Hasta La Creative!

Many execs in the digital media and marketing industries cringe at the notion that the National Security Administration surveillance scandal has any ties to their consumer data-collection practices. As that debate rages on, a bedrock of the consumer data explosion — cloud computing — could be at risk in the U.S.

An August report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation predicts as much as $35 billion could leak from the U.S. cloud computing market by 2016 if foreign clients pull business from U.S.-based cloud services. By 2016, Gartner estimated the public cloud computing sector would generate $207 billion.

Advertising agencies, ad tech firms offering marketing software and data management services, and brands themselves use U.S.-based cloud services, which allow relatively easy, cost-efficient access to data they use to run digital ad targeting, email marketing efforts, site optimization and loyalty programs. Amazon is one of the largest providers of cloud-based data services. Even average web users store data such as document and music files in the cloud via services such as Google Drive and Dropbox.

Continue reading at AdAge.com