Dive Brief: 

• Advertising technology built to track user habits and deliver online ads faster has substantially changed the way ads are bought, sold and delivered, but the technology developed could have other implications. 
• The founders of Invite Media, a demand-side platform, are now working on the startup Flatiron Help, which is working to bring big data analysis to oncology — ultimately providing medical professionals with better access to information and encouraging doctors to be paid for better outcomes.
• The ad technology could also potentially create a better retail environment, more in-tune devices like thermostats, and potentially be the underlying processing layer driving most of society's transactions. 

Dive Insight: 

When ad tech was first being developed, the scope of potential may not have been clear. Now that big data is so critical, the opportunities are essentially limitless. That should excite a lot of ad tech developers, because as the ad tech industry becomes more crowded and uniform, there will be other opportunities waiting in different industries.