We live in a time of unprecedented access to information and levels of connectivity. People from all corners of the globe can communicate and share ideas on a day-to-day basis. Data is everywhere. Our online activity is documented with increasing levels of sophistication. If you’re in the digital advertising or performance marketing industry, you already know how powerful data is. We interact with large datasets all of the time, but do we actually understand it?

The problem is not the amount of information available to us – it’s how we represent information in meaningful ways.

Imagine that you are an aspiring young professional conducting market research and have just amassed an incredibly large dataset about how companies spend their money on performance marketing. How do you convey this information to your boss – someone who doesn’t have time to sift through spreadsheets, connecting the dots between important points?

Scenario #1  You spend hours crafting a PowerPoint presentation, richly detailed and full of useful information. The presentation looks something like this:

Scenario #2  You pull the most important elements of your data analysis, and use your creative side to represent them in a powerful info-graphic:

The information in both of these scenarios is exactly the same, but presented in two completely different ways. Both access large datasets, and both convey the same message – or do they?

Be honest with yourself. Did you actually read the data in scenario #1 at first? Your eyes probably gravitated automatically towards the visually appealing info-graphic before returning to the slides. The human brain loves looking at pictures. Images and visuals are much easier for us to process, and are often more memorable than text.

Reading and understanding text takes a lot more brainpower than looking at a picture or a good info-graphic. Our brains like using as little information as possible to make decisions, relying on prior knowledge and other cognitive shortcuts to filter out irrelevant details. In a time when we are constantly being distracted by our smartphones, tablets, and emails – it is essential to communicate your information effectively.

If your performance is being measured and critiqued by the decisions your boss makes after listening to your market research presentation – as it was in our scenario above, it really matters how you convey your information. Keeping your presentation simple, insightful, and full of relevant visuals will make your boss much more likely to actually pay attention to what you are saying.

The takeaway here is that one of the best possible ways for the average person to interpret the massive amounts of data available to us is through visuals. Making great info-graphics takes a lot of dedication and practice, so start small and keep it simple.