The Web Analytics Association is producing a Webcast on Understanding Customers Through Data: Web Analytics, Audience and Advertising Measurement on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 12:00 Noon, EST, which I'm speaking in; you can register to attend the Webcast here.

Here's more information from the WAA Site about this webcast:

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WAA Webcast Series: Understanding Customers Through Data: Web Analytics, Audience and Advertising Measurement

Thursday, June 19, 2008
12:00 PM EDT/9:00 AM PDT

Learn more about the metrics, methods and tools used by online marketing analytics practitioners, online advertising media and audience measurement organizations. Find out how to use these metrics and tools to better understand your customers, your website’s competitive standing and overall website value. WAA members feel free to invite fellow web analysts who are not currently members!

Judah Phillips, Director of Web Analytics at Reed Business Information, will moderate a discussion among our panel of expert members.

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It's going to be interesting.  One thing that occurred to me is how much the subject of our talk is illuminated by material in the appendix of The Online Advertising Playbook: Proven Strategies and Tested Tactics from the Advertising Research Foundation.

In another one of my ideas - which I hope to mention at the Webinar, and which I already mentioned today in the rehearsal to Josh Chasin, head of research at ComScore - is about developing a closer relationship between Audience Measurement tools based on panel data like ComScore, Nielsen and Web Analytics platforms (referred to as Site Side Analytics in the Online Advertising Playbook).

For example, ComScore MyMetrix already provides core reports on categories such as "Conversational Media" and "JobSearch" - these are based on sites (and specific pages within a site) the panel visits each month - why not make it easier for those URLs to be used as segmentation in Web Analytics, as well?  

If my traffic from "Conversational Media" (Social Networks, Blogs and Message Forums) is 5%, according to ComScore (which doesn't, by the way, make it easy to come up with that information - you have to export the data into Excel in order to mash up the information with a Source/Loss report for the site your interested in) why can't the Analytics Platform running on my site tell me how much cookie based traffic I got from Conversational Media  - and compare the two?

Actually, what I'd like to see, is Google Analytics do it first.  

Why?  Google Analytics is already doing Benchmarking and a large number of accounts are participating and here's an area where Google Analytics could play to it's strengths. 

What to see what percentage of traffic your site got from any category that ComScore or Nielsen provides?  All Google has to do is take the URLs published in MyMetrix, for example, and create a bunch of custom definitions, filters, updated monthly, and then allow the data it's already collected to be segmented (if the account holder wants that) as a benchmark.

Anyway, I hope you'll register and attend the Webcast, or, if you read this post after the Webcast, go and listen to in the archives.