I was at the latest SEMPO meetup Thursday night at Razorfish - SEMPO NY Presents: The Great Conversion, which had a ninja panel consisting of:

Dennis Mortensen, Entrepreneur, Author and Director of Data Insights at Yahoo!

Ben Seslija, Senior Director, Acquisition and Analytics for Clickable

Jorie Waterman,  SVP, Director of Search of MRM

Eli Goodman, Search Evangelist of comScore, Inc.

Andy Fisher, VP of Analytics and National Lead, Razorfish

I’m recalling the insights I had listening to these 5 ninjas talk about conversion, entirely from memory, for better or worse, as I didn’t take notes, and decided to just take in what was being said, attentively relaxing, so to speak.

On what to measure for Conversions:

Dennis Mortensen mentioned pre-click data was desirable to track and it’s becoming more possible to do so – most data in site analytics is post-click data which doesn’t reflect search query behavior and lead up to the click on a ad or search result.   Jory Waterman mentioned tracking the entire history of a search funnel is important and that current analytics don’t always capture that (going along with what Dennis said).

Meanwhile, Andy Fisher mentioned that what goes on in Razorfish is no secret – but that his goal, and the goal of his company, is to find information that will allow his clients to succeed, crucial data that drives conversions – the type the client wants – and cited an example of PPC data for cheap auto loans (or something like that) and how the wrongly worded ads would draw people to click on it who don’t have the right credit history, and should not be getting a loan, but who also spend the advertisers dollars, clicking the ad. Razorfish has figured out, so Andy claims, smart ways to save their clients money by doing superior research.   Eli Goodman mentioned the case studies that Comscore freely provide and how their panel data has been successfully used to predict search behavior in the past, and how it’s improving (he said more, but I can’t remember what that was).

Finally, Ben Seslija mentioned the vast difference between pre-click data and post-click data and that, up till now, all of our analysis has been based on what happens after the click, but that, with the layering of third party ad data, and some very smart thinking and analysis – you can do some amazing stuff (again, I don’t recall all that Ben said, but this was the gist of it).

On what is coming up in Conversion tracking in 2010

Dennis Mortensen said that he is now convinced in 2010 Yahoo! Analytics and other analytics platforms will be able to do deeper analysis of search behavior by adding pre-click data to the mix.   He also commented on Google Analytics new offerings announced at Emetrics earlier this week and mentioned that, for all the hoopla, most of those features were already available in Yahoo! Analytics and other vendors for some time.   However, Dennis did mentioned that some of the advanced analysis that Google is doing with the data, which is still basic, has promise, and is probably the most significant enhancement they provided this week (telling a customer what data they should pay attention to that was being tracked, but not highlighted anywhere in the Analytics, previously).

Andy Fisher of Razorfish mentioned that he was excited on the rise of the Ad-Exchanges and the “Futures Exchange” of cookie data that is being brokered by various player in that “market” and how Razorfish is playing in that field and experimenting with, as I call it, “cookie arbitrage“ or, for a better name, call it “online lead scoring” for their clients (buy the cookie value of a visitor for cheaper and resell it to a retailer later -etc).

I had heard a bit about this kind of “Futures Market” on visitor data and online “Lead Scoring”  at Leadscon East, in August, in a very interesting session about Achieving Breakthrough Results via understanding and leveraging  the Advertising Exchanges

Achieving Breakthrough Results

Internet advertising presents a truly accountable medium for the deployment of advertising dollars. In times good and bad, but especially in the more challenge economic environments, those spending money want to know they are getting the most out of their money. This applies for both those whose objectives focus on branding and those with a more specific performance objective such as a sale or a lead. Learn how you can make your dollars go further and get the results you deserve.
Presenter: Murthy Nukala, Founder & CEO, Adchemy
Moderator: Rob Leathern, Chief Executive Officer, CPM Advisors, Inc.
Panelists: Alan Edgett, Sr. Director, Digital Media Strategy & Innovation, Experian Consumer Direct
Paul McLenaghan, Vice President, Interactive Markets, TARGUSinfo
Scott Spencer, Group Product Manager, DoubleClick Ad Exchange, Google

While the particular approach Nukula’s company, www.Adchemy.com, focuses on providing, as I understand it, the pCTR estimation …. (Adchemy.com does far more than this – but most of their documentation is behind a firewall and isn’t online where it can be freely seen – nor is the presentation and Leadscon East, which i quote, though I did try to find it online)

……estimating the likelihood that a given user will click on a particular ad from a certain advertiser. In the search world, this problem is called “pCTR estimation,” for probability of click-through rate. The ranking algorithms for search advertising, Mr. Nukala explained, incorporate not only the price per click an advertiser is willing the pay, but also the estimated click-through rate (calculated by applying clever algorithms and machine learning to vast quantities of query data).“It is well understood,” Mr Nukala said, “that as pCTR estimates improve, the quality of ranking is better, which leads to higher revenue per search.”

It is also important to understand, he added, that the click-through estimates do not improve merely proportionately as search traffic increases but by something more like an exponential multiplier. Presumably, that is the sort of thing Mr. Ballmer had in mind when he said “scale drives knowledge.”

So, one of the areas of Analytics Conversion, again, one that Razorfish is playing in, certainly in 2010, is, essentially, the best way I can put it is … Online Lead Scoring and Online Lead Arbitrage, with an intricate Futures Market, to boot - and all of that is “pre-click” and based on previous behavior, cookie values stored across a network – suggests … Wall Street.

So, is 2010 and beyond when we get Arbitrage of our clickstream … and will that produce a economic rise and crash the same way the Wizards of Wall Street did with “hedged” bets on each other’s success and failure?   Probably not, since the Futures market for Online Lead Arbitrage is really brokering “attention” and “access to better deals” for better “cookie values”, so to speak … but in another way, the buying and selling of “clickstream data” and the decisions based on it – are, on the face of it, disconcerting - and perhaps, suggesting a need for regulation that is entirely absent right now – so I see, a red flag here.

Moreover, this level of decision making is having in a hundredth of a second – across many servers, with little or any accountability,  and few people outside of insider geniuses like Murthy Nukala, who fully understand what those decision are based on – while exciting, for a profitability standpont, bring up some ethical questions – one’s that I’m undecided about.  I will say that I am troubled about it, but i’m not sure it’s illegal or even unethical – but I feel something in me that believes it’s ….. wrong, but I haven’t actually figured out the reason why, for sure.

If, in 2010, site analytics, in some form, begins to incorporate some form of online lead scoring, or at least, with this form of decision making, may eventually lead to a two or three tiered web – where the best offers and best values are presented only to those who have the “best cookie value” based on an “unregulated exchange” .   In fact, this may already be happening, now – and we’re just not seeing it for what it is.

I don’t like it.   We’re having enough problems with Google’s “unregulated” control of search results now, organic mainly, and paid, as well – I have spoken out about this before in a post last year titled The Google Economy -and while Google will eventually tell publishers what they actually making off of the ads, they haven’t as yet ……. but Google is also running an “arbitrage” in both paid and organic results (I suspect, organic as well – the paid part is well known) and they’re unregulated.  Here’s what I wrote about last year in response to Google’s almost always stellar financial results:

…All Google needs to do at any point, is manipulate the dials to pay out to publishers more or less, as they need to, to make whatever Quarterly Goal they want.

In other words, Google has total control over it’s own Economy -Google is it’s own Economy - and it can alter the payout on advertising to publishers in any way it feels like – without anyone ever knowing how much they actually made, and it can alter its PPC Ads to be easier or harder to click on, as it wants - all which end up controlling how much money it makes and how much money it reports.

Google is the ultimate “rigged” system - as much as I love wearing Google T-Shirts and Swag – as great as their products are – their 3Q08 results each quarter are as “unnatural” as George W. Bush’s winning the Presidential Elections of 2000 and 2004 - especially 2004 (Neocons are trying to do it again in 2008, but having a much harder time of it).

In fact, Google can almost, almost make as much money as it wants to make…. as long as people use Google to publish PPC Ads of any variety, and people click on them ….. Google will be profitable. How profitable?

Without getting fixated on this rant about “lead arbitrage” and “cookie arbitrage” – I just don’t feel the mechanics are well understood, by enough people to provide any kind of “peer review” of it (except the insider industry of “leads selling”) or should I all it “Leads Con” that it should be become more pervasive in 2010 – but it appears that – yes, this is where it’s going, as far as I can tell, based on what I heard.

The last speaker I recall a lot about, Ben Seslija, Senior Director, Acquisition and Analytics for Clickable, had some very interesting insights about combining Nielsen and Comscore data for better online advertising results (300% – 400% lift) – he cited using Nielsen to find out the ad copy running in Subway and Bus in Chicago and then aligning online ad copy, and query data pulled from ComScore’s QSearch, to make the same copy that is appearing to an offline viewer match the online message.

This brings up an interesting point – sometimes we make decisions based on being comfortable with the message – and while that’s not the only reason we make a decision to buy something, or do something, we are, at our hearts, still influenced by superstition and the idea an advertiser engages and cares about us – and one way that is now manifested, I feel, is through a better alignment of offline and online messaging.

I think this “alignment” of messaging works now so well because so few can do it well, take the time and buy and “marshall” their resources to produce a coordinated effect – but ….. were everyone to do this say….by 2015, we’d become much more immune to that kind of “persuasion” – and simply running the campaign with the right taglines, and making that campaign consistent, and complementary, across all media, will become a given in the future.  While it works well now,and for the next few years – 10 years from now, this approach will not work as well…that’s my guess.

I also want to add that Jorie Waterman,  SVP, Director of Search of MRM, did mention the understanding and targeting of ads and tactics for each stage of the funnel a searcher is at (along with the locations they are searching at) is crucial in getting the best results, and that’s what she’s working for an hoping for more of in 2010.

I meant to write about this a couple of days ago, but didn’t get a chance, and now, I’ll post from my iPhone, just to ensure I write about and share an insight about planning websites and web presence.

Looking at RFP’s, I have never seen one specifying what elements are going to be tracked (by site analytics) and how they should be tracked.

Almost any RFP has structure and usability elements already specified, but almost no one thinks about specifying analytics tracking Requirements (or supplying such information as a response to an RFP).

Why not? Why is usability and web design, along with Branding elements (and a CMS) in a Request Proposal, but Analytics Tracking, isn’t?

Granted, who ever is building a site, isn’t going to be tracking it, since the site is being created for a customer. I understand that, but, since the web developent firm doesn’t think about tracking, and stakeholders often don’t know to, or can’t, it’s a big hole in the design process.

It’s no wonder many sites don’t get tracked well, or at all (or, just stick Google Analytics tags on a site, and call that, Analytics Enablement). I realize this analytics Enablement requirement might be an additional burden for many RFP’s, but, I think Analytics ought to be in every new website proposal.

While it’s not possible to forsee every event or state on a website or websites that should be tracked, it’s amazing that such a request (for analytics) is absent.

On the positive side, I’ve noticed SEO and Social Media Strategy / Execution, being asked for, and those things tend to be measured, or, at least, an attempt is often made to measure both.

Why not formalize the measurement process and methodology by adding it to any Website Request For Proposal – (I know this is a political issue in many organizations-analytics is typically added, like icing to a baked cake, around launch – but, that approach ought to be reexamined)?

A lot was announced, and promised to us in the last 24 hours though the practical effects will take several months to play out.  I don’t want to repeat what everyone else said – though I do need to establish the main points before offering my own thoughts about it.

One of the more significant announcements came from Google yesterday at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco where  Marissa Mayer Showed Off Social Search and Social Results From  Social Networks intergrated into Google (but, only those reachable via Google Profile) via Twitter, meanwhile Bing is pulling recent status updates from Facebook and Twitter.

For one thing, these developments are an indication of the  convergences of Search and Social Media  (noted that earlier this year, about 6 months ago) where I said:

” ….Just want to close out this post by observing how much “convergence” was taking place at Search Engine Strategies this week – Social Media, Search Engine Marketing and Web Analytics have d e-facto, merged; while the conference is called “Search Engine Strategis” it’s really more the intersection between Social Media, Search and Analytics -and so, who can say that Art, Social Networks and Web Analytics are also, not converging.”

As information is coming to us in a combined form, skills to handle it and act on it will change, perhaps, with unintended results. One example of unintended results, and I’m pulling this from left field, literally, is the new FCC Blogger Disclosure rules – @andrewhazen spoke  about upcoming FTP rulings at a local meetup tonight. Hazen mentioned the FCC could not monitor what everyone was saying even if they wanted to.

But that’s not exactly true, and is less true, every day.

Take Google SideWiki – Google opened up commenting about any website (as long as you have the Google Toolbar installed and updated) and people questioned weather Google could police malicious or brand damaging comments, but you hardly hear a peep about anyone complaining yet about bad comments (Google appears to be suppressing the appearance of  most of the comments or not many people are leaving comments, period) but Google would not have released the SideWiki if it didn’t have the means to police it.  Same thing with the SearchWiki, a year ago.

With the recent investment of the CIA in Visible Technology Social Monitoring tool (and Visible Technology is sponsoring the conference I’m speaking at in London next month, Monitoring Social Media 09) AND the convergence of digital information into Google, it could be means to monitor not just FTC Blogger violations, but any activity deemed significant and worthy of study.  I’m not necessarily saying this is a bad thing – perhaps, it’s beyond good or bad, it’s probably an inevitable evolution – but still … do we realize the real web will be crawled for behavior trails, due to possible threats, and those threats will erase any privacy we still have left?

In another way, the merging of real time data into search results will make them richer, but also, more variable – which will both disrupt Search Optimization, and open up new opportunities to rank quickly, drive traffic to sites via waves of fabricated news.  Chances are, Google will quickly develop counter measures, though the inclusion of real time search will open up many new holes for spammers to exploit search engines.

Contextual Search will grow richer, and be able to be targeted against waves of new information, with ad targeting capability  quickly developed – providing new ad inventory and new ways to get flooded with information we don’t want, along with nuggets of what we do want and need.

At the same time, Social Media (in that real time data from Twitter and Facebook updates) being merged into organic search results means many more search results, playing into Google Caffeine, which was just released a few months ago, to handle real time data, and display it along with more static search results in a faster way – all this pointing to the ability to quickly display and monitor results in real time.

You can even see another piece of Google’s thinking and evolution in the latest update to Google Analytics that was just released on Tuesday at the Emetrics Summit DC with  Google Analytics Now More Powerful, Flexible And Intelligent including Email Alerts on changes in your analytics data.

But Web Analytics data is just one form of data that email alerts can be made from, and the current form of Google Alerts could easily be updated to include not just mentions of a selected keyword or keyword phrase, but of pattern – any pattern – including patterns that would be interesting to the CIA or to FCC and FTC.    I’m not even saying this is a good thing or a bad thing – but it is the logical implication of where this is all going.

On the positive side, due to the melding of all the various streams of information (and Google Wave shows promise, from what I understand of it – of inter-operating on several streams of data in one operating environment – even if those streams of data were never designed to inter-operate with each other) marketing, public relations, social media and search jobs and disciplines are about to get super charged.

Social Media, which has been looked at, for the last 2-3 years, as and interesting and experimental approach to marketing and public relations – will suddenly become a cash cow – how can anyone in their right mind ignore Social Media,  now when all this new Social Media inventory is suddenly dumped into Google, along with all the new possibilities to run targeted ads against it – and Google evolves into a real time social search engine?

Steve Rubel wrote that  The Age of Social Search Dawns today, in his personal lifestream (another sign that everything is converging) – here’s what he said/wrote:

During the first fifteen of years of the Internet’s gestation, we searched the web unassisted. In the second era, we’ll do so with the curated assistance of our social networks – and be able to spot trends from friends. As we wrote in our search white paper earlier this year…

“However, on the whole, social networks are becoming a key way for people to find content that’s meaningful to them. In response, all of the major networks are building out search tools that could, conceivably, threaten Google.”

Well, Google made it clear they’re not waiting around to get beaten. This is the opening salvo of what will be an all out social search war in in the next few years. Watch this space.

Another implication of “Social Search” is that you’ll want choose your friends more carefully – or, at least, some of us will, because, to a large extent, you’ll be able to see their search results in yours, and vice versa – not exactly what your expected from search.

To some extent, that’s good for people who can produce or uncover valuable information to a community – you’ll want to be the friend to such an individual, and such individuals will be sought after, much as influential blogger are today, and rightfully so.    And as a result, blogging software will evolve to accommodate those changes, as will online newspapers, the first being the Huffington Post Social News – that is just now reinventing online news around social networks.

Finally, with everything going into the Search Engines – Search will finally eclipse, but not entirely replace, other forms of marketing, online and off, but … with the caveat that Social Search and Social Networking will have converged – and with it, comes the death of the current understanding of SEO.

Search Engine Optimization, as it is currently understood,and has been practiced, for the last 12 years, dies – as, shortly, within a year or so, no one will see the same results – personalization of search results will become the de-facto result – and Search and Social Media will merge into one discipline – where reputation management and online social monitoring will be it’s main components.

Instead of going after rankings – you’ll be going after reputations – stuff you can write about urls and segments, in locations who’ll see your listings – predicting what they will see, and how to write copy and generate new real time data to show up in Search Results becomes the new SEO.    Meanwhile, new tools will need to be developed to cataglog and rank reputation in Search.

And that’s good news for Social Media Monitoring platforms – who will naturally want to evolve to cover search.  Meanwhile, the competition will come from Google, itself, with it’s own reputation monitoring – and that reputation monitoring capability will be integrated into Google Analytics – which will, inturn, cause a shakeout  in the Social Media Monitoring platforms on one hand, and the merging of what was called Web Analytics with Social Media and Search – much as Web Analytics has now become absorbed into Data Intelligence functions, according to Eric T. Peterson

If you pay close attention to the marketing you see from Omniture, WebTrends, Unica, Coremetrics, and the other “for fee” vendors you’ve surely noticed a dramatic change recently. Nobody is talking about web analytics anymore; the entire focus has become one of systems integration, multichannel data analysis, and cross-channel analytics.

All the sudden web analytics is starting to sound like, gasp, business and customer intelligence.

Eek.

Since it’s late and since this post will be over-shadowed by the hype around Google Analytics releasing more “stuff” on Tuesday I’ll cut right to the chase: I believe that we are (finally) on the cusp of a profound revolution in web analytics and that the availability of third-generation web analytics technologies will finally get digital measurement the seat at the table we’ve been fighting to get for years.

Yes, Web Analytics will get the respect from CMO’s, finally, that we deserved all along – except, we’re not longer going to be called Web Analysts, as Web Analytics and SEO, as they were currently understood, are becoming obsolete.

And that’s what is being worked out right now, as I’m writing this.   A lot of change, a lot of convergence – some of it good, some of it, not.

But, like anything in life, the value is in what you make of it – nothing I said here, even the government’s inevitable monitoring of all the information we put out for them – is necessarily, bad.   But, then, our view of what we consider to be “freedom” and “privacy” are being transformed – almost, in real time.