Posted by Marshall on October 25, 2008 |
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I was really exhausted by the 5 days I spent in Alexandria VA, just outside DC, at the Emetrics Marketing Optimization Summit, but it was overall a great conference and most of the familar faces were there - and easy to network with.
By the way, I’ve begun to think in terms of including my imagery with my Web Analytics posts - most people know that I’m an artist and it’s part of my own unique branding - and it’s something I do in my own way - where I think it fits - I’ve included my iphone paintings, in this case, to capture the feelings I had, a combination of excitement and exhaustion - in this newer medium, which, lately, I’m finding very satisfying to work in.
Thoughts and Feelings - IPhone Painting - Using Colors Application
Marshall Sponder 2008
For one thing, there was an entire Social Media Track at Emetrics this time, that’s never happened before and I attended about half of the sessions in that tract - which was about the best I could do given the competition with other sessions and speaking with people, that I’ll often opt to do, even ahead of attending a session. Most of the sessions I covered are at Emetrics Summit.
I also live blogged most of the sessions I covered using my IPhone, but ran into a glitch with pre-created posts (to capture Marketing Notes and hyperlinks); I required network connectivity in order to edit posts I created beforehand, and most of the time, the session rooms did not have connectivity. I find creative ways around that limitation, and overall, decided the day of carrying a laptop to conference sessions is effectively over - it’s no longer needed as the iPhone has all the neccessary functionality to live blog with. Applications such as WordPress, will continue to improve and make laptops unnecessary for most conference work within the next year.
Getting back to the Social Media Track at Emetrics, it could have been a conference by itself - there was certainly enough content to qualify and in many cases, first class speakers who were doing leading edge social media analysis with an analytics bent. There was a keynote on New York Times Web Analytics by James G. Robinson which suggested that, for a Newspaper like the NY Times, weekly reporting has become neccessary as information is coming in so quickly that monthly reporting no longer is sufficient - there was a number of interesting metrics James came up with, I was familiar with some of it, other things were actually quite illuminating, and I was very happy I attended his keynote.
However, Bill Glassman from The Gartner Group noted that we’re all looking for the next big thing and it felt as if the conference was looking for it too - perhaps the closest thing to that was Mobile Analytics - it seemed to be the new darling of both Emetrics and perhaps, Web Analytics in general. It’s almost as if Mobile Analytics has “replaced” the focus on “Social Media” which is now becoming “absorbed” into the general consciousness of Web Analytics practitioners.
Omniture had an excellent presentation, as did Sebastian Wenzel from Lifetopia Corp, who also writes www.webanalyticsbook.com (the mobile metrics guide is somewhere on his site, but I can’t find it right at this moment - otherwise I’d provide the link for download).
There was also a great session on Measuring Virtual Worlds, with Dr. James Bower of Numedeon Incorporated, Jared Freedman of Code4Software and Matt Bostwick of A4R4 Media. Between Matt, Jared and James, Brand Metrics were explained and detailed in a way I had not seen before, and I think we all “got it” - what branding really has become - which is “product branding” - it’s all about the product, not so much the brand.
I also had a great talk with Jennifer Veesenmeyer, a senior consultant for Stratigent, who I’ve seen and spoken to several times at other Emetrics Summits and some WAA Events.
Finally, I stayed one more day to attend a Board Meeting of the Web Analytics Association, whose Board I am part of. There’s only one place in my life where I can discuss and create strategy that drives business forward, and that’s on the Board of Directors of the Web Analytics Association.
For most of my life, I’ve been affected by the decisions made by others - and being on the Board of Directors has given me an experience of what it’s like to make decisions relevant to the organization and for me, that’s was a very rich and rewarding feeling - especially this last meeting - which was the best one, for me, since I joined the Board.
Posted by Marshall on October 22, 2008 |
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I’m also attending DIY SEM: Your Agency May Not Be the Best Resource - Gary Angel, Mark Ruzomberka, David Harrod and here’s my notes and insights on it - coming to you from my iPhone, while live blogging - but first, here’s the marketing notes:
A06 Wednesday, 1:05 - 1:55
DIY SEM: Your Agency May Not Be the Best Resource
Gary Angel, Semphonic
Mark Ruzomberka, Traffic.com
David Harrod, Traffic.com
Tracking the ROI on thousands of keywords seems overwhelming and managing them against business goals feels overwhelming. But outsourcing the task to an agency might not be your best move. Traffic.Com manages a significant ($1M annualized) search engine marketing program that is one of the primary drivers of traffic to their site. Facing competition from Google in their core business, Based on the optimization opportunities revealed by a Semphonic audit, Traffic opted to bring their program in-house and run it themselves. Mark Ruzomberka of Traffic.Com and Gary Angel of Semphonic will describe the process of an agency process review, outline the key decision-factors in bringing a PPC program in-house, and discuss Traffic.Com’s experience managing the program. You’ll get a better understanding of how to audit your existing SEM program, how to identify the optimization strategies that make sense for your business, and some of the benefits and barriers to managing your own SEM program.
By the way, as I noted in my earlier post a few days back, that Jim Sterne has made it really hard for me by putting an excellent session on Voice of the Customer Panel - John Fernandez, Lance Jones, Mark Brooks to be at the same time … but look, I can’t be in two places at one time - and sometimes, you just need to pick and choose what to focus on.
Here’s my notes and insights now:
Excellent session which pointed to a few conclusions:
1. It makes sense to take a paid search program, if only for being able to react much quickly and take advantage if buzz events.
2. Larger agencies maybe optimized for certain types of activities, they may not suit many businesses that operate with a hybrid model, or atypical business cycle (for example, if your business depends on natural disasters happening) you might be happy when events happen that are most people’s misery.
3. Certain optimizations are not worth doing, even if they are possible to do.
Posted by Marshall on October 22, 2008 |
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I would not want to miss the New York Times Presentation (Keynote) by James G. Robinson, who directs Web Analytics at the NYT; in fact, there was an excellent presentation from the NYT at the last Emetrics Summit in San Francisco, one of the best, if not the best session I attended then - I definitely will not miss this one. Here’s the marketing notes on James Robinson’s keynote:
“…Web Analytics as a Value Driver Across Media
James G. Robinson, Director of Web Analytics, The New York Times - Wednesday, 9:00 - 9:50
A massively well-received presentation in both London and San Francisco, you’ll learn how The New York Times uses web analytics to grow both their print and online audiences, improve web engagement, and increase revenue and profit. The presentation will trace the development of the Times’ web analytics strategy which is mapped directly to value drivers for customer and the business. Learn how The New York Times:
- Integrates online and print data to better track and profile users
- Uses web data to make the print newspaper more profitable
- Shapes insights to flow through “the last mile” to senior management
Again, I find myself drawn to attend the Social Media Analytics Session(s) at Emetrics on Wedensday.
I am sitting here listening to Jim Sterne introduce James Robinson. James starts with asking us if we read the paper this morning. He’s been at the Times for a year, and what a year it’s been!
Customer Insights Group - micro of intergration happening at the Times. Print and Digital are very different culturally.
Prolifiration of tools, but what drives the business, what is important?
We look at week over week analysis over month over month, things
Web analytics bulliten published weekly that ties in with current trends. Weekly reports are awsome and stakeholders love them but they aren’t enough.
We came up with 16 user behaviors that result in revenue and qualified it and came up with signing up for a subscription as by far the most profitable.
And we found 2 links on the site generating the most revenue and we ended up seeing the Print and Digital needed to talk to each other, so we got both talking.
James went into a new approach of predicting how many newspapers extra to print after a scandel (covered at the last emetrics in SF).
We came up with a metric based on total pageviews / revenue to drive the print business. Circulation Analysis.
Eggs and Investment - we had to decide weather to invest inall of this - Pageviews per Keywords. We have millions of possible. A page has a value, a keyword has a value. We haven’t figured it all out yet but our approach is determined.
Here’s our approach - if you do a user behavior analysis, it’s a single, tie to revenue, a double, investment a triple, ROI, a home run.
What does each if our tools used for? We have a clear idea now, much more than a year ago.
Newstracker - an interesting story.
Questions:
1. How do combine audience measurement with web analytics? They do, but James didn’t go into detail.
2. How did James get to this Job? He said it was a long, winding path.
Summery; James came up with a few really interesting insights from his first year running New York Times Web Analytics and the key takeaway for me is the weekly reports that are published internally and tie in current events, being a newspaper, they can do draw on it and these reports create company wide awareness of the web analytics group.
The question about intergrating Nielsen NetRatings with Omniture/WebTrends mirrors issues I’m dealing with currently, but I don’t think James really answered the question exceptvto say that it has been accomplished by his team.
Also, James said audience measurement sits on a different part of the New York Times Tools map than Web Analytics, and pointed out that you dont’t use a hammer when a screwdriver is required, and it’s important to have a map of tools your organization uses and the purposethey are used for.
But having said that, James said audience data is used to figure out “who” is reading the paper and web analytics shows “how” they are reading the paper.
Interesting point.
At the end of the session Omniture had a presentation mobile phones.
What does the market look like for mobile? Quite a lot of growth in numbers and capabilites.
Interesting presentation about celiberities and mobile phones. Analytics show mobile “referrers” by make.
Many challenges for web analytics and Matt from Overture went over the main ones.
Image tags used for identification. Omniture has intergrated Site Catalyst with mobile analytics. Partly we need to identify the handset so site owners can determine if the site experience works for the site. Capturing data and geolocation.
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