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.

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.

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.

I’ll also stay in the same room for the last session of the day on expanding your Online Community. I know Laura Lee Dooley, who joined the Social Media Committee I started at the WAA and read Beth Kanter’s blog which is an excellent resource for Non-Profits who wish to leverage Social Media (and honestly, a lot of what Beth Kanter writes about could be applied to for profit businesses just as well as non-profits).

“..S04 Tuesday, 5:10 - 6:00

Followers, Friends, and Fans: Expanding Your Online Community

Jonathon D. Colman, The Nature Conservancy
Laura Lee Dooley, World Resources Institute
Beth Kanter, How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media

If you aren’t on facebook, twitter, friendfeed, technorati, and delicious, should you be? And once you jump into social media, how do you track and measure success? Tips, tools and stories from the trenches from three people who focus on online engagement and have more links, friends and followers than some small countries have citizens.

Laura Lee on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Anyway, here’s my notes on Beth Kantor’s presentation. She looks at AideRss and the statistics and see’s what posts do best.

Also Beth looks at Technorati and noted her ranking goes up and down and says she says she’s noted when her rankings go up or down and what triggers it.

Btw, Beth raised 215k for Cambodian refugees as non profit. Beth goes and friends a lot of people who follow alerts on her name, or “Cambodia”.

Laura Ann - she uses Twitter a lot and suggests we all create Twitter accounts.

But….But… Most companies are not prepared to handle interactive feedback. That’s a major roadblock.

Ambient Awareness - Listening Post Exhibition. Post Ratio: 1 : 12 (once about yourself and 12 times about others)

Laura handles two Twitter accounts
She used several metrics including twitter clickthrough and posts.

Xefer and Twitter Grader.

Is twitter multiple relationships or a single one to Twitter?

A lot of concerns about Twitter downtime but the service continues to grow.

laura points out the person who has the Twitter account for your company needs to be a senior person who knows the Brand well. No Interns, that’s not a good idea for several reason.

Nature Conservatory Case study using DIGG

One thing to note was the Digg traffic wasn’t worth much though they got a lot of that traffic.

Digg is good if you want to reach new people but it can lead to other things that are valuable.

Results of Social News Campaign on Digg. Normally they get 20,000 visits a day but 76,000 visits for the day when a Digg story ran on Digg homepage.

But ….. Our goal was to spur conversations about the enviornment plus tons of links, which in turn drove new visits of higher quality plus SEO juice.

How much time required? A few years to become a crediable source on Digg, or whatever large Social Networks.

The ad itself, took a few hours to set up. But Digg helped reach people we normally would not be able to contact.

Nature Conservatory also uses Radian6 to listen to the conversation.

My take is that social media is a lot of work, learning to leverage relationships.

Many organizations are too stoggy to adopt Social Media but once they see the results you usually get but it’s a culture change.

Digg changes make it harder to get a story on the first page but many top Diggers have interests in causes.

Fact is that Digg has been gamed so much the top keyword in Google for a search on Digg is “gamed”.

I’m covering yet another session on Social Media Metrics by Jason Burby and Ryan Turner, both of ZAAZ.

Social Media Metrics

Jason Burby, ZAAZ
Ryan Turner, ZAAZ

I captured the tail end of Jason’s session.

Monitoring response and creating policies to respond. Plugging in ratings and reviews, intergrated social tools and internal communications.

How to handle authentication and user identities. Targeting popularity engines with your content.

Jason cited the case of a Sony camera with a review on CNET, and the feedback is mixed, you can respond in a fair way.

ZAAZ Web Analytics and ZAAZ Social Media approach are the same, defining what success is.

To be honest, so far, I am not hearing anything different on this talk then what I already know.

But here’s what I make at of this perception - Social Media Marketing is essentially web analytics, but with different inputs and outputs.

ZAAZ has a Social Media Conversion Calculator which is available on it’s site
-not a big deal, but you can fill in your own actions and related prices.

Both brand perception and shopping have always had a social context. Three years ago we accessed the opinions of 5 friends in the consideration process, today we can access the opinions of 5 million fellow customers. Measurement on the social web presents analysts with new challenges: How do you measure word of mouth? Can you model the relationships between online research and offline purchase? What is the value of a comment on a blog post? A connection in a social network? A question in a support forum? A tag on YouTube? How does engagement affect lifetime customer value? Jason Burby and Ryan Turner of ZAAZ will present some insights from their experiences grappling with these issues, and they’ll put forward some ideas about where businesses need to focus as the social web grows in importance over the coming years.

On my way to the keynote, which Jim Sterne said was about using Web Data to run the business, i ran into Katie Paine.

I asked Katie how her recent European travels had been (because I read her blog via my RSS reader and see her updates on Twitter and FaceBook).

I quickly realized Katie had not told me anything yet. I got that information asyncronously, just by subscribing to her.

So, here’s a value of Social Media, how we stay in touch, having conversations that never really end (continunous conversations), like the one I have with Katie Paine.

Anyway, onto the keynote.

Jim thinks we need a calender function in Web Analytics, think Timelines on steroids.

Things to measure
1. Measure what is happening online (Hitwise, Compete) including Competitive Analysis
2. Site Analytics
3. MVT
4. Measure what you can’t control, Social Media, and how they feel when they are on your site.

So, the interesting point here is …. If you get the information above on your site and competitiors how does it affect your marketing and more importantly, the Business Outcome.

What is the value of a page; you need it for each page of your site.

Jim told everyone to look at their budget now and assured us they will be different next year (due to the economy).

Jim Sterne ended the keynote by asking us to note at least one thing new at this conference we haven’t seen beforecand put videos up from the conference on a new YouTube channel which will help someone win a free pass to the next Emetrics Summit in San Jose and a year from now, here in DC.

I want to commend the WAA Marketing Committee for coming up with the YouTube video idea. It did not orginate in my Social Media Committee … In a way, the functions of Social Media aren’t really seporate from marketing, sales, membership, research, standards, Social Media is part of all of them.

So, I see the social media committee work we started at the WAA as something that has migrated to other committees. That gives me a clue on how Social Media will evolve in many organizations.

My belief is the issue with social media has been where it belongs, where does it sit on an organization, who are it’s stakeholders.

With Search and Web Analytics, we generally know where these things sit, but not with Social Media. But that situation has started to change and what is happening at the Web Analytics Association is a clue on how it will go.

All we need to do now is figure out where Social Media sits in an organization, and allot a budget for tools, training and headcount.

The keynote was followed with presentations by ForeSee and Optimost.

Optimost announced “Adaptive Targeting” with a new offering; Optimost is now owned by Interwoven.

The Optimost new module for Adaptive Targeting goes beyond measuring average lift; persona based variables along with demographics and locational data is merged with MVT.

A guy named Kris from America’s Test Kitchen shared interesting results from using Adaptive Targeting.

Price sensitivity was determined for all groups at 30 Dollars. Also, the Optimost data ended up feeding into basic site usability improvements and it resulted in several hundred thousand dollars of savings or profit.

Note: I had a post with marketing notes prepared ahead of time but, one of the snags of working with posts that did not orginate on the IPhone, I can’t edit a such a post without a network connection. Bummer! Anyway, I started from scratch and wrote a new post.

I walked into Justin Cultroni teaching Google Conversion University and he’s fantastic as an instructor and extremely knowledgeable on analytics and Google Analytics, in particular.

I walked in to the Goals, Funnels, Ecommerence and Site Search and I got a few points cleared up I didn’t know about, including how to set up goals properly, using head matching, issues with session ids, how to set up site search and the way funnels work (a clearly defined process).

My sense is that much of the work of web analytics is to match up the way a business works with the way a particular data analytics platform needs to have the data structured. In a way, web analysts are the “glue” that ties together Marketing, IT, and the analytics collection platforms.

True, analysts provide insight into the data collected, and that is mainly the way I look at Web Analytics, but the other side of the house is that Web Analytics is the glue for matching up the different parts of your organization, in a way that is often overlooked.

I also sat in on Justin as he covered Website Optimzer, Webmaster Tools, Ad Planner, which was pretty farm good.

Google Ad Planner can be used as competitive intelligence tool much as AdCenter is.

The data comes from the behavior of the top 3000 sites, according to someone in the room that works for Google and in Google Ad Planner.

You have to sign up for the beta,you don’t have to even run a campaign with it, or you can figure out what ads to run and for whom.

Again, forgive my spelling and grammer, I am typing this on the IPhone.

I’m excited Eric T. Peterson and Web Analytics Demystified, along with ComScore and Josh Chasin, figured out a way to overlay Web Analytics Demystified Visitor Engagement Score; this is big news.

I’m on my way to Emetrics Marketing Optimization Summit DC and writing this from my 3G IPhone using WordPress; I don’t have the ability to link to Eric T.Peterson’s post today, just now, but you can check it out for yourself at webanalyticsdemystified.com, if your interested.

Here’s the thing, I work with Web Analytics and ComScore Media Metrix, quite a lot, and have read Eric’s paper recently, so I have a seasoned opinion.

I think Engagement Scoring is going to be a big improvement for ComScore, though I hope it will be provided as part of ComScore’s core reports rather than being a new product that you have to pay extra for. Based on what information I can pull out of Eric’s post, today, I am inclined think the result will be the latter rather than the former.

Why?

Look, 4 of the 7 measures in his formula are used because the other 3 can’t be pulled out of ComScore’s Audience data, and of those the formula used, the base data is already present in any core report ComScore produces.

In his post, Peterson shows the caculated percentages for each engagement index, not the raw data and an example of how he applied his calculation. That’s what leads me to think the Engagement Score will be. Paid addition to standard reports once it’s offered, if it ever is offered (hope I am wrong on this one).

However, I do understand giving away everything valuable is also, not desirable. And, honestly,Engagement Scoring does add value, so thereis some justification for adding additional cost. Clearly, this is a philosophical issue, and I don’t know what the final form of this service will be, anyway.

But, I still think it would be unfair to tack on additional charges for calculations on data to arrive at an Engagement Score based on published and paid for data the subscriber already has.

Think of it this way, some Web Analytics Platforms, as of today, don’t give you “Bounce Rate” but it’s easy to calculate Bounce Rate based on a standard report, so why charge extra for it?

The 4 Engagement Percentages being presented in Eric Petetson’s post, that make up a property’s score aren’t much more complicated to calculate than Bounce rate is.

I think the Web Analytics Demystified Engagement Scoring of ComScore Reports, is a major advance for ComScore, but it needs to be free and offered as soon as possible.

As Eric Peterson noted, there are some features of Audience Measurement that confer a distinct advantage over Web Analytics, such as the Catogorization of web properties.

Peterson quickly came up with a loyal score for any ComScore site by dividing visits to a web property by the total visits to all web properties in the same category; it’s simple, but effective, and draws on data the Subscriber already has in a standard ComScore report, which means a subscriber can do the Loyalty Calculation for themselves, if they want.

I’m looking forward to speaking with Eric Peterson, and hopefully, Josh Chasin about the resarch being presented today, in person, at Emerrics Marketing Optimization Summit.

I want to add one more point, and this is directed more at ComScore; Data that a subscriber already gets in one format (or report) should be made freely available to a ComScore data subscriber in other forms, for no additional charge.

However, if data a ComScore Subscriber already gets is manipulated with additional data the Subscriber doesn’t have (hasn’t paid for) then ComScore, I feel, is well within their rights to repackage the data as a new product.

Examples where ComScore does not appear to be following my advice is their Cross Visiting reports, these are simply a recalulation of data a customer already paid for in the Core Reports.

On the other hand ComScore Segment Metrix adds considerable extra data to Core Reports, improving them; ComScore is entited to market Segment Metrix as an additional product because of all the additional information contained (unlocked, would be a better term).

So, from that point of view, Web Analytics Demystified Engagement scoring ought to be a free enhancement, a gift to ComScore Subscribers, who pay hand over fist for the ComScore offerings, in the first place.

What does Eric Peterson and his brand get out of it? More people know who he is, his brand spreads, which is, by all measures, a good thing.

And now my fingers tire and I’m almost in Washington DC now.

Hope there’s not too many typos and misspellings here, tried my best to avoid that.

Finally, Emetrics Summit is over; this morning I attended the Web Analytics Association Board of Directors' face to face meeting we have 2 of these each year) and it was very productive.  

I also presented yesterday on Second Life Analytics at IBM along with Jared Freedman of Code4software.com on Second Life Advertising and metrics.  

I'll cover this more in a couple of days.

Been so busy over the last two days in Washington DC attending Emetrics Summit that I haven't had time to post much, or at all.

Tonight I took my Social Media Committee of the Web Analytics Association to dinner at a nearby resturant  - one of the most memorable dinners I've had and it was great.

There were some very intesting things I found out today at the