The biggest topic that you will grapple with in 2011 is consumer privacy. We are at the most liberal and lenient point of consumer privacy in the history of time. It’s primarily because digital data is spewed by consumers with each click, like, Tweet, share, and update with reckless abandon. Consumers are barely aware of the digital footprints they’re creating and we don’t know how to handle it. There are no rules here.

Consumers are racing to new digital medium at breakneck speeds to be early adopters of the next best thing and are literally addicted to digital. Our obsession is so ravenous that almost half of smartphone users will wake up in the middle of the night to check for digital updates. It’s not their fault really, in fact I include myself in this frantic race to get the newest browser, the latest app, or to connect with nearly anyone who asks. Heck, I downloaded the Owner’s Manual to a Hyundai on my iPad within seconds of watching a TV commercial just because I could. I have no idea what data Hyundai now has on me and if or when I’ll start receiving ads or emails containing must-have offers for a car that I probably won’t ever buy (although it looks sweet!). My point is that we’re on the precipice of a substantive change in the way that consumer data is collected and utilized. If we (and by “we” I mean we digital measurers, organizations and institutions) don’t get our acts together in the first quarter of Q1 then we will have regulation forced upon us.

In my opinion, the number one most critical component for even getting off the ground with privacy protection is education. We must educate consumers, organizations, developers and governments to have a meaningful conversation about privacy. If we fall short of that, ignorance about how data is collected, how it’s used, and who uses it, will continue to be vilified by consumers and media sources that don’t know What they Know.

To that end, I’m working on a concept that I’m calling the Privacy Apogee.

Those of you who are up to speed on your celestial mechanics will know that an apogee reflects the furthest point of orbit from earth. What I seek to explore is the farthest point of ethical data collection from a consumer. My working diagram above depicts your average consumer at the epicenter of privacy and the way we track his digital activities using technology that extends from innocuous to invasive. My plan is to flesh out this concept with current tracking capabilities and potential consumer benefits. Moreover, I intend to create a blueprint for accountability. Ultimately the goal is to produce an infographic that conveys several things:

For consumers

– The Privacy Apogee will illustrate data tracking capabilities that exist today and highlight some of the benefits of opting-in to these tracking practices.

For developers – It will offer guidance on what methods of data to collect and how to communicate data collection, storage and utilization practices in clear language.

For organizations – The Privacy Apogee will illustrate just how far – is too far – by showing what’s technically possible and what’s morally ethical.

In creating this work, I hope to educate and inform the masses by offering a public service that will open some eyes to the critical imperative for self-regulation before we have governmental mandates forced upon us. The Privacy Apogee will illustrate current technological capabilities for tracking consumers’ digital actions and offer both positive and negative repercussions of those actions.

So back to you Captain Blackbeak…I’m listening and this is what I’m doing to create change. It’s a change in perception. A change in education. And a change in direction for our industry. But like you, I cannot do this alone and need the support and mindshare of our industry. With the help of my partner Eric and the industry #measure pros out there my goal is to crowd source this idea to ensure that I’ve fully considered the technology capabilities and the benefits of tracking practices, So I need your help. The Web Analyst’s Code of Ethics is one part of this, but I’ll be working to define the pros and cons of data collection and the methods by which we accomplish our task. Stay tuned for more, as this is just the beginning…

But in the meantime, what do you think?

2011 is shaping up to be the year of big marketing. And luckily for us measurers, smart marketing is founded in data and measurement. With IBM’s recent acquisition rampage and now Teradata’s plans to buy Aprimo, there is unprecedented choice for integrated enterprise marketing solutions. Teradata announced today it’s intentions to buy the Enterprise Marketing Management leader for $525M with a closing date anticipated for sometime in Q1 2011. It’s a smart move in my opinion because the days of big data management and the ability to harness the consumer data firehose for elevated marketing are upon us.

On the executive briefing this morning, I pointed a question by asking if this acquisition was a response to IBM’s recent buying spree and the answer was a definitive no. Bill Godfrey, Aprimo’s Chief Executive Officer, quickly pointed out that Aprimo’s technology set covers 8 categories and that only one competes directly with the IBM/Unica offering. He iterated, “This is not a copy-cat move” with mild umbrage. Mr. Godfrey went on to eloquently explain that the merger pursues an independent strategy that brings a unified platform covering a very broad end-to-end spectrum of functionality. While the story sounded familiar, it’s a good one. It leverages the database storage and business analytics capabilities of Teradata and layers the marketing management and operations proficiency of Aprimo on top. This enterprise-ready integrated solution fuels a marketers’ paradise where insights are churned from data, which pumps intelligent life into automated marketing. All this happens within a closed-loop system that improves over time. Sounds rosy doesn’t it? To paraphrase Teradata’s CMO Darryl McDonald, “The combined solution will help accelerate revenue generating campaigns and leverage data for strategic insights and quick response.”

Keep in mind that this isn’t entirely new territory for Teradata who has been offering marketing products to its customers for some time. With IWI (Integrated Web Intelligence) and TRM (Teradata Relationship Manager), it’s already servicing digital data integration and intelligent marketing to it’s customers. Yet, it will be interesting to see how many existing clients and new organizations adopt this complete functionality. My hunch is that this stack is not for the feint of heart nor the bootstrapped organization. It will work best with deeply integrated datasets, stored within big iron and activated using some complex Marketing Resource Management capabilities. All things that both Teradata and Aprimo excel at. But fair warning: Mom & Pop shops need not apply. However, if you’re a large enterprise looking to accelerate your marketing prowess, then this may be the solution you’ve had on your wish list all these years.

While integrating these technologies may take a while, and the promise of an end-to-end solution is no trivial pledge, I’m bullish on the deal. This is a step forward for marketers because it has the potential to deliver the ERP system they never had. It still doesn’t cover everything, but the combined solution sure does handle some critical moving parts.

Congrats to everyone at Aprimo for building an attractive offering and to Teradata for recognizing it. And Happy Holidays to all!

The following originally posted in Exact Target’s 10 Ideas To Turn Into Results report. It’s part of their Letters to the C-Suite Series and this is my letter…

To The Executive Team:

Do you even know who your customers are anymore? Chances are, you probably don’t. You
catch fleeting glimpses of them as they open your emails or pop onto your website for a quick
visit. You might even momentarily engage with them when they drop into your store to browse
around or see your products firsthand. Or maybe you meet them ever so briefly as they feign
interest in your brand by “liking” something you posted on Facebook.

If you’re doing it right, your business is collecting feedback across many customer
touch points.

But you only really hear them when they shout from the rooftops, irate and full of vim. That’s
probably where you begin to learn what’s on their minds. But do you even know that it’s the
same person who was showing you all that love during your last promotion? Probably not.
In actuality, few companies really know their customers. Whether your customers are end
users or other businesses, how they interact with your brand, where they discover new
information, and how they communicate is changing at an astounding rate. Customers
are increasingly unaffected by traditional marketing conventions, and their tolerance for
redundant messaging, static content, and conflicting brand information is nonexistent. They
don’t see your organization like you do—in departmentalized silos of categories, products,
business units, and operating divisions. To them, you’re just that brand they either love, hate,
or treat with ambivalence. That is, until you knock their socks off by impressing them with your
service, support, and relevance. Yet, to really deliver value to your customers, you need to get
to know them. This starts by remembering the interactions you have with them and building
off of these activities.

Digital communication is the new reality, and treating customers through digital channels is
synonymous with how you’d treat someone you meet in person. Listen to what they’re saying
and respond with appropriate dialog. But most importantly, remember these things (because
upon your next conversation, your customer might just remember you):

• Your memory of customers exists at the database level.

• By maintaining customer profiles and appending them with attributes that contain history,
activity, and propensity (among other things), you can truly begin to have meaningful
interactions.

• To do this effectively, the database must contain information from all your touch points.

This includes transactional systems, web analytics, call centers, mobile devices, social
media, ATMs, stores, email systems, and whatever else you’re using to reach out.
Bringing your data together through integrations enables you to achieve a holistic picture of
your customers. A little scared by this? Well, you should be. Customer behaviors are going to
fundamentally change the way you engage with your audience. If you’re not equipped, they’re
going to take their conversations (and their wallets) elsewhere. By integrating your data, you
open opportunities for new customer dialogs.

Take my word for it—it’s happening NOW.

Your Agent For Change,
John Lovett

Robots are cool. I like robots when they build cars, try to plug oil spills and clean carpets. The only types of robots I don’t like are the ones that hit websites repeatedly and throw off my precious web analytics data! Do you have a problem with these types of robots? Would you know how to see if you do? I find that many web analytics customers don’t even know how to see this, so in this post I will share what I do to monitor robots and hope that others out there will share other ways they deal with robots.

Why Should I Care About Robots?
This is often the first question I get. Who cares? Here are my reasons for caring about minimizing robots hitting your site:

1. If you use Visits or Unique Visitors as part of any of your website KPI’s (i.e. Revenue/Unique Visitor), you should care because robots are inflating your denominator and dragging your conversion rates down
2. If you are tasked with reducing Bounce Rates on your site, you should care as robots will often be seen as bounces
3. Omniture (and other web analytics vendors) often bill you by website traffic (server calls) so you may be paying $$$ for junk data
4. Often times web analytic KPI’s have razor-thin differences month over month and having a lot of garbage data can mean the difference between making a good and bad website business decision

Do I Have a Problem?
The first step is to identify if you have a problem with robots. Unfortunately, SiteCatalyst does not currently have an “out-of-the-box” way to alert you if you have a problem (@VaBeachKevin has added this to the Idea Exchange so please vote!), but in the meantime, here is my step-by-step approach to determining this:

• Create a recurring DataWarehouse report that sends you Page Views and Visitors for each IP address hitting your site (If you store the Omniture Visitor ID in an sProp, I would use that in place of IP address). This can be daily, weekly or monthly depending on how much traffiic your website receives. I sometimes add the Country/City as well (you’ll see why later).

• When you receive this report, it should look something like this:

• Once you have the data, I create a calculation which divides Page Views by Visitors and then sort by that column (if you have a lot of data from different days/weeks, you can create a pivot table). The result should look like the report below where you will start to see which IP addresses are viewing a lot of pages on your site per visitor. Keep in mind that this doesn’t mean they are all bad. It is common for small companies or individuals to share IP addresses. The goal of this step is just to identify the IP addresses that might be issues. In the example below, you can see that the the top two IP addresses appear to be a bit different than the rest. While it may make you feel good that these unique visitors liked your website so much they viewed thousands of pages each, you might be fooling yourself!

• Once you have this list, I like to do some research on the the top IP Address offenders. You can do this via a basic Whois IP Lookup or you can invest in a reverse IP lookup service.

What Do I Do If I Find Robots?
If after reviewing the top offending IP addresses you find that you do, in fact, have a robot hitting your site, you have a few options:

1. Work with your IT group to exclude these IP addresses from hitting your website. This is your best option since it will be the most reliable and reduce your web analytics server call cost.
2. Work with Omniture’s Engineering Services team to create a DB Vista Rule that will move these website hits to a new report suite so it will not pollute your data. The best part of this option is that you don’t have to engage with your IT team and you can add/remove IP addresses anytime you want via FTP. Unfortunately, you will still be hit with server call charges for this (not to mention the cost of the DB Vista Rule!), but if you also pass data to Omniture Discover, you might save money there by not passing bad data to Discover.
3. Work with Omniture’s Engineering Services team to build a custom solution for dealing with robots…

Employee Traffic
While I don’t want to imply that your co-workers are robots, I wanted to mention employee traffic in this post as well since it is tangentially related. I find that many Omniture customers don’t exclude their own employees from their web analytics reports. This can be a huge mistake if you have a lot of employees or have employees who actively use the website. For example, at my employer (Salesforce.com), we use our website to log into our internal systems which are all run on Salesforce.com! This means that we have thousands of employees hitting our website every day to log in to our “cloud” applications and that traffic should not count towards our marketing/website goals. Therefore, we manually exclude all employee traffic from our reports by IP address to minimize the impact of employee traffic impacting our KPI’s. While we don’t consider this to be robot traffic, we address it in the same manner by passing employee traffic to its own report suite. One cool by-product of placing employee traffic in its own report suite is that you can see how often your own employees are using your website so you can show management that the dollars they give you serve multiple audiences!

Final Thoughts
As I stated in the beginning of this post, this is just one way to investigate and deal with robots. If you have other techniques, please share them here! Thanks!

This last week I was in London thanks to the good graces of our friends at Tealeaf to deliver a keynote speech at their EMEA customer conference. After the event, both reporters and conference attendees asked me “What is the most important technology trend in web analytics today?”

I have been asked this hundreds of times in my career as an analyst and consultant and the answer used to be tricky. In the past I’ve opined “multichannel integration”, “segmentation”, “application usability” and even “none, it’s about people and process, not technology.”

This time, however, my answer was clear: Tag Management Systems.

Tag management has become a nightmare for many companies.  As we outlined in our white paper with ObservePoint on the need for a “Chief Data Officer”, tagging and data collection has gotten out of control in companies of all sizes. Information Technology supports one set of tag-based tools, marketing deploys their own stuff via content management systems (CMS), advertising and other individual stakeholders drop their tags, and before you know it you have a dozen or more scripts included at various points across your site.

In a way, because of fragmentation in the marketplace this situation was inevitable. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Emerging tag management systems (TMS) are rapidly transforming the data capture and technology deployment landscape, replacing inefficient, individual installations with a “one stop shop” able to manage any number of tag-based technologies via a single user interface. Early adopters of these systems are reporting a profound transformation of both their ability to manage data capture and their relationship with Information Technology.

From a web analytics perspective this is what we call a “win/win.”

One of these vendors is Ensighten, a company founded by a group of folks who have a long established reputation in digital measurement. Their CEO Josh Manion and I go back pretty far, and so when he told me about their platform I was immediately intrigued but somewhat skeptical.

I had already seen nearly all of the competing solutions in the market and walked away a variety of concerns. I’d even gone so far as trying to establish an “Open Tag Alliance” initiative with one vendor, which unfortunately collapsed due to time constraints.

Needless to say, I was impressed with Ensighten, so much so that I asked Josh if we could partner with him (something we rarely do with technology vendors.) He agreed, and so we are proud to announce that we are the first deployment and integration partner to sign up with Ensighten.

In support of our partnership we agreed to write a paper detailing what we see as the advantages of tag management systems. Titled “The Myth of the Universal Tag and the Future of Digital Data Collection”, this short paper outlines the need for TMS, the rationale behind deployments, and the opportunity for return on the investment. The paper is freely available now at the Ensighten web site or you can write us directly for a complimentary copy.

Readers should note that there are a handful of tag management solutions in the market today. At Analytics Demystified we believe the growth in the sector is validation of the opportunity — each of these companies have good stories to tell and an expanding customer base.

You should consider a tag management system if you are:

• Frustrated with the “one tag, one project, one timeline” model of tag deployment;
• Switching vendors and looking to gain leverage over future deployments;
• Heavily invested in Flash but have long struggled to measure the technology;
• Managing globally distributed sites but have little centralized control over tags;
• Looking to add Q/A and workflow management to your tag deployments;
• Concerned at all about the quality and data accuracy from your web analytics.

If any of these criteria apply to you I would strongly encourage you to give John or I a call. We’ll be more than happy to walk you through the current tag management system vendor landscape at no charge and point you towards whatever solutions seems right for you.

We welcome you to the age of tag management systems and we hope you will join us in welcoming Ensighten to the market.

Your next actions:

• Contact Analytics Demystified for more information about TMS
• Visit the Ensighten web site to download “The Myth of the Universal Tag”
• Visit the Ensighten site and learn more about their tag management system

We’re certainly on an acquisition hot roll here in our cozy little measurement industry. This week marked yet another buy-up of a web analytics company, Netherlands based Nedstat, was acquired by comScore. The sale price was reported at $36.7 million USD, which brings the tally of measurement buy-outs including the $1.8 billion dollar Omniture acquisition last year to nearly $2.5 billion dollars by my count. Those are some good multiples on revenue since my Forrester Web Analytics Forecast didn’t peg market spending to hit even $1 billion until sometime in 2015. Granted Omniture, Unica and to some extent Coremetrics were offering more than just web analytics in their product portfolios. But regardless, measurement technologies are all the rage these days and finally, big businesses are taking note of the value of web analytics.

Foreshadowing

Some might say that comScore and Nedstat, while serving similar industries for different purposes, were running on parallel paths and that an acquisition was a plausible outcome. But before I dive into that hypothesis, first I’ll toot my own horn by mentioning that I went on record predicting this one. The good fellas at Beyond Web Analytics interviewed me on the topic of market consolidation just after the IBM acquisition of Unica and we had a good chat about it here on the podcast. The closing question asked me to look into my crystal ball and guess who would be the next acquirer in the analytics market. While I didn’t guess that it would be comScore, I did speculate that there are some very interesting and valuable technologies that exist in Europe. I mentioned both Webtrekk in Germany and Nedstat as companies that would make appealing acquisition targets. Clearly comScore must have been listening (c’mon, I jest). But one of my clients across the pond also mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Nedstat’s CEO was quoted in a German newspaper as saying that there is no longer a place for a dedicated web analytics company in this environment. I’ve been saying this since early 2009, but coming from a chief officer of a successful technology operation…Foreshadowing indeed.

The Red Herring

So, bright and early on morning of the acquisition my friend Jodi McDermott reached out to me on the news by pointing out the press release on the deal and I owe her a big thanks for that. When we spoke later that morning along with Magid Abraham, comScore founder and CEO the first question Jodi asked me was…”Were you surprised?”. Now, the dirty little secret is that analysts can never show surprise, but heck yeah I was surprised that comScore was the buyer!?! I didn’t anticipate comScore because of their Unified Digital Measurement (UDM) solution which currently handles over 500 billion transactions per month and is growing rapidly. So, they already had their own tag based measurement solution. Additionally, just under a year ago comScore announced a strategic partnership with Omniture to deliver a newly created Media Metrix 360 solution predicated on UDM that would leverage a hybrid combination of Omniture page tags and comScore’ panel based measurement.

It was brilliant actually, and demonstrated the first significant attempt to bring together advertising measurement with site-side data. Yet, just a month after this partnership was announced, Omniture was snatched up by Adobe, and I can only speculate that the momentum on the partnership was stymied. Don’t get me wrong, Media Metrix 360 still exists, and clients like Martha Stewart and the Wall Street Journal add marquee status to the initiative. Thus, I would expect that comScore will support Media Metrix 360 by continuing the partnership with Adobe’s Omniture Business Unit as well as continue development on their own proprietary solution. Whatever they choose to do, these efforts – their own hybrid UDM tags and the Omniture relationship – created a red herring for me that had me looking elsewhere. Now the real question is… Was Nielson surprised and how will they counter? Sorry friends, my crystal ball is not that good.

The Plot Twister

I saved the best for last because here’s where the plot starts to get really interesting. comScore has stated that its acquisition interests in Nedstat are to better serve the media and publishing industries. Web analytics and site-side measurement has long been focused on the transaction and sites that don’t have traditional online transactions are left to quantify success by custom fitting solutions to meet their needs. With most web analytics solutions you’re forced to follow the conversion funnel through to a transaction (or not) and attempt tie things together or launch remarketing efforts from there. But when there’s no transaction at the end of the visit, then many traditional web metrics have very little resonance to the business.

Nedstat has long been focused on key topics like engagement and rich media measurement – metrics that matter to publishers. Now with the acquisition by comScore who has a stronghold within many media companies (not to mention a reserved line item in their budgets) they can create a very different value proposition for media companies looking to quantify metrics for their advertisers as well as optimize the experience for their visitors. I tend to agree with Magid who stated that this new paradigm for publishers is likely to create a natural segmentation in the market. With stalwart web analytics firms (albeit in their current incarnations) Omniture, Coremetrics and Unica are working towards an analytical system that feeds marketing automation. Now we’ve got the potential for something entirely different.

For these reasons I’m bullish on the acquisition. We have a new opportunity for web analytics where site-side measurement meets audience (panel based) measurement. It’s the collision course that many have been talking about. And it sets the stage for propelling measurement into next generation devices, apps and mobile platforms that don’t have transactional elements. It’s still too soon to say how this will play out, but I applaud Magid, Gian and the comScore team on their vision for creating a new measurement paradigm. And a big congrats goes out to Michael, Michiel, Fred, Ulrike and the entire Nedstat team for building a globally attractive solution. Bravo.

But these are just my thoughts…I may be way off…I may be crazy. Readers, do you agree that this new duo can impact enterprise measurement on a new level? I’d love to know what others think.

This summer’s web analytics acquisition season has heated up to the point where when my phone rings and it’s John (who wakes up hours earlier) saying “comScore has acquired Nedstat” my response is “of course they have!” Not to say this isn’t an exciting acquisition, but wow the vendor landscape has changed a bunch this year …

John spent the morning on the phone with our friend Jodi McDermott and comScore’s CEO Dr. Magid Abraham talking about the decision for comScore to get more deeply into client-side measurement technology and he promises to have a more comprehensive post up in a day or two. I only wanted to weigh in and say “congratulations” to the entire team at Nedstat!

I have been lucky enough to have worked with Michael, Fred, Michiel, and Ulrike on a number of occasions and have produced two white papers with them (one on video, the other on mobile) with a third coming out in a few weeks. The management team and everyone I have interacted with at Nedstat are wonderful people and they will definitely add great value and expertise to the comScore family.

Again, watch for more detail and analysis from John in the coming days and congratulations to the comScore and Nedstat families from all of us here at Analytics Demystified.

So the beauty of one public company buying another is that they usually hold an analyst call to explain the rationale. Props to IBM for holding this call just two short hours after the news broke and for giving a few of us a chance to pepper them with tough questions. On this call, Craig Hayman, General Manager of IBM Business Solutions (within the IBM Software Solutions Group) and Yuchun Lee, Founder and CEO of Unica shared an insiders’ perspective on the deal. In fact, Craig even shared the code name “Amaru” which was his secret squirrel moniker for referring to the deal internally before it was done.

So here’s the scoop.

The IBM acquisition of Unica was largely driven by a recognized need for enterprises to get closer to their customers by understanding their experiences and interactions across a broad network of channels and customer touch points. They’ll accomplish this by using analytics technologies, building single view profiles of customers and delivering marketing process improvements.

Sounds a little like markety-speak doesn’t it? Well, regardless it’s still a pretty good story and one that I hope IBM is able to pull off. It’s actually similar to the one that Adobe told after the Omniture acquisition with perhaps more of an automation spin.

What does this mean for Web Analytics?

When Joe Stanhope of Forrester fame deftly asked how IBM planned to rationalize the overlap between NetInsight and the recent Coremetrics acquisition, the response was dominated by the word “synergies” which they see a lot of between these firms. Yuchun rightly went on to describe NetInsight as only one product in the Unica portfolio and that Coremetrics and Netinsight served different segments within the web analytics market. He explained that NetInsight has strength in the on premise solution market (which they do) and that their ability to leverage web analytics within an online datamart was also differentiated (while not entirely unique to the market at large, it’s true when compared to Coremetrics. NetInsight uses a relational database construct for storing and accessing clickstream data). Yuchun also pointed out that Coremetrics has strength when it comes to collecting high volume, high transaction data. This is a result of Coremetrics robust infrastructure that they’ve been building to collect and deliver this data at scale without incurring exorbitant expenses (and they were doing a damn good job of this).

All in all, the comments about the synergies concluded by stating that both tools would accelerate the benefits of deep customer insights for IBM’s clients. None the less, it will be very interesting to wait and see which features and functions emerge from a combined solution of two web analytics powerhouses.

What does this mean for IBM?

As much as I’d like to think that analytics is the epicenter of the business world, this deal is about multi-channel campaign management and marketing automation. IBM is without question on a buying spree. They snatched up SPSS, Coremetrics, DataCap, Sterling Commerce and now Unica in short order. Presumably this is all part of IBM’s strategic growth plan that earmarked a whopping $20 billion for acquisitions through 2015. But from a web analytics perspective, this acquisition didn’t occur because of the NetInsight product. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of the technology, but Unica’s campaign automation solutions and interactive marketing prowess within the marketplace surely made them a tasty morsel for IBM to gobble.

The newly acquired Unica technology will sit within the Software Group business – or more specifically – IBM Software Solutions Group. Yuchun will own the BU within the software solutions group. And this group also holds Websphere Commerce, Coremetrics, Cognos and about a bazillion other software solutions. But as we learned on the call today, Craig Hayman will work to build out frameworks and the connections between these multitude of solutions.

What does this mean for clients?

So, when I look at the big picture, my speculation is that IBM is furthering the bifurcation of the marketplace in yet another direction that separates the “haves” from the “have nots”. What I mean by this is slightly different from what Eric described in his bifurcation of analytics market as a separation of tools based on the level of experience for each user. He puts technologies like Adobe Omniture’s Discover and Coremetrics’ Explore into the exclusive camp of highly skilled analysts who are capable of performing true analysis on digital data sets. The rest of the population is left with simpler, yet still capable tools (not meant in a disparaging way) like Google Analytics that are intuitive and require little training to begin garnering insights. While I agree with Eric, a new twist in this divide can also be developing on a financial level.

As we know, Google Analytics is free and enterprise analytics can quickly run into six – even seven – digit figures in a hurry. My thoughts on this financial divide and IBM’s perpetuation of it stem from Sam Palmisano’s scoff at the notion of consumer technologies dominating the enterprise. Clearly the IBM acquisition moves dictate that a set of tools designed for the professional marketer will be vastly different from the solutions accessible to consumers on the street. Thus, I see this as yet another wedge in the bifurcated divide between large enterprises, the ones that typically purchase software from the likes of IBM, Oracle, and SAS, and small and mid-sized companies who are forced to use a different toolset primarily because of price.

So at first blush, if you’re a big enterprise this all sounds pretty good. IBM and Unica join forces, which isn’t too much of a stretch as there’s also some history here…IBM is a Unica customer using campaign management, marketing resource management and other services to bring about a “marketing transformation” within their own organization (at least that’s how Craig Hayman put it). And Unica has also been OEM’ing IBM solutions for some time. The acquisition extends the growth trajectory that Unica was already on and helps to bring together IBM’s end-to-end story that they call “Blue Washing” (Err…hope that code word was okay for public consumption).

But, the acquisition also acts as a good milestone for IBM who is assembling all the key ingredients for a leading enterprise solution – Sterling Commerce is connecting to the back end – Coremetrics offers deep insights into customer behavior and segments – and now Unica delivers a marketing management solution. It’s hard to argue that they’re not connecting a very compelling story for marketing professionals.

Yet, if you’re a mid-sized business or even a small organization…the IBM “Blueness” may have just distanced itself even further into the stratosphere.

The burning question on many a web analyst’s mind today is likely…Who is Transpond? That’s the question I asked when I first learned of Webtrends’ plan to acquire the San Francisco based application development platform vendor.

Today the acquisition closed and word is out. At first glance, this may sound like a left turn for web analytics and perhaps it is. But in my mind it’s an interesting acquisition that’s headed in a positive direction. It also demonstrates that Webtrends isn’t afraid to make bold moves and assert its innovative position in the social analytics realm.

The History

Transpond was founded in 2007 as iWidgets, back when widgets were all the rage (here’s a view from the Wayback Machine). The company got off the ground with a $4M investment in early 2009, but found that they were limited by their chosen iWidgets moniker and went through a rebranding exercise in the Summer 2009 to become Transpond. All the while, they’ve been providing application development tools for companies to build and deliver apps on mobile devices like the iPhone or Android, web platforms like Facebook and even TV apps for connected televisions. Transpond offers do-it-yourself development of applications such as quizzes, polls, games and interactive commerce for distribution across multiple digital channels. They also provide development support if you’re looking for some expert dev resources to really make your apps sing. Under the new ownership of Webtrends all of these capabilities will be folded into the Webtrends Apps offering and presumably reporting will become available within the Webtrends Analytics 9 interface.

What’s in it for Webtrends?

So, you may be asking yourself, why is Webtrends interested in this company? Well, the way I see it, Webtrends is tuned into the fact that more and more organizations are developing content that will live and breathe off-site. That is, apps that are not contained within your primary web presence. Whether it’s on a mobile phone, Facebook or the next new platform, users are interacting with your content and each other off-site. That’s a domain that web analytics has traditionally not been able to capture without some fancy footwork because most web analytics solutions rely on tracking contained within the pages of your primary web sites. While tracking within apps is not new either, this acquisition opens up the possibility of integrating behavior with applications that exist off your site into the data soup that is digital analytics. It’s really a logical extension of the analytics technology.

Why is this Cool?

What’s also really appealing about this technology from a development perspective is that the platform allows company’s to build apps and deliver them across multiple platforms in a consistent manner. Thus the ability to build it once and delivery to many, in whatever format they choose to consumer the content. Plus, when you bake in measurement and analytics to the apps, then you really have a means to evaluate interaction and compare across channels.

While this is certainly a new direction for web analytics acquisitions, I for one like the purchase and look forward to seeing Webtrends execute on the delivery of this new solution. Webtrends has the distinction of being one of the first pioneers in web analytics out there and also as the last independent vendor left standing. I’m pleased to see that this old dog ain’t afraid to learn new tricks.

Congratulations go out to Alex, Casey, Justin and the Webtrends team on the innovative move and to Peter Yared and Charles Christolini of Transpond for closing the deal.

This weekend the Wall Street Journal produced a well researched article called The Web’s New Gold Mine: Your Secrets. Apparently, it’s the first in a series of articles about Internet tracking practices. It’s entirely informative and chock full of quotes, anecdotes, video and interesting visuals. I highly recommend giving this article a read if you subscribe to the WSJ, or encourage you to join the discussion on their blog. However, I take serious issue with the bias inherent within this first article. The author, Julia Angwin uses phraseology like “the business of spying on consumers”, and “…details about her, all to be put up for sale for a tenth of a penny”. Clearly, the conclusion drawn by the author and presented to readers is that tracking solutions are spawned from malice. I vehemently disagree.

While, it’s true that some tracking can be used for devious function, the majority of uses are fully anonymous and serve to benefit end users exponentially. The reality is that media fragmentation, facilitated by the Internet, has forced advertisers to compete for our attention. To do this, they’re hocking their wares in a significantly more relevant way. By serving up advertising content that’s based on activity, propensity and preference, they are saving us from the irrelevant fire hose of most advertising. Without being coarse, I find that the fact that some consumers are self-conscious and sensitive to advertising that’s targeted to their browsing activity as trivial. It’s trivial compared to the the benefits that targeting delivers to the rest of us.

I’ve got more to say on this topic, a lot more in fact, but I’ll stop short for now. My closing thought is that, while the author of the Web’s New Goldmine may see the art and science of tracking as a boon for advertisers… I see it as a significant win for consumers. A jackpot perhaps. I hope and expect that my online and offline interactions with brands will get increasingly better and more relevant as my interactions continue. Tracking will enable this to happen. But, that’s just me…I’d love to know what you think.

Years ago Google’s Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik told everyone “data quality sucks, get over it” which at the time was quite the funny and controversial thing to say.  Among other things Mr. Kaushik encouraged his readers to “resist the urge to dig deep” to understand data-related problems, to “assume a level of comfort with the data” and to focus more on trends and less on absolutes.

At the time this advice seemed good. Any number of companies were in the midst of switching vendors back in 2006 (a trend that has noticeably declined) and so guidance to not stress out on the differences observed between old system “A” and new system “B” was good, as was his encouragement to spend more time focusing on data quality in key areas (checkout, carts, etc.)

Unfortunately times have changed.

Since 2006 we have seen a slow but steady increase in the prominence that digitally collected data has within businesses of all sizes. Now in 2010, more senior managers, Vice Presidents, and CEOs than ever are incorporating both qualitative and quantitative data collected from web, mobile, and social sites than ever before. Among our clients we have seen a profound shift from “nice to have” to “critical” when it comes to data flowing through Omniture, Coremetrics, Unica, Google Analytics and other systems, and slowly web analytics is becoming an embedded component of business decision making.

While this shift has far reaching implications lately at Analytics Demystified we have been looking more closely at how we can help our clients not “get over” the “suckiness” of data quality and actually do something about it.  We are doing this for one simple reason: senior leadership doesn’t want a glib response to data quality issues, they want as high a level of accuracy possible and concrete answers for why that accuracy isn’t forthcoming.

Don’t believe me? The next time your boss asks about the quality of the numbers you produce look them squarely in the eye and repeat Mr. Kaushik’s words, “Well Bob the data quality sucks and so you should just get over it, okay?”

When you’re done you can call my friend Corry Prohens to help you find a new job.

The alternative is, of course, to actually pay attention to your data’s quality and work diligently to incrementally improve data collection processes. Rather  than be lazy about the very foundation of all of your valuable work (and the high-quality analysis you’re working to drive into the business) you can do a few simple things designed to make your data “less sucky” and thusly more valuable.

And what are those things? Thanks to our friends at ObservePoint we have authored a short white paper on this exact subject! Titled “When More is Not Better: Page Tags” and subtitled “The Dramatic Proliferation of Script-based Tagging and the Resulting Need for a Chief Data Officer” (okay, not my best title, I admit it) the paper outlines the business processes and technologies required to develop a little more trust and faith in your digitally collected data.

The paper is a free download from ObservePoint but you will need to trade some information with them. I can assure you Rob Seolas and his team are fine folks and given that they have a tendency to send out sweet USB devices to prospects there are worse things than having someone from ObservePoint call.

Get your copy of “When More is Not Better: Page Tags” at the ObservePoint web site today!

If you’ve read the paper I welcome your comments. While we recognize that few companies are going to appoint a Chief Data Officer to manage their digital data quality we hope that our readers understand that the point is not the job title but rather the work the associated work. Our thesis is that as the push towards digital continues those companies who have (and can communicate) a high-level of trust in their data will gain a competitive advantage, and in a world where the competition is always only a click away, who doesn’t want every advantage they can create?

Okay…I’ve been quiet about the Coremetrics acquisition by IBM for long enough now. While the dust still won’t settle until sometime in Q3’10, when this deal passes FTC scrutiny, I’m compelled to weigh in and offer my $.02 USD mainly because there’s been some good dialog in the blogosphere from people I respect like: Eric, Joe Stanhope, Akin and more recently Brian Clifton.

I’ll take a slightly different approach and use the acquisition to talk about the state of the web analytics marketplace. For starters, let me just say that this acquisition was inevitable. So too will Webtrends be acquired by some player looking to incorporate metrics into their overarching set of technology capabilities. And as I blogged earlier this spring, yet another even bigger fish will eat the existing big fish and we’ll utter oooh’s and ahhh’s as the analytics technology market evolves into a vital organ for all businesses with a heartbeat. While not immune to arrhythmia, this course of events shouldn’t really take anyone by surprise. I’ve been saying this for a while now and even penned “Web Analytics is Destined to Become an Integrated Service” back in May 2009 when I wrote the Forrester US Web Analytics Forecast 2008-2014 (subscription required). I’ve been advocating web analytics as a function within the marketing organization, which seems to be a logical orientation. However, it’s interesting that the consumption of analytical technologies has come from a smattering of different perspectives.

Here’s how the post-acquisition landscape looks:

Creatively Speaking…

Adobe’s acquisition of Omniture undoubtedly took many by surprise (myself included – although you’re never allowed to admit surprise as an analyst). The promise Adobe made to investors was that they would incorporate the market leading web analytics technology into the creative life-cycle by enabling measurement at the point of content creation. Perhaps that’s not exactly how they positioned it, but that was my impression and they’re now executing on that promise. Say what you want about acquisitions and the slow moving integration process, but Creative Suite 5 debuted in April just six short months after the deal closed, with measurement hooks from FlashPro and Dreamweaver into both SiteCatalyst and Test & Target. They’ve also accomplished this remarkable feat using a visual interface allowing content editors and non power-users the ability to begin measuring their digital assets. This utilization of analytics places measurement at the operational level, yet by and large it’s still within the marketing group.

The Marketer’s Toolbox…

Enter Unica with their rebranded Marketing Innovation product suite where NetInsight (formerly Sane Solutions) web analytics sits at the core. While both Omniture and Coremetrics made pre-acquisition strides to amass a truly effective online marketing suite, they were merely playing second fiddle to Unica Campaign, Interact and Marketing Platform solutions. Unica is widely acclaimed as a leading Campaign Management tool and sits proudly in the marketing departments across many an enterprise business. They’ve worked web analytics into the DNA of their overall marketing perspective and use it to power the automation and decisioning that many organizations strive for with lust and admiration. Their utilization of analytics really does empower analytics as a lynchpin for integrated marketing.

Shoppers World…

With speculation still swirling about the how’s and why’s of IBM’s intended use of Coremetrics, it’s tough to ignore Coremetrics’ strength in the retail vertical. While Coremetrics has an impressive client based outside of retail, including publishers and financial institutions among others, they’ve clearly got some good mojo going with their triple-A retail clients. Just thinking of how Big Blue will assimilate the nimble teams of relentless Coremetrics marketers in San Mateo and Texas makes me slightly nervous. Not for any loss of focus by the Coremetrics team on their dedication to client support or from their delivery of leading analytical capabilities that they offer – rather – where will this newly acquired asset live within the IBM estate? The way I see it, two possible scenarios can play out here:

1. First is the scenario that Akin speculates upon whereby IBM is folded into the Websphere group and serves to illuminate the value of customer interactions within website platforms across IBM’s customer base. This would greatly benefit Websphere customers although it would narrowly define a finite application of a technology that is so much bigger than just online commerce.

Or;

2. The scenario that Eric envisions (and one that I believe would benefit our industry exponentially) is the one where IBM becomes the “business analytics” juggernaut in the enterprise. If this were to occur, IBM would need to integrate its SPSS and Cognos acquisitions to get really crafty about delivering extremely high value digital insights.

These are two very different outcomes and both speculatory, but I’m rooting for the latter simply because it has the potential to push analytics so much further along. My sources tell me that some long-time IBM’ers feel this way too. One confidant with access to IBM brass even shared with me that internally the acquisition will be deemed a failure by some at IBM if Coremetrics isn’t integrated with SPSS and Cognos. That’s great news, because wholesale failure of business analytics isn’t an option.

Switzerland…

So here we have Webtrends as the only standalone web analytics player remaining from the set of truly original US-based technologies. They’re doing a good job of playing the part of Switzerland as they not-so-quietly establish a platform of Open Analytics whereby data flows in -and- out of the interface fueling other operations around the business. While this is not the same as an integrated approach, Webtrends is taking a strong stance on have-it-your-way analytics. Their open APIs and REST URLs make it easy to leverage their data collection and pump data to any application within the enterprise. Thus, they too offer an integrated approach yet do so by maintaining a position that supports rather than delivers the adjacent marketing functions.

The Low End Theory…

Any post about the state of the analytics marketplace would be remiss if Google Analytics wasn’t included in the conversation. I include the Big Googley in the Low End Theory – not because they’re trailing – but because they’re sneaky smart. Just in case you haven’t been watching, since Google acquired Urchin Software, GA has been quietly amassing millions of installations across businesses large and small adding to the democratization of web analytics. I’d argue that they’re not doing this in a concerted enterprise-wide way, but they are probably gaining the most ground across the enterprise by sheer adoption and hands-on utilization. What this means is that pockets of users are deploying Google Analytics for very focused use of the data and the organization is becoming more accustomed to seeing GA data and using it to make key decisions in their day-to-day operations.

Many other analytics programs are delivering similar value to business users, yet in an extremely isolated manner with tools like KissMetrics, Twitalyzer, Visible Measures and Radian6 just to name a few. This is truly the low end theory because the data is rarely seen by anyone outside the marketing group, but it’s driving key activity around specific marketing functions without the larger business really taking note. Think grassroots baby – under the radar – with potential super smartie effectiveness.

Can Marketing Come from the Heart?

By now you should be asking yourself; So where’s this all going? Despite how each of the companies I described above fit into the overall aspect of a company’s business, I think that we can all agree that analytics is about understanding business performance. Here is where Eric’s vision of the Coming Revolution in Web Analytics fits into the story and the quietly powerful behemoth that’s already penetrated the enterprise garden sits in wait down in Cary, North Carolina. Whether it’s SAS, another player, or an amalgamation of services from multiple players – analytics needs to be at the heart of the organization. Here’s where my analogy pays off…because if this is to happen, then data becomes the lifeblood of the enterprise and analytics allows companies to relate to their customers and offer more tuned in and relevant products and services. Marketing should control this blood flow but use it to power the brain and the working limbs of the organization. While this may start to look like Business Intelligence, I believe it’s different because it requires real-time information, automated decisioning and ultimately creativity. These are qualities that I have yet to see from a BI tool. But maybe I’m naive.

Before this diatribe gets any longer, and you dear reader need resuscitation I’ll call it quits. But I’ll offer fair warning that this is just the beginning of my thoughts on the matter and there’s more to follow. I’d also love to hear what you think.

By now you’ve heard that IBM announced today their intent to purchase Coremetrics. While I was caught off guard by the news — it was all over Twitter before I’d had a single drop of Espresso — I cannot say I was particularly surprised. Coremetrics has not been particularly coy about their intent to do what is best for their customers and company, and IBM is on a tear for acquisitions and investment in analytics with over $10 billion spent on 14 (now 16) acquisitions since 2005 including SPSS, Cognos, and now Coremetrics.

In fact, according to CMS Wire, IBM is now #2 behind privately held SAS for analytics market-share (14.5% versus SAS’s 33%.)  Couple this with the consulting services organization IBM established just over a year ago and the picture becomes incredibly clear: IBM has the potential to become a digital analytics juggernaut in the Enterprise.

You know what? I’m excited about this.

I’m excited for three reasons, none of which are particularly altruistic of me considering that I am a strategic business consultant who has spend years working to elevate the visibility of digital analytics within the Enterprise. From my point of view, my partners and I (and our peers) will only be more successful as traditional business pays more attention to the value of digitally collected data as an input to business intelligence.

But I digress.

I’m excited by IBM’s acquisition of Coremetrics for these three reasons:

1. This acquisition validates my “Coming Revolution in Web Analytics” thesis. In 2009, with the support of SAS, we postulated that we were on the cusp of a grand revolution in web analytics, one that had profound implications on both the practice and the practitioner. In the same way SAS continues to refine their web and customer experience analytics offerings, IBM buying Coremetrics pushes us further along towards what I believe is an inevitable future where digital analytics is powered as much (or more) by statistical and predictive models as “pretty” spreadsheets and iPhone viewer apps.
2. This acquisition validates my “Two Sets of Tools” thesis. Back in February of this year I wrote a post about the need for two sets of tools to do digital analytics professionally. I wrote this post in response to a dramatic increase in the number of companies telling us their business users were frustrated with the complexity of the most widely deployed “Enterprise” web analytics tools. While Coremetrics 2010 is certainly not perfectly suited for business users of all shapes and sizes, I do like what they’ve done with the recent release (view source on the main site!) More importantly, Coremetrics plus SPSS is essentially the bifurcated solution I describe appropriate for deployment within large companies.
3. This acquisition has tremendous potential to elevate the visibility of “digital analytics” within business leaders across the globe. One of our vendor clients commented today “don’t you think the need for web analytics has been validated already?” to which I could only respond “no.” Everywhere we go — conferences, clients, prospects, social events, you name it — we continue to see a half-hearted expression of commitment by senior leadership for web and digital analytics. Don’t get me wrong — they are 100% committed to connected efforts! Leadership LOVES mobile apps, social media, Flash and Flex and Silverlight and the iPad and QR codes and … well, you get the idea. But in my experience when it comes to investing in the measurement of those efforts to validate their value to the business, well, let’s just say interest seems to wane. My hope is that with IBM backing digital analytics and pushing Coremetrics as part of their portfolio that this will change much more quickly than it would with, say, Adobe pushing the same agenda (sorry, sorry, sorry!)

My last point is clearly the most important. For web analytics to truly “grow up” and mature into the valuable contributor to the entire business we all know (or at least suspect) it can be, it has to become a greater priority for senior leadership. And despite the fact that the people I respect the most — guys like Jim Sterne, Gary Angel, and Josh Manion — continue to do the real evangelical work, pounding their fists and respectfully raising their voices in an attempt to get management to pay attention, I suspect that John Squire and Joe Davis injected into the analytics sales process at IBM has far greater potential to change minds and focus within corner offices.

Sorry to put that on ya, Squire. Let me know if I can help.

Since I was slow to get this post up two other well-written and thoughtful pieces about the acquisition have been published that I would encourage you to read:

• Akin Arikan (Unica)’s “Farewell to Web Analytics” post, which I think is a little hopeful on Akin’s part but should be expected as IBM is a large Unica customer and so this deal creates some risk for Akin and his team;
• Joe Stanhope (Forrester)’s take on the deal. Joe was lucky enough to have dinner with John Squire last night and has a lot of detail about IBM’s opportunity.

Again I am really excited for Coremetrics management and staff. Personally I think that IBM made a great decision, one that will create benefits for everyone truly committed to digital analytics.

As always I welcome your thoughts.

This is purely speculation. I have no inside knowledge into the possibility I present here other than hypothetical conversations with peers. Sean Power brought up the topic over dinner recently, which caused me to start thinking seriously about the realities of Microsoft buying Adobe. He blogged about it way back when Adobe acquired Omniture. At that time, I was at Forrester and when we got wind of the deal, we had an all-hands meeting to make sense of the awkward acquisition. Upon arriving at consensus, I quickly penned a missive about why the acquisition of the leading web analytics and optimization firm made sense for a creative software firm like Adobe. Yet, like most others, we had to squint at the deal to see any logic in it at all. Now it’s starting to become clear why Adobe shelled $1.8B to add some attraction to its offering for a much larger suitor.

Adobe controls big chunks of the digital customer experience. Specifically, they play a major role in content creation through the CS5 suite of products. While web developers aren’t necessarily building their global digital offerings in Dreamweaver, surely they are using elements of Creative Suite to do just that. Further, any document where the author wants to control its integrity will lock it down by saving it in PDF format. And now through the acquisition of Omniture, they gained the ability to measure and optimize consumer utilization of those assets as well as the web sites and marketing efforts of leading brands across the globe. We’re just starting to see the fruits of this curious marriage between the two firms in the announcements of tracking capabilities within the CS5 release. Yet, these tracking methods are not meant for the traditional users of Omniture’s set of highly robust analysis capabilities; they are designed for content creators and developers to gain insights about the digital assets they’re producing. I like to think of this as tricking people into using web analytics by not actually telling them that they’re using data to make day-to-day business decisions. Brilliant actually. This introduction of tracking capabilities within CS5 falls precisely in line with what my partner Eric Peterson describes as the bifurcation of the web analytics marketplace. Analytics at the low-end are offering information that is helpful (dare I say critical) in making decisions about business activity. At the top end are trained web analysts who crunch the data to tease out the insights and offer recommendations based on a holistic representation of data from numerous disparate sources. With Omniture Insights providing the analysis horsepower at the top of this scenario and CS5 empowering the bottom, all of the sudden, Adobe becomes an invaluable resource for enterprises that deliver services in online, offline, B2C, B2B or B2B2C environments. Now, let’s introduce Microsoft into this mix.

MSFT has labored [successfully] to own the consumer desktop with its operating system, indispensable productivity tools (MS Office), and not-so-universally, rich media with Silverlight. Not to mention that they’re still working diligently to capture consumers with Bing, MSN and a slew of other services pointed at end users. All this traction across MSFT properties gives them a lofty vantage point from which to monitor consumer behavior across digital channels. Adding a stack of ubiquitous software for content creation and some world class measurement capabilities may be quite attractive to the Redmond rotund. They’d immediately challenge Apple on a new level of customer intelligence and empower their enterprise customers with a whopping new set of capabilities. Despite the new consumer view to be gained from this possible acquisition, the real benefits are a nicely wrapped enterprise solution complete with: MS servers, a .NET framework, SharePoint, Dynamics CRM, Dynamics ERP, and a kitchen sink of bells, whistles and anything else you might want. Given the opportunity to deliver, measure and manage the customer experience at a really deep and integrated level seems like an appealing bet to me.

I won’t droll on about how or when this impending acquisition will occur; mostly ‘cause I have no idea. But I will hedge by saying that others suitors may actually line up before MSFT comes calling. Google for instance could parlay a nice entrance to the packaged software market and gain the ability to create, deliver and measure that largest advertising network on the globe. For that matter Apple may be strategically sparring with Adobe’s crystal palace in a deliberate attempt to soften their value. Swooping in for an acquisition after some fierce battling on the street wouldn’t be completely unheard of…now would it?

Update (April 22, 2010): This article at Venturebeat suggests that iPhone application measurement vendors are hearing good news from Apple regarding their ability to measure in-app data.  The article, however, is devoid of any kind of details whatsoever and so the Tweets saying “Apple NOT banning analytics from OS 4.0” appear to be somewhat optimistic in my opinion.  I’d love to hear from Google, Omniture, Webtrends, Coremetrics, Unica, etc. and see if they are having the same “you have nothing to worry about” conversations with Apple. Obviously is Venturebeat is correct this is great news, but if I were developing an iPhone application I’d want a little more  than rumor to contradict the language in Section 3.3.9.

Wait and see I guess …

Dear Mr. Jobs,

As a very loyal Apple customer and user of your products I want to thank you for all that you’ve done for computing in general. Your attention to detail and your vision have resulted in many of the most useful and usable products I own, too many to list honestly. While I was able to hold off for three days before purchasing the original iPhone (now on my third since I upgrade with every release) I pre-ordered my iPad and absolutely love it.

Thanks for that.

Unfortunately as a long-time member of the digital measurement industry I am in the uncomfortable position of having to ask you to reconsider what will undoubtedly be viewed by many Apple customers, developers, and end-users as an egregious mistake. I am talking about Section 3.3.9 in your updated iPhone Developer Agreement in which you apparently ban all third-party in-app measurement. While I respect Apple’s right to privacy, for those not familiar with Section 3.3.9 I would encourage you to read the following articles:

• Apple Places New Limits on App Developers
• New iPhone Developer Agreement Bans the Use of Third-Party Analytics and Services

The summary statement is that your updated Developer Agreement, if my read is accurate, strips all of your Development partners of their ability to measure application usage with an eye towards improving the overall quality of their product.  Just as a reminder these Developer partners include Best Buy, Expedia, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Netflix, and some 150,000+ other companies working to deliver great experiences on your iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad devices.

While I certainly understand the over-arching desire to have quality control in all things Apple, which the mobile family of applications essentially become by proxy, banning the ability to measure application use is likely to be met with some resistance among your larger Development partners.  Many of these companies are known to me as a consultant and have active programs in place to use solutions like Adobe’s Omniture, Webtrends, Coremetrics, Unica, Google Analytics, and Yahoo Web Analytics to determine which application functionality is working and which needs to be addressed in future updates.

Given that Apple is a long-time Adobe/Omniture customer I rather suspect that this third-party tracking is embedded in many of your own applications.  Perhaps that’s not the case, but given the general utility of these applications I would be pretty surprised if your own developers aren’t in violation of the new Developer Agreement somewhere in the pre-installed application stack.

If not, well, shame on your developers for not embedding application tracking in complex applications like Pages and Keynote on the iPad. While I certainly do love the freedom I have to write on the iPad, I suspect if you were using Adobe/Omniture to track Pages you’d see me continually tapping the page in landscape mode trying to get a menu to come up so I can make a bulleted list …

But I digress.

Since many of your best Development partners are companies well-known for their general prowess for digital analytics — companies like Best Buy, Expedia, Cisco, Netflix, Disney, ABC, ESPN, and many, many more — you may want to give a little more thought to Section 3.3.9. If this section remains you are essentially blocking all of these companies (and all mobile developers in your App Store) from gaining valuable insight into how their applications can be more useful, more delightful, and frankly, more like Apple.

Hopefully this was just a huge oversight on someone else’s part within Apple, especially since as far as anyone knows you don’t have technology available to replace the data that would be lost if (or when) Developers comply with this requirement. It may seem a touch geeky but business owners are increasingly relying on this data to justify the expense and commitment it takes to participate in the App Store (and the mobile revolution in general.)

Being such a fan of your work I’d like to offer a solution, just in case your open to the idea.

Apple has an opportunity to do something that, well, nobody else really has or does in terms of digital measurement. Because of how the App Store works, Apple could create a set of terms and conditions for application tracking that would simultaneously provide guidance to your Developer community and create an unprecedented level of transparency for technology end-users everywhere (or at least those using Apple products.)

Imagine a tier of requirements and resulting notifications to the end-user based on the type of data the application wanted to pass.  Just like geo-location requires explicit one-time opt-in today, tracking of individually identifiable (e.g., device-level or personal) data could require the same type of opt-in.  For more basic tracking (e.g., completely anonymous interaction data) you could simply allow that without opt-in to foster the growth and development of the application development community.

The most important thing is you would have an opportunity to craft a set of mobile tracking requirements that could be extended and applied across the entire mobile universe. In the same way Apple has changed our relationship with “pocket computing” forever, your company could essentially resolve a problem that in some ways is an accident waiting to happen, and do so in a way that creates opportunities rather than creating tension with the very group that is making your products so successful today.

If this is in any way interesting to you I’d love to discuss it more. My contact information is on my web site.

Measurement is not as sexy as the iPad or iPhone, but at the end of the day it is just about as important. With every new technology comes the need to understand it’s use and justify related expenses. Your Development partners are intensely drawn to the iPhone opportunity to be sure, and it’s great that you’re making people like Loren Brichter and others rich thanks to their efforts.

But not everyone will be as savvy as Apple or as fortunate as Atebits; most companies work to use the limited data they do have to understand user behavior in an effort to make incremental improvements to their applications. Section 3.3.9 seems to prevent this data from getting into your partner’s hands, preventing the very thing I suspect you’re working to promote: the highest quality applications possible delivered via amazing devices.

Hopefully I and others are simply reading Section 3.3.9 the wrong way. I would be honored if you or someone from Apple would provide guidance on this point and I’m happy to help communicate that guidance in whatever way I am able.

Sincerely,

Eric T. Peterson
CEO, Founder, and Senior Partner
Analytics Demystified, Inc.

Baseball fans across the nation were smiling this weekend with opening day games around the league. Those of you who know me, recognize that I’m a raging Red Sox fan, but last night’s 8pm start time against the Yankees was just too late for me to catch the entire game. So, upon checking the scores this morning I got to see this cool new interactive game summary on Redsox.com.

The spark lines show Tweet volume with mouseovers that offer details on each individual tweet. And the highlights are actual video clips that fire off a new window right from the summary page. Way to go MLB.com for delivering a simple, yet innovative mix of professional and consumer generated content.

Oh, yeah…the Sox beat the Yankees 9 – 7 in the opener if you’re wondering.
GO SOX!!

Being a change agent for web analytics requires taking calculated risks, standing up for what you believe, and working diligently to make our industry stronger. I left my job at Forrester Research in part to become a change agent for web analytics and my bid for a seat on the WAA board of directors is the next big step in my journey. But, this quest I cannot fulfill alone – I need your vote. I’ve never run for elected office before so to illustrate my conviction, I borrow words from John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential nomination speech and added a few of my own…

“With a deep sense of duty and high resolve, I accept your nomination.” I’ve stated several times before that there is no industry better than web analytics. Our colleagues within web analytics – the practitioners, the vendors, the leaders and gurus – are by and large friendly, approachable, and always willing to lend a hand. It makes working within analytics gratifying and fun. My hope is to elevate these positive attributes of our industry by aligning under the professional organization that we can call our own.

“The times are too grave, the challenge too urgent, and the stakes too high…”
Despite my positivism, we are facing turbulent times as an industry. We need to strengthen our association at a global scale to ensure that we speak with a common voice in all countries and in all languages to distinguish the Web Analytics Association as the undisputed resource for education, standards, research, and advocacy.

“…if we open a quarrel between the present and the past, we shall be in danger of losing the future.” It has recently come to my attention, despite proof from some members that not everyone receives value from the WAA. If elected to the Web Analytics Association board I will dedicate my term to proving the value of our association to members at every level, from student to vendor to advanced consultant. If we cannot recognize our own value, how then can we expect outsiders to accept our mission with the credibility and respect it deserves?

“I believe the times demand new invention, innovation, imagination, decision.” Those of you who know me recognize that I am not one to dwell on the mistakes of our past. Instead, I look to the future to determine how we can improve our situation and our position within the industry. These are exciting times for web analytics but times that will regale us to obscurity if we fail to demonstrate our vision through genuine contributions. We must think differently about how measurement technologies can be applied to today’s challenges and illustrate how the WAA is defining these efforts by taking a decisive leadership stand.

“This is a platform on which I can run with enthusiasm and conviction.”
It is this industry, its people and our collective challenges that I want to champion as a representative of the Web Analytics Association. I’ve stated my intentions on the WAA web site, but will reiterate the most important. It’s time to stop making excuses and start delivering value to the members of the WAA. A vote for me will get you a dedicated evangelist who is willing to shoulder the burden of hard work and diligence that’s required to orchestrate change in this industry.

I welcome your thoughts and comments about how to improve our industry and will guarantee an open mind throughout my tenure on the Web Analytics Association board of directors if elected. Thanks for reading, Now Get Out And Vote!!