Tag: Adobe Summit

Adobe Analytics, Tag Management, Technical/Implementation

Star of the Show: Adobe Announces Launch at Summit 2017

Posted on by Eric Peterson

If you attended the Adobe Summit last week and are anything like me, a second year in Las Vegas did nothing to cure the longing I felt last year for more of a focus on digital analytics rather than experience (I still really missed the ski day, too). But seeing how tag management seemed to capture everyone’s attention with the announcement of Adobe Launch, I had to write a blog post anyway. I want to focus on 3 things: what Launch is (or will be), what it means for current users of DTM, and what it means for the rest of the tag management space.

Based on what I saw at Summit, Launch may be the new catchy name, but it looks like the new product may finally be worthy of the name given to the old one (Dynamic Tag Management, or DTM). I’ve never really thought there was much dynamic about DTM – if you ask me, the “D” should have stood for “Developer,” because you can’t really manage any tags with DTM unless you have a pretty sharp developer. I’ve used DTM for years, and it has been a perfectly adequate tool for what I needed. But I’ve always thought more about what it didn’t do than what it did: it didn’t build on the innovative UI of its Satellite forerunner (the DTM interface was a notable step backwards from Satellite); it didn’t make it easier to deploy any tags that weren’t sold by Adobe (especially after Google released enhanced e-commerce), and it didn’t lead to the type of industry innovation I hoped it would when Adobe acquired Satellite in 2013 (if anything, the fact that the biggest name in the industry was giving it away for free really stifled innovation at some – but not all – of its paid competitors). I always felt it was odd that Adobe, as the leading provider of enterprise-class digital analytics, offered a tag management system that seemed so unsuited to the enterprise. I know this assessment sounds harsh – but I wouldn’t write it here if I hadn’t heard similar descriptions of DTM from Adobe’s own product managers while they were showing off Launch last week. They knew they could do tag management better – and it looks like they just might have done it.

How Will Launch Be Different?

How about, “In every way except that they both allow you to deploy third-party tags to your website.” Everything else seems different – and in a good way. Here are the highlights:

  • Launch is 100% API driven: Unlike most software tools, which get built, and then the API is added later, Adobe decided what they wanted Launch to do; then they built the API; and then they built the UI on top of that. So if you don’t like the UI, you can write your own. If you don’t like the workflow, you can write your own. You can customize it any way you want, or write your own scripts to make commonly repeated tasks much faster. That’s a really slick idea.
  • Launch will have a community behind it: Adobe envisions a world where vendors write their own tag integrations (called “extensions”) that customers can then plug into their own Launch implementations. Even if vendors don’t jump at the chance to write their own extensions, I can at least see a world where agencies and implementation specialists do it for them, eager to templatize the work they do every day. I’ve already got a list of extensions I can’t wait to write!
  • Launch will let you “extend” anything: Most tag management solutions offer integrations but not the ability to customize them. If the pre-built integration doesn’t work for you, you get to write your own. That often means taking something simple – like which products a customer purchased from you – and rewriting the same code dozens of times to spit it out in each vendor’s preferred format. But Launch will give the ability to have sharable extensions that do this for you. If you’ve used Tealium, it means something similar to the e-commerce extension will be possible, which is probably my favorite usability/extensibility feature any TMS offers today.
  • Launch will fix DTM’s environment and workflow limitations: Among my clients, one of the most common complaints about DTM is that you get 2 environments – staging and production. If your IT process includes more, well, that’s too bad. But Launch will allow you to create unlimited environments, just like Ensighten and Tealium do today. And it will have improved workflow built in – so that multiple users can work concurrently, with great care built into the tool to make sure they don’t step on each others’ toes and cause problems.

What Does Launch Mean for DTM Customers?

If you’re a current DTM customer, your first thought about Launch is probably, “Wow, this is great! I can’t wait to use it!” Your second thought is more likely to be, “Wait. I’ve already implemented DTM, and now it’s totally changed. It will be a huge pain to switch now.”

The good news is that, so far, Adobe is saying that they don’t anticipate that companies will need to make any major changes when switching from DTM to Launch (you may need to update the base tag on each page if you plan to take advantage of the new environments feature). They are also working on a migration process that will account for custom JavaScript code you have already written. It may make for a bit of initial pain in migrating custom scripts over, but it should be a pretty smooth process that won’t leave you with a ton of JavaScript errors when you do it. Adobe has also communicated for over a year which parts of the core DTM library will continue to work in the future, and which will not. So you can get ready for Launch by making sure all your custom JavaScript is in compliance with what will be supported in the future. And the benefits over the current DTM product are so obvious that it should be well worth a little bit of up-front pain for all the advantages you’ll get from switching (though if you decide you want to stick with DTM, Adobe plans to continue supporting it).

So if you have decided that Launch beats DTM and you want to switch, the next question is, “When?” And the answer to that is…”Soon.” Adobe hasn’t provided an official launch date, and product managers said repeatedly that they won’t release Launch until it’s world-class. That should actually be welcome news – because making this change will be challenging enough without having to worry about whether Adobe is going to get it right the first time.

What Does Launch Mean for Tag Management?

I think this is really the key question – how will Launch impact the tag management space? Because, while Adobe has impressively used DTM as a deployment and activation tool on an awful lot of its customers’ websites, I still have just as many clients that are happily using Ensighten, GTM, Signal, or Tealium. And I hope they continue to do so – because competition is good for everyone. There is no doubt that Ensighten’s initial product launch pushed its competitors to move faster than they had planned; and that Tealium’s friendly UI has pushed everyone to provide a better user experience (for awhile, GTM’s template library even looked suspiciously like Tealium’s). Launch is adding some features that have already existed in other tools, but Adobe is also pushing some creative ideas that will hopefully push the market in new directions.

What I hope does not happen, though, is what happened when Adobe acquired Satellite in 2013 and started giving it away for free. A few of the the tools in the space are still remarkably similar in actual features in 2017 to what they were in 2013. The easy availability of Adobe DTM seemed to depress innovation – and if your tag management system hasn’t done much in the past few years but redo its UI and add support for a few new vendors, you know what I mean (and if you do, you’ve probably already started looking at other tools anyway). I fear that Launch is going to strain those vendors even more, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Launch spurs a new round of acquisitions. But my sincere hope is that the tools that have continued to innovate – that have risen to the challenge of competing with a free product and developed complementary products, innovative new features, and expanded their ecosystem of partners and integrations – will use Launch as motivation to come up with new ways of fulfilling the promise of tag management.

Last week’s announcement is definitely exciting for the tag management space. While Launch is still a few months away, we’ve already started talking at Analytics Demystified about which extensions our clients using DTM would benefit from – and how we can use extensions to get involved in the community that will surely emerge around Launch. If you’re thinking about migrating from DTM to Launch and would like some help planning for it, please reach out – we’d love to help you through the process!

Photo Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

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General

#AdobeSummit Takeaways: My Regrets

Posted on by Eric Peterson

I’ve written several posts with different reflections on my Adobe Summit 2013 experience. You can see a list of all of them by going to my Adobe Summit tag.

Just like the old adage that, if a vacation doesn’t end before you wish it did, then you stayed too long, one of my measures for a conference is how many thinks I didn’t get to do that I wish I had.

In the case of Summit, I had a pretty healthy list:

  • I didn’t get to see more of Adobe Social — Adobe has been all sorts of crazy hard at work on the product, and the glimpses I caught in keynotes show that there’s a lot going on with it.
  • I missed Unsummit — the unaffiliated, peer-driven conference on Tuesday. I didn’t actually know about Unsummit, which, I think, is pretty common with first-timers.
  • Microsoft Surface — Tuesday night, I had a conversation with some guys from MSN who indicated they all had Surfaces. I’ve never actually seen one up close, so I was fully expecting that I’d bump into one of those guys later in the conference and get a look. That’s not really related to analytics, but it’s a gadgethead’s regret.

Then, there was a list of people I regret not getting to hang out with or not getting to hang out with more:

  • Carmen Sutter – Carmen is one of the Adobe Social product managers who I met last fall shortly before she dived into that role. I got to see and meet a lot of people, but I really racked up the near misses with Carmen. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t actively avoiding me.
  • Ben Gaines – Ben’s an Adobe Analytics product manager, and I did manage to chat with him on Tuesday night for a bit, attend his “Sitecatalyst Tips” breakout, and swap a number of tweets. But, still, you really can’t get enough of Ben, and we didn’t get enough time to solve the world’s problems. I’ll just have to lobby to get him to Columbus for our April Web Analytics Wednesday. Cross your fingers if you’re in Columbus.
  • Gregory Ng — Chief Strategy Officer for Brooks Bell and guy-who-never-sleeps-as-he-pursues-a-gazillion-quirky-side-interests. We chatted for a bit at the welcoming reception and then failed to connect again. That’s one of the things about Summit — you get 10 minutes with a person and say, “Let’s catch up later,”…and then the conference is over!
  • Jason Thompson — even worse than Greg, I saw Jason right as I arrived at the hotel on Wednesday evening…and never saw him again (excluding tweets). Curses!

The list of things I don’t regret is wayyyyy longer — I saw some neat things, learned some good stuff, and got to hang out with some great people!

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Analytics Strategy, Presentation

#AdobeSummit Takeaways: My Favorite Tips

Posted on by Eric Peterson

I’ve written several posts with different reflections on my Adobe Summit 2013 experience. You can see a list of all of them by going to my Adobe Summit tag.

This post isn’t long, but I picked up a few real nuggets of brilliance that were very tactical tips that I’ll be exploring further in my day job in the next week or two.

Finding Questions in Site Search

Nancy Koons might be the nicest person on the planet (feel free to leave a comment if you think you know someone nicer) and also is the source of two of my favorite tips (neither of which is at all Adobe-specific).

I’m a fan of site search data (I even wrote a Practical eCommerce article on the subject last year). Nancy set up the tip by explaining why site search analytics makes sense, but then she gave this tip:

“Filter your site search terms report by the words: who, what, why, where, and how.”

Literally. Filter for those 5 words. What this will give you a list of results that are full questions people typed into your search box. These are all going to be unique — they’ll be wayyyy out on the long tail of the report. But, they’re also context-rich. They tell you exactly what the visitor was trying to do.

Cool, huh?

A Poster of Insights

This next tip is also completely to Nancy’s credit. The entire panel touched on the need to not just do analysis, but to effectively communicate their results. Nancy shared a situation where her team was doing a “year in review” and had a number of useful insights that they had turned up over the course of the year. The challenge they had was, “How to actually communicate them in a way that they wouldn’t be forgotten at the point when they would be most useful to apply in the coming year?”

The solution: a printed poster that captured the insights that would most be able to be applied in the coming year. The poster was heavily designed — almost infographic-level detail. The posters were good-sized — they looked to be 24-30″ wide and maybe 15″ tall — and were distributed to the marketers to put up in their offices. Brilliant! A constant reminder/reference of the most useful learning from the prior year!

Report Builder…

There were several tips that were geared towards “don’t present the data directly from within SiteCatalyst,” which meant Report Builder and Excel got some real love. Report Builder is a great way to get automated data updates into Excel, where the richer visualization options for the platform can be put to full use.

If you want to hone your Report Builder and Excel chops, consider Kevin Willeitner’s class this fall in Columbus (and stick around for #ACCELERATE).

Context Variables in SiteCatalyst

I’m not proud. I’ll admit that I totally missed context variables in the v15 release…until Ben Gaines explained them in his “10 tips” session. Basically, remove developer confusion over the difference between props, eVars, and event.

Did You Pick Up a Favorite Tip?

I got a number of other little nuggets and ideas, but these were the ones I most felt like I’d be putting to use almost immediately. What did you take back from Salt Lake City that you’ll be putting into action soon?

 

 

 

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Analytics Strategy, Social Media

#AdobeSummit Takeaways: Adobe Puts on a GREAT Event

Posted on by Eric Peterson

I’ve written several posts with different reflections on my Adobe Summit 2013 experience. You can see a list of all of them by going to my Adobe Summit tag.

This was my first Summit. I’ve wanted to attend for years, but the stars never quite managed to align to get me there. And…this experience had me regretting that I didn’t work harder to force some astronomic alignment!

The best way for me to capture the “GREAT” in the subject line is with a bulleted list:

  • Overall event organization — given the magnitude of the event, seemingly every detail was fully thought through with redundancies and contingencies in place. Pre-event communication, “no wait” registration, a great mobile app, people standing everywhere with “Have questions? Ask me.” signs, transportation to and from various venues, and food and drink stations well stocked and appropriately spread out for every meal. Perfection.
  • Speakers — the Adobe presenters, the keynote speakers, and the practitioners in breakout sessions were top notch. I actually found myself questioning how to rate the speakers — “Average” for Summit or “Average” for all presenters I’ve ever seen at conferences? I went with the latter, which meant I had a Lake Wobegone experience — all the speakers were (well!) Above Average.
  • Community Pavilion — the vendor exhibit hall was very well laid out, and the range of vendors on hand was a great mix.
  • Fostering the conversation — I was invited, along with Michele Kiss, to be a Summit Insider. We were given free rein to share our experiences via social media to try to foster the conversation. And, we got to do some video interviews of attendees, which was both nerve-wracking and fun. I honestly thought I was at least trying to take a little bit of the edge off my usual snarkiness…but two different people commented on my Twitter snarkiness on Thursday night. I guess we’ll see if I’m back next year in the same role if they do it again. I’d certainly love to!

What are your thoughts about the quality of the event? Did I miss a seedy underbelly somewhere, or did you think it was well done?

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Analytics Strategy

#AdobeSummit Takeaways: Adobe Marketing Cloud

Posted on by Eric Peterson

I’ve written several posts with different reflections on my Adobe Summit 2013 experience. You can see a list of all of them by going to my Adobe Summit tag.

Summit was Adobe’s opportunity to tell the Adobe Marketing Cloud story in multiple ways to a large and captive audience. They did a good job, including an ambitious “megademo” that followed a hypothetical scenario all the way across all five components of the full suite. I’m not going to try to explain the platform — Adobe has lots of content that does that well, and I’m not really qualified to comment on several of the major components. Rather, I’m going to cherrypick some specific observations.

Tackling “Collaboration”

The story behind Adobe Marketing Cloud includes a lot of “breaking down the silos” ambitions (between creative  and analytics, between analytics and marketers, between marketers and agencies, between analytics and testing, etc.). Those silos need to be broken down, so it’s great that Adobe is talking about that and evolving their products with that in mind. Having said that:

  • Adobe is a technology company — their bias towards “breaking down silos” is to lead with “tools” for that. That’s great! Rolling out single sign-on for all of their products and employing a common interface and “collaboration space” where users of the various tools can post/pin/share content from the different tools is an attempt to provide supporting technology for collaboration.
  • People and process are still key — it’s not that Adobe doesn’t acknowledge that. They do! But, I don’t think they’re thinking they will get into the business of helping companies with the “people” aspect of what’s needed here. And, my sense is that they somewhat see “the tools” as being “the process,” which it’s not. (One of the big reasons I joined Clearhead was that the vision for the company was heavily focused on the “people and process” aspect of analytics and optimization…so I’m not going to complain that Adobe is not diving full-bore into that space!)
  • How clients are managing collaboration now — in one of the optimization panels I attended, a member of the audience asked the panelists, “What tools do you use to manage the optimization process itself?” Very interestingly, Autodesk and Dell said they use Sharepoint, and Symantec said they use a heavily customized implementation of Jira.  All three panelists indicated these were clunky and imperfect solutions. Which brings me to…
  • Adobe…or someone else? — (at least) two exhibitors at Summit actually play in the collaboration space to some extent: SweetSpot Intelligence and Insight Rocket. Granted, these are focused on the “digital insight management” aspect of collaboration, which has a narrower focus than the full “Marketing Cloud” scope. But, there’s something to be said for focus! (And kudos to Adobe for having both vendors in their Community Pavilion — kudos for the event itself are the topic of a different post).

I absolutely love that this conversation is getting elevated.

How Integrated Marketing Cloud Components Will Be Is Unclear

Adobe has introduced single sign-on across the entire Marketing Cloud, which is an impressive technical feat, and a necessary first step in truly providing an integrated experience across the platform. I actually left unclear as to how deep that integrated experience currently goes. Each of the components of the Marketing Cloud has subcomponents, and each subcomponent, at one time, was a standalone product. So, we’re talking a massive effort to truly unify the user experience across the full platform:

  • Basic palette and visual elements — this would be a basic level of experience unification that would at least show that all products are “Adobe.” I don’t think this will be a trivial effort in and of itself, but it would be great to see it happen.
  • User experience consistency — this is the real whopper, because the different components/subcomponents are doing fundamentally and drastically different things. And, they’re not going to have a ton of users jumping across from, say, Adobe Analytics products to Experience Manager products. But, oh, man, if Adobe tackled that with “consistency of the interfaces to the full extent possible” on their 3-year roadmap…that would be pretty freakin’ admirable and cool!

Adobe Analytics — Simplification of Options

From some backchannel exchanges, Adobe thought they had clearly articulated this simplification in the opening keynote. But, also from the backchannel, non-Adobe employees were scratching their heads. I actually got a really clear explanation from an Adobe consultant I know late in the day on Thursday. And it’s simple (and fantastic):

  • Adobe Analytics Standard — includes SiteCatalyst, Data Warehouse, Discover, and Genesis (the connectors — NOT services to get them working , if needed)
  • Adobe Analytics Premium — same as Standard, but also includes Insight

Simple, right? I suspect that means the “base cost” for Adobe Analytics will go up a bit. But, clients will no longer stretch their budgets to get SiteCatalyst…and then realize 3 months later that they need Data Warehouse and Discover (and agency analysts will no longer be told by their clients: “Yes, we have Discover, but we only have 3 seats, so we don’t let agencies access is to answer the questions we’re asking them to answer.”).

Adobe: thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!

Adobe Social — Encouraging Progress

I actually didn’t get to attend any of the Adobe Social breakouts (I couldn’t justify it given the sessions they competed with). I’ll cover this again in my “regrets” post.

What I did see is that they’re continuing to be serious about “getting the data” (I’m sure the breakout sessions covered that they’re now part of the Gnip partner program, but I missed that in the keynotes) and integrating with Adobe Analytics, and they’re working hard to seamlessly incorporate Context Optional. They’re also, it seems, pushing themselves to figure out truly effective visualizations for the data they present. More on that in the next section.

Data Visualization — It Feels Like Adobe is “Half Pregnant”

Okay, so you can’t be “half pregnant.” I sorta’ feel like Adobe might be trying to, though, when it comes to information visualization.

The good news is that Adobe seems to be really be expecting to overhaul the user experience for their products. To be as polite as possible about it, I abhor the current SiteCatalyst interface, and it has pained me to watch very smart, long-time SiteCatalyst users (and Omniture/Adobe employees) defend it. It’s been a blind spot that has generated bulging veins on my forehead more than once. Specifically, the lack of flexibility in how data gets visualized (the SiteCatalyst dashboards allow some customization…but are still wayyyyyyyyy on the “rigid” end of the flexibility spectrum; this is the case for all web analytics platforms).

What is still really unclear is how much of a serious investment Adobe is making in truly giving their products the ability to natively visualize information.

It was super-telling (to me) that both the NFL and Vail Resorts panelists in the “Rock Stars” session had tips specifically about using Report Builder to actually build reporting and analysis deliverables. Doughnut charts kept popping up in various new feature demos, which, to me, say, “We know pie charts are bad, so we’re not using them.” Which, of course, completely misses the point of why pie charts are evil.

I’d love to have Adobe set their sites on Tableau Software as a company they treat as a competitor they need to take seriously — just tasking a few people with doing serious competitive research of Tableau would open some eyes on the product team (as would getting a few people to read Stephen Few’s Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data).

What Were Your Product Takeaways?

There is very little in this post that I can claim as an original observation — tweets and conversations with attendees certainly contributed (unfortunately, not directly and discretely enough that I can properly provide attribution). I’d love to pick up some other thoughts and observations from the “product” aspect of the conference in the comments below!

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General, Social Media

#AdobeSummit Is Next Week

Posted on by Eric Peterson

Every year, it seems, I hit a point where every analyst I know is dropping the question, “Are you going to Summit?” (“Summit” of course, is industry shorthand for Adobe Digital Marketing Summit.) For years, my shoulders have sagged each time the question is asked as I’ve responded, “Not this year.”

But…this year…I’m actually responding in the affirmative. And, through a stroke of fantastic good fortune (and, I’m convinced, some anonymous string-pulling on my behalf, but I have only suspicions and no hard data), I’m actually going to be a Summit Insider.

Michele Kiss (@michelejkiss) and I will be roaming the conference as digital correspondents for the event — tweeting (of course), interviewing attendees and various Adobe muckity-mucks, and reflecting on our experiences. In other words…doing what we like to do at analytics conferences even when we haven’t been tasked with the responsibility!

My Pre-Summit Predictions

I’ve never been to Summit, but I’ve certainly read posts, listened to podcasts, and had discussions about it to the point that I’m comfortable making some predictions:

  • There will be some fantastic content (as I worked on my schedule, I was disappointed to find out that the Autoscheduler for the event was not able to open up rifts in the space-time continuum — I had three time slots where I desperately wanted to be in three sessions at once)
  • There will be nuggets of wisdom (real wisdom here, people — not just pap cliches) from keynoters that I will not see coming at all
  • Michele will out-tweet me by a ratio of at least 10:1 (It’s not a competition! But that’s what the loser always says, right?)
  • I will get to catch up with a lot of friends (and will get to meet some of them in person for the first time!)
  • I will be irked at least once by something someone at Adobe says (I’m generally a cranky person, so my irkedness is to be expected)
  • I will be exhausted — mentally and physically — by the time I make my way to the airport on Friday morning (to head to SXSW…oh…lord…score me a restful flight, because “stamina” is not something that has increased with age!)

If You’re Going to Be at Summit

Please, please, please track me down. I’m easy to find. Whether or not I wear my Gilligan hat will be determined by the level of peer pressure exerted, but I’ll be keeping a close eye on my Twitter account, and I’m going to be disappointed (pissed, really) if I don’t come away with a few good “connected via Twitter” stories from the event.

If there’s something you would like to see Michele or me do that would make your Summit experience more interesting, entertaining, or noteworthy, please let us know! We have the loosest of reins (think Zoe Barnes after she left The Washington Herald for Slugline), the power of the digital pen, and a penchant for stepping a bit off the reservation if it seems like it would be fun to do so. And we have Michele’s legions of followers.

If You’re Not Going to Be at Summit

Hey! Part of the reason Adobe asked us to do this is that they’d love to have the Summit experience extend in a small way to those analysts who are unable to attend. If you’re on the Twitter, there are lots of ways to follow along:

And, of course, you can get fancy and combine the above into various Twitter searches (my favorite reference on that front is this TweetReach blog post).

But, if there’s something you think I could do that would give you a better remote experience, let me know!

Stay Tuned!

I’m excited about the event (as is evident from the schoolgirl-quantity volume of exclamation points in this post) and look forward to trying to wrap my brain around the experience and capture my thoughts in the moment and afterwards.

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