Web Analytics Management

Microsoft adAnalytics Bids Adieu

In contrast to the great expectations accompanying its beta to duke it out with Google Analytics, the end of the adAnalytics beta and product was announced quietly on March 12. While there hasn’t been an official reason given, it doesn’t seem like there was ever a really big following for the solution. While certainly not scientific proof of this, the lack of response to a feedback request on the adAnalytics blog back in July makes you wonder what the take up of the solution actually was in the end. In general, it was surprising that it was such a non-factor in the analytics space. Perhaps adAnalytics will be best remembered for its ability to provide a limited amount of demographic data on about 25% of users based on their MS Passport Live ID...an intriguing concept, but not complete enough to draw any meaningful conclusions about traffic to your site. While it may be entertaining to speculate on whether MSFT will pursue the analytics game going forward, I’m not sure what they would need to do so. Sure, companies such as Omniture, Coremetrics and WebTrends are all possible acquisition candidates, but I don’t think they have much reason to do so. If it’s data that they want, they can get that through the rest of their web and PC-based applications and services.

I also don’t see this as any type of rejection of free analytics…I see more and more organizations looking to integrate Google Analytics into their web analytics framework as a way to service low demand analytics consumers and cut down on page view charges associated with their fee based vendors. And while many in the market may be frustrated at the lack of availability of Yahoo! Analytics there will likely be more interest in direct proportion to access over the coming months. No, the adAnalytics marketing strategy just failed to materialize effectively, and Microsoft clearly saw no reason to keep a service that added little or no value to its bottom line.

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If you're anywhere between NYC and DC, lets meet up at JBoye's Philadelphia conference May 5-7. I'll be speaking on Strategic Techniques for Improving Your Web Analytics will show you how a well executed web analytics strategy leads to successful analytics solution implementations.

75 of 2009

It’s been a busy first few months of 2009 and I wanted to tell you about some of the things I’ve been working on…also wanted to pass along a discount to eMetrics, a reminder about the WAA Public Sector Survey and a heads up about an upcoming presentation I’ll be making in May.

• In mid-February, I finished up the CMS Watch 2009 Web Analytics Report. This is the third edition of the report, and I added coverage of video and mobile specific vendors. Also, in response to the WAA’s review of the 2008 report, I asked all vendors to provide their take on WAA Metrics Standards compliance. Out of the 20 vendors that were covered, 10 complied. It was heartening to see that both Google Analytics and Coremetrics went public with their compliance soon after I made the request…and disappointing that more vendors did not. You may have your opinions about the relative value of the WAA Standards, but I think the effort that vendors do or do not put into transparency speaks volumes.
  

• If you’ve been reading my blog posts since the beginning of the year, you’ve noticed I’ve become quite interested in the question of web analytics data privacy and access. To expand on this often overlooked topic, I’ve teamed with CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne to write Do You Really Own Your Web Analytics Data? I’d love to hear what you think about this relative to your vendor selection decisions.
  

•  I mentioned in my post last week about the WAA Public Sector Survey. If you haven’t taken it, there’s still time…in fact you have until Monday, March 23. So, if you’re a .gov, .org, .edu or .mil, take 10 minutes and contribute to the knowledge-base…I’ve been tracking the results and seeing some very interesting trends and findings. This leads me to…

•  eMetrics in San Jose. We’re hoping to have preliminary findings in time for the big, big show May 4-7. And if you use this promo code WAMANAGE12 when you register, you’ll get 12% off your registration. If you register by this Friday, March 20, you’ll get an even better deal with Early Bird pricing! Go to: http://www.emetrics.org/sanjose/2009/register.php

Finally, if you can’t make it to eMetrics, join me on May 7 in beautiful, downtown Philadelphia, where I’ll be speaking at the JBoye conference.  My presentation, Strategic Techniques for Improving Your Web Analytics will show you how a well executed web analytics strategy leads to successful analytics solution implementations. The conference runs from May 5-7.  To register and find out more, go to: http://www.jboye.com/conferences/philadelphia09/schedule.

Web Analytics Association Takes on the Public Sector

Do you practice web analytics for a government agency, a non-profit organization, an educational institution or a branch of the military? If you do, what types of metrics and reports do you run? Are most of your reports generated in an ad hoc manner for spot analysis for senior management? Or do you focus on creating a self-service environment in which content managers and marketers act as “power users” who can take care of their own analytics requirements?

 

The Public Sector Special Interest Group of the Web Analytics Association (WAA) started asking these and other questions  both to find out whether web analytics in the “non-private” sector is really that different than the private sector, and to help web site managers, marketers and analysts develop benchmark metrics, usage and presentation methods that are common to this corner of the web universe.

 

The result is the Web Analytics Association (WAA) Public Sector Web Analytics Survey.  I like to think that this is the first step in developing a greater presence and recognition for this segment, which often seems to be regarded as somewhat of a “backwater” by the larger web analytics community. I’m hopeful that the survey results and communication of the results will help foster a greater dialogue between the public and private sector web analytics communities.  And wouldn’t it be cool if there was enough participation among public sector organizations to ultimately foster the type of index we’ve seen in the retail area, such as the Coremetrics Benchmark?

 

If you work for a public sector (including military), non-profit or educational organization, take the survey now; you don’t need to be a member of the WAA.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=QWRWnODN1hbqLUaNyy52Lg_3d_3d

 

Who’s Web Analytics Data is it Anyway…Part 3

Since I wrote Whose data is it anyway? and Whose data is it anyway? Part 2 I've started to dive a bit deeper into the subject  of web analytics data ownership as part of my vendor research for the just released The 2009 Web Analytics Report and because I'm managing a vendor selection process for a Federal government entity.

It’s a complex issue and one that often gets overlooked during web analytics vendor selection and contract negotiations. Many analysts and web managers whom I speak to at large organizations either don’t read or don’t have access to their vendor contracts…and generally don’t ask about data ownership during the vendor evaluation process.  Many people just assume that they own their web analytics data.

So what does data ownership really mean? Is it simply a “concept”, or does it translate into anything of business value? Well, it depends on your vendor…what they say, what they don’t say and what they put in writing.

Let’s look at the four aspects of "data ownership":

Use of Your Data

As we’ve already written, Google Analytics and Yahoo! Web Analytics state in their contracts that may use your data for a variety of commercial purposes. Not all, but a few of the fee-based vendors state that they’ll use the data for benchmarking or industry average information. This seems to be a more palatable pill to swallow for large, security-concerned enterprises, such as those in government and financial services.

Data Security

All of the largest web analytics vendors have gone to great lengths to ensure the safety of your data from the perspective of storage, access, and redundancy and server failover. Yet if there’s a data loss, you’re on your own. All agreements absolve the vendors of any liability. So, in this case, what does data ownership really do for you? Not much.

Data Retention

Being able to run reports on historical data and having access to unaggregated data as far back as your contract runs may be considered to be a sign of data ownership, and one that many take for granted, but it is nothing of the sort. There are basically two types of web analytics data you can retain: data that is used in creating summary tables used for the reports you run in the core solution, and unaggregated data that makes up your web analytics database. The length of time that this data is kept may or may not be in the contract. We find this to be part of your service agreement, and can be completely negotiable. Your vendor will have a default length of time for both types of data…typically 12-36 months. You want more than the default, you can pay for it. We know of one fee-based vendor that breaks out default retention on an hourly, daily, weekly and monthly basis…just a bit more complicated and just another way to add to your cost of ownership.   The upshot of this: Data retention has real meaning for what “data ownership” is all about…or does it?

Data access- API or file extraction of core data tables for export to another system.

Before you get all excited about making a deal for keeping your data for 36 months, you have to think about how you’re going to export the data out of the web analytics solution. While it may be easy to pull old reports, what if you want to extract the unaggregated data to export to another database, or what if you want to use it with a business intelligence tool? How do you get it? Vendors that provide a data warehouse capability, are happy to sell you this capability and therefore your underlying data is available and extractable…typically through APIs. But if you don’t purchase a data warehouse capability or your vendor doesn’t offer one, you could get your unaggregated data in a state that is really hard to deal with…it could be unprocessed, meaning that the data is in a “log file” state, or it could be in a CSV format. In either case, you’ll have a lot of work to do to get the data in a state that is usable.

So, what’s “data ownership”? I think you have to figure out what elements of data ownership make the most sense. From my perspective, making sure that you can get your hands on your web data when you need it and with as little interference as possible are prime considerations. Security and privacy are paramount, but if you choose to go with an on-demand solution, you’ll need to be assured that the vendor meets your criteria, knowing that if there’s a data loss, you’ll have little recourse.