Digital analytics over ten years

This article, written by Neil Mason, was originally published on Clickz.com on 22/12/09 and is republished here with permission.

It’s hard at this time of year not to get a bit reflective at the year that’s gone by and to think ahead to the year that’s about to be. But it only struck me though as I sat down to write this column that I am just about to complete my first decade working in digital marketing analytics. I got started when I moved to work at an online auctions business in 2000 having spent a (large) number of years working in “offline” marketing analytics and consumer insight. I remember that when I got to this online business that the head of marketing told me to forget everything that I had learned in the offline world as this was “new media” and that “things were different” now.

Things were different for sure. There were different marketing channels to manage and to understand, there were different technologies to deal with to collect and analyse the data. Things were happening phenomenally fast and it did seem that the normal rules didn’t seem to apply. But I quickly came to the view (and one to which I still subscribe) that underneath all the noise and the excitement that the normal rules did still apply and that the core principles and marketing and marketing analytics were still valid. The methods of execution may change and the methods of analysis may be different but at the end of the day it’s just another marketing channel.

So how far has digital analytics come in the last 10 years?
In some ways it has come on incredibly well but in some areas there is still a way to go. First of all, web analytics exists as an industry in way that it didn’t at the beginning of the decade. There is an established Web Analytics Association which continues to grow and shape the industry. Soon, there will be certification which will allow analysts to have official recognition of their competence and expertise. So, in that sense the web analytics industry is displaying more of the characteristics of its older cousins such as brand (advertising) marketing and direct marketing.

There have also obviously been significant developments in the technology behind web analytics. The costs of data collection have fallen dramatically enabling more organisations to have access to data on what is happening on their website and the effect of their digital marketing campaigns. The page tag has become a universal method of collecting that data giving the potential of real time or near real time results. The reporting interfaces on web analytics systems have (on the whole) got better allowing easier access to that data and the ability to generate new or customised reports has improved.

If I have a frustration about the development of the industry over the last 10 years, it is this: I don’t think that we have got much wiser about how digital marketing works and to truly understand the dynamics of marketing across multiple channels. In this sense I wonder whether as digital marketers we’re any better off than our offline colleagues. There’s the famous saying, attributed to John Wannamaker “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” That was said over a hundred years ago but how many digital marketers today really believe that they are any better off today than John Wannamaker was back then, even with all the technology and data at our disposal? If so, then why is this?

One thought is that we have become the victims of the data. Because we have so much data available to us we have become paralysed by the numbers. In John Wannamaker’s time they didn’t have the data, these days a lot of offline marketing analytics is supported by data that can be expensive to collect, whereas digital data is cheap and widely available. Does this wide availability of data mean that we are not as efficient and as effective in our analysis of that data as we should be? It’s a thought that crosses my mind often. I might be wrong but having had the opportunity to work on both sides of the online/offline fence my sense is that over the past 10 years the online marketing world has been “data rich” but “analytically poor”. We still have constraints and conventions, such as last click attribution, that make it easier to report historical activity but not to measure marketing effectiveness. I have no doubt that this industry will continue to evolve, adapt and flourish. We have new challenges to address such as measuring the newer digital channels such as mobile but my hope is that we don’t get too wrapped up in the technology and that now the focus is more on the “analytics” in web analytics rather the “web”.

My best wishes for a successful, prosperous and satisfying 2010.