The Future of Web Analytics is…Online Analytics!

Analytics · By On · 4 Comments

Last week was a pretty big week for the Web Ana­lyt­ics indus­try. With the pub­li­ca­tion of the For­rester Research US Web Ana­lyt­ics Fore­cast 2008 by John Lovett, we learned the rel­a­tive matu­rity of the mar­ket today and where adop­tion is headed over the next 5 years. There are cer­tainly some inter­est­ing find­ings in John’s report-despite the cur­rent macro­eco­nomic sit­u­a­tion. By 2014 US busi­nesses are expected to spend $953 mil­lion (yes, approach­ing that big Bil­lion dol­lar mark) with an aver­age com­pound annual growth rate of 17%. Pretty healthy growth con­sid­er­ing the mar­ket­ing spend cut­backs seen across numer­ous indus­tries. Clearly, mar­ket­ing deci­sion mak­ers are see­ing the value of the mea­sure­able, online medium to impact the top and bot­tom line while allo­cat­ing spend away from the tra­di­tional offline chan­nels. Cer­tainly the news­pa­per ad busi­ness is feel­ing the pinch, pro­jected to be down 22% this year.

Yet one of the areas that I believe was over­looked in this For­rester Report is related to the dis­cus­sions, debates, and ideas I’ve cov­ered with friends and peers through­out the indus­try over the past few years. As con­sumers engage in more social media, video, and mobile activ­ity it presents a chal­lenge for online mar­keters to mea­sure what is hap­pen­ing off-site in addi­tion to the tra­di­tional on-site mea­sure­ment. Lau­rie Sul­li­van actu­ally opened her recent col­umn in the Medi­a­Post Online Media Daily with a ref­er­ence to this point:

“Strug­gling to ana­lyze data and prove cam­paign per­for­mance from Web sites, Face­book, Twit­ter, iPhone and Black­Berry appli­ca­tions, U.S. com­pa­nies in aggre­gate will more than dou­ble invest­ments in Web ana­lyt­ics dur­ing the next five years…”

Inter­est­ingly enough, the For­rester Report does not explic­itly call out Face­book, Twit­ter or these mobile app plat­forms. Yet I would con­tend these rep­re­sent some of the most excit­ing growth oppor­tu­ni­ties for mea­sur­ing and under­stand­ing con­sumer engage­ment. Fun­da­men­tally, I believe we need to start think­ing and talk­ing about web ana­lyt­ics as online analytics-that is– the tools, tech­nolo­gies, ser­vices, processes, and peo­ple engaged in mea­sur­ing both the on-site and off-site click­stream behavior.

Here at Omni­ture, we of course believe so strongly in this impend­ing tran­si­tion that we’ve launched numer­ous social media, mobile, and video mea­sure­ment offer­ings to help our cus­tomers get their arms around this. In addi­tion to our Twit­ter announce­ment from ear­lier this win­ter, we announced our App Mea­sure­ment for Face­book last week which received some great inter­est and atten­tion through­out the media, blo­gos­phere and Twee­t­os­phere. In case you missed it, check out some great posts by Jesse Stay at louisgray​.com (lov­ing this title!– Omnipresent Omni­ture Makes Face­book Apps Omnipo­tent), eWeek, and Mash­able. Social media is a huge space and, in addi­tion to mobile and video mea­sure­ment, rep­re­sents that next quan­tum leap into what I would con­tend we need to call online analytics.

So what are your thoughts about this? Is the future of web ana­lyt­ics… online ana­lyt­ics? I say yes!

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  • http://www.analyticsevolution.com John Lovett

    Hi Matt,

    Thanks for ref­er­enc­ing my For­rester Fore­cast report and bring­ing atten­tion to emerg­ing trends in Web ana­lyt­ics. I very much agree with you that mea­sur­ing emerg­ing media is a crit­i­cal com­po­nent of Web online ana­lyt­ics and one that should not be ignored.

    While emerg­ing media mea­sure­ment is a truly excit­ing area to watch ~ I con­tend that the nascent char­ac­ter of these mea­sure­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties has yet to reg­is­ter a blip on the over­all Web ana­lyt­ics fore­cast. Of course, ven­dors like Omni­ture have been cap­tur­ing emerg­ing media nearly as quickly as it appears and this aspect is addressed in the over­all mar­ket fore­cast. Yet, the (what I call) niche ven­dors, who spe­cial­ize in sin­gle appli­ca­tion or lim­ited appli­ca­tion mea­sure­ment tools, are admit­tedly under the radar of the US Web Ana­lyt­ics Fore­cast. I do how­ever watch these com­pa­nies with eager antic­i­pa­tion as they tend to drive inno­va­tion – bring solu­tions to mar­ket faster – and often become acqui­si­tion tar­gets for larger entities.

    I too think that Lau­rie Sullivan’s piece was spot on and wel­come the tran­si­tion from on-site mea­sure­ment to web-wide mea­sure­ment, fur­ther extend that to the offline world as well. It’s my opin­ion that the crux of this issue will be addressed between on-site mar­keters and adver­tis­ers. Rela­tion­ships like the one that Omni­ture has devel­oped with WPP are crit­i­cal in align­ing data from two sides of the mar­ket­ing orga­ni­za­tion that have his­tor­i­cally NEVER matched. Closer align­ment between on-site activ­ity and adver­tis­ing met­rics will alle­vi­ate many issues and empha­size the impor­tance of mea­sure­ment capa­bil­i­ties such as attribution.

    That said, I do agree that we’re mov­ing in more direc­tions than I was able to address in my Fore­cast report. Each of these is notable and wor­thy of excite­ment. I can assure you that I’ll be watch­ing and strive to add fuel to the conversation.

    Cheers,
    John Lovett

  • http://www.omniture.com Matt Langie

    John–

    Thanks for your com­ment. I cer­tainly agree that from a dollars/revenue per­spec­tive, the social media/video/mobile ana­lyt­ics space is but a round­ing error when con­sid­er­ing the over­all web ana­lyt­ics mar­ket. Yet talk­ing to online mar­keters across the indus­try, it cer­tainly appears these emerg­ing chan­nels rep­re­sent that “blind spot” where they really need the tools, tech­nolo­gies, and prod­ucts to help them gain that “sin­gle ver­sion of the truth” to truly under­stand cus­tomer intent and engage­ment. And get­ting the adver­tis­ing data and online ana­lyt­ics data to be fully inte­grated is cer­tainly part of that jour­ney to “full enlightenment.” :^)

    As always, I appre­ci­ate your thought-provoking research, com­ments, and fuel to the con­ver­sa­tion (or is it fuel to the fire?!?).

    Cheers!

  • Matt Lil­lig

    Any talk of attri­bu­tion mea­sur­ment in the report?

  • http://www.thelostagency.com David

    My ques­tion would be how this fits into Dell’s recent state­ment that Dell Out­let has made $3 mil­lion in sales from Twit­ter since 2007, as far as I know they are using Omni­ture Site Cat­a­lyst to track online sales.

    Will the next report start to take a seri­ous look into Social media?

    So with­out the use of Web Ana­lyt­ics would they be able to realise how impor­tant Twit­ter is to dri­ving their online busi­ness model.

    http://​bits​.blogs​.nytimes​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​6​/​1​2​/​d​e​l​l​-​h​a​s​-​e​a​r​n​e​d​-​3​-​m​i​l​l​i​o​n​-​f​r​o​m​-​t​w​i​t​t​er/