Archive for 'Vendors'

Back in February our newest partner Adam Greco waxed philosophical about Google offering a paid version of Google Analytics. He got a bunch of feedback and all-in-all the post raised some interesting questions about Google’s place in the web analytics marketplace. Now there is a new rumor — one far less substantiated than the so called “Enterprise” offering Adam discussed — but one with potentially more far reaching implications.

On a call today, we heard that Google may be considering charging everyone for the use of Google Analytics.

Everyone? Yep. Everyone.

The details were sparse and wholly unsubstantiated, but come from a source that we generally trust as reliable. And while we normally don’t deal with rumors here at Web Analytics Demystified, given Google’s footprint — conservatively estimated to be around 30,000 business sites around the world with perhaps an order (or two) more non-business sites being tracked today — the implications of this rumor are interesting for two reasons:

1. If Google were to charge a fee similar to other of their offerings, say $100 per year, to use Google Analytics, these fees may produce millions of dollars in annual revenue (and profits) for Google and their investors. Outside projections for Google Analytics installations range into the millions, which, given a reasonable retention rate (say, 10%) would produce substantial revenue. Given the changes Google is going through right now on their management team it’s hard to say how important “revenue” is, especially when the bandwidth and data storage costs for Google Analytics are likely to be significant given estimated volumes and at a time when Google is being criticized over their increasing operating costs. Given the constant criticism over the years of Google’s inability to generate profits outside of their advertising business perhaps this sort of obvious revenue is suddenly appealing.
2. If Google were to start forcing folks to pay, this might be a huge boon to the emerging “secondary” market of web and digital analytics vendors including Woopra, Chartbeat, Performable, Clicky, Kissmetrics, and a rapidly expanding set of web and mobile analytics vendors who largely charge tens to hundreds of dollars per month. Despite the odds given the footprint “traditional” web analytics vendors have within the Enterprise, combined with the hegemony Google has over entry-level businesses and small companies, in the last three years we have seen a surprising “second coming” of web analytics vendors gaining traction in a variety of niches. Be it real-time analytics for blogs (Chartbeat, Woopra), funnel analysis (Kissmetrics), heat-mapping and session recording (Robot Replay, ClickTale, Reinvigorate), or customer-focused analytics (Performable), these companies are, by-and-large small, agile, and somehow managing to gain adoption despite the presence of Google and “the bigs”.

This second implication is very interesting to me … the fact that against well-established, already deployed, and in Google’s case completely free competition, these start ups are able to grow and, at least in a few cases, thrive (see Clicktale, Robot Replay who was acquired by Foresee Results, Performable, etc.) Imagine the glee that founders and investors in these companies would experience if Google Analytics were to put up a real (albeit potentially small) barrier to entry. It likely wouldn’t be enough to stop companies, but it might be enough to make them think “Hmm, I wonder what else is out there?”

Given that most of these start-ups are focusing on ease-of-use and specific use cases, and in many instances are doing a pretty darn good job (my opinion), this pause might be exactly what these start-ups need. Heck, it might even help some of the bigs, given the trouble they have had selling against Google Analytics juxtaposed against the dramatic interface changes that some are poised to unleash. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying that Google charging $100 for analytics magically re-opens the door for traditional vendors with annual contracts in the tens of thousands of dollars. But every substantial change in the marketplace is an opportunity for great management teams, and Google suddenly charging anything would surely be a substantial change.

But I digress.

At the end of the day I personally consider it highly unlikely that Google would start to charge everyone just because they can — it just seems like an unnecessary and “evil” thing to do (despite the fact that we did the same thing earlier this year at Twitalyzer without any negative impact on our business.) Still, Google is held to a pretty high standard, and I suspect that the (relatively) small amount of revenue they would ultimately generate is hardly worth the negative press they would likely receive.

But I’m interested in what you folks think. Would you pay $100 per year for Google Analytics as it exists today? What if they offered more features or functionality? If the latter, what would they need to add to get you to pony up? Or would you immediately pull the code off your site if Google required any kind of payment? If so, why?

I welcome your comments and conversation.

Wow, I just got done looking more closely at the Web Analytics Demystified team calendar for the next few months and it is a doozy! Chances are if you live in the U.S. and do any type of digital measurement, analysis, or optimization professionally we are going to see you between now and the end of March.

If that is the case, we’d like to buy you a drink!

Despite each of us presenting, often multiple times, we are always happy to make time for our clients and potential clients when we are out-and-about.  If you realize you’re going to be at one of the following events why not drop us a line and we’ll see if we can connect. Who knows, maybe we’re planning a great party or something …

• On Tuesday, February 8th, Adam will be at the Online Marketing Summit in San Diego, California. Adam is presenting at 11 AM so look for him in the Conversion (B2B/B2C) track
• On Wednesday, February 16th, Adam and I will both be in Minneapolis at a special Web Analytics Wednesday event at Glueks downtown. If you’re in the Twin Cities register here to join us for drinks!
• From Tuesday, March 1st to Thursday, March 3rd, Adam and John will be at Webtrends Engage in San Francisco.
• From Tuesday, March 8th to Thursday, March 10th, all three of us will be at the Omniture Summit in Salt Lake City, Utah. Adam is presenting in the “Analytics All Stars” track.
• From Monday, March 14th to Wednesday, March 16th, all three of us will be at the venerable Emetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in San Francisco. The three of us are presenting throughout the conference but I’m most excited about my keynote with Lynn Lanphier from Best Buy on Tuesday, March 15th.
• I will in San Jose on Friday, March 25th, delivering the keynote presentation at the SDForum annual analytics conference (details still coming.)

After all that the three of us are going to slink home to our loved ones and try and convince them we are in fact their fathers, husbands, and sons.

Seriously, though, we never get enough opportunities to meet with partners, friends, and prospects at these events so if you’d like to meet with any or all of us please drop us a line sooner than later so that we can block time and make plans.

Given the considerable buzz in the marketplace regarding Tag Management Systems and vendors like Ensighten, TagMan, and BrightTag I wanted to call your collective attention to a free webcast I am participating in next week on “The Myth of the Universal Tag.” On Tuesday, January 25th at 1:00 PM Pacific time I will presenting with Josh Manion, CEO of Ensighten and Brandon Bunker, Senior Manager of Analytics at Sony, detailing some of the advantages I see in the adoption of a tag management platform.

What’s more, the nice folks at Ensighten have taken the registration form off of my white paper on tag management systems and so everyone is free to read all of my thoughts on Tag Management without prompting a sales call.  How cool is that?

Spread the word:

“The Myth of the Universal Tag” free webcast sponsored by Ensighten
Tuesday, January 25th, 1:00 PM Pacific / 4:00 PM Eastern
Register online now at GoTo Meeting!

Don’t forget to download that free copy of my white paper on tag management systems!

By now I hope you have heard that Adam Greco is joining John and I as a Senior Partner in Web Analytics Demystified. While his official start date isn’t still for a few weeks he’s already on the road as part of the Demystified team. If you’d like to meet Adam in person and talk with him about the practice he is building there are a few places I just happened to know he will be in the coming months:

• Adam will be participating in the Web Analytics Association (WAA) Symposium in Austin, Texas on Monday, January 24th. Adam is talking about integrating web analytics and CRM which is core to his practice area given his past work at Salesforce.com and Omniture.
• Adam will also be presenting at the Online Marketing Summit in San Diego, California on Tuesday, February 8th. He’ll be giving the same presentation on web analytics and CRM, discussing how to move marketing analytics from the server room to the board room.
• Adam will also be joining me in Minneapolis on Wednesday, February 16th for a special Web Analytics Wednesday sponsored by our good friends at SiteSpect and with the generous help from our friends at Stratigent.  We don’t have the details on the site yet but the event will be downtown Minneapolis and Adam and I will be doing some prognostication and fielding questions from Twin Cities locals.

Adam will also be at Webtrends Engage, Adobe’s Omniture Summit, and the Emetrics Marketing Optimization Summit but we’ll post more on that when additional details emerge.  Suffice to say Adam will be busy in his first few months on the job.

If you haven’t met Adam I would encourage you to head out to one of these events and introduce yourself. Especially if you’re a marketer and are considering the Online Marketing Summit — if you haven’t been to OMS you really need to go.  Every year I am absolutely blown away by the job that Aaron Kahlow and the OMS team do bringing that conference together.  OMS draws amazing speakers, amazing sponsors, and most importantly amazing conference participants and delivers an absolute fire-hose of information.

I’m sincerely bummed that Adam is taking my place at OMS this year — I haven’t actually missed a big OMS event in California ever — but I am confident that the audience will benefit greatly from Adam’s message about CRM integration, his direct experience at Salesforce.com, and his distinct presentation style.

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 Web 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 Web 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