Fortunately most business owners have learned from past mistakes and are showing interest in measuring the effect of their investment into mobile. But measuring mobile isn’t easy — the sheer diversity of technologies involved and the rapid evolution of the industry has created a monsterous landscape of devices, communication protocols, and requirements.

As a result dozens of companies have sprung up, all making claim to a unique ability to measure the mobile opportunity. Unfortunately some of these companies have decided that relying on hype, hyperbole, and sometimes outright lies are a better sales strategy than building a great product with a unique value proposition. We have seen CEOs bash other CEOs, sales people obfuscate their identity and try and provide “objective” answers, and antics that can only be described as “juvenile.”

Because the mobile opportunity is so great Web Analytics Demystified started taking a closer look at measurement earlier this year. I was fortunate enough to be able to rely on the expertise of folks like Michiel Berger and Thomas Pottjegort at Nedstat, the mobile team at NBC, dozens of analytics end-users, and some of the brightest product managers in the analytics sector tasked with integrating mobile into existing digital measurement offerings.

What I found was a series of surprising truths about how mobile analytics is evolving. Nedstat was kind enough to sponsor this research — and clear disclosure: Nedstat has been measuring and integrating mobile data into their web analytics offerings for years — and I am happy to announce the availablity of this research in a new white paper titled “The Truth about Mobile Analytics.”

You can download this paper from the Nedstat web site for free (but they do ask your name, email, and company name):

DOWNLOAD THE TRUTH ABOUT MOBILE ANALYTICS

We are also holding a special webcast on the subject on June 23rd at 10 AM Central European Time (CET) which is unfortunately quite late in the evening for those of us in the U.S. but quite well timed for Nedstat’s customers. I suspect the webcast will either be repeated or rebroadcast at a later date and time.

SIGN UP TO JOIN THE MOBILE ANALYTICS WEBCAST ON JUNE 23

Also, if you’re really into mobile and mobile analytics please consider joining us at the X Change Conference September 9, 10, and 11 in San Francisco. More details will be out next week but our mobile sessions will be led by Greg Dowling from Nokia (a company with some knowledge of mobile I am told.)

I encourage everyone to download the paper and give it a read, regardless of your position on mobile and mobile analytics today. As always I welcome your feedback and commentary.

Brett Crosby, Matt Cutler, John Pestana, and Bob Page are four names that every web analytics insider knows. Co-founders of Urchin, NetGenesis, Omniture, and Accrue respectively and now senior managers at Google Analytics, Visible Measures, ObservePoint, and Yahoo! Web Analytics, each of these gentlemen continue to shape digital measurement to this day.

In the keynote session we’ll be focusing on the past, present, and future of digital measurement. These guys were active participants in the early foundations of the industry — hell, Matt Cutler co-authored with Jim Sterne the seminal work Emetrics: Business Metrics for the New Economy back in 2000 which more or less kicked off the whole ball of wax — and all four have a history of participating in the early days of Emetrics in Santa Barbara (which is the model for the X Change, an intimate gathering of peers and friends.)

The audience will have a chance to ask questions.

Registration for X Change 2009 is now open and you will save 10% off the cost of registration if you sign up to join us before July 31st! I have more information about the X Change here in the “Community” section of the site and will be adding more content very soon!

I look forward to meeting many of you at the Founding Father’s keynote at X Change 2009!

This year’s conference is being held at the extra fancy-schmancy St. Regis hotel in San Francisco, immediately adjacent to San Francisco MoMa and as central as you can possibly get while still suffering Starwood 5-star luxury accommodations. In a word, the venue is SWEET!

But, as with past X Change events, the venue will immediately become secondary to the excellent conversation, excellent company, and excellent insights being shared. As with the 2007 and 2008 events we plan to have the brightest practitioners from the best companies leading the conversation. Confirmed participants already include Best Buy, Intuit, Nokia, AOL, Forrester Research, Charles Schwab, Turner Broadcasting Systems, and more!

Also, as Gary alludes to in his post about the conference, I had a pretty good idea for this year’s conference keynote … we’re still pinning down details but I can honestly say the keynote this year is something that none of us have seen before at a web analytics conference or event.

We’re also excited to announce that on September 9th we will be holding the first-ever X Change Think Tank training day! Credit Gary this one, and it makes perfect sense to me given the strength of the Semphonic crew, but we will be taking the ideals of the X Change and extending them to an extremely intimate learning environment. I will be leading two classes and I hope to get my new business partner Aurélie Pols to lead one or two as well!

If you have budget for training in 2009 I definitely encourage you to have a look at the Think Tank and feel free to ping me directly for more details.

One of the things I love the most about the X Change is the transparency we have and that we learn from our participants. Every attendee helps us make the X Change a better conference, every year! To this end I am actively seeking input about the conference via this site, Twitter, email, … heck, you can call me directly if you have a good idea!

You can register now for the 2009 X Change and will save 10% if you do so before July 31st! Head on over to the Semphonic web site and start the registration process — and don’t forget this is an event that has sold out every year it has been offered! Because we limit the conference to 100 participants we fully expect to sell out in advance again … don’t get caught waiting!

I hope to see you at the X Change!

After two years I am very proud of the work I’ve done and the clients I’ve worked with. I have had the opportunity to work with some of the best brands, the best companies, and the most visionary management teams who are actively wokring to do more than simply “run reports” and instead want to actively compete on web analytics. That said, I have come to the realization that there is no way I could satisfy the global need on my own … so I did what every good business owner should do: I went out and got someone smarter, more eloquent, and better looking to be my business partner!

At Emetrics last week in San Jose I was incredibly excited to announce that Aurélie Pols, Europe’s most widely known and well respected web analytics consultant, has joined Web Analytics Demystified as a Principal Consultant.  Aurélie brings depth and experience in web analytics that is rare anywhere in the world and exceedingly rare in Europe, she was the first consultant to break the “one vendor” stranglehold in Europe that forced firms to work exclusively with a single technology, and she brings a brilliance to the explanation and use of these tools that amazes even me.

Now Aurelie and I will be working together in Europe to “demystify web analytics” and help companies make significantly better use of their technology investment. Between the two of us and our contacts across Europe Web Analytics Demystified will now be providing a far greater level of service than was previously possible.

I highly recommend that you read Aurélie’s “Hello, World” blog post and start following her at aurelie.webanalyticsdemystified.com. If you have any questions about Aurélie’s practice or how Web Analytics Demystified can help you regardless of where you’re located, please don’t hesitate to contact us directly.

I hope you will welcome me in welcoming Aurélie to the Web Analytics Demystified team.

The update is important and stems from a bunch of research I have been doing for the past six months. Given the launch of Yahoo Web Analytics 9.5 today and the recent opening up of the Google Analytics APIs I am busier than ever talking with companies who are trying to find the “right” balance of technology, people, and process.

Also, as I do from time to time I have a really big announcement that I will be making at the beginning of my talk. Last time I quit my job at Visual Sciences to start Web Analytics Demystified … this time? Come to the talk and be the first to find out!

I hope you’ll drop by and see my talk, again: Wednesday, May 6th at 11:00 AM.

I am also speaking briefly in the “Softer Side of Metrics” panel with Mr. Stephen “Recently Elected to the WAA Board” Hamel and folks from BT Buckets and Firefox on Thursday, May 7th at 11:00 AM. This should be fun since I’ll get to introduce the larger web analytics community to the work I have been doing with Twitalyzer.

Also, don’t forget about the Emetrics edition of Web Analytics Wednesday which is, as always, open to conference attendees and the local community alike. We have something special planned to honor our recently deceased colleague Hosam Elkhodary so I hope you’ll sign up (so we can get a good count) and join us at the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose.

Finally, as always I go to Emetrics to meet with as many people as I possibly can and operate under the “I can sleep when I get home” mentality. If you’ve read my books, read my blog, enjoy Twitalyzer, or just have always wanted to ask me something please feel free to reach out … literally if you see me passing by or by Twittering me at @erictpeterson and setting up a time to meet.

(If you can’t make it to San Jose the next big analytics event in the U.S. is the X Change Conference September 9, 10, and 11 in San Francisco. I’m a huge fan (and partner) in the X Change so I’d love to tell you more about it if you’re interested!)

I hope to see you in San Jose!

A few weeks ago I got to do exactly that thanks to Brent Leary at CRM Essentials.

If you have a few minutes and want to hear my recent thoughts on a variety of subjects including getting started in analytics, the impact of analytics on social media, and the work I’ve done recently on Twitalyzer, please take the time to listen to this interview.

Brent is a totally engaging interviewer and he pushed the conversation along in unexpected ways. I have been getting tons of good feedback already but, as always, I welcome your thoughts and comments.

Challenge? What’s hard about campaign attribution? You tag campaigns and web analytics tells you what works, right? You get pretty ROI graphs and click-reports and all that fun stuff? Campaign analytics is easy!

Wrong.

One of the best-kept secrets in online marketing is that most campaign attribution data is completely wrong and the models used to evaluate campaign performance are wholly inappropriate.  The relative nascence of digital marketing practices, combined with conflicting measurement systems and poorly understood interaction between online marketing channels, likely means that hundreds of millions of dollars are wasted annually on marketing efforts that don’t produce their intended results.

Companies are increasingly responding to this observation by re-examining their marketing measurement systems.  Even the most cursory analysis yields a great deal of information about the “campaign attribution problem.”  Popularized recently by Microsoft with their “Engagement Mapping” efforts as well as analysis published by Forrester Research and others, it is clear that the most widely used online campaign attribution model is inherently flawed.

To correct these flaws and begin to improve both the accuracy of measurement and the general understanding of how marketing really works online, Web Analytics Demystified recommends a new approach to campaign analysis.  Dubbed “Appropriate Attribution”, the approach leverages widely available but infrequently used data to triangulate towards the true value of online marketing efforts.

Given that the majority of online advertisers have direct response goals, and that most marketers are still generally unsatisfied with the campaign measurement tools at their disposal, Web Analytics Demystified believes that Appropriate Attribution is the first step towards improving companies’ collective understanding of their digital marketing efforts.

Eventually marketers will have access to robust warehouses of data detailing consumer interaction with online media and advertising, but the adage “you must walk before you can run” is as true in digital marketing as it is in life.  Before business owners and marketers become fully equipped to benefit from complex marketing mix analysis of online and offline channels, they are well advised to address the campaign attribution problem to increase the return on their valuable dollars spent for online marketing efforts.

Thanks to the fine folks at Coremetrics you can read all about Appropriate Attribution and learn how you can start to get a better understanding of your online marketing efforts today.

Download your copy of the Appropriate Attribution paper from Coremetrics today.

On Tuesday of this week the web analytics community lost a passionate advocate with the passing of Hosam Elkhodary. I had the pleasure of working with Hosam just after founding Web Analytics Demystified as well as spending time with him at many an Emetrics. There are many blog posts about Hosam out there but the most touching is Mike Sukmanowsky’s — Hosam clearly had the same impact on Mike as he did on many of us. I encourage you to read Mike’s post and comment there if you knew Hosam.

Hosam will be missed.

FROM THE WEB ANALYTICS FORUM:

Some additional information for those who are interested in contributing to the Heart and Stroke Foundation fund for Hosam. You can donate online here:

http://www.heartandstroke.on.ca/site/c.pvI3IeNWJwE/b.3581623/k.C08D/Donate.htm

In addition designating that the contribution is in memoriam of Hosam, please make sure you address the card as follows, which will doubly ensure the donation is directed properly:

Abdalla Elkhodary
7 Delaney Drive
Ajax, Ontario
L1T 4B2

This is actually a unique election given that none of the existing Directors who have the ability to run again have chosen to do so. The few I have talked to about this have cited “time” as the major factor but no doubt the WAA will miss April Wilson’s passion, Neil Mason and Laura Paxia’s experience and European perspective, and Seth Romanow’s historical knowledge of the Association. Thankfully Jim Sterne will still be serving as Chairman of the Board (right Jim?)

I really like the approach the WAA took this time interviewing each candidate and putting the text and recording on the Association web site. It certainly helps us learn a little more about each candidate which will make a difficult vote a little easier. I also like that some candidates are actively campaigning in the Web Analytics Forum, in Twitter, at Emetrics, etc. This more than anything emphasizes the importance of these Board positions — and of the Association in general.

If there is any one question I would have posed to the candidates that did not get asked it would be this:

“If there was one thing you could go back in time and change about the web analytics industry, what would it be?”

Who knows, maybe some of the folks running for WAA Directorships will take the time to answer the question. I know what my answer would be ;-)

Best of luck to EVERYONE running in this election!

“… in order to report a Unique User, the measurement organization must utilitze in its identification and attribution processes underlying data that is, at least in reasonable proportion, attributed directly to a person” and “In no instance may a census measurement organization report Unique Users purely through algorithms or modeling that is not at least partially traceable to information obtained directly from people, as opposed to browsers, computers, or any other non-human element.” (Section 1.2.4)

The last little bit references, I believe, the IAB’s distinction of four types of unique “countables” — Unique Cookies (Section 1.2.1), Unique Browsers (1.2.2), Unique Devices (1.2.3) and Unique Users or Unique Visitors (1.2.4).  The term “measurement organization” was a little, well, mystifying as was evidenced in my January post, and sadly the final document does little to clarify this term other than to say the “document is principally applicable to Internet Publishers, Ad-serving organizations, Syndicated Measurement Organizations and auditors” on the IAB web site.

This definition is important since in my last post the real conundrum appeared to be that if “measurement organization” included Omniture, WebTrends, Google, Coremetrics, etc. then the IAB was essentially saying that the vendors needed to change the way they reported Unique Visitors, at least for their clients who would be subject to the perview of the IAB and MRC.  What’s more, George Ivey from MRC never got back to my repeated requests for information, despite two members of the IAB working group (Josh Chasin from comScore and Pete Black from BPA Worldwide) openly disagreeing in their interpretation of the definition …

Well, a few weeks back I got a call from Joe Laszlo, an old co-worker of mine at JupiterResearch who is now the IAB’s Director for Analytics, the guy basically responsible for the document.  I always liked Joe and it was nice to hear from him again.  And Joe did clarify for me what a “measurement organization” is … he just didn’t directly clarify the impact on web analytics vendors.

According to Joe (and he will surely correct me publicly if I am misinterpreting our conversation) the “measurement organizations” that should be guided by this new definition of “Unique Users” are publishing organizations who are outwardly reporting their metrics for consideration by advertisers in the open market. Companies like AOL, Weather.com, ESPN, etc.  This is, I think, much more clear than the sentence a few paragraphs up that includes “Syndicated Measurement Organizations and auditors” and puts at least this part of the document in context: Essentially when using numbers coming from census-based systems, the IAB and MRC want publishers to start reporting Unique Visitor counts that have some basis in reality.

Pretty hard to disagree with Joe and the IAB on that point. We all pretty much agree that cookie-based visitor counting is messed up, and I think we can even agree that the degree to which these counts are “messed up” is a function of the target audience, the duration under examination, and the type of site.  For example, we expect cookie-based counts on sites that attract highly technical users on a daily basis to be much more impacted over a 90-day measurement period than, say, sites that attract largely non-technical users on a monthly basis over the same 90-day period.

So I’ll make one really bold statement right now, the kind that I have a tendency to regret but hey, it’s Monday and I’m feeling pretty good about the coming week:

The IAB are to be applauded for taking such a bold stand on the subject of counting and reporting unique visitors based on what we traditionally consider “web analytic” data.

I said as much in my last post … right after I said that the likelihood of the web analytics vendors following these recommendations was about the same as everyone waking up tomorrow to realize that the financial meltdown was a bad dream and the Dow is still over 14,000 (zero). The team of folks that the IAB brought together, which I understand included both Omniture and WebTrends, should be congratulated for taking a firm stand on one of the most dogged issues plaguing our collective industries (web analytics, online advertising, online publishing, syndicated research, etc.) for at least the past five years.

It is about time that we all agreed that “Unique Visitor” reports coming from census-based technologies frequently have no basis in reality. Further, we should all admit that cookie deletion, cookie blocking, multiple computers, multiple devices, etc. have enough potential to distort the numbers as to render the resulting numbers useless when used to quantify the number of human beings visiting a site or property.

Yes, before you grieve on me with your “but they are probably directionally correct” response I agree with you, they probably are, but fundamentally I believe that advertising buyers are at least as interested in the raw numbers as they are the direction they are moving. I say “probably are” because if you’re not taking the IAB’s advice and reconciling census-based data with data derived directly from people, well, you’re never sure if that change in direction is because your audience is changing, technology is changing, or there is a real and substantial increase or decline.

I mentioned above that my conversation with Joe didn’t really clarify the impact on web analytics vendors under the IAB’s new definition. Since I spent a fair amount of time thinking about the IAB guideline’s impact in this regard, I will make another bigger and bolder statement:

Starting immediately, I think the web analytics vendors and any company reporting a cookie-based count that is not in compliance with the IAB’s definition of “Unique Visitor” should stop calling said metric “Unique Visitors (or Users)” and correctly rename the metric “Unique Cookies”.

Yep, I am 100% in favor of using the IAB’s new terminology and being semantically precise whenever possible. The “Unique Visitor” counts in the popular web analytics applications are always actually counting cookies and so we should just go ahead and say that explicitly by calling them “Unique Cookies”. This change would actually give the web analytics vendors a neat opportunity … to battle to be the first to have a real “Unique Visitor” count that is based, as the IAB has suggested, on underlying data that is, at least in reasonable proportion, attributed directly to a person.

How could they do this? Let me count the ways:

1. Develop a standard practice around the use of log-in and registered user data
2. Work with third-party partners who are focused on gathering more qualitative data (for example, Voice of Customer vendors like ForeSee Results)
3. Work with third-party partners who are estimating cookie-deletion rates, or at least have the potential to (for example, Quantcast)
4. Work with third-party partners who can actually calculate cookie-deletion and multiple-machine use rates with some accuracy (for example, comScore, Google, Yahoo!)

I’m sure there are a few ways I am not thinking of, but these are the big four that have been talked about since 2005. While I expect to get some grief from paying clients about this statement, and I fully expect my suggestion to be widely ignored by the vendor community (no offense taken), I think this change would be a big step towards the recognition that there is only ONE DEFINITION of a “Unique Visitor” and this definition is only tangentially related to the number of cookies being passed around.

Like Soylent Green(TM), “Unique Visitors” are PEOPLE and our industry will go a long way towards maturation when we collectively agree on this fundamental truth.  It is not to say that Unique Cookies is not a valuable count — hell, in the absence of a strategy for reconciling cookies against people-based data unique cookies are all we have. But I do not believe that after nearly 15 years we are doing the online measurement community any justice by plugging our ears and signing “LA LA LA LA I CANNOT HEAR YOU GO AWAY!!!!!”

Which brings me to my last point …

I was really, really bummed out to read Jodi McDermott’s MediaPost article titled “Unique Visitors Come in Two Shapes and Sizes.” I was bummed because I have always liked Jodi since we worked together at Visual Sciences, because I think she is a brilliant member of our community, and because I knew I was going to end up writing these words … Jodi’s thesis is wrong and does the web analytics community a dis-service in attempting to defend a mistake by asking to water down a good definition just because it isn’t “hers” (in quotes since Jodi is a member of a larger committee charged with defining standards within the WAA.)

From Jodi’s article (which I recommend you read, especially the comments, and the emphasis is mine):

“Bravo to the IAB for forcing the issue with audience measurement companies to standardize the way that they report uniques, but from a Web analyst’s perspective — and as a member of the WAA Standards committee — I wish they would have not allowed the term “unique visitors” to be redefined in such a way as to allow for multiple definitions in the space. Web analysts and media planners today have a hard enough time trying to figure out which data source to use and which standard to apply when performing their job — but that issue is now compounded even more by multiple definitions of unique visitors. In defense of the IAB, its membership is comprised of some heavy-hitter companies who are not about to change that “tab” in their reporting UI that says “Unique Visitors” on it.  But in defense of  WAA individual and company members, which include vendors such as Omniture and WebTrends (who were both listed as “Project Participants” on the IAB document, interestingly enough), neither are we. The term will live on in both places.”

I think what Jodi has missed here is that the IAB has actually given the world a useful and more accurate definition of “Unique Visitors” than any used in the web analytics industry today. More importantly, given the relative weight, clout, and respect enjoyed by the IAB in the wider world, I don’t think their definition allows for “multiple definitions” … I rather think that over time the IAB expects their member companies, especially those who want to have their numbers audited and publicly used, will consider the IAB definition the definition of “Unique Visitors” and properly consider the term we web analysts widely use today to be “Unique Cookies.”

I’m not sure what Jodi means by “heavy-hitter companies who are not about to change their “tab”" since I’m aware of very few companies today that have implemented the IAB recommendation for practical and ongoing use. But I was incredulous when I read the statement regarding using the IAB’s new definition, “in defense of the WAA individual and company members, which include vendors such as Omniture and WebTrends, neither are we. The term will live on in both places.”

Seriously? Rather than start calling our cookie counts “Unique Cookies” and having a rational conversation with our bosses to explain that the technology we use is limited in its ability to discern real people, you prefer to throw down the gauntlet with the IAB and say “screw your definition?” Despite the criticism that has been both wrongly and rightly heaped on the WAA’s “standard” definitions, despite the considerable group that crafted the IAB’s definitions, and considering the fact that the WAA’s definition is wrong, you want to pick a fight?

Two wrongs never make a right, and you’re wrong twice here. Sorry.

I am not on the WAA Standards Committee, I am not on the WAA Board of Directors, and my dues with the WAA are about to lapse so I have no basis for representing the organization. Perhaps reading more into Jodi’s post given my knowledge of her passionate work in the WAA, but I would strongly encourage the current Board of Directors to examine Jodi’s statements in the context of the IAB relationship and the “bigger picture” at play.  Because while Jodi may speak for the WAA Standards Committee and by extension the entire WAA, she certainly does not speak for me.

I will gladly use the term “Unique Cookies” when I am talking about a cookie-based count and reserve the term “Unique Visitors” for those situations where I have some basis for doing so. More importantly I will encourge my clients and vendor friends to consider doing same. The IAB has given the entire measurement community a reason to take a huge leap forward and gain clarity around one of our most important metrics. To turn our back on this opportuntity because it will necessitate change, require additional explanation, or because “we like our definition better” is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Harrrrumph.

I suspect like previous posts on the subject this will generate some conversation. As usual I do not pretend to have all the answers and I welcome your feedback. I am, unfortunately, traveling all day Monday and will have limited ability to approve and respond to comments but I promise to do so as quickly as possible.