I recently attended the eMetrics Summit in Boston, which also included the DAA Lunch, where I had a chance to catch up with a number of fellow DAA members in our community. Events like these are always a great opportunity to speak to colleagues and peers from other organizations, to see what the newest vendor offerings include, and to connect faces to names that you interact with in our digital community. While this is always a favorite activity of mine, I’ve been noticing a new kind of digital interaction quietly percolating over the past couple of weeks.
It’s the Open Forum on the newly published DAA Community website. If you haven’t checked it out yet, visit now to set up your member profile and see all the great new stuff that the DAA is offering. Yet, for those that are short on time, I’ll provide a few snippets of conversations that have occurred just to pique your interest and let you know what you’re missing:
Thoughts on Analytics Governance – Posted by Ned Kumar
Ned wrote: “I have seen governance being centralized where the administration and standards come out of one central body and have also seen cases where it is decentralized, where various stakeholders within the organization govern themselves adhering to an agreed upon skeletal structure.
I am curious to hear about how governance (as it relates to analytics) is executed in your organization and the level of success and learning so far.”
James Niehaus replied: “In analytics I am a strong believer in a hub-spoke model with centers of excellence supporting embedded decentralized teams either dotted or solid line. Often, if you are supporting a global organization with distributed autonomous regional business units or diverse channels, I don't think there is any other way it can work effectively and efficiently for both sides…”
Thoughts on Working in Digital Analytics – Posted by Jim Sterne
Jim wrote: “I was talking to a friend the other day and explained what I do and the role of digital analytics. He noted that I seem to really enjoy my job (which I do). I started to explain what exactly it is that I love about my job and I mentioned how it's a really emerging area and we often use cool technology etc. But I was wondering what others love about their job and about the industry in general?...”
Dave Gatdula replied: “…When I started, I knew nothing about analytics... or Digital Marketing for that matter. I was just a consumer. Now, after about a year (and an incredible #eMetrics Conference in San Francisco last year), I am able to actually understand what is happening in the Digital Marketing and Analytics world, and I am able to say that it's truly a fascinating environment…”
Helene Cameron-Heslop replied: “My passion for Digital Analytics stems from my love of numbers, combined with the fact that it's human behaviour we're analysing and influencing…”
Thomas Jorgensen replied: “…this is an evolving industry where new tools and methods for better insights and understanding the consumers are introduced on a regular basic…”
Questions on multi-touch digital attribution – Posted by Terry Cohen
Terry wrote: “How do you handle populating a "source of acquisition" field in a database when you are implementing multi-touch digital attribution? Are you storing more than one source in your database?”
Anita Andrews replied: “At a high level, yes, you store more than one source. It depends on what tool (if any) you are using for capturing the multiple sources - are you just stacking a cookie with UTMs yourself? Or, are you using a tool/3rd party product? One thing we like to do is to focus on where the bang for the buck is - on two fronts...this is so that you can limit your data size. While data storage is relatively cheap, querying that data can get slower and slower…”
Todd belcher replied: “In case it helps, the way I am currently thinking of this is by first acquisition and then subsequent re-acquisitions. In order to understand all of the sources a customer has touched, and to set us up for attribution analysis, we are tacking on sources in the database at the page-view level. Even within a single visit, one might have multiple sources…”
As you can see, there are many great questions being asked and answered on the DAA Open Forum. I think we might be onto something here… So, if you’re looking to ask that burning question about analytics…OR if you just want to read what others have to say, stop by for a visit and stay awhile. We’d love to hear from you.
Sincerely,
John Lovett
DAA President