How to Vote

Below you will find all the nominees in each category. You will receive a ballot by email with a unique username and password to login to the voting website. From there, you can select one nominee from each category and submit your ballot.

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Client/Practitioner of the Year (individual or group)

• Ashish Braganza, Manager of E-Commerce and Self-Service, Comcast

Ashish Braganza is Manager of E-Commerce and Self-Service Analytics at Comcast. I had the pleasure of supervising Ashish during my tenure as Director of E-Commerce at Comcast and I can honestly say he is one of the most dedicated, hard working and knowledgeable Internet marketing professionals I know.

To begin with, he is an extremely dedicated and detail oriented metrics guru. He excels at understanding the business problem to be solved and then at performing the analysis to answer that question. He is passionate about his work, has a thorough understanding of how to use data analysis to measure and guide both tactical and strategic decision-making, is committed to quality and always goes the extra mile.

He is also the primary catalyst and integration point person for Comcast.com's successful transition to Omniture tools. Ashish's insights helped Comcast determine what offers and promotions make a difference in attracting customers to Comcast via the web. As a result, multi-product connects generated from Comcast.com are multiples higher than just a couple of years ago.

• Shari Cleary, Vice President, Digital Media Research for Entertainment and Games, MTV Networks

Shari Cleary has more than 11 years of experience in Web analytics is responsible for all Web analytics for Comedy Central Digital, Spike Digital and TV Land Digital. Prior to joining MTVN, Cleary was a digital marketing consultant for Visual Sciences (acquired by Omniture) and worked closely with Media and Content customers to optimize their Web analytics. She was also the director of research for CBS Digital Media from 2002-2006. Cleary was first introduced to digital media research when she joined Media Metrix (acquired by comScore) in 1999. This is a woman who understands how to wring the most insights from data for giant content sites.

• Allen Crane, Executive Director, Research and Analytics, USAA

USAA used to think in terms of member contact channels: 450 million web sessions, 56 million phone calls, 20 million IVR self-service calls, 3 million faxes, etc. But given their customers have always been multi-channel, this financial services company now configures and analyzes its data across "conversations". Allen stitched together customer interactions across channels to cross-correlate new metrics like "containment" with stand-by's like "satisfaction". His work in market intelligence and business analysis moved USAA from tracking online behavior to monitoring customer behavior.

• Dell, Testing & Targeting Team

Dell Online Analytics, Testing & Targeting team led by the Executive Director, Ms. Isabelle Mouli-Castillo. Isabelle's group manages all online analytics & testing activities across Dell's multi-billions' Consumer & SMB Online business. She has set the vision for Dell to become the best-in-class online analytics & testing team and has made tremendous progress toward that goal in year 2010. To name just few of the achievements:

1. Grew the size of the team to probably the largest in the industry with 25 analytics & testing managers (not including the supporting group in site design, content operation & IT etc.)
2. Attracted and retained industry's best talents and now owns the most DAA Certified Web Analysts
3. Doubled the financial upside driven by the analytics & testing programs through her team
4. Brought in a dedicated PMO and created business processes to make the testing program scalable at global level
5. Created a testing culture and challenged the entire Dell online marketing organization to become more data-driven
6. Joined DAA as a corporate member and hosted what Jim Sterne called "Monstrously" successful DAA symposium in Ausin
• Leisa Glispy, Group Director, Global eCommerce at Waterford Wedgwood Royal Doulton

As the current head of global eCommerce efforts for WWRD - the Waterford Crystal, Wedgwood and Royal Doulton family of brands - Leisa’s most recent project was the launch of a new multi-branded eCommerce platform and full site redesign, with a focus on improving the online customer experience, utilizing Web 2.0 Web Merchandising and integrating a luxury brand aesthetic. The redesign included an advanced Google Analytics implementation capable of tracking sales across the three brands, covering three regions (each comprised of multiple countries) and multiple currencies. Leisa is an MBA with over 11 years of experience in the online space developing International Web Strategies and eCommerce revenues while specializing in the Luxury Goods industry. She is a certified Website Usability Analyst (CUA) with hands-on experience managing Global eCommerce Operations, implementing Online Customer Acquisition & Retention Marketing programs, developing Web 2.0 Web Merchandising programs and improving the online customer experience.

• Shawn Hushman, VP, Advanced Analytics, Kelley Blue Book

Nomination for Kelley Blue Book analytics team (led by Shawn Hushman): Shawn Hushman took a team consisting of statisticians and web analysts and integrated them beautifully. Often there can be some friction and differences in methodology amongst more "deep statistical analysts" (who may dive deep into the data without necessarily understanding the business behind it) and business-oriented web analysts (who can decipher what it means, and translate from statistician to the rest of the organisation) but this became a very cohesive team who achieved great things.

As an ad-based site with clients who purchase on an "upfront cycle" (similar to television) Kelley Blue Book forecasts its on-site inventory 18-24 months in advance at an incredibly granular level - over 15,000 forecasts (EXCLUDING regional forecasts ... so multiply that by 210 DMAs and thousands of counties!) and manages to keep these forecasts incredibly accurate.

In addition, Kelley Blue Book has prioritised data and analytics (after all, there is a VP of Analytics!) by investing in tools such as SAS, Netezza and MicroStrategy to truly drive the business from data, and is working on integrating complicated (off-line) ad data with SAS forecasting, ad server data from DoubleClick, leads data in a home-grown system and Omniture web data.

Analytics at Kelley Blue Book grew exponentially both in team size and in capabilities in under two years, in large part to Shawn's leadership.

• Theresa Locklear, VP Business Technology, NHL.com

The NHL is committed to using fact-based programming across platforms but no where is it more utnilized than on its award-winning website.

A prime example is how Omniture SiteCatalyst & Discover were used to make detailed decisions for the video player and homepage layout. Years ago the NHL committed to having a world-class video proposition. Valuable learnings have been made in the first few years since the re-launch that included figuring out what video content and segments people want and perfecting our Video player to serve as a portal that drives consumer engagement.

NHLwe figured out that highlights were consumed first, had the highest traffic AND highest engagement telling us to program more of what the consumer wants - highlights!

The old video player restricted user flow and had other flaws so the team redesigned it to include better channel layout, navigation and share functions among other improvements. Video consumption has gone up 197% YOY as a result.

A second example is provided of the analytics influence on the homepage. Improvements have been made to the site layout, pathing, editorial programming, focus on tent-pole events just to name a few. The unique Visitors were up 20% last month YOY.

Theresa has been leading the analytics team since her arrival and has pioneered fact-based programming across our organization. Her award-worthy successes helped contribute to the NHL being a leader in the digital space.

• Carmella Manges, Director of E-Marketing, St. Edward’s University

Background & Challenges: When Carmella first arrived in Higher Ed in 2004, there was little or no usage of web analytics among marketing teams in that industry and, despite a strong desire for financial and marketing stewardship, St. Edward’s University had not yet entered this arena. Having arrived from the commercial sector as an e-marketing consultant in the financial services sector, this came as quite a shock to Carmella since she had been applying web analytics for her former clients since 1996.

She immediately set out to create a viable web analytics model for the university. Using commercial industry best practices to mold our own web analytics model, it’s taken a while for these techniques to take root in Higher Ed. Only in the past 2-3 years have other Higher Ed peers begun to embrace and make routine the practice of web analytics.

St. Edward’s University has engaged in web analytics for e-mail and its websites since 2005.

• Each e-mail broadcast is concluded with a formal analytics report.
• Each university web property has a quarterly traffic report where they can now observe behavioral trends with distinct seasons that had not been readily evident (or documentable) in the past. This, of course, is in addition to any campaign-specific web analytics reports generated to support drive-to-web campaigns and local advertising.
• Benchmarking studies using web analytics are conducted as they plan to expire an old web property or build a new one.
• Traffic is analyzed first before making decisions about whether new web pages are needed, often using these reports to demonstrate the need to eliminate (rather than add) new content.
• Annually, the e-marketing team provides a “master results report” to in-house clients for all e-mail broadcasts along with web analytics data as part of the annual planning cycles for the upcoming recruiting season.

Over time, they have continued to enhance their toolkit (moving from server-side to client-side analytics), increase the sophistication of KPIs (developing reports that don’t just cite traffic observations, but also report essential conversion metrics) and to expedite turnaround while maintaining accuracy.

Despite all the available data, they still felt that we had been only skirting the problem and needed to dig deeper still.

Solution: Carmella often finds herself out on a limb within the industry, particularly with respect to web analytics. In Higher Education, many “commercial” KPIs are unknown. So, when attempting to use website traffic to forecast actual headcount at a university, well… to her knowledge, no one has ever been able to do it before. And, if it could be done, it might revolutionize the way that colleges and universities think about the web as part of their recruiting strategy.

That is, they would know, before any applications are reviewed, whether they have enough prospects in the pipeline to meet annual enrollment goals.

This is the single, imposing question that enrollment managers and deans of admission “sweat” over each recruiting cycle.

And it is the “Holy Grail” for marketers in Higher Ed, “Are there enough prospects being converted that will translate to deposited students?”

Outcomes: It seemed impossible. Nonetheless, it got her thinking… With tentative steps and a lot of persistence, she succeeded in developing a financial model/calculator that used web traffic as a predictor of these critical funnel KPIs:

• Inquiries (leads)
• Applications
• Admitted Students
• Deposited Students
• Enrollment

Carmella further tested the calculator running it against the actual enrollment management reports for the university. With a bit of tinkering, she ensured that they could accurately predict enrollment based on the number of online inquiries and applications. In truth, she almost didn’t believe it would work. But, after each iteration of testing, the forecast of the calculator matched exactly to the actual enrollment report. Simultaneously stunned and elated, it seems that the analytics gods were looking over her shoulder at the time. What started as a personal, intellectual exercise ended with something remarkable.

For Carmella, it’s capped off a 15-year pursuit of an innovative analytics model.

Where We Go From Here: Having succeeded with their current websites, they are about to complete a 3-year effort to launch an entirely new institutional website built upon the Eisenberg principle of “persuasion architecture.” Their next challenge will be to determine whether this financial model holds or needs further refinement based on the higher expectations they have for the new website.

• Joe Megibow, Global Analytics and Optimization, Expedia.com

Joe took a completely disorganized, silo-ed company and performed a feat of magic to tie together all the disparate data feeds into one, cohesive analytics masterwork. He then presented his approach to hundreds of Digital Analytics Association members at numerous conferences offering hope, humor and inspiration.

• Michael Mayfield, Senior Ecommerce Analyst, The North Face

The North Face has an extreme hunger for data, and their deft use of the information and analysis Mike provided, has allowed the company to increase average order value, double online conversion, and perhaps most importantly, capture otherwise obscure opportunities well ahead of their competition. The North Face noticed that users were searching for variants on the phrase “phone gloves” on the site’s internal search engine. Mike worked with the merchandising team and found a glove with fingertips specifically designed for Apple iPhone users in mind. In 2010, based on their 2009 success and further analysis of the data, North Face merchants ordered 20 times the glove units and sold them out completely by mid-December.

• Monster

The Analytics team at Monster faces some incredible challenges as a highly trafficked global website, they have incredible volumes of data, a global scope, and a relatively small team in comparison to the amount of data they are responsible for. To deal with these they have assembled some outstanding tools such as Adobe Insight to find correlations between diverse metrics across web properties and countries to understand global traffic spikes at a regional level. This is a challenge that the Monster team tackled with a combination of software and utilizing experienced analysts with a regional understanding o customs, holidays, and local behavior. The global analytics team at Monster has surpassed expectations in being able to predict user behavior at a regional level with a global rollup and use their analysis to drive additional ad revenue for a organization in need of a strong analytics culture. The level of understanding and detail combined with the strong revenue growth driven by the analytics group at Monster is why they deserve to be the practitioner group of the year.

• NFLShop.com

NFLShop.com, the official store of the National Football League, acts on the insights gained from capturing and listening to voice of the customer. The goal of the website is not only to sell apparel and merchandise, but to strengthen fans’ relationships with individual teams and the NFL brand. Measuring satisfaction with the customer experience online helps them know which improvements will better meet customers’ needs and expectations. ForeSee Results has worked with NFLShop.com since 2007 to measure customer satisfaction by using the proven methodology of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), which links customer satisfaction data to financial results.

Increasing Sales & Driving Traffic NFLShop.com anticipated seasonal differences in their online audiences and wanted to better understand the segments. Who was coming to the site, why, and how could satisfaction and purchase for each of these customer groups be increased? In addition, the NFL allocates its commercials across multiple departments, so it was imperative to prove that advertising dollars to promote NFLShop.com would be highly beneficial.

Actionable Insight #1: Audience Demographics Shift

During the holiday season, ForeSee Results’ Satisfaction Research Analyst noticed a huge shift in customer satisfaction for a key segment of site traffic: women shopping for gifts. Gift-givers had higher satisfaction scores for the website compared to other segments, and there also was an increase in their purchase intent and brand loyalty. Josh Feinstein, the Direct Marketing Manager, confirmed the validity of the data by noting a higher conversion rate for gift-givers. As a result, NFLShop.com increased their catalog circulation to women, as well as TV advertising, to target gift-givers in a campaign designed to appeal to the kinds of gifts they were looking for.

Actionable Insight #2: Redesign for Navigation Preference

NFLShop.com asks visitors how they navigate the website though an online survey. With 32 NFL clubs and thousands of items, it could be difficult to navigate to specific merchandise visitors were looking for. The satisfaction survey identified the high demand items that were hard to find.

This intelligence gave NFLShop.com validation to redesign the home page to not only become cleaner but also help visitors navigate to more of the site via homepage content. After the homepage redesign, the percentage of shoppers who used the homepage tripled and revenue from visitors who navigated through the homepage was up significantly compared to past years. Purchases coming from the homepage doubled.

Actionable Insight #3: Stock the Right Merchandise

The satisfaction survey identified the extent of demand for big and tall sizes for both men and women, particularly during the gift-giving holiday season. By quantifying demand, Josh built a business case for aligning merchandising demands of the online shoppers to supply. They also featured big and tall merchandise in email promotions that were very successful.

Actionable Insight #4: Buyers Want to Get Email

Measuring the satisfaction with fulfillment not only gave Josh the assurance that customers were happy with their purchases, but afforded an opportunity to grow the email subscriber base. The browse survey asked if customers were subscribed to receive email offers from NFLShop.com and if they answered “no”, they were asked if they wanted to subscribe. A large percentage opted in and the revenue per e-mail address is twice as high as other email subscribers. Results:

• Year-over-year online sales increased by 25% in December when NFLShop.com targeted an advertising campaign to female gift-givers, in spite of the tough economy.
• The homepage redesign streamlined navigation to high demand merchandise and doubled homepage revenue.
• Based on the voice of the customer, NFLShop.com started marketing hard-to-find products such as Big and Tall merchandise. The online store doubled sales of this merchandise over 2008 and Josh’s team is now planning much easier navigation for this category.
• Soliciting email subscriptions through the browse survey enabled NFLShop.com to build the email database with high value customers who bought twice as much on average.
• Bob Page, VP Analytics, eBay

Bob has been at the forefront of HUGE dataset management from 1996, when he was co-founder, CTO and VP of Product Development for Accrue Software. At Yahoo! and now at eBay, Bob was the first to voice concerns about getting the most out of data while preserving the authority and respecting the privacy of the general public.

• Russel Rueden, Director of Web Research & Analytics, Kohler

This year Russ Rueden and the Kohler central web analytics team have made significant strides. He kick-started a long term social media analytics plan, began establishing a mobile strategy, leveraged web data to identify market trends and, most significantly, solidified the regular creation of use case analysis. The attached case study and corresponding PowerPoint slides describe the impact site use case analysis has had on the culture at Kohler.

• Tim Wilson, Director, Measurement and Analytics, Resource Interactive

Tim Wilson's blog is an excellent source of information about the integration of external data with web analytics data. Just in case you don't subscribe, here it is: Gilligan on Data. He also is very active in their Web Analytics Wednesday chapter.

• Vegas.com

Ever gone away for a long weekend that included round-trip airfare, three nights at the Bellagio, front row tickets to Cirque du Soleil, dinner at Bouchon and a hike at Red Rock Canyon? It could only mean one thing: you went to Vegas, baby! But before you enjoyed the energy, hospitality, culture and pure fun that Las Vegas is known for, it's more than likely that you spent some time booking your adventure online at VEGAS.com. In addition to being the official Vegas travel site TM, statistics show that VEGAS.com is the clear choice of consumers, with more than 2.5 million visitors each month.

VEGAS.com didn't become the most customer friendly, innovative and comprehensive Las Vegas travel company on the Web by accident, however. Its cutting-edge ebusiness team knows that a single web site flaw or poor online experience can drive away legions of loyal customers. By combining multivariate testing with Customer Experience Management, VEGAS.com is the clear innovator that is advancing the practice of web analytics in the travel industry, click by click.

Challenge:
Optimize its heavily traveled website, with the ability to test multiple variations of the site's ever-changing content in real-time, without the need for conventional, manual testing processes that require changes to the site's source code. VEGAS.com also needed to gain a better understanding of online issues—specifically WHY customers struggled or failed to convert.

Proposed and implemented solutions:
SiteSpect enabled VEGAS.com to simultaneously test the multiple variants of the site's content, navigation, and merchandising, without relying on its in-house IT staff to make changes to the site's source code. Tealeaf provided the customer experience management solution that enabled VEGAS.com to understand the qualitative aspects of user experience on the site. I Instead of hypothesizing about site issues, VEGAS.com usesTealeaf’s replay ability (a page-by-page, browser-level recording of the actual customer experience) to quickly diagnose and fix problems that cause failed customer experiences. With Tealeaf and SiteSpect in place, VEGAS.com is continually finding areas of their site to improve and drive new revenue opportunities.

Results:
VEGAS.com ran a test to determine what combination of online security messaging components would be most conducive to raising sales conversion rates for site visitors. The company simultaneously tested 4 security icons, 3 text treatments, and their placements on 5 different pages within the site to determine the winning combination. The winning variation produced significant improvements across multiple key performance indicators, including site abandonment, visitor page views per session, and overall conversion rates. SiteSpect has also helped VEGAS.com save time and money by enabling them to test web offer concepts in the early stages before investing in these initiatives. SiteSpect testing quickly revealed whether or not a web promotion would perform adequately, allowing VEGAS.com to prioritize the investment of its development resources into proven winning concepts.

Using Tealeaf, VEGAS.com was able to sharply decrease the number customer “pogo-stickers” and increased increased site conversion immensely. The company also improved customer satisfaction and retention by resolving frustration over the search results. VEGAS.com also significantly reduced the impact of third party vendor outages. Furthermore, with customer service representatives using Tealeaf as an integral part of the customer recovery process, conversion rates on potentially lost orders have increased, translating into otherwise lost revenue.

Most Influential Agency / Vendor (group)

• Analysis Exchange

Simply put, this is exactly the apprenticeship model that this industry needed to continue to grow from multiple levels and the added benefit is that non-profit organizations get free help! A mentor, a student and a non-profit organization - everyone wins.

• AT Internet

In 1995 Alain Llorens, chairman, launched AT Internet as a web agency. He was a pioneer when the web was in its infancy. Realizing he could leverage his experience of cost-effectively creating web sites, he then refocused AT Internet to become a web analytics company in 1997. (14 years). We have over 3500 clients Europe-wide and own 60% market share in France. Based in the UK office, I have seen how prospects contact us saying that they heard good things about our solution, how easy it is to implement, where they can make some changes directly from the dashboard instead of changing tags etc.

Apart from sales, one more unique factor about AT Internet is that 60% of the staff is in Research & Development and constantly has new and improved versions of our solution coming out. Winning this year's Most Influential Vendor/Agency would mean a lot to AT Internet and expose us to prospects who have pushed boundaries with free analytic solutions and wishes to take the next step. For the reasons above, I would like to nominate AT Internet. White papers and further documentations are available.

• ForeSee Results

ForeSee Results is a pioneer and market leader in online Voice of Customer measurement, applying the scientific discipline to measuring the online customer experience, from the customer’s perspective. Over the past 9 years, with 58 million surveys for over 1000 measures that now extend to offline customer channels (in-store, call center), mobile, social media from our origins in web measurement.

While it’s a marketing truism that satisfied customers are the most valuable to an organization, ForeSee Results quantifies this relationship with the only methodology link customer satisfaction, future behavior with financial results, The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). At a macroeconomic level, the ACSI has 16 years of empirical evidence of this powerful causal relationship and at the web measurement level, ForeSee Results has many client case studies and testimonials attesting to the benefits of measuring and managing customer satisfaction online and in other channels.

In 2009, ForeSee Results introduced CS SessionReplay, the leading edge technology that documents actual user sessions. So much more than a series of static screen shots, CS SessionReplay captures screens viewed with mouse movements, clicks, flash and other dynamic content – so web managers can truly see the customer experience in the context of customer perceptions, intent and needs and share it with their colleagues to trouble-shoot problems and seize opportunities.

In 2010 Foresee Results expanded core suite of offerings to include:

• Cross-channel customer satisfaction measurement - with stores and call centers
• Expanded social media measurement, including Social Media Value Index, customer satisfaction measures on social websites and measures of social functionality on companies’ own websites
• Measurement of mobile websites and mobile apps and a new iPhone app for the ForeSee portal
• Expanded usability services Client Case Study: NFLShop.com, the official store of the National Football League, acts on the insights gained from capturing and listening to voice of the customer. The goal of the website is not only to sell apparel and merchandise, but to strengthen fans’ relationships with individual teams and the NFL brand.

Actionable Insights from ForeSee Results data and analysis:

• Identify Valuable Shopper Profiles’ Needs. During the holidays, there was a huge shift in satisfaction for a key segment of site traffic: women shopping for gifts. Gift-givers had higher satisfaction scores for the website compared to other segments, and there also was an increase in their purchase intent and brand loyalty. The validity of the data was confirmed by a higher conversion rate for gift-givers. As a result, NFLShop.com increased their catalog circulation to women, as well as TV advertising, to target gift-givers in a campaign designed to appeal to the kinds of gifts they were looking for.
• Redesign for Navigation Preference. Satisfaction data and analysis documented that visitors struggled to navigate across a field of 32 teams to find merchandise they wanted. This insight guided a home page redesign which tripled the percentage of shoppers who used the home page. Revenue from these shoppers was up significantly compared to past years.
• Stock the Right Merchandise. The satisfaction survey identified the extent of demand for big and tall sizes for both men and women, particularly during the gift-giving holiday season. By quantifying demand, Josh built a business case for aligning merchandising demands of the online shoppers to supply. They also featured big and tall merchandise in email promotions that were very successful.

Results

• Year-over-year online sales increased by 25% in December when NFLShop.com targeted an advertising campaign to female gift-givers, in spite of the tough economy.
• The homepage redesign streamlined navigation to high demand merchandise and doubled homepage revenue.
• Based on the voice of the customer, NFLShop.com started marketing hard-to-find products such as Big and Tall merchandise. The online store doubled sales of this merchandise over 2008.
• Soliciting email subscriptions through the browse survey enabled NFLShop.com to build the email database with high value customers who bought twice as much on average.

“In a cross-channel world, it’s critical to understand how customers' experience with a company in one place affects their loyalty, brand affinity, and intent to purchase in another place,” said Larry Freed, President and CEO of ForeSee Results.

“We’re helping many of our clients measure the customer experience in stores, in call centers, on websites, and even with interactions on mobile phones or social media. The result informs resource allocation to initiatives that will have the greatest return on investment.”

• IBM

The goal of a "Smarter Planet" starts with analytics and only further proves true with the recent acquisition with two of the leading web analytics vendors in the market, Coremetrics and Unica.

• IQ Workforce

I am nominating Corry Prophens and IQ Workforce for the Most Influential Agency of the year. It is through his work in taking the time to understand the web analytics industry specific needs, and the get to know the clients, vendors, and the people that make up this industry we love. This is how IQ Workforce has become so successful.

His innovative approach has engaged everyone in the industry from sponsoring WAW events, to attending the various conferences, to seeking out blog posters to add content to his website and on point newsletter. Corry has also taken to Facebook and created a vibrant and active community on the worlds largest social platform. So while IQ Workforce may not be a traditional agency, the work that they are doing to help find and cultivate talent is key to companies, agencies, and vendors out there be successful.

• Leo Burnett

Leo Burnett creates acts that transform human behavior. Ideas with meaning and purpose are what drive shifts in consumer/brand relationships. As more and more clients embraced the agency’s ‘acts not ads’ philosophy, it became clear that traditional methods of analysis and reporting could not sufficiently support the idea platform.

As the owners of measurement and modeling at Leo Burnett, our team’s challenge was clear; we needed to move away from standard (siloed) exposure and engagement metrics such as visits, impressions, clicks and opens. Instead, our insight deliverables necessitated behavioral and cross-channel perspectives that were effectively communicated to key client and internal stakeholders.

Our answer was to develop a comprehensive digital intelligence platform that included a suite of proprietary web-based applications, an array of innovative modeling/analytic techniques and new methods of insight communication and visualization. Our analysts leverage this unique line-of-site into clients’ digital ecosystems to develop rich behavioral insights. The resultant intelligence and optimization recommendations inform both channel-specific tactics as well as campaign-wide strategy. This new approach has been instrumental in driving consistent and substantial growth; our team has grown from 20 to over 40 members in just four years. Clients such as Allstate, Kellogg’s, Coke, McDonald’s, Purina, Whirpool, Delta Faucet, Sealy and more turn to our digital intelligence deliverables to inform key creative, marketing, media and business decisions.

One of best examples is our industry-recognized work on Delta Faucet’s integrated brand campaign.

Our campaign dashboards, deep-dive analyzes and designed experiments have become a trusted and integral part of Delta’s business intelligence. By harnessing our innovative platform, we are able to provide a unique set of cross-channel behavioral transformation indicators synthesized from web, search and social analytics including:

• Change in demand, awareness, consideration, preference and probable purchase
• Change in market share, consideration and other KPIs versus key competitors
• Impact of television and print ads on research behavior within digital space
• Direct response to television and print ads
• Search engine marketing performance and coverage monitoring
• Media-to-website behavioral and pathing profiles
• Geographic-based performance and behavior profiling Recommendations derived from this intelligence have informed optimizations to digital and campaign-wide strategies/tactics.

Designed experiments were primary driver of a comprehensive overhaul of Delta’s digital media strategy. And spatial models and day-part behavior analysis provided the blueprint for geo-targeted/time-optimized banner and paid search advertising.

In March 2010 we presented a pioneering approach (initially developed for Delta Faucet) to measuring changes in behaviors at the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) Re: conference. Our “Statistical Approach to Using Search and Social Media Trends to Measure Integrated Marketing Activity” utilizes web, search and social media data to quantify the relationship between consumer behavior and key business drivers such as revenue.

As an outcome, clients can measure the success of their integrated marketing efforts in a manner that facilitates more real-time optimization.

By identifying key search and social media tracking metrics and aligning with purchase funnel stages, we can:

• Monitor, in near real-time, campaign performance
• Align campaign performance directly to the purchase process we want to influence
• Make more timely optimization decisions based on quantitative data

In late 2010, we developed another new measurement technique to support Delta’s campaign intelligence. Behavioral fingerprinting measures consumer activities across hundreds of millions of scenarios within a brand’s digital ecosystem using a powerful cloud-based clustering algorithm. Once identified, the resultant behavioral segments were leveraged to significantly improve the precision of Delta’s performance measurement and reporting. This year, Delta Faucet will look to behavioral fingerprinting to significantly enhance the logic of their content management, multivariate testing and marketing automation solutions.

During a recent client/agency assessment (facilitated by a 3rd party) Delta Faucet provided a resoundingly positive review of our work. “Makes measurement work very interesting”, “excellent partnership” and “terrific insights” are a few of the excerpts. But the most telling indicators of our success include Delta’s:

• Increased investment in our scope of work
• Increased investment in digital marketing that was a direct result of our intelligence
• Increased campaign-driven sales

While the focus of this overview has been on our support of Delta Faucet, the Leo Burnett Optimization team has many more equally impressive awards, recognitions and case studies. One such example is our second place finish in the DAA’s 2009 Championship contest. From optimizing online display and landing page creative to quantifying share of purchase and ROI associated with branded website engagement, our results are represented in our client’s continuing success.

• MaassMedia

MaassMedia is an agency that others should seek to emulate. They provide insights their clients need, even if that means reinventing parts of how web measurement is done.

They haven’t settled for the comfortable status quo of delivering reports and analysis using current web analytics tools and processes. Instead, they have created better ones where needed, all in the name of providing real actionable insights for clients, rather than more data.

In a very short time since founding MaassMedia, Aaron has built a successful web measurement agency/consultancy. I’ve spoken with many of his clients and found that Aaron’s focus on delivering analytics implementations and measurement platforms that are built for what the client actually needs as opposed to what they say that need, has earned him many loyal clients.

This factored into my nomination of MaassMedia, but it isn’t the driver. I believe that what sets MaassMedia apart is that in a world with so many tools offering so many me-too features, Aaron saw what their clients and the industry really needs, and despite being a small company that is far more of an agency than software company, he went out on a limb and built it. Even better, it actually works.

The solution, a business intelligence platform that sits on top of other measurement tools, helps to solve one of the fundamental problems in the industry: connecting website activity to offsite activity and actions.

This system, which I won’t be able to do justice to, enables fast and efficient integration from multiple data sources and technology platforms like web analytics, email marketing, ad servers, CRM systems and salesforce automation. Most solutions that attempt this in the industry today were built by software companies who offered the unwanted features of large price tags and long implementations. Not MaassMedia.

From what I’ve seen, they can be implemented in weeks and MaassMedia offers a service layer around it to make it work effectively for their clients. Think about what this offers!

For ecommerce websites, ROI can be measured not just on a sale driven today, but on the total lifetime value created by the campaign (which is a far better measure of ROI than revenue from today’s sale).

For lead generation websites, the ROI of campaigns can be measured based on actual conversions to customers and can filter through the noise from unqualified leads.

For any site, this also means that predictive modeling (to date a web analytics pipe dream) can be done on the entire integrated dataset, enabling marketers to see things that web analytics tools that spit out visits and pages views could never show.

I am proud to nominate MaassMedia because they chose not to settle for what everyone is offering. They chose to do something that would improve the industry and set a great example for agencies and others to follow.

• Rapp Collins

Rapp Collins starts with data. From data we glean insight. That insight ignites our creative solutions. Simple. Data ignites creativity. So what? Well, these days, if you want the $$$, you can't just call people to action. You need to inspire action; to do that you need creativity. But, creativity without insight is all style and no substance. And insight is just guessing unless informed by hard data. Data ignites creativity. Please forgive us, but we do believe our simple message bears frequent repetition. Why? Because the data-driven cycle is infinite. The more our creativity inspires action, the more $$$ we generate and the more additional data we generate. That data then forms new insight. And ... well, we suspect you've got the idea by now.

• TopSpot

TopSpot currently uses a number of different tracking methods to prove sources and conversions, but the most robust and accurate tool has been our in-depth knowledge of analyzing user behavior. While a number of software and analytic tools, such as form tracking, call tracking, and web analytics packages play integral roles in taking a history of the visit, the ability to assemble the information from multiple channels into an actionable metric is the most valuable tool we can offer our clients.

We can demonstrate value of being able to properly attribute source by studying a recent example that landed on the site from various sources and ad campaigns:

During the first visit, the searcher entered the site from a Google AdWords campaign using the search term “copper bus bars”, and, within two days, returned via an organic visit by searching for the company name (“vahle inc”), and entering through an organic search result.

Because this particular industry has a longer buying cycle, the user did not return to the site until 41 days later. We can speculate that this visit was to gather additional data or contact information, but it seems to be a merely referential visit given the search term and time between the previous and future visit. Unlisted, but still relevant to the point, is the fact that they visited the Contact Us page, but did not convert online at that time. On the final visit, the user enters a previous search term (“Vahle Inc”), and returns to the site, eventually converting via an online form.

During this visit, the user viewed several pages related to the concept of battery charging contacts, positioning systems, the general catalog, but converted from a short contact form on the page related to battery charging contacts. The user cited an immediate need for pricing about a very specific model of industrial battery charging equipment.

This would be considered a valid and relevant conversion according to the parameters set forth by our client. Using the commonly used last-click attribution model, most marketers would assume this conversion comes from an existing customer, given the direct nature of the very direct and branded organic search. Had the user been a little more informed, it’s entirely possible that the last visit would be a direct-to-site visit, furthering the incorrect theory even more. Because many of our clients are in the industrial sector, we’ve found that there is a high likelihood of phone calls instead of a web conversion for the “last click”.

This can even further muddy the source attribution, given that there is a marked increase in bounce rate when phone calls increase. For the sake of clarity, and to have the best possible data to prove conversions, we have turned to online/offline campaign call tracking.

Using an accurate call-tracking solution, we were able to see where this visit did, in fact, result in a conversion. Even though the bounce rate seemed unfavorable at first, being able to track across multiple channels proved that the content of the landing page actually worked well enough to convince the user to take action from a single page visit.

In addition to being able to track the source of the phone call, we advise clients of the utmost importance in reviewing the actual phone conversations to ensure quality. We provide our clients with the option of recording all calls, and will review calls for problems both in customer service aspects, and relevancy to the business model. Addressing issues in both of those areas can increase customer loyalty and decrease resource-wasting interactions with unqualified leads.

At TopSpot, we have discovered that there is a great importance on referencing the entire conversion path, and communicating this information to our clients so that we can have an accurate understanding of the end user’s buying and conversion cycle. Business models are continuing to become more complex, and keeping track of the conversion path based on that business model is proving to be more difficult than ever.

As a result of our diligent review and understanding of how to assemble the many sources of attribution data, we are able to provide far more value, along with actionable guidance, to our clients than mere surface-level metrics could ever hope to communicate.

• Visual IQ

In today’s marketing environment – where marketers are typically using more channels, producing more measureable results, and generating more marketing data than ever before – Visual IQ enables advertisers and their agency partners to be more effective and efficient in the management of that ever-growing ecosystem.

Visual IQ’s combination of services and hosted business intelligence software provides marketers with unprecedented insight into the combined performance of all their online and offline marketing channels, campaigns and tactics. Visual IQ then performs attribution modeling on that multi-channel performance to monetarily quantify the impact every channel, campaign and tactic has on the other. And it’s all presented in user-friendly, interactive dashboards.

The company’s IQ Intelligence Suite of hosted software products was first introduced into the market in 2007 and has evolved to keep pace not only with marketers changing analytics’ challenges, but also with the growing number of customer touch points. The software enables marketers to to produce the optimum mix of channels, campaigns and tactics by capitalizing on the automated recommendations provided by the platform.

It also allows marketers to analyze their typically disparate, siloed marketing performance (both online and offline) in a completely holistic, apples-to-apples fashion. Users benefit from having the critical success metrics they currently use recalculated to take into account the cross channel, cross campaign, and cross tactic impact of all their marketing efforts.

Armed with this holistic view and more informed metrics, advertisers and agencies that are typically overwhelmed with the avalanche of data their efforts produce are able to make quicker, more accurate decisions about optimizing their digital and traditional advertising spend to produce the maximum return within a given budget.

Additional benefits that Visual IQ and its products deliver include:

1. Simplified integration of marketing data from all of the disparate sources where it exists inside and outside the organizations (search engines, ad servers, email systems, ad agencies, software platforms, CRM systems, etc.)
2. Customized data and analysis so clients can analyze results in both an apples-to-apples manner, as well as by whatever client-specific criteria (such as line of business, business unit, product, etc) they require.
3. Science-based marketing attribution that utilizes the world’s most rigorous and accurate attribution modeling and machine learning techniques to scientifically identify the attributes within a client’s marketing mix that truly influence performance, as well as demonstrate the actual performance of every channel, campaign and tactic on the marketer’s combined marketing performance.
4. Employment of “top-down attribution” in the absence of user-level (e.g. cookie) data that is typically available (though not always) through digital channels
5. Predictive analytics for future performance planning and budgeting, including “what-if?” analysis and spending recommendations for the optimum combination of channels, campaigns and tactics—both of which enable marketers to more easily justify requests for additional budget, as well as to make the most informed decisions about where to spend future marketing dollars.

Visual IQ counts many of the world’s largest producers of digital and traditional marketing performance data among its clients. These include American Express, AT&T, Cablevision, Vanguard Group, CVS and Liberty Mutual Insurance and Aegis, WPP and Publicis, among many others.

To demonstrate the impressive results Visual IQ has driven on behalf of its clients, take the example of one of North America’s largest banking and financial services corporations, with over 6000 locations offering banking, mortgages, credit cards, and other financial products (full case study attached). Although their marketers used a number of channels to generate online applications for several of their key product lines, they were managing these channels as separate silos with no quantifiable knowledge of the cross channel synergies or impacts of their efforts—and no ability to make informed decision about how to effectively integrate, or manage spend among, these channels to maximize their total ROI. The company turned to Visual IQ to more effectively implement and integrate their paid search and online display campaigns with a goal of increasing the combined ROI of those channels by 25%, and the number of year over year conversions by 15%.

Through the insights gained from Visual IQ products, marketers identified and implemented changes in their individual campaign strategies, as well as to their channel integration strategies, that significantly boosted combined ROI. The results speak for themselves: over a three year engagement, the client produced a year over year average monthly increase of 21% in the number of conversions and a 32% increase in ROI – exceeding their increase in conversion goal by 40% and their increase in ROI goal by 28%.

• VKI Studios

Vancouver-based VKI Studios is one of the leading agency in Canada. VKI not only boast a great team, focus on website optimization with great clients, but they aren't afraid of sharing their know-how on their excellent blog. Have a look at the history: http://blog.vkistudios.com/.

Most Influential Industry Contributor (individual)

• Manoj Jasra, Sr. Specialist, Online Intelligence, Shaw Communications

Manoj has primarily been responsible for giving Web Analytics and Digital Marketing a face. After dozens of presentations, lunch ‘n learns and meetings, there is now a group called “Online Intelligence” which the entire organization (all the way to executives) relies on to understand the online experience of our customers. Manoj has developed amazing relationships with all of the measurement vendors so much that Webtrends asked him to join their customer advisory board AND Foresee Results modified their satisfaction index review based on his feedback.

In January last year a company called Invesp published a list of the most influential online marketers in 2009 - where Manoj ranked #39. Avinash was also on the list – he cracked the top 10. Most folks in the online community know Manoj from his blog, Web Analytics World, which he’s been running pretty much solo for nearly 5 years. If you look at the frequency of his posts, he’s outputting 30 posts a month, multiply that by 5 years and you’re looking at 1800 unique pieces of content.

Web Analytics World is a great resource for finding insight and tips into analytics/measurement technology – in the past year it featured a lot of good content in the mobile/social space as well. Web Analytics World has a pretty cool section called Vendor Spotlight which helps measurement companies gain publicity to a very niche audience.

Manoj has performed dozens of interviews with people in Analytics like Jim Sterne to practitioners to entrepreneurs. There are obviously hundreds, if not thousands of marketing blogs, but there aren’t too many bloggers who are as prolific and consistent as Manoj has been in the past five years.

Manoj’s blog is ranked in the top 150 blogs on Adage Power 150 Blogs and is ranked in the top 10 when looking at only Canadian blogs. In the last couple of years Manoj has expanded his community to encompass Twitter and a Facebook Group (4100+, 1800+ followers and members respectively).

Last year Manoj came up with this really neat idea to create an eBook containing tips, tricks and recommendations from strategists all over the world. The response lead to 2 eBooks and over a thousand downloads of each eBook. Manoj is planning to launch #3 early this year. Just from the sheer numbers you can tell that Manoj has created an amazing community for analyst and strategists around the world to participate, learn and be inspired in their digital career.

• Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist, Google

“If you need a write-up about how influential Avinash has been, you are probably in the wrong Association.”

• Emer Kirrane, Manager of Web Analytics, Yahoo!

Emer Kirrane deserves a nomination for Most Influential Industry Contributor based on her unwavering support of the web analytics community. Over the past few months she has been conducting lighthearted interviews with members of our industry. She posts these interviews on her blog. The count currently stands at 34 interviews. That's a lot of people. Additionally, she volunteers her time as a mentor and community liaison for the Analysis Exchange, where she helps non-profit organizations get started with web analytics.

Supporting materials:

1. Emer's blog, Crepuscular Light (includes industry interview series)
2. Emer's Analysis Exchange profile (includes 8 testimonials/ratings)
3. Emer's LinkedIn profile (includes 8 recommendations)
• Evan LaPointe, Vice President, Director of Client Performance & Analytics, Search Discovery

To say that Evan is changing how we think about Web Analytics doesnt begin to scratch the surface. His vision of how operations not just marketing should be influenced by the interactions that consumers have with brands online is inspiring. An exceptional speaker and mentor, he charmingly presents the most complicated implementations of Analytics and Usability for even the most removed audiences and you always see the "light bulb go off". Always seeking new and interesting ways to present information, his blog and monthly columns are engaging and full of applicable insights that are easily shared across any organization.

Evan is "growing" a new kind of discipline and bringing people in that would not normally have participated and presenting to an audience who isnt normally provided this depth of information making his reach of influence broad not only within our industry but commerce in general.

"While there are many superlatives to laud upon Evan LaPointe, this is the most important: Evan has vision. In an industry driven by the details, he never loses sight of the big picture and the client's goals. There are many smart and innovative people in this business - it is Evan's vision that makes him a leader."-David Whitehead, Performance Strategist, 22squared

"Evan is truly a wonder. He has extensive knowledge in SEO/SEM and web analytics and he is easily able to communicate that knowledge to people across the spectrum. We are fortunate to have worked with and learned from him."-Justin Tenisci, Performance Strategist, 22squared

Evan "has deep intelligence and industry experience presented in a teachable way...brings strong confidence and conviction to his work...brings the right mix of "expert" and approachability" -Mike Grindell, COO, 22squared

In the end what i think makes Evan the most influential is that he can see a bigger picture than most and still executes strategies flawlessly...thinker and do-er. "Vision without execution is hallucination.”-Thomas Edison

He builds tools: http://www.gatrackthis.com/

He writes: http://www.atlantaanalytics.com/
http://searchengineland.com/library/analyze-this
http://blogs.business.com/b2b-online-marketing/category/b2b-web-analytics/

He presents: http://vimeo.com/19263928

• Gemma Muñoz

Gemma is THE web analytics evangelist in Spain. Besides her job as web analytics consultant, she is participating in many events talking about WA and also teaching. Her last academic project is the first web analytics master in Spain. In the attached document you can see links to some of her talks and classes. She, of course, writes about analytics in her own blog since 2008.

Gemma has contributed in developing and pushing main WA projects in spanish markets, and the first WA master in Spanish. She is the most influential contributor for WA in Spain.

Her vision exceeds all the analytic initiatives developed in Spain. She established an analytical model used by other analytics professionals in Spain. It could said that Gemma is the Spanish Avinash. She is always innovating. And on the other hand, she is cute, nice, always smiling and proactive. Her website.

Gemma develops a lot of activities concerning web analytics: In Twitter, she is known as @sorprendida, a reference account in web analytics in Spain.

She is a frequent speaker in events like Conversion Thursday, Practitioner Web Analytics, The Monday Reading Club..., etc. She teaches Web Analytics in many well known Business Schools and recently organized the first Master in Spain specialized in web analytics sponsored by DAA, which she also manages from now on.

Her last talk in the Monday Reading Club was very successful and had many followers. This is the result of her great job and effort in this matter.

Gemma also founded "Madridgeekgirls", a group of women interested in Web Analytics and technology in her city: Madrid. Gemma is a professional reference and a great person who deserves such a prestigious recognition as the DAA Awards for Excellence.

Industry-referenced articles:

• http://www.emerkirrane.com/2011/01/24/avinash-kaushik-man-2-0/
• http://www.influenzia.net/blog/gemma-munoz-web-analyst-sorprendida/
• http://www.eventosfera.com/2011/01/the-monday-reading-club-madrid.html
• http://www.prnoticias.com/index.php/prcomunicacion/532/10053572
• http://espaciodircom.blogspot.com/2010/03/gemma-munoz-nueva-responsable-de.html

Industry events or conferences:

• Esade
• Telefonica
• Tristanelosegui
• ¿Dónde Está Avinash Cuando Se Le Necesita?
• Judah Phillips, Senior Director, Monster

Judah Phillips embodies the phrase most influential industry contributer. Through Judah's persistence and dedication the Boston WAW's have grown to over 100 analytics practitioners meeting on a regular basis to compare analytics best practice and learn from thought leaders of the such organizations as Adobe, IBM, Unica, Web Analytics Demystified, AMA, DAA, SiteSpect, multiple well known technology and fortune 500 companies. Judah routinely speak at these events as well as offering attendees advise on web analytics related activities.

Judah has helped broaden the scope of web analytics and expose top level executives to the value of having dedicated professional focused on web analytics through his work organizing, inviting speakers, and speaking at OMMA events. Through his efforts he has raised the visibility of web analytics by pulling in hundreds of executives from top level companies to listen to global analytics speakers discuss best practices and offer advice on emerging areas of web analytics such as social media and mobile.

Judah has also taken on a leadership role in formulating the Boston chapter of the DAA, using his personal connections he has a built a founding team and helped plan a Boston symposium through his interaction and advice to DAA members Matt Langie, Jim Stern, Shannon Taylor, John Lovett, Lee Isensee, and Jonathan Corbin to name a few.

Judah has influenced the web analytics community through his writing, interviews, speaking, and efforts to raise the visibility of web analytics throughout global organizations. Judah deserves to be recognized as the industry luminary that he is for the vast amount of effort he has put into the web analytics community.

• Rudi Shumpert, Senior Director, The Keystone Solution

This nomination is for the work that Rudi Shumpert does on the Beyond Web Analytics Podcast and the primary individuals giving their time and efforts to continually illuminate the key people, issues, and opportunities within the industry. Rudi has created a valuable resource for the entire community with their podcasts and have been the source of many insights across the industry as well as assisting in bringing some of the key community member into more prominence. Rudi Shumpert has made a big impact on the web analytics community with the podcasts. Rudi founded the podcasts and now hosts them regularly along with Adam Greco and Gary Angel. The audience for these has grown rapidly, the topics and guests are top-notch.

Working on this entirely in their free time they have been asked to assist at many different conferences, speak at several engagements, and continue to be referenced within the community as a whole. Covering topics ranging from the DAA and its missions and goals, to Universal Tagging, to key career opportunities in the industry they have both been critical in building some standards and stability in a frequently changing market.

Rudi has also contributed to web analytics events this year, having been a huddle leader at X Change, a speaker at eMetrics and at Omniture Summit.

Finally, Rudi is restarting Atlanta Web Analytics Wednesday meetings.

• Jason Thompson, Senior Analytics Consultant, Numeric
• Is one of the most, if not the most, active contributors to Twitter on the #Omniture hashtag
• Is one of the most helpful, not quite the most active, contributors to Twitter on the #Measure hashtag
• Seemingly lends a hand to anyone willing to put for the effort
• Volunteers his time again and again to help with the Analysis Exchange
• Started a dialog about the Digital Analytics Association which is still being referenced
• Contributes heavily to the web analytics knowledge base on their website On top of all that, this same person somehow finagled what was supposed to be a $36.00 individual donation request into providing fresh, clean drinking water for:
  • 253 people
  • 53 families
  • 1 community
• In the Central African Republic, 253 people in that village would vote for if they had the chance.

Jason goes out of his way to help anyone in the Omniture or Web Analytics community, isn't afraid to take a stand on issues he believes are important, and he united a community to provide clean drinking water for an entire community. There are so many wonderful contributors in our community, but this year, it's got to be Jason.

Web Analytics Rising Star (individual)

• Kumiko Ando, Senior Analyst, Ogilvy

Kumiko was instrumental in designing the tracking, implementing the code, and launching a global campaign site for one of Ogilvy's largest clients. The campaign site was a complicated set of flash design, video and rich content to spur engagement, education, and subscription into Ogilvy's lead management strategy. Kumiko's tracking design allowed the team to quickly monitor site activity in an optimal fashion allowing to better understanding working and non-working components of the site along with the source of traffic pin-pointing to the how, who, and where had the highest engagement. The tracking/implementation strategy allowed for easy automation of reporting and had most/all the necessary actions coded and available for the evaluation of insights.

• Jonathan Corbin, Engagement Manager, Adobe

Jonathan Corbin is a guy who gets it. As the Director of Consulting at Wunderman, Jonathan managed teams of up to 30 web analysts and managers doing global work for some of the world's biggest brands, such as Nokia. He hired, fired, and made sure the job got done - across multiple simultaneous global environments in extremely complex and political situations. And he succeeded. Last year, Jonathan decided to concentrate fully on digital analytics instead of offline and online analytics - prior to Wunderman he was a CRM consultant at Unica - so he took a job at Adobe beating several qualified candidates for the Engagement Manager role.

As the Engagement Manager at Adobe, he works with some of the world's biggest brands (again) helping to define both strategy and tactics for extending their digital analytics implementations with Adobe products. In the process, he has become Adobe Certified on every single-one of their products from the simple SiteCatalyst to the complex Adobe Insight. He knows his stuff. In fact, he was put on a social media panel at OMMA Metrics in SF - and he did great.

He actively supports the Web Analytics community in Boston, DAA, WAW, and is known in the entrepreneurial and venture capital community as well. He's also an engaged participant on social media channels. He deserves the web analytics rising star award because his star is rising and burning bright. Not to mention, he's a good guy and a gentleman too.

• Carlos del Rio, Owner, User Driven Change

Carlos has a great mind for Analytics, and is always bringing challenging new ideas to the table while upholding the established practices laid out by the DAA. He often lends advice to analysts with less experience and is always open to differing points of view. Carlos is becoming a very prominent figure in the web analytics community.

In 2010, Carlos was an avid participant in multiple conferences including: SMX Advanced, Gnomedex, and PII Conference. In addition to this, Carlos has participated in the founding meetings for the Seattle DAA Chapter which was started in the Fall of 2010.

Carlos has also co-hosted several Web Analytics Wednesdays in Seattle, along with myself in addition to being a dedicated attendee when hosted by other practitioners and vendors, and is champion of the WAW's in Seattle. Carlos also participates in a smaller, and more casual analytics social gathering entitled #measure & #microbrews.

Finally, he is an avid participant in #CROchat on Twitter. In addition to maintaining a full time Search and Conversion Optimization consultancy, Carlos is a published author of a book and multiple white papers, which includes maintaining a website for the publications along with bi-weekly blog posts.

Carlos also spent much of 2010 co-writing a book entitled "User Driven Change: Targeted Social Engagement" due out in April 2011. Carlos is surely a rising star in web analytics, and doesn’t just tweet/blog to toot his own horn, but rather makes a compelling statement to the community and is driven to supporting and building the web analytics arena each and every day.

• Kevin Deng, Web Analytics Manager, Publishers Clearning House

Kevin Deng was recently hired by Publishers Clearing House to be their dedicated Web Analytics Manager supporting Coremetrics and PCH's e-marketing initiatives. He was previously a Web Analytics Manager at Citigroup, Campaign & Insights Manager at Royal Bank of Canada and before that Customer Insights & Analysis Manager at Canadien Imperial Bank of Commerce. At Citigroup he lead analysis to identify customers’ online behavior patterns, predictive risk indicators and profitability dynamics using data warehouse (SAS) and web data (Omniture Insight). He was able to successfully segment customers by online behavior indicators and develop targeting opportunities for revenue generation, cost reduction and loss reduction. With a Master's degree in Computer Science from the University of Essex England and an Honor Bachelor's degree of engineering from Chongqing University in China, he is revolutionizing the way Publisher's Clearing House use e-marketing analytics to improve path flow conversion, drive revenue and increase optin rates for their online marketing campaigns, generating new insights for the business.

• Carol Gohl, Program Manager, Dell

The reason to nominate Carol is simple and obvious. There are so many web analytics gurus, ninjas etc. in our space. But how many program manager we have? Carol is currently the PMO for Dell's online analytics & testing organization. She brought in her experience in project management and discipline to institutionalize process in a very dynamic testing enviornment. Jeffrey Eisenberg said in DAA Austin symposium that process is going to kill us. If there is anything Dell is ahead of others, that's the rigerous process Carol built which enables Dell to do more test and scale the testing program at the global level. The keynote presentation Carol gave in emetrics DC last year was very well received by the audience. No one will be surprised to see that she continues to shine in our little web analytics industry.

• Melissa Gorris, Senior Consultant, Ogilvy

Melissa led our web analytics tracking, measurement, and optimization efforts for our largest financial services client. Her assignment was challenging in that the client is interested in both driving revenue and brand perception. Often times not in-step in terms of correlation. Melissa has focused on a disciplined approach of define, track, measure and optimize performance. Through her efforts one of campaign sites experienced a 91% improvement in registrations Melissa is currently driving an effort to connect social media to the site.

• Michele Hinojosa, Director, Digital Analytics, Red Door Interactive

Michele popped-up in the #measure web analytics community just a few months ago and quickly became one of the leading voice. But don't get fooled, she's not a newbie, she's been at it since 2006 in various roles. With her outgoing and fun style, she is not afraid to challenge status quo, share her thoughts, and ask for help when she needs it.

In the past 12 months there are few people that have brought the level of enthusiasm and fun that Michele (Jojoba) has driven into the core of the web analytics industry. Our jobs are not always easy, fun or all that glamorous but Michele has continued to push others to see beyond these challenges and strive for more. Her efforts with the DAA in the membership committee and in making the career development group what it is today are impressive. Essentially out of nowhere, this displaced tweeting Aussie has sparked others to participate in an eMetrics "Photoshop War", Donate to "JasonInATutu" and all the while she has taken on two personalities - Michele Hinojosa & Jojoba. In an industry known for being about creating reports and trying to measure web sites, Michele has taken a different approach and it is starting to make big waves.

While Michele has been doing web analytics since 2006. At the D.C. eMetrics in 2010, Michele not only presented effectively on her work at Kelley Blue Book, but she was an incredibly prolific tweeter. She is consistently, actively, and valuably engaged with the #measure community -- sharing useful and engaging content. Michele is also super-willing to switch to private mode and swap direct messages and e-mails on specific topics -- contributing insightful perspectives on a range of analytics challenges. Michele is also active in the DAA (apparently!) -- working on the career development task force (or whatever it is called). Clearly, she has passion for the industry and is interested in helping it grow and grow effectively.

• Nick Mihailovski, Developer Relations, Google Analytics

Nick Mihailovsky has been a part of the Google Analytics team since it was originally acquired, but his work continues to exceed all expectations in reach, depth, and overall quality. Over the past year or so his work has had a phenomenal impact on the GA Developer community. Not only has he extensively documented the technical workings of the product, but he has also coordinated the development and documentation for the free Google Analytics API. Moreover, he has made the API accessible and approachable with tools such as the Query Explorer, which allows developers to test API requests while authenticated in their account. All of this work has led to a thriving developer community who have built amazing applications that continue to add value to Google Analytics and drive better reporting & analysis for clients of all sizes. Beyond that, he also puts a human touch to GA with the "Web Analytics TV" webisodes, starring Nick & Avinash Kaushik, featured on the GA YouTube Channel. Few individuals have had as much wide-reaching impact on pushing forward the practice of deep analysis of web data as Nick Mihailovsky.

• Gemma Muñoz

Gemma is an Accomplished professional with extensive experience defining Analytics strategies, managing reports from idea to analice and building strong relationships with partners. Deep knowledge of Internet services, mobile market, social networks and ecommerce. Self-motivated, creative, and highly committed to make things happen. Superior communication skills and a demonstrated ability to tackle challenges through leadership skills and collaboration spirit. Passionate about analytics teaching, the Internet and the application of new technologies.

Requirements:

• http://www.emerkirrane.com/2011/01/24/avinash-kaushik-man-2-0/
• http://www.influenzia.net/blog/gemma-munoz-web-analyst-sorprendida/
• http://www.eventosfera.com/2011/01/the-monday-reading-club-madrid.html
• http://www.prnoticias.com/index.php/prcomunicacion/532/10053572
• http://espaciodircom.blogspot.com/2010/03/gemma-munoz-nueva-responsable-de.html

Presenter at three or more industry events or conferences.

Provided guidance to individual industry members and the DAA:

• Esade
• Telefonica
• Tristanelosegui
• Tyler Phillips

Tyler has been an instrumental part in designing a comprehensive monthly web behavior analysis report for one of our key clients. He transformed what was a stagnant monthly dashboard into an insight tool.

Focusing more on web behavior analysis versus simple tracking reporting. The monthly behavioral analysis report provided insight from a customer perspective: the type of pages they preferred, top search terms, next logical step, likelihood to adopt and respond to the various marketing offers. The report is not the central tool used to make strategic website and online marketing enhancements. The report is spans multiple client departments and thus provides a perfect conduit for an integrated marketing meeting and strategy.

• Ann Poritzky, Web Analytics Lead, U.S. National Institutes of Health

Ann Poritzky, a Rising Star in Web analytics within the federal government and the Web Analytics community at large, has provided invaluable leadership to colleagues at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which has more than 1,700 public facing Web sites. For the past several years, Ann served as Chair of the Digital Analytics Association's (DAA) Public Sector Special Interest Group and has been an active member of the Federal Web Managers Council Metrics Sub-Council. In recognition of her leadership within the federal government, Ann assumed the role of Co-Chair of the Metrics Sub-Council in 2011. In 2007, Ann was one of the first to receive the Web Analytics Award of Achievement from the University of British Columbia’s award winning program. NIH ACTIVITIES NIH is comprised of the Office of the Director and 27 Institutes and Centers (ICs). Prior to Ann joining NIH in 2008, the ICs largely worked independently, using multiple tools and a variety of methodologies, resulting in reporting inconsistencies, gaps, and duplication of effort.

Few working in Web analytics knew one another. Others were not aware of the importance of Web metrics. Ann changed all that through her leadership of the trans-NIH Web Metrics Group. As NIH’s go-to resource for Web analytics, she has fostered a vibrant and growing community of Web measurement practitioners, and sponsored a speaker’s series featuring analytics experts from within and outside the government.

With her wide variety of experience with Web analytics, Ann mentors many NIH staff members, always ready to answer simple and complex questions; explain qualitative and quantitative evaluation options; convey knowledge about NIH Web measurement activities; and connect people at NIH who can learn from each other. Her knowledge and expertise facilitated numerous collaborations and alliances that increased productivity and efficiency throughout NIH.

In 2010 Ann applied for and received funding through a highly competitive NIH-wide application process for Developing Web Analytics Best Practices for NIH. A major goal of the project is to develop recommendations to improve the quality, consistency and comparability of Web site evaluation among NIH public-facing sites. Ann is currently providing oversight and direction to this Trans-NIH project as well as Web site analysis for NIH.gov using the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) survey, Webtrends, Google search data, Crazy Egg (heat mapping software) and GovDelivery (email) metrics. She also leads the trans-NIH Web Authors Group (WAG) and WAG Web Metrics Group. EXTERNAL ACTIVITIES Through NIH and other Federal Government channels, Ann provides information and resources critical to NIH Web site managers, decision makers, and her colleagues across Government.

After President Obama was elected, the new administration initiated efforts to revise and modernize the rules for federal agencies using Web site measurement, customization and social media. In recognition of her knowledge and expertise, Ann was invited to provide recommendations on proposed OMB policy changes to the White House New Media Office, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the Federal Web Managers Council.

Ann worked tirelessly behind the scenes to assure that the OMB policy would be workable for her fellow government colleagues. When the new OMB policy guidelines were released in June 2010, NIH was one of the first federal agencies to implement them and served as a model for other agencies. In 2007, Ann co-founded the Web Analytics DC Networking Group, building the web analytics community in the traditionally non-profit public sector community, and fostering opportunities for web analytics professionals to learn from one another.

From 2008 to 2010, Ann served as Chair of the DAA Public Sector Special Interest Group, managing a groundbreaking DAA research project on how public sector and non-profit organizations use (and fail to use) Web analytics. Along with Phil Kemelor, lead researcher, she co-presented a DAA-sponsored hour-long Webinar on the research, Tapping the Potential of Web Analytics for Public Sector and Non-Profit Web Sites. Based on the survey results, she also co-wrote a technical assistance guide on Web analytics and the first piece of a DAA “Toolkit” for Public Sector practitioners on Return on Investment for public sector and non-profit Web sites to be published by the DAA in early 2011.

When Ann assumed the role of Co-Chair of the Federal Web Mangers Metrics Sub-Council, she recognized the growing use of Google Analytics in the Federal sector, and immediately planned a successful meeting discussing the use of Google Analytics by Federal agencies.

• Chris Rorie, Association Director of Analytics, MRM Worldwide

Chris Rorie has quickly risen through the ranks at leading digital agencies (MRM Worldwide, Digitas, PHD) by rapidly developing an expertise in analytics, and communicating this passion to clients and internal stakeholders. He's also a dedicated mentor and source of inspiration for those looking to break into the industry. In only 4 years, he has made significant business contributions to Fortune 500 clients and globally recognized brands, while simultaneously devoting time to serve those in the post-grad, job-seeking position he was in not so long ago.

First, a few words on Chris' capabilities as a Web Analytics practitioner. Chris has a keen understanding that excellent communication lies at the heart of effective analytics. He prides himself on developing analysis that is clear, compelling, and concise, and succeeds in a way well beyond his years. His focus on communication has enabled him to truly affect change at the senior leadership level. For American Express, he developed the branding team's first digital engagement score. Client leadership found the metric so useful, they mandated its use on all digital branding campaigns in '08, and it is still in use today. For Vonage, Chris developed an automated performance dashboard that drove a 45% improvement in Cost per Acquisition through weekly media optimization. At MRM, Chris is leading the charge on my team to evolve the agency's social media analytics practice. He's an extremely high performer, and his current role consists of managing a team of three on a $700k+, multi-client portfolio in the New York office. Due to his proven ability to deliver, we've recently given him the opportunity to expand the analytics capability in our Princeton, NJ office.

Chris contributes to the industry by inspiring the people around him. He enjoys training Jr. Analysts and evangelizing analytics with cross-capability team members. He's had several opportunities to undertake these roles. At Digitas, he trained Vivek Patel in reporting and analytics, and led an Omniture training for colleagues both junior and senior to him who hadn't had the opportunity to use the tool. At PHD, he served as client analytics lead for Vonage, where he trained media planners Leslie Nardone and Luis Pichardo on reporting and data management. He also served a key internal role as the first digital analytics hire of PHD’s New York office, where he was tasked with spearheading a nationwide reporting and analytics audit. The role involved assessing reporting efforts across 15+ client account teams and communicating opportunities for improvement in a gentle and diplomatic manner.

Chris has focused a tremendous amount of energy on his career, but he's also made time to serve as a mentor outside of the workplace. He actively advises promising, motivated students looking to break into analytics. Barclay Richey is one example, an '09 grad Chris has been working with since Oct '10 to help with his job search. They've met regularly over the past few months to discuss Barclay's job opportunities, and engage in industry education and interview preparation.

Over the past six months, Chris has re-doubled his efforts to participate socially in the industry he's so passionate about. He's become a modest influencer on Twitter, where he shares his favorite analytics and advertising thinking to 300 followers (he's proud of his 40+ Klout score). He's also recently started blogging. He's been delighted to cultivate comment activity from agency thought leaders on his articles. You can also find him on Quora and as an active contributor to Hacker News, where he's working to bring web analytics basics to the burgeoning startup community (UN: car387, submissions: http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=car387).

There are many young professionals out there with a passion for analytics, but there are few who have taken the actions that Chris has in the space. These actions speak to his talent, ambition, hard-working nature, and unwavering kindness towards those around him. He's the sort of person you dream of working with; let's see where he is in 10 years.

• Ravi Shukla, Project Manager and Practice Leader (Analytics Team), Position²

Asynchronous Google Analytics Code and Page load time was tweeted by "Google Analytics" on Twitter on April 28, 2010. It has received visits from 75 countries to date. It has been referred by reputed agencies in US and Europe like Bruce Clay, and WebAnalytics.es.

Analyzing 'Chat Quality' Using Google Analytics – Funnel Analysis has received visits from 29 countries to date.

Ravi has been engaging in discussions with the web analytics community using yahoo-groups. He has lead the web analytics efforts for Lyris Inc. (one of Position²'s clients) using "Clicktracks". His work is recommended by the VP of Marketing at Lyris Inc.

He has been credited for inspiring a paper on 'Gray Networking' at the prestigious "ACM SIGAPP annual SAC meet" in Switzerland 2010.

He was awarded the merit certificate by CBSE (Board of Education for school level in India) for being among top 0.1% of successful candidates in Maths in India in AISSCE 1997.

He mentored his college IIIT Bangalore in setting up web analytics on the site. This was done in his free time on a voluntary basis. He has trained the following two individuals: Sasthi Sarma, Amitabha Chatterjee

The training was broadly related to following areas Web Analytics Basics Google Analytics Setup and Reporting Clicktracks setup and Reporting. In addition Ravi has been holding sessions for members from other teams in my company who want to know the basic of web analytics.

Work Profile: Ravi works as a Project Manager and Practice Leader of the Web Analytics Team at Position2 Inc. (Bangalore). His expertise lies in the area of Online Marketing, Web Analytics & Web related Development.

Ravi uses both paid and Open Source tools including Google Analytics, Omniture Site Catalyst, Click Tracks, Urchin, AWStats, Sherlog etc. Apart from using tools, he also analyzes raw server log files using standard Unix commands and scripts for extracting information.

His interest areas include Web Analytics, Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Social Media Analytics, Project Management, Client Management, Web related development (HTML, CSS, XHTML, JavaScript, PHP, Perl, MySql, MS Excel), A/B Testing of Landing Pages. Algorithms in the field of Information Retrieval and Graph Theory.

• Tim Wilson, Director, Resource

Tim is one of the co-directors of WAW in Columbus. He is in charge of organizing and finding speakers for the events as well as speaking himself. He religiously blogs at gilliganondata.com and @tgwilson and has been recognized by many for his work and contributions to the field.

He is the Director of Measurement and Analytics at Resource Interactive and plays an integral part of the learning culture. He implemented many procedures, dashboards and policies for the company and personally mentored new web analysts.

Tim has recommended Stephen Few's Information Dashboard Design and preached the learnings throughout the company as well as at WAW meetings to the advantage of those listening.

Innovator/Technology of the Year (individual or group)

• Beyond Web Analytics Podcast

The Beyond Web Analytics podcast should pretty much say it all. They've had pretty much every top person in the industry as a guest and take the time to discuss the thinking, philosophy and application of web analytics in an easy to follow discussion format. Much has been gained from listening to the episodes and they have positively influenced plans and development in the WA arena.

The podcast is product agnostic which is also nice.

There are other sources out there but they tend to be focused on a particular product or service and presented by an evangelist. Beyond Web Analytics dispenses with the thinly veiled sales pitch and instead delivers what anyone who's interested in the overall subject of web analytics wants and needs: a presentation of concepts, ideas and strategies that goes beyond products and vendors.

This podcast represents a unique resources on the web. What's more, the nearly 40 episodes cover all aspects of web analytics from best practices to strategies to usually ignored subjects like WA career development and finding/retaining WA talent. It is doubtful there is any other online WA resource that spans the web analytics world as comprehensively as this podcast.

• BTBuckets

BTBuckets contributed to the advancement of the industry by bringing Behavioral Targeting to the masses. In the same way that Google raised the industry by providing Web Analytics for free, so BTBuckets has done with Behavioral Targeting by providing a free "lite" version for free.

• Justin Cutroni, Director Web Intelligence, Webshare

Justin Cutroni is the world's expert on Google Analytics. As we all know Google Analytics is the most widespread and commonly-used analytics tool on Earth with tens of millions of deployments. He understands the detailed technical inner code and data structures that enable Google Analytics to be extended as deeply as required and as integrated as possible to business need. Justin also realizes how to extract the maximum business value from the data generated by Google Analytics. In other words, while he is a technologist who can code the tool - he can also help people make money using data. This combination is rare.

The Analytics industry loves geeks and thinks the technologists are the "bees knees." They really aren't, but they are important. Justin is certainly the King Bee when it comes to doing both: coding and optimizing using Google Analytics. The real value of analytics isn't in the absolutely necessary technical implementation. Instead value is derived from how you apply the data to solve business issues and inform business decisions. Justin can "switch hit" from both sides of the plate - in a way that would make even A-Rod jealous (if he were a web analyst).

Thus, when Justin wrote Google Analytics Shortcuts (his first book), he provided the world with a way to use this emerging technology to drive business. Then, he authored the O'Reilly book "Google Analytics," which is the de facto standard for how to apply Google's technology to the business at a deeper level than most web analysts will ever hope understand in their wildest dreams. Justin is also well-known for his Google Analytics Training classes, where he has trained several thousand people on how to use web analytics - across the world.

When it comes to innovation, it's not about a "code of ethics" and it's not about another "maturity model." It's about putting yourself out there in writing and in-person sharing hard-learned knowledge about how to effectively deploy the world's most common web analytics tool - and how a business can gain economic value from using the technology provided by what is arguably the world's most powerful and important company. In short, Justin wrote the book on Google Analytics in 2010, he's taught everyone how to use it, and he's also an industry advocate and positive, smart, and nice person. Not to mention he is also, truly, a "rocket scientist" and good Dad. A real example of web analyst's web analyst.

• Ensighten

Ensighten has changed the way people think about tag management solutions. The buzz of "universal tag" has been on peoples tongues for a while but the community has been less than satisfied with the current offerings. In 2010 Ensighten broken into the market with the experience of a CEO that had dealt with the challenges of deploying web analytics solutions and turned it into a game changing solution.

Ensighten Manage, a Tag Management System created by Ensighten, is the greatest new piece of technology in the web analytics industry. It achieves the solution to one of the greatest pain points and inefficiencies in the web analytics industry – manual tagging.

Often the process of manual tagging takes days of programming, not to mention the complications involved with getting an agency, IT or vendor resources to add or change tags on a website. For flash or compiled applications, tagging gets even more complex and cumbersome.

Ensighten has created a revolutionary piece of software that allows users to control these tags via a simple user-friendly interface. With Ensighten Manage, the marketer or web analyst can edit, add, remove and pause tags, all with a few clicks. Just as content management systems organized websites and made managing them accessible to non-technical people; Ensighten Manage organizes JavaScript tags and makes managing them a simple process for non-technical people. This changes the time of vendor deployment from months to potentially days. It allows companies to test vendors quickly and in a secure test environment, providing companies with greater choice and flexibility.

Additionally, Ensighten Manage has created a platform that is limited only by the end-user’s creativity. Being highly flexible, Ensighten Manage can solve problems that its creators had not even intended.

For example, Ensighten Manage can be used to manage corporate privacy policies, giving companies the power control which data is collected and which vendors receive it. While there are a few similar tag management solutions in existence, Ensighten Manage is the only solution that can manage tags on flash, other compiled apps and mobile devices. In addition, it has a secure and robust infrastructure, making it scalable, dependable, and reliable even for the most security-focused financial corporations.

Ensighten has improved web analytics for such enterprise clients as AARP, Internet Broadcasting, LendingTree, Nature Publishing Group, Nestle Purina PetCare Company and Sony Electronics to name a few. With all of these benefits in consideration, and the high demand for a solution to manual tagging, Ensighten Manage is the best innovation of 2011 for the web analytics industry.

• KnowClick

KnowClick was founded with a simple premise: to provide the answers which marketers, agencies, and executives need to get more from the web and be able to prove it. Our advanced technology makes it possible by capturing a "360 degree view" of the people visiting, their behavior on the site, and how the site impacted their perceptions and offline actions. KnowClick's solutions have been built to be powerful but also easy to use. They do the heavy lifting for you. No training is needed, no software to install, implementation typically takes 2-3 hours, and you can keep using existing tools. They offer turnkey “software and services” solutions that are available for one-time or ongoing usage.

• ObservePoint

Having worked in the WA space since 2004 both on the vendor side (Omniture), the client side (Major League Baseball) and now as a consultant (Varsity Analytics), one of the most frustrating elements of working in WA is the almost automatic doubting of the accuracy of WA data. Typically, if the data doesn't align with the "gut feeling" of the management team, the data is crucified and deemed as "inaccurate" or "useless".

After managing the WA practice at Major Leage Baseball for 3 years, third party "tag validation" system in ObservePoint was introduced to Varsity Analytics. In 2008, Omniture implemenation from older G code was migrated to newer code H code. After a complete overhaul, the code was launched only to see the site traffic decline.

Immediately the implementation was considered a failure and "clearly incomplete" as they assumed that there were missed tracking of some key elements of the site, but the implementation was sound, just needed a technology to prove it. The "inaccurate" tag stuck with our data set into 2009 but finally in 2010, ObservePoint went into action.

In a matter of an hour, third party data showed that 99.8% of our pages were not only tagged, but tagged correctly. It turns out, after some digging, their old implementation was not sound and data was slightly inflated. Since then, data has been presented in board meetings with confidence. Every major analysis presented starts off with our tracking validation measurement available from ObservePoint to reiterate that the data is indeed accurate according to our architecture.

This was a relief and confidence builder to have that arrow in the quiver as a Web Analytic Manager and now as a consultant as ObservePoint is used to validate every project. As adoption increases, WA managers will wonder how they went so long without an empowering tool like ObservePoint.

• Next Analytics

This is the only product on the market that brings together the analytic data from Google Analytics, Facebook, Facebook Insights, Twitter, LinkedIn, Constant Contact, Zoominfo, SQL queries, SAP BW and basically anything that Excel can get at.

This allows web analytics to being a new direction. Instead of analyst being required to work with only one set of data at a time, our technology allows web analysts to merge and collate their results and produce reports. Over 200 dashboards are offered right out of the box.

But there's also an Excel based script that lets power users, web analysts process the data in ways that parallel a high end business intelligence application. Case Studies with key clients (to be named) are currently being arranged. But the turnkey nature of our product speaks for itself. In ten minutes, the product can be downloaded and see over 200 GA metrics, 200 Facebook Metrics and a wide variety of view of data from Twitter and LinkedIn.

The Case Study is replicated worldwide twenty times a day, every day. Fast to ROI, it also is offered at a very accessible price, which means there can be more web analysts out there doing what they do best, analyze.

• TagMan

TagMan is the first independent, universal container tag management system. It is designed specifically to provide online advertisers with greater ability to manage the tracking tags that sit on their web site and make the most of the data those tags deliver.

• Audience Data Best Practices Team, Turner Broadcasting System Inc.

We would like to nominate the Audience Data Best Practices (ADBP) Team at Turner Broadcasting System Inc. for Innovator of the Year (Group). Turner is a large media company with brands such as CNN, TruTV, TNT, TBS, Adult Swim, CartoonNetwork, and is the largest operator of sports properties online, including NBA, NCAA, NASCAR, PGA, PGATour and Sports Illustrated. Operating in over 200 countries Turner reaches its audiences via TV, online and mobile channels.

With over $6billion in revenue and 9000 employees, the coordination of Turner operations is complex and time sensitive. Prior to 2010, Turner was focused on the generation and delivery of content to its audiences. Each property within Turner competed with each other and measured its’ success independently, resulting in inconsistent data definitions, implementations and continual reinvention of best practices. Many hours were spent on ensuring data was correct and not on using that data to drive the business. In addition, there were inherent obstacles to fully leveraging web analytics data with other platform systems such as Ads or Mobile.

Due to the uniqueness of each property’s data, Turner was also unable to fully monetize its audiences across the Turner network across properties. The solution was not immediately obvious. Turner brought in Keystone Consulting to assess each property and how they were trying to use data to run their business. Out of that process came 3 recommendations; a new Turner-wide contract with Omniture to replace 18 silo contracts – resulting in 350% more functionality for same cost; the creation of global standards; and the creation of a centralized team of dedicated experts drawn from 3 organizations that would work with each property in a hub-and-spoke configuration.

Armed with estimates of operational inefficiencies and lost monetization opportunities, Turner gained the support of each business unit and Turner executives to create the Audience Data Best Practices Team (ADBP) with dedicated headcount and a new Omniture contract. Since its creation in Q1 2010, ADBP team has systematically standardized implementations for each Turner property for Omniture and rolled out company wide standards for comScore, Nielsen, Bango Mobile Web and Mobile Applications.

In addition, they have implemented site monitoring and audits to ensure compliance with the standards. In addition to technical implementation, Turner has also put in place processes that range from data definitions, technical deployment, QA and training. Turner has saved several million dollars a year in operational “data chasing”, increased time to market of each property and more importantly created a culture of driving business using audience data – a radical 180 shift in thinking across the enterprise in one short year. Based on the success of ADBP and its work in Online and Mobile, the model was now been extended to include all audience data sources including TV data.

By centralizing best practices through the ADBP team, Turner has shifted from spending time organizing and cleaning up data to using the data for Insights and Recommendations. Based on the work of the ADBP, Turner is now in the midst of rapidly building out its Audience Insights capabilities – joining Web Analytics data with Ad, Mobile and Third Party data to capitalize on new opportunities for both Ad Sales and the Brands. This work was party responsible for the creation of the DAA Media SIG, and Turner is now regarded as one of the leaders of all Media companies when it comes to understanding how to leverage our audience data.

• Valiton

Revolutionizing the way data is tracked and managed in complex environments (e.g. different CMS, different Videoplayers, Ajax, Gaming Flash applications, multi-domain and multi-country).

Via a capsuled technology using two-faced adapters data-delivering systems and data-receiving systems can be managed independently thus significantly lowering costs of tracking while boosting tracking performance, data quality and easing as well as speeding up implementations, upgrades and changes. The layer framework is running on two of our biggest clients - three more implementations are contracted / planned for Q1 2011.

• WiseWindow

Background: During the 2010 mid-term elections, House Majority and political power was at stake. Buzz around the elections was extremely high and voters were being more vocal than previous years. With the adaptation of social media, reactions and opinions spread quickly, affecting sentiment like never before.

Challenge: The Daily Beast needed a way to track and predict election results and share real-time updates with their readers. They recognized the flaws in traditional polling, as the feedback is not always candid and therefore, less accurate. The Daily Beast wanted honest, unsolicited opinions about more than what created election buzz. They wanted to track how voters felt about election events and if it would ultimately affect their votes. The Daily Best needed accurate, up-to-date data in order to remain a credible news source and stay ahead of their competitors.

Solution: So, the Daily Beast turned to WiseWindow and their Mass Opinion Business Intelligence (MOBI) tool to classify the billions of political comments made online and distil the information into a pre-defined, structured database.

The Daily Beast took advantage of MOBI’s highly predictive technology to measure consumer sentiment and behavioral intent around politicians, their views and platform and important political issues, providing a more honest and complete business intelligence profile than a traditional political survey. They called it the “Election Oracle.”

Outcomes: The “Election Oracle” accurately predicted 37 of the 38 Senate races and 98% of the house races. The editors at the Daily Beast got so much positive feedback from their readers, and increased pageviews that they agreed to partner with WiseWindow for the 2012 elections.

In addition, the Daily Beast is using WiseWindow technology to track buzz around the Academy Awards through their “Election Oracle.”

Where the Web Analytics Practice Goes from Here: This partnership shows how data providers can create business intelligence that is useful not just in purchasing, but in media and measuring significant events in real-time. MOBI pushes researchers to seek ways to measure honest sentiment through unsolicited comments and turn them into predictive tools. This partnership pushes all in the analytics industry to think beyond simply selling data to marketing and sales teams and consider how they can keep everyone more informed.

WiseWindow was able to pull extremely accurate political data by downloading and sorting the entire collective consciousness and closely following any changes to discover what people are thinking and saying about any given topic. WiseWindow was able to sort the online political commentary into domains, map the conversations to each domain and examine the social media evidence closely. WiseWindow uses cluster analysis to analyze not only what people were saying about campaigns, but the context in which it’s being said. This is the next generation of web analytics - business intelligence that utilizes smart data this is: relevant, continuous, comprehensive, granular, timely, and strategic.

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