2014 Awards for Excellence Finalists

Congratulations to the 2014 Awards for Excellence Finalists!

Votes for the 2014 DAA Awards for Excellence have been tallied and the results are in! Good luck to the following individuals and companies in the final round of judging.

Digital Analytics Rising Star (Individual)

• Allaedin Ezzedin, Manager, Digital Analytics, E-Nor

  Allaedin Ezzedin is my Digital Analytics superhero.  He's an industry veteran with more than 7 years of experience, currently managing a global team of analytics implementation specialists for the Digital Analytics powerhouse, E-Nor Inc.  Allaedin has led the successful deployment of analytics solutions for organizations ranging from Fortune 25 to data-driven start-ups.  He is always the first to jump onto a data challenge and look at it from every angle, examining every crevice, twisting and turning it making sure the perspective is legitimate, then squeezing, juicing, and extracting the most insight out of the data as possible.  From his passion for the latest tools; his innovative ideas in code, strategies; his definitions of efficient best-practices and implementation; communication of data into clear tangible reports; and translation of metrics into insights and goals for executives and marketers - any interaction with Allaedin will have you seeing his visions and dreams of bridging the gap between business requirements and technical capabilities.  Allaedin tirelessly aids the marketing community get the most out of their Digital Analytics experience, actively participating in industry conferences, beta testing new features and functionality for the latest tools, and communicating customer feedback for future enhancements.  His blog posts and theories are widely read and known amongst avid Analytics ninjas.  As if that's not enough, he is the founder of CampaignAlyzer.com, a tool I use frequently.  CampaignAlyzer is a web-based application that acts as a central repository platform where organizations can store their marketing campaign values in one database. Marketing agencies and digital marketers across organizations now have the ability to collaborate in tagging various online and offline campaigns, and ensure consistency in their marketing campaign tagging.  I hope you will consider him for the rising star, only cause a "digital analytics rising sun" isn't an available option. 

  Certifications:

  • Certified Web Analyst (Digital Analytics Association)
  • Google Analytics Individual Qualification (Google)

  DAA Interview with Jim Sterne:

  • http://www.datadrivenbusiness.com/daa-interview-with-jim-sterne-allaedin-ezzedin

  Videos:

  • Alice in Marketing Wonderland http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GO-RDY6l4rQ

  Social Profiles: 

  • LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/in/allaedinezzedin/
  • Twitter @AllaedinEzzedin 
  • Google+ https://plus.google.com/+AllaedinEzzedin

  Personal Site:   www.allaedinezzedin.com

  Recommendations:
  “Allaedin has been a driving force behind the implementation of Google Analytics on SonyEntertainmentNetwork.com. He has a deep understanding of web analytics and has written educational articles on best practices and new features. He has the unique ability to explain complex systems to unfamiliar audiences. Furthermore, Allaedin is always available and willing to help. Allaedin has exceeded my expectations on project deliverables and I look forward to continuing to work with him.”
  Amanda Thompson | Online Marketing Manager | Sony 

  “Allaedin is super bright, personable and consistently delivers amazing results. His knowledge of the Analytics space, especially Google Analytics, is awesome and enables him to delight his customers.”
  Avinash Kaushik | Author, Blogger, Analytics Evangelist | Google  

  “Allaedin implemented Urchin for us. He is very reliable and punctual. He is very nice to work with. He is also flexible, since he was able to accommodate last min changes.”
  Andre Barata | Project Manager | Agilent Tehcnologies 

  “Allaedin is super sharp. He really knows his Google Analytics, and I highly recommend him as an analytics consultant, due to his incredibly thorough knowledge of analytics.”
  Donovan Rittenbach | Web Manager | California Academy of Sciences 

  “I`d like to Thank Allaedin for a great, interesting and useful seminar about Campaign tagging in Google Analytics and using Campaignalyzer. Our audience learned a lot about how simple and fast working with campaigns can potentially be, and I hope that someday this app will have Russian interface so our residents could use it freely.”
  Iraida Yudintseva | SEM Complex 

  “Whilst we have never physically met I find Allaedin to be extremely knowledgeable about Google Analytics. Better still, he is great at sharing his knowledge and ideas to benefit the analytics community. I am an avid follower of his work and reader of his fantastic blog posts.” Nikki Rae | Web Conversion Specialist | Fresh Egg

• Valerie Lambert, Digital Analytics Manager, American Medical Association

  Two and a half years ago I was hired as the Web Analytics Manager for the publishing side of the American Medical Association. The work I did for our group lead the corporate side of the AMA to decide last year that it too needed someone to take control of their digital analytics as well. As I worked with them to craft the job description and determine a salary range, I became quite concerned. I knew the market and they were asking for a significant amount of experience and skills with a salary range that didn't measure up. Not surprisingly they struggled and I was sure they'd need to give one way or another. When they told me they had hired someone from within their market research department and she had very little web analytics experience I was very worried. Looking back now, I shouldn't have been as the individual they hired is a not just a rising star, but a rock star. Valerie dove into the role head first; while the expectations placed on her were enormous, and some of the business leaders she served were at times unfair and even condescending, Valerie did not waiver. She consumed every digital analytics resource she could find, and began attending every conference she could, even paying her own way when her budget was trimmed. She asked questions relentlessly but with such genuine passion and desire that you couldn't help but want to share everything you could and root for her success. As notes from her superior, Nick Abruzzo, and the two consultants she worked closest with, Adam McArdell and Tamika Braxton, will attest, she has overcome a truckload of obstacles to build a fantastic foundation and culture of digital analytics within the AMA. Early on I was happy to play the role of teacher and mentor, but in this short time she has unquestionably become a trusted partner who I often look to for input and perspective on my own projects. She inspires me to continue to learn and grow and I'm just hoping I can keep up with her in the future! The impact of what she has built (the largest custom google analytics implementation ever worked on by our consulting group Stratigent) is just now beginning to be felt and the executives are ecstatic. Meetings where she had been allocated 10 minutes to quickly review "metrics" are turning into an hour of discussion around the new insights she's brought. She now manages the tagging and analytics for over 57 web properties, many with diverse goals and objectives. This list is reduced from the original 72 due to her work with Portfolio Review team which used her analysis to help guide where the AMA should focus their efforts and resources, and where they should scale back. And finally, as Nick mentions below, in less than a year she's already been promoted from analyst to Manager. If that isn't a rising star I don't know what is! 

  Supporting Material #1 (Nick Abruzzo - Vice President, Digital Strategy & Services, AMA): 

  • In terms of background I recruited Valerie in April of last year from the market research department within the AMA.  While Val did not have significant experience in digital analytics – I actively recruited her due to the quality of her previous work in market research and her passion for digital media.   After joining the digital strategy and services team Val took the helm in driving the enterprise-wide implementation of Google Analytics.   Not only did Val have to learn the various and complex nuances of digital analytics on the job, but she also had to gather and understand the requirements for the project from a very diverse group of internal stakeholders.   There were a total of 97 requirements that were gathered and implemented which resulted in over 1500 lines of code added to the corporate website.  Each requirement was aggressively reviewed and tested after implementation.  Stratigent (Google’s preferred implementation vendor) shared that the AMA’s implementation was the most complicated they’ve worked on to date.  In addition, they indicated Val has done an excellent job leading the effort as well.  The custom implementation of Google Analytics was delivered at the beginning of Q4 and the Membership, eCommerce, IT, and Enterprise Communications & Marketing teams have started to actively use the reports produced within GA. These reports have provided important insights in online visitor behavior – which are driving numerous changes to our online applications.   Not only was the GA implemented successfully, but Val also earned the trust and respect of her demanding internal clients. Overall, her client satisfaction rating was a 4.4 out of 5 – due to her tenacity, customer service focus and dedication to digital analytics.   Beyond the implementation, last year Val consistently demonstrated her ability to bring best practices to the role – and as a result, has improved our ability to gather and analyze digital analytics.  The best example of this is her leadership in managing Digital Analytics Round Table (DART).  Val has managed this task force, on her own – and has driven internal alignment on critical subjects with other analysts in the AMA. Through the DART Val has:   
  • led the adoption of a new social media publishing platform (Google Wildfire), to improve social analytics;
  • helped identify a new approach for tracking email;
  • led the development of a Hypothesis Library – to ensure we share what we know in terms of digital analytics. effectively across the organization.   It’s due to these accomplishments that I promoted Val to Digital Analytics Manager at the end of 2013.  

  In closing, given her promotion, and the progress she’s made in moving the AMA’s digital analytics capabilities forward I recommend that she be given the Rising Star Award by the Digital Analytics Association. 

  Supporting Material #2 (Adam McArdell - Senior Technical Consultant, Stratigent):

  • I’ve been working as a technical consultant in the web analytics space for roughly 5.5 years, and much of the time, the data collection process is a black box to clients that just puts the appropriate data into the tool to be reported.  What impressed me most with Val was her willingness to get her hands a bit dirty and work with me to better understand what was going on “behind the scenes”.  We sat together and ran through a laundry list of detailed requirements, testing them live to see what needed to be tweaked.  She took the time to get a feel for what some of the technical challenges were and how the solutions to those challenges are developed.  It isn’t often that I find business/marketing folks who care to know the details, and I realized that it wasn’t that she loved JavaScript as much as I did, she just cares about the analytics program.  She doesn’t just want to report the numbers, she wants to understand the story behind the numbers and use them to improve the online and marketing experiences.  She understands that analytics isn’t about reporting that total visits are up, so things are looking good.  It’s about identifying why those visits are up and utilizing that knowledge to make them go up even more.  Her enthusiasm and desire to get meaningful analysis from the data that is being reported is not only inspiring, but also a breath of fresh air.  Her passion for her work extends beyond her own company, as she has told me about multiple occasions where she has told others about all of the cool and interesting custom reporting she is able to do, helping others understand that there is so much more they can track, and so many reasons why they should pursue more meaningful data than a simple base tag can provide.  Val is truly a shining example of what an analyst should be to help the industry as a whole grow and prosper, and she hasn’t even been in her role for a year.

  Supporting Material #3 (Tamika Braxton - Sr. Digital Analytics Consultant, Stratigent): 

  Within an hour of meeting Val I was beyond impressed, I was speechless. I knew I had met someone that was not only a natural in the field, but also had that extra “x” factor that set her apart from 99% of those you meet in the industry.  That’s saying a lot considering I’m a consultant and have been in the industry almost 5 years – and worked in corporations for 10 years (i.e. I’ve worked with a LOT of people!). Anyone that has ever been the first and only Web Analyst in a large corporation understands the unique challenges, obstacles, and complexities that come with such a role. When I met Val she had been in her role for only a few months but her breadth of understanding was astonishing and vast. Not only did she “get” web analytics strategy, best practices, analysis, and reporting, but also it was clear that she had a solid understanding of the technical intricacies and implications. In addition to that, in her short-time in her role she had already helped several stakeholders (all levels of the company) understand the importance of web analytics, embrace it, and evolve in their thinking of it -  making her an undeniable agent of change in moving the organization into a more data-driven direction.  Val has such a passion, phenomenal personality, and natural gift for not only “doing” web analytics, but being a leader in the space that I have no doubt she will continue to rise (rapidly), and become a very well respected and recognized presence in the industry. There’s no limits to what Val can do, she’s amazing.

  View Valerie's LinkedIn profile.

• Brian Lugtu, Senior Analyst, Adobe

  Brian Lugtu works at Adobe and works on the Analytics and Optimization team.  Note that this team is part of the GMO (i.e. Global Marketing Organization) within Adobe and is *NOT* part of the "Ominture" Business.  Our team is the internal Digital Analytics team that analyzes Adobe.com for our business stakeholders.  Note that I, Andrew Bakonyi, run the Analytics and Optimization team.  Brian Lugtu reports into a manager that in turn reports into me.  We have about 20 Digital/Web Analysts throughout Adobe.  For this award I polled the entire Digital/Web Analytics community at Adobe and by far Brian Lugtu was the person that best exemplified a "Digital Analytics Rising Star".  Note that Brian used to work at Walmart.com as a Digital Analyst before coming to Adobe.  Here are some key reasons why people voted for him:

  • He is responsible for providing Digital Analytics insights for the ecommerce team which is by far the most demanding team at Adobe. He has consistently been able to meet their incredibly high expectations while at the same time build really solid working relationships.
  • The ecommerce team (Rob Giglio, VP & Eric Cox, Sr. Director) awarded him with their "AWESOME AWARD".  Here are the details:  Our team votes every month to recognize someone within our organization who has been going above and beyond to help drive our success.  For the month of August a number of folks voted to recognize you, as an extended team member, for all that you do to help improve our ability to analyze and understand our online business.  Your hard work and constant willingness to partner with us on difficult issues is truly appreciated.  Here is the quote submitted to nominate you, and what we shared with our worldwide team yesterday during the meeting:  Brian Lugtu: is a Senior Analyst in the Marketing Insights and Operations Team.  He is our GO-TO person for any web analytics question and has always helped to analyze the impact of projects like Cayenne, or enhancements like launching AMEX in Japan.  But most recently, Brian was a key participant in helping us deep-dive the EMEA online business to identify opportunities for conversion improvement.   And – along with being responsible for publishing the weekly “Last Touch” report that gives insight into how our Marketing spend is performing for us, he also recently partnered with our team to create a “conversion dashboard” that helps our sales team track performance of the website and conversion funnel, so that we’re better equipped to make data-driven decisions.  One of the best things about working with Brian is his attitude.  No matter how complicated the ask, he always has a smile on his face when he says “yes, we can get you that data”.
  • Brian has begun actively participating in the Digital Analytics community.  This year he attended the DAA Annual Awards Dinner, participated in XChange, and also developed close relationships with other industry practitioners at Adobe Summit.
  • Here are a number of other deliverables that people cited when voting for Brian:
  • SiteCatalyst "Reboot": Brian did a very thorough UAT for the SiteCatalyst Reboot making sure that all of the detailed ecommerce variables and events were correctly tagged across all of the Adobe "Stores" (i.e. US, UK, Germany, France, Japan, Spain, etc. more than 50 properties in all).  Brian uncovered several bugs that were completely missed by everyone else on the team which is a testament to his thoroughness, persistence, dependability, and the high bar that he sets for himself.  - another Senior Analyst colleague of Brian Lugtu
  • ECommerce Funnel Reports : Brian worked very hard to create an ecommerce funnel dashboard which helped stakeholders get insights into the funnel performance on every step of the customer journey.  The report leverages 10 different Discover projects and integrates them along with offline transaction data into Excel and provides users with a dozen different filters that allow them to drill down and do dynamic comparisons on the exact views that they need to optimize their business. - another Senior Analyst colleague of Brian Lugtu
  • Ecommerce Training: Brian pulled together a customized training program tailored for the specific needs of the ecommerce team.  It not only taught them the fundamentals of how to use SiteCatalyst but used specific ecommerce 'use cases' to ensure that the content was relevant for the team.  He researched the most used reports and the areas of greatest interest to the ecommerce team. Finally, he delivered this training to the ecommerce team himself. - Rob Liebscher, Sr. Manager and direct manager of Brian Lugtu  - Collaboration: Brian was also considered the GO-TO person to help onboard several new Analysts to Adobe this year. Further, he even went "above and beyond" his duties to help the Testing team better analyze their tests by using SiteCatalyst.  Here is a direct quote from a colleague:    "Having worked in Adobe Consulting for 5 years, I can say that Lugtu is one of the most knowledgeable people in terms of SiteCatalyst and Discover. He helped me analyze a very complex ecommerce test by showing me how to pull all the metrics and create custom segments for everything we wanted to track. I owe all my Discover knowledge that I've gained in the past year to him." - another Senior Analyst of Testing colleague of Brian Lugtu
  • Marketing Channels Report: Brian single handedly re-created a report that shows the performance of Adobe's Marketing Channels.  The previous report was static and was distributed three weeks in arrears so Stakeholders had stopped using it.  However, given the spend that Adobe puts into Paid Media it was critical to understand the performance of our Marketing Channels which was creating a long list of Ad Hoc requests each week.  Brian volunteered to re-engineer the report and created a dynamic Excel report complete with filters that Stakeholders could use to zero on in the exact information they needed for their own needs.  Moreover, this report utilized several different data sources (i.e. SiteCatalyst, Discover, SAP, HANA, etc.) for both online and offline data yet Brian was able to figure out a way to automate the report so that it could be distributed Sunday night in time for the critical sales meetings that occur on Monday mornings.  The VP of Ecommerce, Rob Giglio, considers this report to be one of his most critical sources of insight and waits for it each Sunday evening.

  NOTE: I would love to supply examples of Brian's work but unfortunately the data is highly confidential to Adobe.  Needless to say, his reports and dashboards are considered the 'gold standard' and are used by other analysts as a template for their own deliverables.  Finally, and most importantly, Brian is not only impeccable when it comes to WHAT he contributes but also HOW he contributes:

  • Broadest Skillset: Not only does Brian know all of the details of SiteCatalyst and Discover but he is also an expert in SQL and is able to query Adobe's SAP/HANA database to pull in offline data to supplement his Digital Analytics reports, dashboards, and analysis.
  • Attitude: In the highly detailed world of Analytics where data can sometimes be used as a political weapon Brian has distinguished himself as a trusted advisor.  Everyone at Adobe, both his teammates and his stakeholders, actively seek out his opinions.  He is usually the 'last word' on the most difficult analytics issues and yet he is very humble and is an absolutely great team player.  He is dependable and manages an exhaustive queue of demands with ease.

  Brian truly exemplifies all of the attributes of a DAA Rising Star.

  View Brian's LinkedIn profile.

• Rick McFarland, VP, Corporate Data Services, Hearst Corporation

  Rick is pioneering the use of audience data to drive new content experiences and insights across a diverse set of media businesses.  The ability to identify and aggregate the data effectively has been one challenge that was conquered. The focus on consumer insights and bringing a real connection between content and audience through data has been a breakthrough.

  View Rick's LinkedIn profile.

• Krista Seiden, Product Marketing Manager, Google

  Krista has been leading the charge to overhaul analytics and optimization within a number of Google's business units. In one short year at Google she has revamped the analytics implementation for a large number of sites, including the introduction of tag management, introduced more detailed analytics tracking to better answer business questions and made testing a large-scale practice by building an internal testing platform and scaling testing efforts by more than 1500%. In addition, Krista is a frequent speaker at industry events not only in the United States, but around the world. She is a frequent contributor to industry blogs and the Twitter #measure community, a mentor for the Analysis Exchange, and an active member of the industry as a Co-Chair of the DAA San Francisco chapter. With what she has achieved in just a short few years, we can expect great things from her in the coming years.

  View Krista's LinkedIn profile.

Practitioner of the Year (Individual)

• Autumn Arbury, Grp Mgr, Web Rptg/Analysis - Global Marketing Operations, Microsoft

  Whether driving day-to-day best practices around taxonomy development or instrumentation and reporting within Microsoft or while addressing the DAA audience at a regional meeting, Autumn demands attention. Why, does she demand this positive attention, you may ask?  We, in Digital Marketing, pride ourselves on creating new ways to gain insight into a customer, into a visitor, but sometimes we struggle to make that insight available to others in consumable ways and/or taking the next step and making that information actionable in a way that effects our businesses in a positive light. Autumn has a way of doing both while driving everything from acquisition to conversion!   

  As the leader of a group of Senior Digital Analysts utilizing a suite of digital marketing solutions, Autumn provides a platform for various groups within Microsoft to gain insight and to begin to understand consumer behavior on the microsoft.com (MSCOM) websites. Based upon the outcome of such analysis/findings, the business groups within Microsoft create new and positive online interactions with site visitors.  

  By producing such analysis, reporting, and optimization recommendations that drive digital marketing activity to be relevant and impactful to Microsoft's business (such as generating sales online, trial downloads, partner referrals, and social sharing activity), Autumn plays a strategic role in allowing Microsoft to make their intelligence actionable and repeatable across multiple business groups (connecting the visitor journey across Microsoft properties): ultimately leading to a better experience for the visitor and ultimately revenue for the company.  

  It is no easy task to create standards within such a behemoth as Microsoft. It is no easy task to coordinate a single view of visitor. It is no easy task to tie together a plethora of technologies. It is no easy task to create a mechanism for the dissemination of data and the recommendation process for envoking change. That challenge does not slow Autumn down. She continues to provide visibility and recommendation at senior levels within her business and be the go-to-person for solutions that drive internal services within the Microsoft environment - becoming a model for others within the company.

  View Autumn's LinkedIn profile.

• David Booth, Co-founder & Partner, Cardinal Path

  I would like to nominate David Booth for “Practitioner of the Year”. It’s a big title and one which I’m confident personifies the devotion that this nominee has had both to the industry and his craft in 2013 and for many years prior.  

  David is a stand out for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that he quite possibly trained more people on how to use Google to grow their business than any other person in the world, travelling to countless locations across the globe and sharing his passion and knowledge with others. 

  Who is David Booth? He is a dedicated and passionate analytics and digital marketing entrepreneur and evangelist, who now works at Cardinal Path – a company he co-founded when he merged his previous firm (Webshare) with two others in 2011.   

  Over this past year alone, David has:

  • Spoken at multiple conferences on digital marketing and analytics in the US and Europe;
  • Been a featured speaker for Google Engage, keynoting events in Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Norway, Japan, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, the Netherlands, Belgium, the US, the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Argentina, Hong Kong, and Greece (to name a few);
  • Published a monthly column on analytics for MediaPost.com
  • Taught a masters-level course on web analytics and online marketing at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.
  • Wrote and recorded an SEO Fundamentals as well as updated to his popular Lynda.com course on Google AdWords with a focus on measurement and analysis;
  • Toured in support of the book he co-authored, Display Advertising: An Hour a Day (Wiley, 2012);
  • Been a prolific sharer of information to the thousands of people who have him in their G+ circles, and follow him via Twitter.
  • As a founder and executive team member with Cardinal Path, helped to grow the business by +50% in 2013  

  He did all this while working to support clients to deliver on aggressive goals, including Mercedes-Benz USA, NPR, Merck, Electronic Arts, Chevron, Papa John’s, Universal Music Group, etc.  As a Senior Partner, he has been instrumental at setting and driving the evolution of the company, working with clients across five continents in web analytics and business intelligence, statistical analysis and testing, technology selection and deployment, and online and search marketing. 

  A core belief of David’s is to share knowledge and give back to the community that helped him to succeed (and you know this to be true if you’ve ever emailed him a question at 2am and received a reply at 2:15 am!).   Sharing his knowledge and passion for all things digital marketing and analytics related is evident in the courses he’s authored and recorded for Lynda.com (Search Engine Optimization Fundamentals, Google AdWords Essential Training and Google Website Optimizer Essential Training), or helping others as a technical editor (e.g. Performance Marketing with Google Analytics and Google Analytics Essential Training).  He has also trained tens of thousands of people over the years as one of the original Google AdWords and Google Analytics certified instructors via Google’s Seminars for Success (now Cardinal Path Training). 

  For someone whose obvious love of this industry permeates everything he does, it’s worth noting how he got his start in digital marketing. Where did David’s passion for digital marketing come from? Many years ago, he worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala and applied his skills to promote local Fair Trade and Eco-Tourism industries, setting up websites that enabled 20 local non-profits to engage in e-commerce with markets in North America and Western Europe as well as receive grants from around the world. A globe-trotter even before he became one of the world’s most well-respected authorities on using Google and analytics for digital marketing, he spent part of his youth working his way through countries like South Africa by helping people with their computer problems. It’s in this same spirit of knowledge-sharing, a desire to help others, and a sense of being ahead of the curve that David approaches his career and his life.  

  By any objective measure, this is a body of work, and a year of achievements, that clearly distinguishes David from among his peers – even those as accomplished as surely the other nominees are.  It is, in my view, what merits him being nominated as Practitioner of the Year and worthy of consideration of your vote.

  View David's LinkedIn profile.

  View the supporting materials for David Booth.

• Nancy Koons, Senior Manager, Web Analytics, Vail Resorts Inc.

  Nancy has accepted invitations to share her knowledge at industry conferences, and been recognized by industry veterans for the quality of information she shares.  In 2013 she shared her tips for analytics success at the Adobe Summit, and social media measurement tips and practices at eMetrics SF.  

  Nancy has led the digital analytics team at Vail Resorts for several years.  Over the past year, she has led a transformation of the utilization of web data within the business.  Her team’s internal clients (multiple groups spanning 8 ski resorts and a large corporate organization) are using web data to help predict and forecast business, inform the timing and content of campaigns to granular segments of customers, and driving strategic decisions across the marketing organization. Nancy has led projects to ensure the organization can optimize both desktop and mobile guest experiences, including the 4th generation of EpicMix, Vail Resorts’ on mountain digital application.

  View Nancy's LinkedIn profile.

  View the supporting materials for Nancy Koons.

• Jesse Nichols, North America Channel Sales Manager, Google Analytics Premium, Google

  Jesse Nichols has been absolutely instrumental in advancing the field of digital analytics for countless companies over the last 7 years at Google, with this year topping them all.  His influence is literally global as he has shared his deep knowledge, insight and expertise in not only the Google Analytics product, but with digital analytics at large, for individuals and companies across the world.  Jesse has a solid grasp on how to make digital measurement practical, useful, relevant and actionable, cutting through the BS.  He has spread his knowledge by teaching hundreds (if not thousands) of individuals and organizations how to effectively leverage analytics for themselves and their clients, so that both customer and organization are effectively better served.  Jesse actually understands what people need and want to get from their analytics and is brilliant at leading them on the shortest and best path to get there.  Simply put, DAA needs to recognize this man, that is all.

  View Jesse's LinkedIn profile.

• Sasha Verbitsky, Digital Analytics & Testing Director, Abercrombie & Fitch

  Over the last two years, Sasha built one of the top in class Digital Analytics practices at Abercrombie & Fitch. From “ground zero” state of no dedicated resources and out of the box, unaudited SiteCatalyst implementation and no data warehouse, A&F Analytics rapidly evolved and matured.
  
  Sasha built a strong team, covering Digital Analytics, Implementation, Testing & Optimization, and Customer Analytics.  A&F now has a mature, robust, well-documented multi-brand, multi-site, multi-platform (with separate Mobile sites and native apps) implementation. They compiled an excellent analytics tool kit that now includes VOC, advanced & predictive analytics, TMS, in page analytics, session replay, multiple social analytics and sentiment tools, testing platform and program in addition to the core web analytics platforms, with most pieces integrated in the last year. Most of this data, including click stream, is consolidated in the data warehouse and A&F now mines for “customer” and “life time” level insights across multiple channels. In addition to technology and people, A&F Analytics put in place data governance and analytics delivery process to support and measure various business processes and decisions. This combination of people, tech, and process enables A&F Analytics team to fully support and power rapid growth of ecommerce business by delivering numerous high value “golden nuggets” of insights, activating multiple marketing programs and initiatives, testing and enhancing many features on the site and parts of user experience.
  
  Outside of A&F, Sasha regularly attends (and have spoken at) Columbus WAW events and various local “analytics industry nights” and educational events (OSU; Fisher business school), where he shares industry insights and best practices with colleagues and students.

  View Sasha's LinkedIn profile.

Most Influential Industry Contributor (Individual)

• Justin Cutroni, Analytics Evangelist, Google

  Justin is an integral part of the digital analytics space. Even prior to joining as the Analytics Evangelist at Google, Justin was considered a leading expert in leveraging (and pushing!) Google Analytics to deliver maximum value. Since joining Google, Justin and his team have continued to develop the product to one of two leading solutions in the industry. Justin also helped lead the effort to launch Analytics Academy - an online learning portal for digital analytics and Google Analytics. With 145,000+ students, in 170 countries, it helped build skills in an industry that needs more workers. If you are in the analytics industry and have a Google Analytics question, you know to check Justin's blog even before the Google Analytics help section. In addition, Justin is a frequent speaker at industry events in the United States and around the world and a champion for our industry.

  View Justin's LinkedIn profile.

• Larry Freed

  Larry Freed is viewed as the preeminent thought leader in customer analytics. In addition to leading ForeSee – a highly successful predictive analytics company whose methodology supports the decisions of 60 of the top 100 retailers, 200 government agencies and departments, six of the top 10 banks and more – Larry last year published his second industry-changing book, “Innovating Analytics – How The Next Generation of Net Promoter Can Increase Sales and Drive Business Results.”  

  The book illustrates how, as president and CEO of ForeSee, he is leading the industry charge in reforming the most important component of doing business in today’s rapidly evolving customer-centric ecosystem by focusing on the customer experience, as it needs to be considered today. His book makes a convincing case for a new standard of measuring customer satisfaction: ForeSee’s latest innovation, the Word-of-Mouth-Index℠ (WoMI℠): The Next Generation Net Promoter Score (NPS®). The book details how WoMI dramatically evolves the long-used NPS and builds a new foundation upon which organizations can best understand customers. After 18 months of testing with more than 300 companies, ForeSee’s research showed that the decade-old NPS overstated word-of-mouth detractors by an average of 270%. The research further demonstrated that WoMI accurately captures the voices of passive and active promoters and detractors to give organizations a complete picture of what customers are saying, rather than relying on an incomplete view with NPS. 

  In short, while under Larry stewardship, ForeSee has created a predictive analytic methodology that is geared towards elevating greater customer satisfaction to achieve business success. ForeSee’s analytics show organizations whether individual channels are supporting purchases, triggering purchases or even undermining strategies in other channels. The result of these insights gives organizations a complete picture of today’s information-driven, multi-channel and multi-device consumer.  

  Aside from WoMI, Larry last year oversaw the introduction of several other influential product solutions aimed at assisting organizations with the precise and reliable measurement of customer satisfaction in order to compete in today’s multi-device, multichannel world.  

  In October, Larry shepherded the introduction of the ForeSee® cx360℠ platform, a multichannel customer experience analytics platform that provides cutting-edge capabilities that help executives improve business results. The cx360℠ platform is powered by precise voice-of-customer measurement, predictive analytics, and ForeSee’s proprietary methodology.  

  Earlier in 2013, to help organizations capitalize on the growth of the mobile channel, ForeSee introduced, under Larry’s leadership, cx Replay for Mobile as the first software-as-a-service solution that visually demonstrates how consumers engage on mobile sites and apps – helping companies improve their mobile customer experience. It brings visitor feedback to life with video replay of real mobile sessions so organizations can rapidly identify and resolve issues.  

  Larry’s industry influence can be further seen in his first book: “Managing Forward: How to Move from Measuring the Past to Measuring the Future.” The book offers Larry’s views on how organizations can use forward-looking customer experience analytics to predict customer behavior to build loyalty, recommendations and financial success. 

  In 2013 Larry clearly demonstrated his unique understanding of the changing nature of the consumer landscape and recognition that businesses require a reliable method to measure the multichannel customer experience. His leadership of ForeSee in the customer analytics industry makes Larry an ideal candidate for the Digital Analytics Association’s Most Influential Industry Contributor award.
  Supporting URLs:

  • ForeSee website: http://www.foresee.com

  • Larry Freed's second book, published in 2013, “Innovating Analytics – How The Next Generation of Net Promoter Can Increase Sales and Drive Business Results.”

  • Larry's first book, published in 2011,  “Managing Forward: How to Move from Measuring the Past to Measuring the Future.”

  • Forbes article that looks at ForeSee's predictive analytics: http://www.forbes.com/sites/barbarathau/2013/04/22/can-predictive-analytics-help-retailers-dodge-a-j-c-penney-style-debacle/

  • Harvard Business Review article, written by Larry, on listening to customers: blogs.hbr.org/2013/04/are-you-listening-to-your-most/

  • USA Today article in which Larry is quoted extensively on the role of mobile in the consumer holiday shopping experience: www.usatoday.com/story/money/personalfinance/2012/11/15/mobile-tablet-smartphone-holiday-shopping/1700427/

  • New York Times article that features Larry's views on retail strategies and their impact on shoppers: www.nytimes.com/2013/01/28/business/new-online-price-trackers-alert-shoppers-to-good-deals.html

  • Wall Street Journal article on ForeSee’s customer satisfaction research: blogs.wsj.com/corporate-intelligence/2012/12/27/for-happy-online-customers-amazon-remains-king/

  View Larry's LinkedIn profile.

  View the supporting materials for Larry Freed.

• Christopher Reynolds, Vice President, Data & Marketing Analytics, Condé Nast  

  Christopher Reynolds is vice president of data and marketing analytics at Condé Nast, home to some of the world’s most celebrated media brands. Christopher leads a team of 40+ research experts, digital analysts, and database managers who strive to provide the premier brands of Condé Nast and their advertising clients with the most accurate and actionable insight on consumer behaviors across all media.  

  In his earlier years, Christopher put his analytics prowess to work leading Kraft’s international web analytics strategy and execution for more than 100 brand websites. He defined the marketing strategy, including search and display media buying, for kraftfoods.com (now kraftrecipes.com), a top online recipe destination and the largest CPG marketer-owned content website. He also led the strategy for monetization of the Kraft CRM program, which included online and email ad sales, syndication, and strategic partnerships.  

  Christopher is an active industry influencer and is regularly engaged in various speaking opportunities at top analytics conferences and industry events. He has received many accolades for his unique contributions, and in October 2013 was honored by ‘The FOLIO: 100’ as one of the most innovative professionals in magazine media. Christopher has also been named Adobe Marketer of the Month, has recognized by his own company as the 2011 Condé Nast Corporate Person of the Year for Research & Insights, and recently as a 2013 Condé Nast Collaborator of the Year. He has also served on several leadership committees, including the Association of Magazine Media, Interactive Advertising Bureau, Online Publishers Association, Media Ratings Council, American Association of Advertising Agencies and Advertising Research Foundation.  

  Upon his arrival at Condé Nast, Christopher led the magazine industry in the development of the framework for the measurement of digital editions of magazines on tablet and mobile devices. This framework was eventually adopted across the publishing industry and paved the way for the measurement standards developed and promoted by the Association of Magazine Media.

  Most recently, and perhaps most notably, Christopher developed the data strategy behind Condé Nast Catalyst: Audience by Design—an audience segmentation and profiling strategy for enhanced monetization across the Condé Nast digital network. This new product exceeded revenue expectations in its first year and has transformed the way the company engages clients by matching Condé Nast’s affluent and influential audiences with brand advertisers to reach consumer types like high-spending moms and highly social singles. While audience segmentation by publishers isn’t new, Condé Nast’s segments are distinctive in their level of sophistication, allowing extraction of consumer insights from its network of 450,000 "preferred subscribers" to better segment the 55 million subscribers of titles like Vogue and GQ. Understanding how to implement and fully leverage the advanced analytics technology that provides highly qualified audience segments is what has set Christopher apart and put his career trajectory on hyperdrive. It’s fair to expect amazing things from Christopher in the future.

  View Christopher's LinkedIn profile.

  View the supporting material for Christopher Reynolds.

• Viswanath "Sri" Srikanth, Strategy Architect, Big Data and Analytics, IBM

  "Sri" has been a quiet force behind the scenes in what will eventually be one of the most far-reaching shifts in our industry. His work in founding and chairing the W3C Customer Experience Digital Data Standard group (http://www.w3.org/community/custexpdata) has been instrumental in turning what was long an aspirational idea into reality: standardizing the collection and analysis of digital visitor and customer data for business users of all kinds. 

  Since announcing the project, recruiting vendor partners and outlining the goals, as chairman, Sri has been a singular force of leadership to advance this often-tedious and thankless task of synthesizing different viewpoints and ideas into a mutually acceptable and cohesive standard which could ultimately revolutionize how digital data is collected, shared and analyzed. All of the participating firms and individuals deserve credit, but Sri in particular has been an essential element of this valuable step forward for the #measure community.

  Sri demonstrated outstanding initiative and leadership in driving the W3C initiative related to the Customer Experience Digital Data Layer open standard.  Sri developed the concept for this standard after learning more about IBM Digital Analytics and the nature of javascript tagging in general.  He had to recruit and bring together a wide group of vendors and customers to refine and drive the initiative through the W3C process and did so successfully.

  View Sri's LinkedIn profile.

• Chris Zakharoff, Marketect, Ensighten

  Chris Zakharoff is probably the most influential person in our industry that the mainstream anaytics community has never heard of. What makes Chris so influential and what sets him apart, is that while most of the other nominees in this category share high level concepts and strategies, Chris provides recommendations that is supported by working code. Code that solves enterprise optimization problems and enable new optimization capabilities. 

  Within the mature Fortune 500 enterprise optimization programs, there is a good chance that they are likely leveraging some of Chris recommendations, if not his actual hand written code. The same could be said regarding many testing platforms (he practically re-wrote Adobe Target), and optimization consulting firms big and small. 

  Whether you need to integrate, augment, or extend your testing platform and capabilities, Chris can likely identify the right solution and write the code to get it done.  

  I personally know dozens of enterprise optimization program leaders who speak with extreme admiration and respect for the quality and impact of the work Chris has done and how he has truly advanced our optimization industry more than any list of testing best practices or blog post of what to test first on a shopping cart. For those of us experienced in the field, we recognize that what Chris brings to our industry is far more valuable. 

  I hope that all the veteran optimization leaders in the DAA recognize Chris' work and vote for him as the most influential industry contributor in 2013.

  View Chris' LinkedIn profile.

New Technology of the Year (Group)

• Anametrix's News and Entertainment Media

  Anametrix is the only marketing analytics platform to combine real-time performance feedback with multichannel predictive modeling for comprehensive insights, and powerful decision support.  By collecting, analyzing and making sense out of data from virtually any source, Anametrix enables marketers to act on multichannel data to drive revenue and profitability. Our real-time dashboards present a unified view of paid, owned, and earned-media effectiveness to assess marketing effectiveness.  Our next-generation analytics platform also allows marketers to perform diagnostic analysis, drill-down segmentation and predictive modeling to improve campaign results, lower acquisition costs, drive loyalty, increase ad monetization and expand customer lifetime value.    

  In October 2013, Anametrix commercially launched Anametrix for News and Entertainment Media, specifically designed for the media vertical.  Anametrix for News and Entertainment Media takes the guesswork out of business decisions with real-time applied analytics. The cloud-based Anametrix solution can:

  • Consolidate and analyze data from print, broadcast, online, social and mobile properties.
  • Combine, real-time information with in-depth reporting and analysis, including predictive and statistical modeling.
  • Deliver in-the-moment analytics on your readers, viewers and listeners.
  • Reveal opportunities to make more advertising, premium content and subscription revenue. 

  Designed for both ease of use and flexibility, the Anametrix technology platform was built from the ground up to power a wide range of marketing analytics capabilities – from streaming data collection, web and mobile analytics, to real-time queries, segmentation, dashboards, reporting and predictive analytics.  This common platform promotes integration and consistency, differentiating Anametrix from other vendors who have developed or acquired their tools separately and attempted to cobble them together.  With a completely unified cloud –based analytics platform like Anametrix, users can combine and correlate information across myriad enterprise data sources, and leverage the power of real-time data collection.  The output is right-time results returned completely in context with accuracy and relevancy across all access layers and delivery methods.  Anametrix is the only analytics platform to natively combine real-time marketing performance feedback with multichannel predictive modeling for comprehensive insights, and powerful decision support.  

  Anametrix powers News organizations ‘editorial teams with the following:

  • What content and authors attract the most readership
  • What stories should be featured on the homepage
  • What headlines increase readership
  • What sections enjoy the longest visits and most pageviews
  • What authors engage most successfully on social media
  • When it makes sense to post a story on Facebook
  • What threshold to set to trigger a paywall subscription
  • What photo galleries attract the most views
  • Who are your most popular photographers
  • How video streaming contributes to size and types of audience and ad revenue

  Anametrix powers broadcast producers with the following:

  • How each delivery channel affects viewership
  • How the mix of traditional television, online, social and mobile affects ratings
  • What social-network engagement correlates to more viewership
  • What campaigns and promotions improve ratings
  • Which programs should be promoted on streaming video sites
  • How to justify increased ad fulfillment with advertisers
  • Whether distributing content to YouTube, Hulu and other partners improves broadcast ratings or erodes audience
  • How to use predictive modeling to forecast ratings and price advertising  

  “Anametrix has given us a flexible, multichannel analytics solution, providing powerful decision support on how our editorial and advertising is performing from moment to moment. Using Anametrix data, our editors and staff have increased page views by nearly 25 percent and audience size by 12 percent year over year, despite introduction of a paywall. We’re also more accurately stocking ad units by popularity, which drives our ad revenues.  Additionally, live-stream data from Anametrix helps us increase our effective television ratings by up to 30 percent, which has a direct influence on our broadcast revenue.”  Joseph Gordon, Director of Research, U-T San Diego

  View the supporting material for Anametrix.

• comScore's Digital Analytix Multi-Platform

  In 2013, comScore launched Digital Analytix® Multi-Platform and moved to the forefront in solving the complex technological and methodological issues associated with digital consumers shifting from screen to screen. With its multi-platform capability, Digital Analytix is able to unify users across devices and platforms using comScore’s proprietary browser unification methodology. This methodology can be applied using keys from a Digital Analytix customer’s own data as well as applied to unauthenticated datasets where browsing is anonymous by the user.  

  comScore brings a unique ability to combine panel research insights, statistical methodology and software engineering together in the Digital Analytix platform – this unique combination of capabilities helps companies to understand customer interaction and behavior across devices and channels across their own organization as well as across their industry. Additionally in 2013, comScore launched Media Metrix Multi-Platform, the multi-platform version of its industry-leading online audience measurement solution. Without sophisticated multi-platform measurement capability, analysts using legacy web analytics tools are overcounting users, undercounting engagement and miscounting conversion. 

  To develop its Digital Analytix Multi-Platform solution, comScore partnered with its customer, Virgin Media – a leading broadband media and mobile provider. Virgin Media had the challenge of unifying customer interactions across their online, mobile device and set-top box experiences. "As a media company, it would be short-sighted to focus on what our customers are doing solely on a single device," said Gianni Maestri, head of digital entertainment analytics and insight at Virgin Media. "Whether they're setting their set top box to record a favorite show from their smartphone or watching music videos on a tablet, we need to know how, when and where they're interacting with our services. Digital Analytix is the only product on the market that enables this level of insight." 

  "Knowing how our customers consume content across Virgin Media’s properties and services on various devices isn’t just nice to have – it’s critical to our business,” continued Maestri. The level of understanding Digital Analytix Multi-Platform provides us is incomparable to anything currently available on the market. Knowing where, when and how people interact with Virgin Media services gives us the insight we need to make better decisions for customers in terms of the content we provide and even how we develop our products." 

  Digital Analytix Multi-Platform is now available to comScore clients in all markets around the world.
  Supporting Material;

  • Digital Analytix Multi-Platform Product Page
  • OpEd on Forbes.com
  • comScore White Paper – “Marketing to the Multi-Platform Majority”
  • Best Practices For Succeeding with Viewable Impressions & Audience Guarantees
• Ensighten's Agile Marketing Platform

  With the release of Ensighten Activate in 2013, the Ensighten Agile Marketing Platform (AMP) stands out as the most innovative and disruptive new technology of the year. 

  Every marketing organization today is facing the same challenge, how do I deliver relevant and personalized experiences in real-time anywhere and everywhere people choose to engage with my brand?  

  With the Agile Marketing Platform, Ensighten now offers the most compelling omni-channel personalization solution in our industry. With the Ensighten AMP, enterprises can finally collect, own, unify, decision, and act on all their data in real time, using any technology, across any device, at a 1:1 user level.  

  Collect all your data – Ensighten’s tag delivery network allows you to capture data across all your digital touch points, including web, email, social, display, and mobile. Quickly build robust data layers to standardize and syndicate your data across all your sites and tags. You can also automatically integrate your offline and CRM data allowing you to fully leverage and activate all your valuable marketing data in one platform. 

  Own all your data: Why constantly rent the data generated from all your paid, owned, and earned marketing activities, when you can own it. Ensighten allows you to capture your off-domain marketing activities as 1st party data to your brand.  

  Unify all your data – Transform, integrate, and stitch all your data together around user profiles. Make your data meaningful and actionable by building rich profiles of your users across sessions, channels, and devices.  

  Decision on all your data - Once you have built your rich user profiles, the Ensighten platform will also allow you to run advanced segmentation, scoring, and modeling on your profile data to identity and target the right experience for each user. 

  Real-time 1:1 action on all your data - The Ensighten platform was built for real-time action and excels at use cases that require real-time personalization of the user experience. Whether its MVT testing or data driven personalization, Ensighten can customize the user experience at a 1:1 level without sacrificing site or user performance. 

  Any technology – Ensighten gives you the freedom and flexibility to deliver and enrich any marketing technology you want. You are not locked in to any one vendor or solution so you can build your marketing technology stack with any combination of tools and vendors you prefer. 

  Any device or touchpoint –Ensighten is optimized for web, mobile, video, social, display, and much much more.  

  The Ensighten Agile Marketing Platform serves as your actionable omni-channel personalization layer driving all your marketing technologies and capabilities across your organization. From web to mobile, from optimization to personalization, from predictive to programmatic, from analytics to attribution, from acquisition to retention, enterprises can now rapidly execute, experiment, and innovate with any technology and solve for any marketing use case at enterprise scale. 

  The Ensighten Agile Marketing Platform deserves to be the technology of the year because no other technology puts as many powerful marketing capabilities into the hands of technologists, analysts, and marketers. 

  To learn more about the Ensighten Agile Marketing Platform visit: http://www.ensighten.com/platform/ensighten-activate.

• Tealium's AudienceStream

  In today’s data-driven world, marketers are challenged with the lack of data integration between vendors and no simple way to turn customer insight into action in a timely manner. Additionally, today’s marketers are plagued with a lack of insight into the entire customer journey because it is difficult to correlate the vast amounts of digital data that is created across multiple digital touchpoints and provide a more personalized experience. 

  In late September 2013, Tealium, the leader in enterprise tag management and digital data distribution platforms, launched Tealium AudienceStream, a new audience segmentation and digital data distribution platform that helps marketers realize the promise of big data by making it easy to identify and leverage actionable audiences in real time.  

  As a result of its unique integration with tag management, Tealium AudienceStream’s patent-pending technology revolutionizes the tag management and data distribution industry as the first service of its kind to enable marketers to unify their cross-vendor, cross-platform audience data; segment and enrich it (e.g., lifetime customer value for e-commerce customers); and take action on that data using their existing digital marketing applications. 

  AudienceStream also enables marketers to work with third-party vendors through an integrated distribution marketplace to drive better results for remarketing and real-time site personalization. Marketers can instantly send their actionable audience streams to major digital vendors that span multiple categories, including email, multi-channel messaging, content management, site optimization, customer relationship management, data management, data visualization, business intelligence and data warehousing platforms. 

  AudienceStream is driving marketing results for businesses across several verticals and business models, including e-commerce, publishing, lead generation, financial services, and more. AudienceStream, in combination with Tealium’s tag management solution, provides marketers with a simple way to unify digital marketing efforts. 

  Visitor remarketing: Tealium AudienceStream can fuel complex rules for remarketing by streaming applicable data to email service providers as they happen. For example, an e-commerce site can leverage AudienceStream to create segments around VIPs (e.g., those who’ve spent over $1,000 in their lifetime), and who have not visited the site in the last two weeks. As soon as the two-week threshold is met, the user’s favorite category can be sent to an email service provider (i.e. ExactTarget, Responsys, CheetahMail, etc.) in order to bring the visitor back to the site. 

  Site personalization: One of the capabilities of AudienceStream is its ability to fuel real-time site personalization. A publishing site, for example, can leverage AudienceStream to track a user’s favorite category (i.e. sports, politics, world news, etc.) across multiple sessions and even multiple devices. As the user enter the site, AudienceStream can extract the favorite category in real time and push the information either back to the CMS or the client browser so that the personalized content is promoted to the user. 

  Improved site conversion: Thanks to the real-time nature of AudienceStream, relevant information can be sent back to the site or the CMS in realtime that will help fuel site conversions. For example, you can use AudienceStream to define the funnel and define when a visitor might be stuck in the funnel (i.e. visitors spending over 10 minutes in the purchase flow of an e-commerce site and not getting past the checkout page), and provide a chat option to the user as soon as the event is triggered. 

  The demand for AudienceStream has been exceptionally strong, helping Tealium increase revenue 140 percent during 2013 and more than double its enterprise customer base. New AudienceStream customers booked in Q4 2013 include: Ancestry.com, Coastal Contacts, Dimension Data, Lincoln Financial Group, and dozens more.

  References/Testimonials
  "The term 'real-time' is often misused in describing digital marketing products; but the value of 'real-time' is immense as consumers today expect personalization instantly at the time of interaction. Tealium’s AudienceStream delivers a unique, automated, unified approach to audience discovery and data distribution that enables marketers to leverage a fully-correlated visitor profile, across all channels and vendors’ data bases, in a truly responsive manner that's as close to real-time as we've seen. Tealium is highly deserving of the nomination for Best New Technology of the Year at the DAA Awards of Excellence."
  - Andrew Edwards, a digital marketing executive [link to www.efectyv.com] and DAA founder.

  “For too long, marketers have struggled with a lack of data integration between vendors and no easy way to turn customer insight into action in a timely manner,” said Eric Peterson, an internationally recognized author and the founder of Web Analytics Demystified, a leading digital analytics consulting firm. “Tealium AudienceStream offers an important breakthrough for transforming customer data into marketing action on a real-time basis.”
   “Tealium AudienceStream is helping us maximize the value of our visitors by providing a more personalized experience based on segments and personas that we create,” said Matthew Belitsky, Manager of Marketing Intelligence at Mindjet, which provides brainstorming and collaboration software and services. “Using Tealium’s tag management solution in combination with AudienceStream provides us with a powerful way to streamline digital marketing efforts, create a cross-channel, cross-vendor view of our visitors and increase revenue.”
  “Marketers are custodians of data and use these insights to drive ROI for their companies. However, the exponential growth of customer data has created data integration challenges that are very complicated. I believe, that with Tealium’s AudienceStream, marketers now have a solution where they can unify their existing marketing applications and take action on highly targeted customer data with a level of ease that I haven’t seen before. I support the nomination of Tealium AudienceStream for New Technology of the Year at the 2014 DAA Awards of Excellence."
  -Rand Schulman, digital marketing expert, web analytics pioneer, DAA co-founder.
  Web Site

  • www.tealium.com
  • http://tealium.com/products/data-distribution/audiencestream/

   Press Release:

  • http://tealium.com/company/press-releases/tealium-launches-audiencestream-help-marketers-discover-leverage-actionable-audiences-real-time/

  
  Articles:

  • http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2299433/tealium-audiencestream-aims-to-bring-order-to-fragmented-data
  • http://adage.com/article/btob/tealium-rolls-audiencestream-service/290374/?btob=1
  • http://www.cmswire.com/cms/customer-experience/tealium-announces-audiencestream-realtime-audience-distribution-platform-022651.php
  • http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/CRM-News/Daily-News/Tag-Management-Provider-Tealium-Announces-AudienceStream-92299.aspx

  • http://www.websitemagazine.com/content/blogs/posts/archive/2013/10/01/segment-and-target-audiences-with-tealium-s-audiencestream.aspx

  View the supporting materials from Tealium.

• W3C's Customer Experience Digital Data Standard Community  

  The W3C Customer Experience Digital Data Standard community was chartered by IBM in 4Q 2012 and immediately supported by other industry leaders like Google, Ensighten, Qubit and Adobe. The group has ultimately expanded to over 100 individual members representing 55+ companies in the digital analytics and marketing space, has been the crucial group for developing a long-sought standard for a web data layer, a potentially liberating technology for web analysts, implementation engineers, marketing professionals and many more who use digital interaction information for analysis and reporting. This represents an unprecedented level of cooperation and collaboration between vendors, clients and analysts to develop a technical standard for our industry. This standard promises to shorten time to onboard new services, lower page weight and reduce maintenance costs. Further, it lays the basis for new innovations in channel attribution and improved data governance. Just as significantly, the precedent set by this collaborative community group opens the door for additional technical standards that can drive an open architecture, encourage data portability and facilitate interoperability in our rapidly growing industry.

Most Influential Agency/Vendor (Group)

• Adobe

  In order to better meet the needs of marketers, analysts and CMOs, Adobe took 27 digital marketing products and created six core solutions in Adobe Marketing Cloud. Adobe Analytics was created by rationalizing seven products into a single solution, which has more capabilities and features packed into a single offering than any other digital marketing or analytics vendor in the world.  

  Adobe Analytics has a leading 41 percent market share of enterprise analytics customers. Since launching in 2013, Adobe Analytics has seen significant market attraction as its $1-million-per-year club doubled in size to more than 70. 

  Adobe Analytics Fortune 500 Customers Include:

  • Top 7 Telecommunications Companies
  • Top 4 Pharmaceutical Companies
  • Top 3 Apparel Companies
  • 9 of Top 10 Tech Companies
  • 6 of Top 10 Financial Services Companies 

  Adobe Analytics enables its customers to create a holistic view of their business by turning customer interactions into actionable insights. With intuitive and interactive dashboards and reports, you can sift, sort, and share real-time information to provide insights you can use to identify problems and opportunities. 

  2013 saw Adobe continue to drive analytics innovation and provide new powerful capabilities that increase marketers’ and analysts’ abilities to put their data to work. Some of the key features released included:

  • Real-time reporting gives marketers high-granularity data surfaced within seconds of collection. The real-time API has been widely adopted and used across dozens of dashboards already and was a big hit for Adobe’s customers as they watched reports refresh during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
  • Anomaly detection allows users to surface statistically significant spikes or dips across any metric without having to run dozens of individual reports.
  • New predictive marketing workflows, including statistical correlations, audience clustering and propensity scoring.
  • New mobile app SDK and tracking lets customers see not only how users engage with their mobile apps, but also how those apps are performing with new lifecycle metrics.
  • The release of the Analytics Capability Maturity Model, an industry self-assessment tool, allows organizations to compare their analytics practice maturity compared to industry benchmarks across seven categories.
  • In video, Adobe Analytics upgraded a number of critical reporting metrics, including the ability to capture video user data every 10 seconds for content and every five seconds for online ads using "heartbeat" measurements.
  • Adobe acquired tag management solution Satellite and then later announced Dynamic Tag Management (DTM), which is free for all Adobe Customers. It adds robust tag management capabilities, simplified deployment and the ability to apply rules for when tags fire on a page. DTM supports any marketing technology including Google Analytics.

  View the supporting material for Adobe:

  • http://www.adobe.com/solutions/digital-analytics.html?promoid=KAVVU
  • http://www.adobe.com/solutions/digital-analytics/analytics-reporting-capabilities.html
  • http://myanalyticsscore.com/
  • http://www.enhancedonlinenews.com/portal/site/eon/permalink/?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20131014006210&newsLang=en&permalinkExtra=
• Ensighten

  This is my nomination for Ensighten as the most influential vendor. Additionally, I would not hesitate to nominate them for new technology of the year. I work for Symantec and believe we are among the leading users of digital marketing technologies. Historically, we've been recognized for our efforts in pushing optimization to the limit — from running 100's of simultaneous campaigns to executing algorithmic modeling to drive personalization through innovative uses of common technology. In the past year, we've continued our push by implementing a DMP (with integrations into our A/B testing stack), tackling multi touch attribution, extending our personalization solution to include a number of online and offline data sources, and integrating VOC with our A/B testing program (in practice & technically). I can honestly say Ensighten has been the single most important technology that has enabled us to deliver these results. It's the glue that powers marketing on our web and eCommerce platforms.   

  In addition to integrating new technologies on our web properties, we've greatly expanded our digital marketing footprint in the last year. After staring with our consumer business unit, we've expanded to SMB, Enterprise, and product portals. This would not have been possible without Ensighten technology. The recent release of the manage 2.0 capabilities has been essential to doing tag management at enterprise scale. When I think about scale, it's not the volume that creates the most complexity, rather it's deploying across so many websites and dealing with numerous development teams. The features Ensighten provides (especially around spaces) is mandatory in this type of environment. The ability to govern (controls), build tags in development environments, then merge to production is a must.   

  I cannot envision a scenario where were would be able to deliver these capabilities across so many sites and teams without Ensighten.   

  The flexibility the solution provides is also unmatched. For example, we do not use the Ensighten technology like most clients (we hand code everything by choice). That said, the fact that it is able to meet the needs of clients like us as well as those that prefer to write almost no code is a testament to its versatility. To me, Ensighten has delivered much more than just a tag manger, it's really a platform. Admittedly, tag management isn't a new technology at this point; however, I firmly believe the new capabilities Ensighten has delivered this year more than justify the award for new technology of the year.   

  When evaluating the most influential vendors in the analytics community I don't think you can overstate the importance of a vendor that enables 100's of (virtually any) technologies to be deployed at will. When I describe to others the biggest benefit of a tool like Ensighten, it's always the same story. In the last year I've never had a discussion with a marketing technology vendor where I've spent more than 30 minutes talking about implementation feasibility. I know everything is possible. Instead of worrying about the "how" we spend our time on the "what" and are better able to deliver for our customers for it.   

  Lastly, early this year we changed the way we organize internally in large part to Ensighten. We now have a marketing technology team within our development group, which manages the tool Symantec wide. Often people start with tag management to get around IT (in our case dev) -- and we were no different. However, after realizing the power of the tool, we integrated and built a team around it. There are very few technologies that can change a company's culture and how they organize. But, Ensighten is one of those technologies.

• ForeSee

  ForeSee is a pioneer and leader in customer experience analytics – helping companies measure customer satisfaction across channels (in-store, mobile, Web, contact center, social and company-level). With ForeSee’s analytics and analysis, companies can see how they’re doing, what they should do differently, and what impact those changes will have on customer experience (CX) and the bottom line. 

  ForeSee’s impact on the customer analytics industry has been astounding. Since 2012, ForeSee has helped customers save hundreds of millions of dollars – with those companies identifying and implementing changes that have forged a measurably better experience for their own customers. ForeSee believes that companies can’t manage what they don’t measure, and in June 2013, it achieved an important milestone: collecting the 100 millionth customer satisfaction survey on behalf of clients. 

  ForeSee’s analytics support the decisions of 60 of the top 100 retailers, 200 government agencies and departments, six of the top 10 banks and more. In 2013, ForeSee announced new or expanded relationships with Alaska Airlines, Comcast, Kohl’s, Medicare.gov, the National Cancer Institute, PNC Bank, Stream Energy and more. 

  Stream Energy serves as a solid example of a company that improved its customer experience because of ForeSee’s analytics. ForeSee’s measurement of Stream Energy’s CX initiatives to drive agent performance boosted the company’s customer satisfaction score by 20% in the past year. As noted in a Forbes profile this year of ForeSee and its customers, NFLShop.com, Hickory Farms and Perry Ellis all recently used ForeSee to improve CX and grow their businesses. 

  In 2013, ForeSee introduced a new way to capture the full measure of the customer experience: the Word-of-Mouth Index (WoMI).  

  Based on 18 months of research and the collection of more than 1.5 million surveys from over 300 companies, ForeSee found that Net Promoter Score (NPS®), the customer loyalty metric used by more than 83% of U.S. companies, was off by 270% – potentially causing some of the nation’s leading companies to make bad business decisions and squander millions of dollars.  

  To address this imbalance, ForeSee introduced the Word-of-Mouth Index℠ (WoMI℠): The Next Generation Net Promoter Score (NPS®) in May 2013, and in July, released the most in-depth study on NPS to date. This benchmark of customer loyalty scores for the top 100 U.S. brands contained eye-opening figures that are now impelling brands to reevaluate their tactics and spending around customer experience methods. 

  In a nutshell, NPS was designed to measure customer loyalty, but it falls short because it fails to distinguish between positive and negative word-of-mouth. This problem with NPS is exacerbated because word-of-mouth is more important now than ever – with consumers holding more power than ever because of barrier-busting social media platforms that magnify the power of their voices. The decade-old NPS never evolved to keep up with today’s changing world. 

  WoMI augments NPS by adding a second critical question: “How likely are you to discourage others from doing business with this company?” The responses from that question evolve NPS by measuring both likelihood to recommend and likelihood to detract from a brand – delivering a more precise, accurate and actionable measurement. WoMI allows organizations to take action to increase customer satisfaction and improve the overall customer experience – taking NPS to the next level of usefulness. 

  Using WoMI has helped Pear Tree Greetings make sense of the shifting consumer landscape. The personalized greeting card company uses results from WoMI to allocate resources and prioritize investments, having calculated that for each one-point increase in satisfaction, the company brings in $1 million more in sales annually. Using WoMI to focus the company more deeply on customer satisfaction, Pear Tree Greetings has successfully raised its satisfaction score several points and is able to stay competitive.
  Supporting URLs:

  • ForeSee website: http://www.foresee.com

  • Forbes article on ForeSee's predictive analytics: http://www.forbes.com/sites/barbarathau/2013/04/22/can-predictive-analytics-help-retailers-dodge-a-j-c-penney-style-debacle/

  • Two whitepapers on the Word-of-Mouth Index (WoMI):
    http://www.foresee.com/research-white-papers/_downloads/womi-fall-2013-foresee.pdf
    http://www.foresee.com/research-white-papers/_downloads/womi-summer-2013-foresee.pdf

  View the supporting materials for ForeSee.

• Visual IQ

  Marketers are under relentless pressure to quantify the impact of every one of their marketing efforts on the success of their overall marketing ecosystem. Budget dollars are continuously allotted to more channels than ever before, making it harder for marketers to truly understand how each channel is performing and how to make the most informed optimization decisions across all those channels. 

  Visual IQ helps marketers solve the challenge of how to optimize a complicated multi-channel marketing ecosystem that is continuously expanding. Its cross channel marketing attribution software products enable marketers to consolidate and normalize diverse sources of marketing performance data, analyze the TRUE impact of every online and offline channel on their overall success, and determine where to invest budget dollars in order to significantly increase marketing effectiveness.  Factors that qualify Visual IQ as most influential vendor include:  

  Market Impact: As an innovator in marketing attribution technology, Visual IQ has made a tremendous impact on the market through its creation of the industry’s first algorithmic attribution management solution. Its IQ Intelligence Suite of products provides marketers with a better understanding of how each marketing channel, campaign and tactic influences conversion behaviors such as purchases, registrations and downloads, as well as financial factors such as ROI and lifetime value. Visual IQ has also led the way in educating the marketplace on the flaws of “last click” measurement techniques by pioneering a machine-learning-based algorithmic approach called TrueAttribution®, which scientifically takes into account every marketing touchpoint and the value it contributes to a desired outcome, so marketers can easily identify opportunities for optimization. 

  Differentiated Approach: Visual IQ has a unique approach to attribution. Its technology was the first of its kind to combine and analyze data from both online and offline channels to offer an all-encompassing approach for understanding marketing performance. Visual IQ’s application suite has the ability to collect any type of marketing data available and display the information in one easy-to-use interface. Users can see the key performance indicators that they already use side-by-side with a corresponding set of attributed TrueMetrics™ in order to make informed decisions to optimize results without changing the way they already work. Visual IQ was also the first company to offer a media spend recommendation product, which elevated the science of attribution from analysis to optimization, the first to bridge the gap between media performance and customer traits, and the first to enable attributed data to be automatically pushed into media buying execution platforms. 

  Exceptional Client Results and Benefits: Visual IQ's customer base, which use Visual IQ's products to manage more than $6 billion of their marketing spend, includes many of the world’s largest and most successful brands as well as their agency partners. Its clients include seven out of Advertising Age’s top ten advertisers in the U.S., including mega-brands like General Motors, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and American Express. Its products have helped clients’ net increases in their marketing efficiency between 15-35 percent and previously assisted in moving client Vanguard Group to Advertising Age’s “Marketer A-List” by helping them decrease advertising spend per acquisition by 68 percent.  

  In addition, Visual IQ recently launched a partnership program to help clients accelerate omni-channel strategy development. The Vision Partnership Program, which includes dozens of leading marketing solution providers like BlueKai, Mediaocean, Ensighten and more, extends the benefits of the IQ Intelligence Suite through integrating with other leading technology and service providers.  

  Unprecedented Growth:  In 2013, Visual IQ grew its staff by 30 percent and its customer base by 64 percent, which contributed to a 124 percent growth in revenue. To meet the growing global demand for marketing attribution management solutions in the European market, Visual IQ also expanded its office in London and launched websites in French and German. 

  Thought leadership:  As recognized experts and evangelists, Visual IQ thought leaders regularly speak at industry conferences (including 20 events in 2013), and contribute articles to leading business and marketing publications (including 41 articles for 23 different publications and in 3 languages in 2013). In addition, its IQ Advisor™ newsletter, delivered every month for the past four years to a growing subscriber base of over 20,000, provides actionable advice and best practices in the areas of marketing analytics, integration and optimization.  

  Industry Recognition:  Visual IQ has continuously garnered industry recognition for its marketing attribution solutions and its impact on the advertising industry. It achieved “Leader” status in the first-ever Forrester Wave™: Interactive Attribution report in 2009, and was named a leader in both interactive and cross-channel attribution in two separate Forrester Wave reports in 2012. Additionally, Visual IQ was named a finalist in the Best Sales & Marketing Intelligence Software category of the 2013 and 2014 CODiE awards, and a finalist in the ‘Most Influential Vendor/Agency’ category of the 2013 DAA Excellence awards, further positioning the company as an industry leader.

• Web Analytics Demystified 

  Nomination #1:
  Web Analytics Demystified is the premiere digital analytics consultancy in the world. Their clients are some of the biggest brands in the world, like Best Buy, Home Depot, Nestle and Johnson & Johnson.

  Their Senior Partners and Partners are the leading authorities on analytics and testing, and (literally!) wrote the books on digital analytics.  

  In addition to industry-leading work for their clients, Web Analytics Demystified has contributed to the industry via the creation of Web Analytics Wednesday and the Analysis Exchange, and shares their knowledge via blogs, webinars and speaking engagements, as well as their yearly ACCELERATE conference and in-depth analytics trainings.  

  More recently, Web Analytics Demystified has created new opportunities in the industry via Team Demystified, helping to team awesome analytics professionals with great brands to continue to grow their work. If previous years are anything to go on, we look forward to great things to come from the team in the coming years.

  Nomination #2:
  Web Analytics Demystified is a well-known name in the analytics industry. When a question comes up about what agency might be a good fit or able to help solve difficult problems, the first agency that comes to mind is Web Analytics Demystified.  

  Demystified has been an invaluable asset to the industry as a whole, spearheading the Analysis Exchange, hosting a yearly well attended conference (ACCELERATE), providing thoughtful and useful info and industry contributions via blogs and twitter, and just being an all around fun team of people to work and socialize with.