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A couple of months ago Google released a video on youtube in which its chief economist explains in the best way I have seen how Google adwords bidding system (ad quality, adRank, offered bid, paid cpc).
Here is the video.

by Kevin Dooley

I received some comments to the Wisdom of the WA Crowd Experiment Results regarding some of the vendors positioning and value proposition. I started writing the answer but I systematically failed to keep it short so finally I decided to make it a post:

Looking back 2-3 years ago to the current main vendors of the WA market we had:

Omniture, HBX and Coremetrics were in a very similar position. Maybe HBX had a slightly bigger customer base and Coremetrics to some extent a better solution feature-wise.

At that time Coremetrics had recently acquired IBM’s web analytics division inheriting most of websphere’s ecommerce and content portals, this was a great opportunity to position themselves as the best ecommerce-breed web analytics solution, which they missed.

HBX acquired VisualScience which was by far the elite-exclusive-expensive Web Analytics solution, maybe trying to overcome some of the drawbacks of their platform at the time.

Some months after Omniture included HBX/VisualSciences in their shopping list which has lead them to acquire companies providing behavioral targeting, multivariate testing, insite search technologies, surveys and probably I’m forgetting something on their current solution portfolio. This makes them today (in my opinion) the most complete 1-stop buy to emarketing analysis and optimization technologies. Furthermore their recent agreement with WPP shows that they are not only tool-savvy but also quite market wise gaining efficient access to top/key accounts worldwide. Currently I far as I know VisualSciences customer have been kept on the VisualSciences tool (HBX’s don’t) but I’m not sure if they are any plans or investment to continue development of the VisuaScience platform.

4 to 5 years ago Webtrends was probably the Web Analytics vendor with the biggest customer base. Most of them were legacy customers with a log-only analysis solution. Their inability to offer a suited update to a tag or hybrid solution and migration to a recurrent license fee allowed other vendors to win those former Webtrends customers. Just recently after firing several directives, maybe a year ago or less, Webtrends have shown signals of a more clear marketing strategy. In my opinion they still haven’t been very aggressive to update their customer base but at least they are trying to compete with Omniture/Unica for a share of the campaign optimization technologies market.

Urchin/Google Analytics. Before Google purchased Urchin they were just one more player in the market (one of the small ones). Why did Google choose them? What make them the right choice? In my opinion besides having a quite straight-forward tool even before becoming Google Analytics, the key element that made them a suited candidate for Google’s Web Analytics service is the tool’s architecture. I think looking back 4 years Urchin was the one tool that relayed the most on the client side for the logic of the tracking. Sure, they were several tools using tags but the way in which Urchin handled several key processes of the measurement allowed them to handle more traffic with less processing capacity on the third party collecting/processing/reporting site. After Google acquired Urchin and turned it to Google Analytics (finding inspiration-merging some product philosophy from Measure Map) they set-off to become the best free web analytics tool. And in my opinion they have succeeded. Since they are not a paid solution-provider, what’s their goal? Clearly aid the development and expansion of Google’s paying business mainly Adwords and Adsense.

IndexTools. Let’s hope Yahoo Analytics! has better luck than Microsoft adCenter Analytics (originally project Gatineu) which has recently been shut-down. In my opinion IndexTools was a rising star when they were acquired. They had a solid Web Analytics tool, they had just released and automatic bidding tool based on performance measured with the Web Analytics tool and integrated with Adwords, Overture and MSN (probably that got them on Yahoo’s site on the first place) and they had announced a behavioral target engine on their product road map. Instead of that right now they are dealing with wether or not they should really open the tool free to everyone (so far it’s free but only opened to beta accounts) and how to handle this load.

Unica. I love their positioning! The multichannel Web Analytics solution. I haven’t used the tool but I have been shown a demo and a partner of mine has actually had access to it. What I have heard and seen makes me want to work with Unica during 2009. Their origins are away from Web Analytics in the Marketing Resource Management (MRM) datawarehouse/silo infrastructure and solution providers and I think this know-how combined with their timely acquisition of Sane Solutions allowed them to enter the Web Analytics marketplace strongly and with a differentiating edge.

Is clear these are not the only vendors, just for a reference take a look at the post announcing the closing of Microsoft adCenter providing references to other tools. I guess these are the ones I have been following during the last years.

Last year Practitioner Web Analytics Event was a huge success. All attendees were happy! That’s why alt64 is organizing a 2009 event and even extending the meeting to Lisboa.

The dates are 19th and 20th of May in Barcelona, Spain and the 21st in Lisboa, Portugal. You can find additional information on the program and registration here.

Avinash Kaushik, Google Analytic’s senior evangelist and author of Web Analytics an Hour a Day is going to participate again.

I will be presenting some topics both at Barcelona and Lisboa. See you there!

The results are in! Thanks to everyone who participated in the experiment.

After processing the answers to remove some slightly skewed values (those out of the range average ± 1.5 x standard deviation were removed) the results are shown on the figure and on the following table:

My interpretation of the results:

1. On average Omniture occupies 1st place both in Current Features Offering and overall Strategy in the WA professionals mindset.
2. Google Analytics is recognized to have the strongest Market Presence and also a strong strategy, 2nd to Omniture.
3. Coremetrics, Webtrend and Yahoo! Analytics are perceived to have a weaker Strategy and Market Presence than the other two vendors.
4. I think this last point contributes to Google Analytics’ Current Features Offering been perceived as strong as the one from paid/former paid vendors Coremetrics, Webtrends and Yahoo! Analytics.
5. Omniture has grown its market presence with the acquisition of HBX/VisualSciences outperforming Webtrends and Coremetrics.
   

What makes Omniture and Google Analytics leaders?

1. A clear strategy and value proposition. For Omniture is its 1-stop shopping approach through a synergic suit of products and for Google Analytics its best free web analytics tool and straight forward approach to WA.
   
2. An orchestrated and continous media presence gaining top-of-mind in both analysts and decision makers. For Omniture through acquisitions and partnerships that cloud the days of its competitors. In the case of Google Analytics its perfect timing of features releases, a ubiquitous presence on the blogosphere and a mediatic and charming Avinash Kaushnik do the trick.
   

What shall we expect from Coremetrics, Webtrends and Yahoo! Analytics in the next 12 months?

Last week there was a very active post and comment thread on Francois Derbaix’s blog (Francois is CEO of www.toprural.com). His post explained the difference he had found between the organic traffic measured  for toprural by XITI and Google Analytics. In just a few days 71 persons commented or linked to the post, some of them just tailgating on the “Google is Evil” theme.

He implied that Google used GA to give a wrong idea on the share of organic traffic over total visits and basically “scooped” the news that GA has a campaign tracking latency with a default value of 6 months. In my opinion Google has been pretty clear on what information is reported on the traffic sources and also regarding the configuration options to modify the campaign tracking latency. So basically, the web analyst using the tool is responsible for the configuration and knowing what GA is measuring and reporting.

To analyze the comments thread I marked each comment as either a trackback or a comment, then I reviewed and matched either the content of the comment or the post linking to the thread to one or more of the following themes:

1. Google is evil or/and Why GA lies to me?
2. Surprised and/or uninformed and/or thankful to know
3. Genuine concern and/or Request for advice/Acknowledge need of specialized support
4. Provide set-up advice and/or additional information
5. Watercooler or miscellaneous conversation and yadayadayada
   

After browsing the 123 comments and posts involved directly in the conversation till the 23/02/2009 I can highlight the following:

• 71 participants (including post author and guest-star  Avinash Kaushnik)
• 123 comments, 27 of them were trackbacks
• 1 every 3 participants was surprised to know Google Analytics track traffic sources in this way and the latency was 6 months
• Only 1 every 10 participants provide set-up advice, solutions or additional information to enrich the conversation
• 12 out of 71 participants at one point of the conversation wrote about the Google is evil theme
• And 6 out of the 27 posts linking the original post were about Google is evil!
• 21 out of 71 participants show genuine concern, requested advice or acknowledge the need for specialized support.

For me the biggest discovery was to learn that so many people use Google Analytics without bothering to learn about its configuration nor the data reported and how quick they place the shame on the tool once they realize they have been getting it wrong.  I’m thinking  “Eyes wide shut”.