This post picks up where I left off on Starting the discussion: Attention, Engagement, Authority, Influence, … and is a follow on to Eric’s two parter (Measuring Engagement Online: The Next Stage and Measuring Online Engagement: Step One). Eric references me as “Mr. Carrabis” somewhere in there. Oh, he must think I’m ancient to call me “Mr.” I will be going through the rest of the comments people made to my original post and commenting on them there. It just takes me time (nobody noticed, I’m sure) because I tend to think things over a bit before responding to them.

And FYI, I’ll be posting elements of the equation’s derivation on BizMediaScience. I doubt anybody is sitting on the edge of their seat waiting to see what I integrate and if I use Tau or Gamma functions, so me thinks that’s best. I will be posting my thought process here, though, and welcome comment, suggestions and so on.

Form Follows Function

Right now the definitions of Engagement that I’m working with are Eric’s (Engagement is an estimate of the degree and depth of visitor interaction on the site against a clearly defined set of goals.), the one we use at NextStage (Engagement is the demonstration of Attention via psychomotor activity that serves to focus an individual’s Attention.) and the dictionary’s (participation, involvement, involution).

I’d love to hear anybody else’s definitions as I’ll work to incorporate them provided they adhere to the philosophy proposed in Starting the discussion: Attention, Engagement, Authority, Influence, …:

1. What do you mean when you use the words “engagement”, “attention”, and “trust” online?
2. Can you repeatedly measure what you mean by them so that there’s a reasonable surety that what you’re measuring is what you mean by the terms you’ve used?
3. Can you make these measurements through a commonly used web-enabled device?

Both Eric’s and NextStage’s definitions pass muster on item 1 above as both are declaratory statements. It’s also worth noting that both definitions contain the meanings of participation, involvement and involution in them as conceptualized in Eric Peterson’s Engagement Project and the Engagement Equation, Part 1. So far, we’re doing real good.

Item 3 above is a definer to our variable set — we are only allowed to use measurements that can be made through a commonly used web enabled device. Note that a “definer” isn’t something that sets limits. A limit would be something like “You can only use screen size and color depth”. The phrasing of item 3 is intentional. As technologies change so will the measurements that can be made through a “commonly used web enabled device”.

Item 3 is really our “looking forward” element. When web analytics started (and when NextStage started, for that matter) web enabled phones, pdas, iPhones, Smartphones, …, were unknown. Fortunately I’ve never let something’s lack of current existence deter me from anticipating it (if you’ve read our patent, you have an idea).

Item 3 covers our “extendable” and “extensable” concerns. It allows us to create a mathematical form that can alter its requirements as new capabilities and technologies come on line without sacrificing its ability to calculate and return real (business) value.

Likewise, with Items 1 and 3 covered, all that remains is to isolate a set of easily captured variables that satisfy the definitions in item 1. The equation — the mathematical form I’m using — allows for new variables and interfaces as they arrive. In other words, the final equation will be good now and way, way down the road. Again, this is something I learned from writing up NextStage’s patents; be as far thinking as possible.

There are other concerns and considerations that (by my nature) I’m putting into the mathematical form. For example, accuracy. Accuracy is a function of target size, not mathematical rigor. Accuracy of 10% with three variables active can quickly rise to 90% accuracy with as few as four or five variables active. Let me give you a “marketing” example. You’re selling to a) 53yo b) white c) males and you’re capturing 10% of that market. But what if you’re selling to a) 53 yo b) white c) males in d) NH with who e) are business travelers? Ah, well, now perhaps you’re capturing 90% of the market.

Some people aren’t aware that the opposite can also be true; it’s possible to achieve (for example) 90% accuracy with three variables and dwindle it to 10% when more variables are present. Imagine a bullseye style dartboard. You can get lots of darts in the yellow and good for you; that’s high accuracy. Then again, there are only five colors you can hit (five variables in the equation).

Now imagine a more traditional dartboard with a very small center area and lots of other areas indicating different values and multipliers. Both types of dartboards are circles, yet add or change a few variables and accuracy as a percentage of dead-centers is shot to heck.

Thus the mathematical form should allow for various degrees of accuracy based on what variables one is able to measure. This means that careful definition of the initial and possible variable sets is critical to the success of the metric as well as its accuracy.

Am I boring you yet?

Without driving you to drink, I chose to make the equation solvable by using three spaces, A, I and V. A is the set of all possible solutions of “engagement” (note that I’m not specifying “online”). I is the set of all possible interfaces that will ever exist (note that I’m not limiting this to “online” or even “machine”) and V is the set of all possible measurements that can be collected for a given interface I (note that I’m not limiting this to real-valued measurements). From here we can go through about two pages of finalized equations and whole lots more to get there.

Or I can show you the next to the last form in the derivation. The image above is important for lots of reasons. First, it’s really nothing more than a mathematical shorthand for Eric’s definition. But wait, there’s more!

It’s also a mathematical shorthand for NextStage’s definition. Also for the dictionary’s definition.

Are you excited yet? I love this stuff! And it gets better!

It’s also a mathematical shorthand for Eric’s definition blended with NextStage’s. Or for any group of definitions that follow Items 1, 2 and 3 above. If you can define the term (1) and can measure it repeatedly through a standard, commonly used interface whatever that may be now or in the future (3) then you get the formula above and it satisfies (2).

Want to know the best part? The formula above is also a mathematical form of SQL statements. You have some data hanging around somewhere and you want to create something you call “engagement” and you want to interrogate the data to create it? No probs. The formula above does the job. It doesn’t matter the size of the query result set nor the initial parameters.

Let me give you an example

Say you have some huge data set of N records and you’re really only interested in some portion of those records. That’s “N - n”. And you want to know how many visitors in this “N-n” group were “engaged” as you define it. That’s “h_i(v_i)” and is also where Eric’s definition, NextStage’s, Eric’s and NextStage’s, Eric’s with five parts of NextStage’s, two parts of somebody else’s, three parts of another person’s, …, goes. Now say of those “N - n” records you want some sequencing (maybe most “engaged” to least “engaged”, maybe something else). That’s “x_i - t_i“. And you want everything else constant, like geographic location and income level and who knows what else. That’s “D[h_k(v_k)]”. Not only can you hold things like geography, income, etc., constant, you can also hold other definitions of “engagement” constant while plucking out the one form you want for a given application or deliverable. And you only want “engagement” for a given interface (web as opposed to mall kiosk, etc). That’s “V” or “I” or “A”. The above basically reads as

SELECT “h_i(v_i)” AS “ENGAGEMENT”
FROM “N - n”
WHERE “D[h_k(v_k)]” = somevalue
AND “D[h_j(v_j)]” = someothervalue
AND …
GROUP BY “x_i - t_i”
ORDER BY “V” (or “I” or even “A”)

The “But”

The only caveat to the above is that each solution to A and I and V requires the interface to be monitoring a thinking being. I won’t even suggest “person”, but (there’s the “but”) you have to be evaluating “engagement” with something we can most easily define (but not limit ourselves to) as “a visitor”. This “but” has some teeth (and a good thing, too!). This means the only v_i available — the measurements and metrics you use — have to be something “a visitor” would do, which means they have to be recordable by a standard interface (item 3 above).

Okay. I’m done for today. It’s taken me about two weeks to come up with a derivation (that’s all the pages I’m not showing you) that works for any definition of engagement on any interface that has any metrics that fits items 1-3 above. Soon I’ll start showing how Eric’s solution fits and what inferences can be drawn from it.

Based on my experience, the majority of web analytics (WA) tools are currently managed by a single, in-house person.  More than likely, the WA tool is underutilized and the WA team is too small and undertrained.  Heck, web analytics is hard. ;)  I predict that within three years, media agencies will build out ‘web insights’ specialties and capitalize on the web analytics opportunity.  Why will they be successful?  (Disclosure: I work for an Omnicom Agency)

Current Lack of In-House Ownership

Where does WA expertise & ownership reside in your organization?  Marketing?  IT?  Somewhere in the middle?  Both?  There is no consistent answer.  And I doubt everyone in your organization that could find value in WA data uses it (or even knows it exists).  Rarely is WA tied into major company marketing priorities, but most analysts agree it should be.  The proverbial WA ball has fallen (or will fall) through the cracks somewhere between Marketing, IT, Web Dev firms, and interactive agencies.  My argument: the group spending the most money to drive web traffic should “own” the full user experience and thus, web analytics.  Typically, this group is an outside agency focused on display, email, paid search & SEO.  Website performance, usability, and page optimization has a large impact on these online investments and are factors directly tied to performance/ROI and overall marketing strategy.

Current Lack of Talent & Economies of Scale

There are not enough talented analysts to meet the current demand, much less the future needs of our data-driven, B.I.-focused industry.  “Experience”, although important, is not the same as talent.  Similar to SEO, scarcity of talent leaves a large gap between those who dabble and those who specialize/excel.  Independent specialists/consultants will realize that nearly the same WA tactics (data insights and actions) have major gains for clients and economies of scale are found.  To get access to the top tier of clients (and dollars), these specialists will either join or become acquired by large agencies to add additional value to the current agency optimization techniques.

WA Insights Improve Agency Work

Tastes Great or Less Filling?  …Put it on the website and see what visitors respond to more.  If a company invests in a regional TV/Radio media buy, what results were seen online from the area – and was it ROI positive to justify expansion into new markets?  For the Fortune 500, agencies are firmly entrenched in building the websites and driving the traffic to increase the company’s revenue.  With WA being the ultimate tool of understanding the online experience and improving it, shouldn’t agencies put it to work to support their vision?  I can’t think of a more appropriate group to gain insights and take action from the data that results in a major impact to the entire business.  When you can make millions of dollars in online spend convert 1% better by improving the cart process, you just made the client a heck of a lot of money and the agency more valuable to the client by increasing the media ROI.  Further support of the growing importance of the media agency was seen in AdAge’s “Why You Should Be in the Media-Agency Business.”  The article cited a recent Booz Allen Hamilton study that asked marketers which organizations would become more important to them by 2010.  Media companies, media planners and communications planners topped the list, with 52% of respondents believing they would be more integral.

Media strategists will seize the WA opportunity.  Clients are demanding agencies to be more accountable for online performance as well as more data-backed “proof” for business strategies and tactics.  The recent trend of the digitalization of offline media will only increase the need for talented analysts to interpret the data for the media agencies.  Only time will tell.  In the meantime, please share your thoughts.

Jeff Campbell
VP, Product Development
Resolution Media

Despite being a newly minted Omniture customer I constantly find myself somewhat out of sync with the announcements the company makes about being the “first ever” and “industry’s only”. Usually I chalk this confusion up to their being excellent marketers and sales people and my being, well, not an Omniture employee. But last week I read a press release from the company that had me wondering if I’ve been working in the same industry as the nice folk from Orme.

According to this very well written press release, “Omniture Fusion(TM) accelerates time to action for their customers” and is “a new industry implementation methodology that provides customers with an explicit roadmap for taking action on their analytics data, allowing them to improve their business in weeks if not days.” The press release goes on to say that “Omniture Consulting’s Fusion methodology takes a proactive, customer-centric approach by conducting a thorough business assessment that helps to determine vertical key performance indicators and business objectives” and that “Omniture Consulting formed the Fusion methodology in 2007.”

Now, I’m not in Utah this week and so I can’t just find Matt Belkin or one of his guys and ask, but there absolutely has to be something I’m missing about Omniture Fusion(TM). I mean, doesn’t every vendor use this exact same methodology when they implement a for-fee analytics solution? The exact same implementation strategy I wrote about in my now classic book Web Analytics Demystified back in 2004?

I have to be missing something … so the conversation I’d like to have here in the Future of blog is about the future of how the technology is implemented into the business, not just he nuts and bolts of the web site.

Setting aside for a moment Ian’s bold prediction, let’s assume that vendors like Omniture, WebTrends, Coremetrics, etc. continue to provide for-fee analytics solutions that need to be integrated into the existing business infrastructure. And let’s also assume, despite Ian’s recent announcement that Gatineau has an automagic integration solution, that Omniture Fusion(TM) Certified Consultants, Omniture’s competitors, and their ilk in the private sector are still required to manage the integration process …

If this is true, what does that process look like in the Future?

Rene, in his typically prescient fashion, has already outlined OX2/LBi’s vision for how integration consulting will happen as our industry matures, citing various specializations. But what if Ian is more right than wrong, and what if the stuff we’re doing today with so-called “Enterprise” software evolves requiring integrations to be held to a much higher standard? What if instead of proprietary data-warehouses and unfortunately thin (or non-existent) APIs we used SAS, Terradata, Oracle and SPSS to understand visitor behavior?  What if the finance organization starts looking for real forecasting information from web analytics, not just crappy estimates based on recently collected data?

I’ll put a stake in the ground and say that nothing changes about the process (either the one Omniture formed in 2007 or the one I first described in 2004 after having implemented for WebSideStory since 2002, whichever you want) but that the work we do becomes increasingly and perhaps insanely complex. Think about the work you do today — whether you’re a vendor like Ian, a consultant like Rene, an industry analyst like John, or those of you who are practitioners — and how it will change if web analytics is not so much integrated into your CMS, but part of the true Enterprise infrastructure?

If this vision plays out, the business objectives become bigger, the KPIs cross channels, and the business assessment needs to be conducted by an entirely different class (or a differently trained class) of individuals.  Instead of well-meaning folks just out of college, the true Enterprise might start looking to global business consultants like Accenture, EDS, and IBM for their web analytics implementations.  Perhaps this is what Accenture was thinking when they bought Maxamine and Memetrics recently, who knows?

Anyway, I suspect Kristi Knight will call me tomorrow and explain what Omniture Fusion(TM) is really all about which will be nice.  But I will still be very interested in what you, the Future Collective, think about where integrations are heading as web analytics continues to grow up.

Eric T. Peterson
CEO, Web Analytics Demystified, Inc.
http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com

Many of you will have read Rene’s very interesting post on this blog, in which he posits a world where there are only two web analytics tools to choose from: Google Analytics and Omniture. I’ve already commented on the post, and my remarks have been deemed to be of sufficiently high quality to merit an invitation from Eric to post a follow-up post here. I’m honored to do so.

The idea behind Rene’s post was that you don’t have to extrapolate the current rash of consolidation in the industry very far to see a future where there are only two solutions to choose from: Omniture at the high-end, and Google Analytics at the low. He goes on to speculate about the pros and cons of such a situation.

The post and its central idea got me thinking, and I realized that, despite the fact that Rene was only painting that view of the future as a means of initiating a kind of Platonic dialog about our industry, he actually hadn’t gone far enough. My prediction for the future of Web Analytics is as follows:

In three years, there will be no Web Analytics vendors at all.

Pretty bold claim, huh? Well, allow me to finesse that statement a little, and explain what I mean by “Web Analytics vendor”. My definition here is a company that makes the majority of its revenues from Web Analytics software and/or services. Today there is still a reasonable number of companies that fit that mold: Omniture, Webtrends, Core Metrics, Nedstat, IndexTools, and a bunch of smaller guys like CrazyEgg and Mint.

Note that I don’t include Google or Microsoft in this list, since neither of our companies will ever make more than a tiny amount from Web Analytics; for us, Web Analytics is a means to an end, a crucial component in a wider story which involves the selling of online advertising and the provision of software and services to make it easy for advertisers to buy this advertising.

This brings me to the real point of my prediction: In five years, Web Analytics will have been absorbed into other, allied disciplines (or will have absorbed them), so there will be no ‘pure’ web analytics vendors any more. Or, to put it another way:

There will be no Web Analytics vendors, but Web Analytics will be everywhere.

Hence the title of this post. The Web Analytics industry as we know it has reached (improbably) the autumn of its years. In just a few years it’ll be hard to find any company who really pays the bills from direct, old-style Web Analytics projects. But far from dying out, it’ll be easier than ever before to find Web Analytics software - it’ll be everywhere: in your ad server, in your CMS, in your marketing automation/CRM system, in your ad network. Companies will choose the Web Analytics that integrates best with their other systems (really, is a part of their other systems) rather than picking discrete, standalone applications on the basis of functionality.

This is already happening through the acquisitions that are taking place in the industry, and through the strengthening of Web Analytics capabilities in related disciplines. Marketing automation/management companies like Unica and Lyris (formerly JL Halsey) now offer web analytics as part of their offerings. Then there are the analytics capabilities of ad-serving tools like DFA, Atlas Media Console, and 24/7 Real Media, or ad networks like Tacoda and Advertising.com.

Content Management vendors such as Interwoven and Vignette also offer integrated analytics, and, in the case of Interwoven, MVT (through its acquisition of Optimost). Whilst CRM companies like Salesforce.com and Netsuite are adding more and more Web Analytics-like features. And, of course, the big portal/ad services companies: Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo!, each of which has Web Analytics embedded into the overall offering set (Yahoo’s capability is harder to spot, but is there - they acquired Keylime Software for this purpose several years ago). Even consultancies like Accenture are starting to get in on the act, acquiring Web Analytics-related assets like Maxamine and Memetrics.

At the other end of the market, Omniture is continuing to add capabilities which are moving it further and further from its core business of Web Analytics. Omniture will continue to absorb other businesses in related areas until the day comes when web analytics is only a minor part of what the company offers. We’ve already seen them do this with behavioral targeting (TouchClarity) and MVT (Offermatica). I predict that we will see Omniture acquire an ad server in the not too distant future. Why would they not, after all? Their value proposition to sites is that they can run and optimize their online marketing through Omniture’s services; having an in-house ad server would be a tremendous help in providing an all-up view of multi-channel marketing effectiveness (at the moment, Omniture has to reach complicated data-sharing deals with the likes of DFA to get hold of this data, or add cumbersome Omniture tags to ad calls).

As for the other Enterprise vendors - now really just WebTrends and CoreMetrics - they will have to go one way or the other; either acquire new capability to bolster their range of offerings, or be acquired. There’s a possible third way consisting of building very close relationships with some key third parties, to create a virtual version of what Omniture has done through acquisition, but it will be a tough road to travel by comparison.

What all of these developments have in common is that Web Analytics will increasingly become an enabling service which allows a company to provide a wider range of offerings - be it CRM/marketing automation, media planning/buying or content/site management. The “main” business (including consulting) will subsidize the investment in the Web Analytics software.

Which leads me on to my second bold prediction:

In five years, all Web Analytics software will be free.

“What?” you thunder. “Free?” Yes, free. I’ve posted before about what a miserable job it is making a living from Web Analytics. There are a bunch of reasons for this is that Web Analytics on its own is not really an annuity business - sure, most Enterprise vendors charge by the month these days, but there’s no established pattern of repeat business that you can build a truly reliable revenue stream on (this is the point, by the way, where the Enterprise vendors reading this splutter and immediately scroll down to post a rebuttal in the comments). The second main reason is that Web Analytics, for all its current glitz and glamour, is still really a minority sport. It’s a bit like Curling at the Winter Olympics - fun to watch for a bit, but most people get bored pretty quickly.

Much more reliably annuity businesses to be in are media planning and buying, or media representation, or selling your first-party ad inventory, or doing the kind of big-iron, multi-year projects that the likes of Accenture excel at. Those kinds of projects can be worth an order of magnitude more than you’d get from a pure-play Web Analytics implementation. But good analytics is essential to the success of these kinds of projects; so any company worth its salt getting into (or wishing to stay in) these businesses needs to offer quality analytics. The Web Analytics will be a “value add”. And do companies tend to charge for the thing they’re bigging up as the great extra thing that you get by working with them? No, they don’t. So Web Analytics will be offered as a free, tightly integrated and - and let’s be in no doubt about this - completely essential component of any online marketing-related offering.

So, at the end of all this, am I predicting doom and gloom for the Web Analytics industry? Hell, no. Things are just starting to get really interesting.

Ian Thomas
Director, Customer Intelligence
Microsoft Advertiser & Publisher Solutions
http://www.liesdamnedlies.com

Since the acquisition of Visual Sciences/HBX by Omniture, there have been tremendous discussions about the future of the Industry. Everybody seems more or less to agree that a concentration is taking place which is somehow normal as Web Analytics is a maturing industry.

Now let’s imagine for a second that this concentration continues and we end up with two solutions. What if all we had at our disposal was Google Analytics as a “basic” free tool and Omniture, the “enterprise” platform, serving the high-end of the market?

How would this landscape affect consultants and practitioners? Would it be a good thing? Or would it be the end of analytics as we know it today? I wanted to open the discussion regarding this topic and know what other people have to say.

Before I go any further, I want to disclaim that as founder and CEO of OX2 that has now joined the LBi Group, we are vendor independent and we thus have partnerships with many Web Analytics vendors including Omniture (through their certification program) and Google Analytics (being members of the GAAC program). This is my personal opinion and doesn’t necessarily reflect the official position of LBi.

That been said, let’s start the discussion! Take a moment and imagine the future I just pointed out. If we had just those two vendors how would that affect us?

On the one hand, I can think of positive effects:

• Training would be easier for consultants such as ourselves as we would have fewer tools to support and understand. Nowadays we have to understand how to get the same metric from Omniture (SiteCatalyst / HBX), Google, WebTrends, Unica, IndexTools, … which, to be quite honest, is often a pain with many vendors – not all - as their underlying documentation can be opaque and support doesn’t always seem to understand what we are actually talking about;
• Practitioners could more easily switch jobs as all companies would be using either one or the other tool;
• Other products such as content management systems, emailing systems, other internet related systems would more easily be integrated with the two existing WA platforms. And compatibility costs would be lower. But not only online software, this would be also the case for other tools such as BI or CRM tools, allowing a better understanding of the online activities;
• Having only two WA platforms would also allow benchmarking easier as we all know that putting 2 tools next to one another inevitably gives you grey hairs. This might push for standardisation, which in term would also mean that switching between tools might be easier. But here, I might be dreaming: each vendor has his own tags. Moving from one solution to another, when you’re working tag based will always be a nightmare.

But as everything in life there’s no yin without a yang. Let’s see some negative effects of this situation:

• As for many industries, a duopoly generally leads to a lack of innovation. Certainly if there is collusion at hand and as GA’s pricing model is different from Omniture’s one, they might have a shared interest in locking the market between their solutions. After all, competition is good. Just take a look at how vendors have been competing these past years to release more powerful tools and better functionalities to address the complexity of Web Analytics;
• If Omniture would be the only enterprise solution, prices would remain high while I strongly believe that WA tools will more and more becoming a commodity, putting downward pressure on prices. Don’t forget that a tool is just that: a tool and that you need people and processes in order to use them correctly, which are the most important factors in a WA project. We have customers doing great things with Google Analytics and I’ve seen very poor uses of expensive WA tools. Look also at Office suites, currently you could say that you have two main options: Microsoft and Star Office; Microsoft still sells their software at a very high price and they make margins of over 70%! If there was a real competition I bet that prices would be lower;
• Having just Omniture and Google Analytics wouldn’t/couldn’t suit every need. Not all websites are alike and we see it already today that a single tool doesn’t fit all. Take for example Coremetrics that focuses on retailers and seems to be doing a great job regarding this vertical. Look also at Unica that allows big corporations to integrate easily WA to Campaign management.

My opinion regarding this question is that it wouldn’t be good for the industry if we ended up with just 2 products (I’ve taken Omniture and Google Analytics as they are the two most important tools nowadays, but it could apply to any other). As I mentioned tools are just part of the equation, an essential but not an important part.

Getting back to Omniture and Google Analytics, the first still has some competition at the enterprise level, which doesn’t seem to be the case for Google Analytics. Let’s be honest, even if we are big fans of Ian Thomas, Gatineau hasn’t, for the moment, been able to be a big threat to GA …

For more on my perspective you can read some of my thoughts about the future of the Industry following the Omniture acquisition of Visual Sciences here:

http://webanalytics.ox2.eu/2007/10/27/omniture-pacman-what-future-for-visual-sciences/
http://webanalytics.ox2.eu/2007/10/31/how-the-web-analytics-industry-will-evolve-with-omniture-as-the-green-giant/

So what do you think? Do you have other things to add to the pros and cons? How would you see yourself in this scenario? Do you want to see a two vendor market, kind of like Windows versus Apple, or do you like the diversity of options we have before us today?

I am looking forward to having a spirited and honest conversation about the future of the analytics market and thank Joseph and Eric for giving us all a venue to chat.

René Dechamps Otamendi, CEO, OX2 (part of the LBi group)

Okay. Something controversial to start.

The only problem is that to me what I’m offering isn’t controversial. It deals with measures and measuring.

Measuring what?

Well, when you put some Flash object on a page. What can you measure? I’m not a web analyst so to me the answers are obvious; measure the psychomotive and psychobehavioral cues that visitors are demonstrating. These and other elements are what make up the Cognitive, Behavioral/effective, Motivational matrix or “CB/eM”. The CB/eM tells you things like age, gender, buying styles, best branding strategies, impact ratios, touch factors, education level, income level, etc.

I understand that not everybody finds these things fascinating. Anthropologists, behavioral and cognitive psychologists, psycholinguists, sociologists, behavioral etymologists, …, those kinds of people go nuts over this kind of stuff.

Some of the stuff listed above has to do with things like attention, engagement, authority, influence, …

This is where it gets a little … umm … interesting. I see words like the above used a lot in web and web based “behavioral” analytics. This is a mystery to me. Much in the same way that an anthropologist and a microbiologist use the term “culture” to mean two very different things, I think the way web analysts and web-based behavioral analysts use the terms attention, engagement, authority, influence, … to mean two sets of very different things. I’ve often commented and written that behavioral tracking as defined by the industry doesn’t track human behaviors at all. Not as I understand them, anyway.

Okay, so what do I mean by these things? To recycle content from Attention, Engagement and Trust: The Internet Trinity and Websites:

• Attention is a behavior that demonstrates specific neural activity is taking place.
• Engagement is the demonstration of Attention via psychomotor activity that serves to focus an individual’s Attention.
• Trust is what the consumer — well informed or not — gives the site (or whatever is asking for the consumer’s Attention) when their Engagement is rewarded with useful, relevant and meaningful information.

I can go into authority (something fellow SNCR member John Cass caused me to explore and which I’ll be publishing about soon) and influence. I know how to measure what I mean by these things. But the definition I use don’t come from the web world even though what I mean by them can be measured through any number of commonly used web-enabled devices.

And while I’m not sure, I don’t think my definitions are those used in web analytics and web-based behavioral analytics. What I can offer is that my definitions — and this is my opinion here — are more closely aligned to what is generally understood in the literature (in the disciplines I mentioned above) than what is meant by web analysts and web-based behavioral analysts.

I’m not equating “close alignment with literature” with “more valid”, merely offering that different paradigms can offer more understanding than any single paradigm alone. But right now I think I’ve gone on enough. I came here to learn. I’d really much rather hear what others think, understand what they measure and what value they assign to it.

So for me the real questions are:

1. What do you mean when you use the words “engagement”, “attention”, and “trust” online?
2. Can you repeatedly measure what you mean by them so that there’s a reasonable surety that what you’re measuring is what you mean by the terms you’ve used?
3. Can you make these measurements through a commonly used web-enabled device?

To push the conversation along, here are some external links that are worth reading:

• Attention, Engagement and Trust: The Internet Trinity and Websites
• Get the attention you’re already paying for
• Defining Attention on Websites & Blogs
• Focusing Your Customer’s Attention
• Expertise - Who Decides?

Remember, this whole blog is about having a conversation. Do you have these same questions? Do you agree with the definitions I propose or do you have different definitions? And most importantly, how do you answer the three questions I posed above?

I’ve known (and been intimidated by) Eric Peterson for some time now. I first met Eric at the 2006 DC eMetrics Summit. He stood in the middle of perhaps a dozen people like a warm, embracing sun bestowing life unto its myriad of planets. I was Haley’s Comet, coming in at a highly elliptical orbit, not known, from far, far away and with any luck never to be seen again.

Anybody garnering that kind of attention and delivering that kind of knowledge is someone to be in awe of.

So I did what I normally do when I want to meet someone and it seems an unlikely occurrence; I listened, watched and waited. Eventually the planets would lose their orbit or the sun would move away and it would be time for the comet to move in.

What I learned was that Eric is a generous, gregarious and engaging individual who’s very open and sharing with his knowledge and his feelings on things.

And did I mention that he’s inquisitive? Always questioning? Not only others but also himself?

That was and is very important to me. People can be very knowledgeable in their fields and my belief is that unless they’re constantly willing to explore, to investigate, to expand their own thinking and their horizons, their expertise fades fast. The sun may shine bright and eventually the stellar furnace cools and their knowledge fails.

The next time I had a chance to truly sit and talk with Eric was at the Semphonic’s XChange conference. We were sitting outside the bar at a WAT with Chris Ivy and some others and were talking about our different presentations. I was very taken by Eric’s thoughts regarding the future of web analytics and what tools might be used to better understand the growing audience.

Developing tools to understand humans is pretty much where I live, or have at least been setting up shop for the past 20 years or so. And as mentioned above, Eric’s enthusiasm was refreshing, so I put forth an idea I had been thinking over, something I’d been churning back and forth, waiting to find someone with like thoughts and like mind.

“Would you be willing to have an online discussion, a true Meeting of Minds or Glorious Accident, where people with different backgrounds and lots of knowledge and a willingness to share could get together and butt heads in a caring and considerate manner? I don’t want arguments, I want conversations. I want people willing to grow and learn, not people stuck in their own ideologies and experiential moraines. In the very least, people who recognize that their mountaintop might be merely a leaping point to greater and more glorious things?”

And Eric said yes.

So why am I co-authoring a blog with Eric Peterson and asking others to join in the discussion? Is there anybody who doesn’t enjoy a warm place in the sun?

(and people who know me should be truly impressed that I managed to post this)

Indeed, what does the future of web analytics hold? The smartest man I know posed that question to me at SEMphonic X Change last year in Napa Valley, asking honestly and earnestly as if I would certainly know the answer to his question. And trust me, when Joseph Carrabis asks you a question like that, you want to have a great answer!

Alas, I am human, and so I believe I said, “Hmmmm, what do you think?” knowing that Joseph is rarely at a loss for words. Ironically, he thought the same thing about me, but neither of us had a particularly excellent answer for this seemingly harmless question!

“What do you think will happen?” is among the most basic of questions, but as soon as you’re asked to voice your opinion for the record you immediately realize that there are ramifications whether you’re right or you’re wrong. If you’re right, people might think you had some type of inside information. If you’re wrong, people might think you’re losing your edge. And either way the answer has the potential to influence outcomes, especially if you’re widely read.

So I hedged my bets and we made a deal. Joseph and I agreed that we would get over our fear of being right or wrong, let it all hang out there, and talk about where the web analytics market is going. But upon reflection we realized that our voices are hardly the definitive word, and our opinions are inevitably limited by our experiences and our particular biases.

Fortunately “Web 2.0″ provides the solution: we created an open blog so the entire community can respectfully debate what they future might hold. In “The Future of Web Analytics, Demystified” we invite any-and-all to contribute their thoughts and ideas to the “debate du jour”, eschewing the idea of “comments” and instead creating conversations.

Each conversation will start with a single author’s position and evolve from there. To start these conversations, Joseph and I will invite individual contributors to proffer up their Utopian views … then, as in any good Socratic debate, the rest of us will respectfully tear that person’s view to shreds, either ending up with consensus or a complete lack thereof effectively highlighting an area of audience measurement that “needs work.”

Sound like fun? Want to contribute? Have great prognostications of your own? Excellent, we’re excited that you’re excited!

GROUND RULES

There are a few basic ground rules we’d like everyone to agree to in advance. Nothing too crazy, but just something that will help set the tone and keep things civil:

1. First and foremost, RESPECT. Individual contributions are moderated and no commentary that attacks a person, place, or thing will be approved. Remember what your momma said about not being able to say something nice …
2. That’s not to say it isn’t okay to disagree. Joseph and I firmly believe that we can have a respectful discussion regarding the multiple sides of any issue without bringing the world down around us. It is okay to have a difference of opinion! And we believe that it is far better to voice dissent than keep it bottled up inside.
3. Go ahead, link to yourself. If you’re putting yourself out there, get something back. Link to your own blog, your own site, your own ideas. But we appreciate and encourage you to link back to this blog and help grow the conversation.
4. Remember, this will go on your permanent record. With all of the above in mind, remember that your contribution will be forever public and likely cited in the place you least expect. Take the time to think about your contribution before clicking the “Publish your Thoughts” button.

What do you think? Is this blog a good idea? We already have the Web Analytics Forum and dozens of well-written web analytics blogs. Will you contribute? If so, what is your motivation for contribution? And are you a little afraid of putting yourself out there? We welcome your comments.