Returning to the fold

Five years ago, my worldly possessions gathered together in a knotted handkerchief on the end of a stick, I set off from the shire of Web Analytics to seek my fortune among the bright lights of online advertising. I didn’t exactly become Lord Mayor of London, but the move has been a good one for me, especially in the last three years, when I’ve been learning all sorts of interesting things about how to measure and analyze the monetization of Microsoft’s online properties like MSN and Bing through advertising.

Now, however, the great wheel of fate turns again, and I find myself returning to the web analytics fold, with a new role within Microsoft’s Online Services Division focusing on consumer behavior analytics for Bing and MSN (we tend to call this work “Business and Customer Intelligence”, or BICI for short). Coincidentally I was able to mark this move this week with my first visit to an eMetrics conference in almost three years.

I was at eMetrics to present a kind of potted summary of some of what I’ve learned in the last three years about the challenges of providing data and analysis around display ad monetization. To my regular blog readers, that should come as no surprise, because that’s also the subject of my “Building the Perfect Display Ad Performance Dashboard” series on this blog, and indeed, the presentation lifted some of the concepts and material from the posts I’ve written so far. It also forced me to continue with the material, so I shall be posting more installments on the topic in the near future (I promise). In the meantime, however, you can view the presentation here via the magic of SlideShare:

The most interesting thing I discovered at eMetrics was that the industry has changed hugely while I’ve been away (well, duh). Not so much in terms of the technology, but more in terms of the dialog and how people within the field think of themselves. This was exemplified by the Web Analytics Association’s decision to change its name to the Digital Analytics Association (we shall draw a veil over my pooh-poohing of the idea of a name change in 2010, though it turns out I was on the money with my suggestion that the association look at the word “Digital”). But it was also highlighted by  the fact that there was very little representation at the conference by the major technology vendors (with the exception of WebTrends), and that the topic of vendor selection, for so long a staple of eMetrics summits, was largely absent from the discussion. It seems the industry has moved from its technology phase to its practitioner phase – a sign of maturity.

Overall I was left with the impression that the Web Analytics industry, such as it is, increasingly sees itself as a part of a broader church of analysis and “big data” which spans the web, mobile, apps, marketing, operations, e-commerce and advertising. Which is fine by me, since that’s how I see myself. So it feels like a good time to be reacquainting myself with Jim and his merry band of data-heads.