Data Warehousing Analytics Data and the Universal Tag

The Really Big Topics at X Change

I’ve been doing a series of posts on thoughts from X Change Huddles and I started with two on behavioral integration of survey data – which was the very first Huddle I took part in. But this was by no means the hot topic at X Change. In fact, the Think Tank class on survey/behavioral integration was one of the least popular offerings we did (much to my chagrin). What were the really big topics? There were two – warehousing online analytics data and using a universal tag. Both came up over and over again. I was mildly surprised by how popular the first was – shocked by the amount of attention given the second. What’s interesting is that the two topics are more related that people might think – and that’s what I want to talk about today.

People have been talking about integrating online and offline data for years of course. But a couple of things this year felt different. Quite a few companies were actually doing real warehousing projects. Some of these were deep into production others felt more exploratory. Either way, people were clearly moving toward making this a reality. Given the broader economy, that’s impressive. Warehousing projects tend to be large investments – not easy to do in a seriously down economy.

The other thing that felt different this year was the number of companies that simultaneously feel confident of their basic web analytics infrastructure and reporting but dissatisfied with the maturity of their analysis. Achieving maturity in analysis has always been a problem – but in past years the big issue always felt like it was just achieving a quality infrastructure and reporting system. It would be an exaggeration to suggest that those issues have gone away but it felt to me like the balance has shifted. A lot more companies seem like they are getting quite a bit from their web analytics implementations and have reached the point where the existing tools just won’t give them any more.

Unlike data integration, the push for a “universal” tag is a lot newer. The idea is to implement a single point of data capture and then move the data to each of the analytics vendors who consume it. A single tag is appealing to many enterprises – after all, it isn’t unusual for a company to have five or six measurement tags on a single page. In addition to one or more full web analytics tags, ones for advertising, video, and various other niche measurement functions are all too common. A multiplicity of tags starts to be a performance burden and a nuisance from an IT perspective.

In some ways, the name “universal” tag may be a misnomer since not every universal tagging strategy even uses a tag. In some systems, wireline capture is used to grab the data which is then piped to the various information consumers. Alternatively, a single tag can capture the data to a central location which then moves just the necessary data to the consumers.

It’s a beautiful idea. The IT burden of tagging is dramatically lessened. Measurement across systems is unified with a single point of data capture (tag placement on existing pages is a common culprit in reconciliation projects). Performance on the page is no longer threatened.

Those are the immediate and obvious benefits.

But there are some less obvious but very real benefits that may be even more important.
X Change happened just before the Adobe deal, but many of those considering or using a universal tag approach named the ability to change analytic solutions as a key driver. For companies that may have migrated through two-or-three solutions in the last few years, the idea of being able to separate the capture layer from the reporting and analysis layer is pretty attractive. Let’s face it, one of the most difficult parts of switching vendors is re-tagging a site. And with the vendor landscape in web analytics looking rather less settled in some respects and the prospect of more acquisitions seemingly likely, the ability to swap software solutions without major infrastructure cost is undeniably appealing.

The last benefit I see is the one that may be the most significant – and it’s the fact that a universal tagging solution can enable warehousing with minimal additional fuss. After all, the whole point of a universal tag (however it’s implemented) is to create a single point of capture that can then move the data wherever necessary. Wherever necessary may well be your own data warehouse.  A universal tag solution eliminates the need for you to move data to a web analytics vendor and then pay them to move it back to you. Instead, your warehouse could potentially take advantage of the same underlying data stream as all of the other measurement vendors.

That’s why I started this post with the observation that warehousing analytics data and universal tagging are more connected than people may think. Universal tagging is a potential enabler for data warehousing. That’s a good thing in-and-of-itself and I think the goal of warehousing and the savings around eliminating a feed from your vendor might become a real enabler of universal tagging.

And think about this - data warehousing in conjunction with a universal tag might make some intriguing types of analytics systems (like Google Analytics for basic reporting plus a warehouse for deep-dive analysis) possible that would otherwise not be.

So far, one feature that you just can’t get out of Google Analytics is a true data feed. And that’s a feature that Google may not even have on its radar. So if you wanted to warehouse analytics data, you couldn’t use GA for data capture. With a universal tag, a system like that suddenly becomes possible.

No matter how you slice it, I expect both warehousing analytics and universal tagging to grow significantly in popularity in 2010. We may not be quite at the tipping point yet, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s all that far away.

Comments

[Rasmus Madsen]

Great post Gary.

Your points are supported by a recent survey from emarketer, which found that the main headache in webanalytics is "integration with other marketing solutions" - the "universal tag" I guess would make that integration possible (see the survey here: http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007289)

Re. separating capture layer from reporting and analysis layer, I believe much to little attention is given to this. The term "web analytics" is used to describe data capture, reporting and analytics, but most of the applications being placed in the software category are mainly data capturing applications with basic reporting features. Many software vendors contribute to the confusion by naming their applications "xxx analytics".

In addition, there seems to be no clear agreement as to what differentiates reporting from analytics. In my view, most of what happens in many analytics/BI applications is actually reporting - real analytics often requires a spreadsheet tool.

At youcalc we aim at offering a pure analytics layer. We have a horizontal analytics platform that can live query SaaS applications (including web analytics applications like Google Analytics, Site catalyst, etc.) and generate real-time analytics on the data. We have zero data capture, zero storage, no warehouse, so in order to deliver analytics we built a full "spreadsheet" modeling layer, that allows for not only mathematical and logical modeling but also some degree of data transformation, mapping (across multiple data sources), etc.

To get a quick idea of what that can do, I invite you to try out some of the analytics apps built on our platform, e.g. this one: http://www.youcalc.com/apps/1249652239535

All best

Rasmus

[Chris Brinkworth]

Gary, many thanks for an insightful and post. TagMan, is that Universal Tag. I tried to make this post shorter than your blog post – but there is so much to get across and I’m sorry if it seems longer.

One extra point is that the use of a Universal Tag can also reduce bounce rate and increase conversion! We recently completed a study which you can download from http://www.TagMan.com. The slowest-loading assets on site pages in our study were tracking tags, taking as much as 250ms. Based on our study, a delay of around one second causes approximately 10% of users to abandon the page, suggesting that four tags on the page could lose you 10% of your visitors.
So – the question is : why serve a tag if it’s not needed for that user – and therefore slow the load of page? By having all tags, controlled from ‘one smart universal tag’ you can conditionally serve ONLY the tags that are needed for that user, and no more.
IE: If someone arrived at MyAnalyticBooks.com from Google SEO search term ‘Jim Sterne’or "Avinash"… why serve the 4 affiliate pixels that you work with, unless that user had previously been exposed or clicked on a related affiliate link? This is also what we call - ‘RealTime’ or ‘Applied Attribution’. Making decisions live, by user – based on the logic you set from your dashboard.
That is what we engineered TagMan do do. It is the cog that (can) powers a lot of what you discuss above. ( Please do visit TagMan.com for a video of the system).

By having a universal tagging system that enables you to manage, track and control all of your tagging needs with the use of one single, Universal Tag; through a simple plug and play UI – we have bridged that gap between Ad Serving, Content Management and Web Analytics to empower your analytics and tracking.

You can house multiple tagging solutions to de-duplicate all online performance marketing, show complete path to conversion and make the tagging process much simpler. You can track all your marketing channels, natural search included, and compare them side-by-side for response attribution modeling. Atlas, DoubleClick and Omniture will all work within our system.

We’re already seeing some amazing bespoke uses of the system, similar to your thoughts above – and excited to see what develops as more people use and experiment with setting the logic behind the tag.

[Sean Davis]

This article is very helpful for thinking about tags. If anyone needs to get up to speed on data warehousing, this link provides a good resource: http://bit.ly/hF1cR