This got me thinking about how we choose to label each other, and how that is coming through the recent launched twitter lists. So before assembling a posse and hunting down my new friend from JCPenny; I thought I would collect all the lists my twitter followers use for me. You can see the result of this in a tag cloud below (I used wordle.net to create it):

So it seems like, I might actually be less of a Jerk and more of an analytics person. Personally I am fond of the terms sexy and data nerd. Ha!. (Perhaps they are actually conflicting labels though.. hmm). The other cool thing is that my blog is supposed to be about Analytics, Media and Marketing. Close eh?

Have a great weekend.. I am off for a walk around Chelsea (with the same two girls and traffic standards).

Cheers :-)
/ Dennis (@dennismortensen)

As I am sure most of you recall we (Yahoo!) launched Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network (YWACN) at the beginning of August 2009. Since then we have been literally inundated with applications (apply here) from all corners of the globe from smart, enthusiastic and extremely analytics savvy consulting firms. These companies excel in their various regions around the world and provide an invaluable analytics service to their customers in areas such as:

• Vendor Selection
• Training
• Tracking code Audits
• Tracking code Deployment from scratch
• Universal Tagging solutions
• And of course Consulting and Optimization!!

Expanding YWACN

So today sees further expansion to YWACN and I’m extremely pleased to announce an additional 20 Consulting firms have been accepted into the network - taking the total YWACN membership to 71! We have focused primarily on expanding members in markets where, until today, we lacked representation and are very happy to have a fantastic group of experienced companies onboard. We are also welcoming a number of folks from existing markets who, based on their experience, we simply couldn’t say no to!

All these consultants are a substantial compliment to the Network, have a breadth and depth of insight into their various regions that is an invaluable resource to YWA users and are, most importantly, charismatic and passionate analytics individuals! If a 60 second ‘get me pumped about web analytics’ pitch were a pre-requisite to joining YWACN these guys would nail it!

So without further ado, our new consultants are:

www.resultrix.com, www.pop.us, www.vml.com, www.bell.ca, www.techwyse.com, www.purevisibility.com, www.cadastra.com.br, www.interactivo.cl, www.mvconsultoria.com, www.neoogilvy.com, www.sqliagency.com, www.clicmetrics.com, www.overalia.com, www.hub-sales.com, www.optimics.cz, www.queromedia.be, www.freshegg.com, www.iihnordic.dk, www.wattproject.com and www.orangevalley.nl

Full contact details for all of our Consultants are located on the YWA website. Welcome all of you, we’re looking forward to an exciting 2010!

Here’s a snapshot from our YWACN Homepage:

Yes, there are still areas of green remaining :-) But seriously, we’ll be expanding the network further in 2010 and are always looking for Consultants in Cities and Countries not yet covered. Located in a ‘green’ area (or white if you happen to be in Greenland!) and want to become a YWACN member, apply here.

Cheers,
Charlie

Not convinced it’s worth your time; here’s the abstract and the introduction:

Abstract

Measuring and reporting on the impact of a Microsite without taking into consideration how it uniquely differs from the expected and somewhat associated parent website is an error! This white paper points to a number of analysis items which will facilitate the right mindset for Microsite analysis and reporting - if this type of thinking is not applied, you will at best provide flawed reporting to your customers and at worst suggest actions that will negatively impact the Microsite.

Introduction

Any online endeavor such as a Microsite is created with a business objective in mind, and for this business objective, one must have a set of measurable KPIs and very likely a set of associated metrics that can be used to optimize the KPIs. This is a given and, with this assumption in mind, as I take you through this white paper, you must understand that this is not meant to provide you with an exhaustive list of Microsite specific KPIs.

Measuring and reporting on the impact of a Microsite without taking into consideration how it uniquely differs from the expected and somewhat associated parent website is an error! This white paper points to a number of analysis items which will facilitate the right mindset for Microsite analysis and reporting - if this thinking is not applied, you will at best provide flawed reporting to your customers and at worst suggest actions that will negatively impact the Microsite. That being said, this is neither a complete reporting and analysis guide nor a template for you to replicate to your next customer - it is a way of thinking which you must apply to your own Microsite reporting. For every three suggestions I provide with regard to reporting or insight on Microsites, there should be another three as obvious recommendations from you, based upon the introduced mindset.

A Microsite (and it goes by many different names) is an autonomous website, focused on a smaller subject matter. It is usually detached from the parent website and the only combined experience is a set of gateways into the parent site. It is unusual and in most cases not recommended to replicate the navigation structure and general layout of the parent site as you lose the advantages of the Microsite - and honestly, aren’t you then just building a new subsection to the parent site? There are ways to analyze whether you have been successful in your casual parent site attachment and we will come to that later. Finally, have in mind that a Microsite is designed to have a limited lifespan - if nothing else, in its current form. You can also think of it as a range of purposes like; specific product offerings, whether that is a feature film, car or a burger for that matter, small branded communities, portal integrated and sponsored content sites, branded entertainment used as a promotion vehicle - and with that in mind, you should have a fair view of what I warrant a Microsite.

It is important that you do not misplace the meaning of a landing page or set of landing pages as a result of your Microsite endeavors. A landing page is a logical extension of your advertisement of your parent site. The landing page serves, for the most part, as either a gateway into the parent site or directly as an optimized transaction page. You can, of course, have a unique landing page on your Microsite, should you want to, but for the most part this will be the home page or a page that plays the role of the homepage. See Figure 1 for an illustration of how Microsite content and traffic overlaps with parent website and landing pages.

As an Agency you must create a mindset in your analysis and reporting that intelligently takes into account the content split and overlap of the three constituents (as shown in Figure 1) and their traffic flows. To put it clearly, we agree that the Microsite is indeed independent, but we also expect integration and overlap with the parent website. Do have in mind that a Microsite can function as a bridge and path between two parent websites as well, such as having the Microsite partly injected into a foster parent. As an example, in describing the idea of a foster parent, envision a scenario where you have the Microsite created as part of a portal channel. In this particular scenario, I both view and treat the initiating foster parent as a campaign source throughout this white paper - and I suggest you do the same in general. The thinking about a foster parent expands the Microsite definition to include elements like the fan-page and branded apps.

I am not debating or concluding on the potential success in deploying a Microsite and/or the overall strategic righteousness in using a Microsite as a marketing vehicle. This white paper assumes you’ve used a different set of metrics for such a debate and positively concluded that branching out from the parent website and using a Microsite is what’s needed for success.

So who is this white paper for then? The Agency Analyst, Account Manager and anybody who is responsible for communicating the effectiveness of a Microsite.

If you subscribe via my personal RSS feed, Email feed or Twitter feed for that matter – you should see a notice come out in the next coming weeks, in regards to the final Microsite Analytics White Paper.

The white paper will be posted as a PDF download.

Abstract

“Measuring and reporting on the impact of a Microsite without taking into consideration how it uniquely differs from the expected and somewhat associated parent website is an error! This white paper points to a number of analysis items which will facilitate the right mindset for Microsite analysis and reporting - if this type of thinking is not applied, you will at best provide flawed reporting to your customers and at worst suggest actions that will negatively impact the Microsite.“- White Paper: Microsite Analytics - Dennis R. Mortensen, Yahoo Inc.

Cheers :-)
/ Dennis (@dennismortensen)

However; I would like to set free my long term belief about this, as I can see some positive momentum in justifying the deal - people getting lulled into thinking that it might make sense (it does not).

To put it politely, I am probably less optimistic about the value of this particular acquisition than most are (quite honestly, I believe it’s broken). Though, I am happy to see that we all agree about this not being a deal about revenue and/or bettering the overall margin of Adobe product sales, which is something Omniture cannot help with, quite the opposite actually. So it must be about the technology, and there is no doubt about the fact that uniting content and tracking is an inevitable next step for the analytics industry.

That said, in the desire to unite content and tracking (and the subsequent optimization) I assume that those involved (Adobe) understand that the current data-collection methodology – primarily Script/Pixel tagging – is a HACK. It was never intended to be more than an intermediate delivery mechanism and a way of circumventing the IT department until we got true access to the data stream. So the future should not, and is unlikely to, include a, as some put it “installing tags” task (something which we debated vigorously at X change earlier this month). If we think about the task (detailed event tracking) at hand for a second and extrapolate today’s web-page status into a future of web-applications (which is happening as we speak). In this scenario we must also accept the arrival of a Web OS of a kind – which could be the browser, which is what we are seeing today, but it could also be something like Chrome OS or a Adobe AIR permutation if you like (to keep a positive tone in this post). In this scenario, which I again believe is inevitable, we have some history to draw our conclusions from, which is, if I use MS Windows as an example, 25 years of event handling and logging. You would NEVER dream of tagging a windows application, why?, because the whole application is built around an event log which you can choose to tap into if needed. The Web OS (in whatever shape or form it arrives) will most certainly and without doubt include the same thinking.

In the above situation, buying a JavaScript tagging company (this might be too harsh a statement) based on yesterday’s idea is worthless; what they needed was actually to build this themselves. For adobe this is (must be) an inherent part of their future thinking, if they want to play in the Web OS game. Building it them selves could include acquiring a company for the engineers and analytics understanding; and for this, Omniture and their limited and by that calculation very expensive few hundred engineers doesn’t count.

If you want my quick quotable conclusion and a quick $100 bet; what we’ve seen is the best of Omniture and any succeeding years from here will be downhill in revenue and likely innovation, furthermore the content and tracking marriage will be won and or lost on a Web OS level - and thus likely to be between Google, Microsoft and perhaps even somebody like Mozilla.

Sorry for the rant, but being an Entrepreneur and as frugal as I am, it just hurts to see the right thinking (content+tracking strategy), but $1.8B wasted on the wrong execution.

Anywho, from one Entrepreneur to another: congrats to Josh, John and team. Well done!

(1) I’m told that SAP looked at Omniture as well (briefly though), which in the current situation (not thinking ahead) and without disrupting Omniture business would have made much more sense.

Cheers :-)
/ Dennis R. Mortensen (@dennismortensen)

First. I am a huge Kindle fan and seeing the DX optimization is just absolutely fantastic! But wait, oh no, I don’t actually own a Kindle myself. Anyone out there who own a Kindle or even better actually owns a Kindle DX? .. or perhaps this is just a sign from God (or whomever) that I must go buy the device! :-)

Amazon Kindle link:
Yahoo! Web Analytics: Tracking, Reporting, and Analyzing for Data-Driven Insights (Kindle Edition).

n.b. Optimized for means: “This title has complex layouts and has been optimized for reading on Kindle DX’s larger screen, but can still be viewed on other Kindle devices.”

Cheers :-)
/ Dennis R. Mortensen (@dennismortensen)

Which Demographic is Driving Twitter’s popularity; where popularity is measured by the visitors they send me (the publisher).

I looked at 2,394,753 referring visits to 7 unique US News Media sites (Q3 2009). A dataset which is not supposed to represent the twitter universe as a whole, but it is confined to one vertical, and as such can be transposed to the general world; PLUS reading news is after all a pretty general activity. I added in the Age distribution from Google referrers, to provide some additional context. Find the exciting result below:

Find the table based data to the chart below. I rounded all percentages because, well, I wanted them to fit on one line.  :-)

So which Demographic is Driving Twitter’s popularity? where popularity is measured by the visitors they send me (the publisher). Definitely Not Teens as the New York Times correctly pointed out today, BUT neither Senior citizens. If anything Middle Adulthood is the term we should use for the demographic driving Twitter’s success.

Cheers :-)
/ Dennis Mortensen (@dennismortensen)

• Using a Page Revenue Participation metric for Conversion Optimization
• Using Web Analytics Metric Alerts for Search Phrase Opportunity Insight

BUT I just made the effort (it is summer after all) in uploading the actual presentation to slideshare; a presentation which you can find embedded below - the post’s hold my commentary, whereas the presentation only served as a backdrop for my song and dance show.

Cheers :-)
/ Dennis Mortensen (@dennismortensen)

I recently surveyed 100 “internet-savvy” people to understand their attitude towards cookies and whether or not they considered cookies to be a privacy or security concern. As a follow-up, I surveyed another group. This time, my focus was the general internet user, who would not be expected to understand the use of cookies. Getting to my target of 100 took slightly more time in this case as the respondents were not as engaged with the subject!

The survey was posted on a group unrelated to web analytics on LinkedIn.com, on Facebook.com, as comments on some blog posts on the subject of internet privacy, and in 15 random categories on answers.yahoo.com. It was also circulated by email (thanks Andy, Mom, and friends!). To my knowledge, the respondents came from at least 8 countries.

In my previous survey, I asked 5 questions which assumed at least a basic understanding of cookies. In this survey, because I could not make the same assumptions, I asked 6 slightly differently-phrased questions, most of which had a yes/no answer and an optional comment field.

The Results

1) I know that cookies are put on my computer by websites that I visit.

• YES 84%
• NO 16%

The vast majority of those surveyed knew that cookies were placed on their machines, although several of those who responded “Yes” were under the impression that cookies were only placed by certain types of sites, like forums or social networks.

2) I know what cookies are and understand what they are used for.

• YES 57%
• NO 43%

Although more than half of the respondents claimed to understand cookies and their usage, quite a few of those who answered “Yes” felt that cookies were solely used for website preferences or helped to load a page faster. The overall understanding seemed rather vague (some considered them to be rather benign viruses) though many grasped the basic concept. It is interesting that although 84% know that cookies are placed on their computers when they visit a website, not all of those have tried to find out what cookies actually are.

3) I know the difference between 1st-party and 3rd-party cookies

• YES 35%
• NO 65%.

Given the fact that 57% of respondents claimed to understand cookie usage, it is interesting to note that only 35% knew the difference between 1st-party and 3rd-party cookies. However, this segment did appear to genuinely understand the difference between the two types of cookie.

4) I have customised my browser settings with regard to the treatment of cookies.

• YES 35%
• NO 65%

The responses to this question were interesting. Of the 35% who responded that they had customised their browser settings with regard to the treatment of cookies, several admitted that they had customised their settings, but that they had no idea what the settings now were. On the other hand, there were several whose set-up meant that they were prompted for permission every time there was an attempt to set a cookie. Some blocked all cookies while some accepted them all, so there was no one setting that stood out as the most adopted.

The majority, those who responded that they had not customised their browser settings, commented that they had not changed their browser settings for a variety of reasons – because they did not know how to, because they would not know what they should change them to given their understanding of cookies, because they knew the default settings of their browser or because they regularly used an application to clear out cookies. We can infer from this then that most of the respondents use the default browser settings, which are often to allow 1st-party cookies and reject 3rd-party cookies (though not always: Chrome, by default, accepts all - you can then choose to reject all or “restrict how 3rd-party cookies are used” – I haven’t been able to find out exactly what this means (though I can imagine) but would be curious to know).

I asked this same question in my first survey, the response to which was YES: 42% and NO: 58%.

5) When I visit a website, I look for and read the privacy policy.

• Always 5%
• Sometimes 41%
• Never 54%

Though this question is not directly related to cookies, my interest included attitudes towards privacy on the internet and overall security concerns. The overwhelming feeling that I got was that “life is too short” for reading privacy policies. In addition, all privacy policies were considered to be the same and over-complicated with legal jargon which could hide any dubious statements. In general, it seems that privacy policies are considered a nice-to-have element of a website, but not a crucial part of a visitor’s navigation behaviour.

6) I have privacy concerns specifically regarding cookies being set on my computer by websites I visit.

• YES 38%
• NO 62%

A similar question in my previous survey (I have concerns about cookies being misused to compromise my privacy) generated exactly the same results. In this case, however, the reasons were slightly different – the distrust of cookies centred more around data being sold on, unwanted viral material etc than profiling and targeting. There was also distrust stemming from a lack of understanding of what cookies are and what they can be used for.

In a fascinating twist, quite a few of those who did not have these concerns said that it was because they did not understand what cookies are and what they can be used for!

Generally, knowing what cookies are does not seem to be a barrier to acceptance. In addition, ignorance of what they are does not seem to be a barrier to acceptance. Most of those surveyed did not know of any problems caused on their computers by cookies and for that reason did not fear them. This did not mean that they knew what cookies were or even had much interest in finding out. Again, as in the first survey, to a large degree, convenience is an important consideration – knowledge that, for example “Bebo forgets me if I delete cookies” outweighs any other possible concerns.

So, all in all, good news for the 1st-party cookie (depending on the default browser settings of your website visitor). For the 3rd-party cookie, however, apathy may mean that it is often blocked and largely misunderstood - like me, as a child :-).

Cheers,

E

I don’t know about you, but I personally think this is beyond exciting, and I am thrilled to see us take this (almost) final step towards full integration into Yahoo!

What is YWACN?

This is a network of third party companies with expertise in deriving insight from Web Analytics AND deploying Yahoo! Web Analytics in particular. The purpose of this network is amongst other things to help our clients get the best out of the tool - and hopefully also help us spread the gospel of YWA. It might even alleviate the stress on my personal in-box!

You are more than welcome to compare this in idea to the GAAC network - there, I’ve said it! :-)

Who are the Consultants?

A lot of the consultants are legacy IndexTools partners - and thus a bunch of folks who have years and years of experience in the actual technology, from before we turned purple. They are… drum roll please:

countquest.se, tribal-im.com, nordicemarketing.com, receptional.com, naviatech.fi, netvantagemarketing.com, e-dialog.at, Leads2Business.nl, milesbennett.co.uk, tricomb2b.com, sems.it, explido.de, booming.de, latitudegroup.com, emerite.cz, astrups.com, snowvalley.com, b-found.no, epsilonium.com, netprofiler.nl, acronym.com, networkintellect.com, coloradowebsolutions.com, contentmetrics.de, deducta.dk, eformation.de, e-interactive.es, eurorscg-riley.co.uk, engineready.com, inflow.dk, intellignos.com, onetomarket.nl, lbigroup.be, positive-thinking.co.uk, stonetemple.com, sundancemedia.ca, webcertain.com, studiocappello.it, zunch.com and creuna.dk.

We even added a few additional rock stars to that:

webanalyticsdemystified.com, semphonic.com, stratigent.com, sapient.com, purpleclick.com, thesedays.com, bitbang.it and insightr.com.

48 YWACN partners all in all - and you should be able to see a full list of YWACN partners on the YWA site. CALL them today, email them, tweet them .. heck, invite them out for dinner, they deserve it! (if you haven’t noticed, they are your new best friends)

Can I join?

Perhaps ;-) If you really excel in the field of web analytics and truly are one of those consultancies that help derive actionable insights from web analytics for your customers - we would love to hear from you.  In return and as a Member of this exclusive, global professional network of Yahoo! Web Analytics consultants you will receive a number of benefits, this including:

• Yahoo! Web Analytics FREE account creation rights (This is sexy eh?)
  
• Listing on Yahoo!’s Consultant Network web page
• Potential client referrals from the Yahoo! Sales team
• Exclusive “Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network” icon for display on your website
• Premium levels of technical support and access to a partner portal
• Access to an exclusive YWACN forum to share ideas and technical tips with other top analysts worldwide
• Unique opportunities to work with Yahoo! to provide trainings, books and speaking engagements

Go have a look at the criteria for becoming a member of the Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network on the web site.

YWACN Links: (..and partners; send me your blog posts if I didn’t catch’em)

- Netvantage - now a member of the Yahoo Web Analytics Consultant Network
- Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network, Nordic eMarketing accepted
- Receptional. Yahoo Web Analytics Consultant Network
- Insightr joins the Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network (YWACN)
- Tribal is nu ook Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant
- Onetomarket toegelaten tot Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network
- ..

Cheers :-)
/ Dennis R. Mortensen (@dennismortensen)

Thanks for your interest in Yahoo! Web Analytics. We’re excited to inform you about the launch of our Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network (YWACN)

YWACN is a network of independent third-party analytics specialists who can help provide analytics consulting services. The specialists in the network have been approved by Yahoo! to help our valued customers. The breadth of experience of YWACN members, and their knowledge of Yahoo! Web Analytics, makes them uniquely qualified to provide expert assistance in analytics planning, implementation and usage.

Whether you’re a large organization or a small ecommerce merchant, you can expect to benefit from a more intelligent leveraging of analytics with YWACN. The consultants in the network can help increase your qualified website traffic, achieve more conversions and sales, and see a better overall ROI.

To learn more about YWACN members, click here. Also, you can look for consultants with the YWACN member emblem.