Monthly Recap: May 2007

May was a bit slower compared to last month in terms of posting. There are two main reasons (excuses) for this slowness

1. I was at eMetrics
2. I was not feeling well for 3 days in this month.

I noticed that when I don’t write anything for few days the number of people who subscribe to the feed of this blog goes up. Does anybody have an idea why this is happening? I have my own theory (Well I am a web analyst) but would like to hear from others.

Here is the list of articles that I psoted.

Web Analytics

• <Web Analytics Job Market is Hot – Update on the web analytics job market. Last month was the highest ever month in terms of open jobs since January 1st. Open Jobs in web analytics were up 68% from January 1st. Omniture was the most sought after tool experience followed by webtrends. My next update is coming tomorrow.
• Are you doing Web Reporting or Web Analytics? – A lot of marketers confuse web reporting with web analytics. I explain the difference between web reporting and web analytics in this post.
• Live from eMetrics – My quick update from eMetrics in San Francisco.
  eMetrics Conference in San Francisco – My second update from eMetrics in San Francisco.
• What does Website Optimization mean? – The word “Optimization” and “Website Optimization” means different things to different people. This article is my attempt to clarify the definition of “Website Optimization”.
• Hot off the press: Actionable Web Analytics – Jason Burby and Shane Atchison of ZAAZ released their first book on Web Analytics.
• Do you really need a home page? – This article was in response to Seth Godin, article “Do you really need a home page? Does the web respect it?”. I reiterated what I had said on the similar topic last year.

Web Analyst Interviews

• Web Analyst Interview: Rohan Kapoor
• Web Analyst Interview: Ravi Pathak
• Web Analyst Interview: Daniel Shields

Behavioral Targeting

• Future of small Behavioral Targeting Networks is grim – I think with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all trying to build their own Behavioral Targeting Networks with recent acquisitions of DoubleClick, RighMedia and aQuantive receptively it probably does not make sense to have stand alone Behavioral Targeting networks.
• Behavioral Targeting: Audience of One – My views and follow-up on the Washington past article titled “Web Ads with An Audience of One” discussing the growing use of Behavioral Targeting.
• Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cookies – This article talks about how the recent acquisitions by three giants acquisition are not about ad serving technology but about user data and reach.

Monthly Recap: April 2007

April was a busy month both on the work and blogging front. I had 17 blog posting, 18 including this one.

This was the first time I made it in Avinash’s top 10 web analytics blog list.. When Avinash released his rankings on April 16th, my blog was ranked 48,459 by tachnorati. In last 15 days the ranking has gone up to 38,710

Here is the list of articles that I posted

Behavioral Targeting

• Search Retargeting – My View – Behavioral Targeting companies offer a service called “Search Retargeting”. My views on this offering are presented in this posting.
• Google and Behavioral Targeting Part II – In my post “Google and Behavioral Targeting” last month I talked about how Google is putting its footprint all over the web and could be preparing for the largest Behavioral Targeting Ad network. I got several emails in response to that article. Two main questions that were raised are:
  1. Won’t there be technical challenges to aggregate all this data and make it meaningful for behavioral targeting?
  2. Won’t there be privacy and trust issues if Google were to go that route?

  This article is to address these two concerns.

• Google and Behavioral Targeting Part III – Google Buys Doubleclick – In this post I discuss how this is a huge step brining Google Close to building Behavioral Targeting network.
• Google Doubleclick deal concerns Privacy Advocates
  The Electronics Privacy Information Center (EPIC), The Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), The U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG) has filed a complaint with Federal Trade Commission (FTC) that Google’s acquisition of Double will compromise privacy of internet users.
• Google Web History: Google and Behavioral Targeting – The Beginning – Google launched a new service called Google Web History. This service will allow users to keep an archive of their web browsing history. The service will also allow integrated web and search history to personalize results based on previous search and viewing patterns.
• Google Web History – My Experience– My experience with Google Web History
• Behavioral Targeting Moves by Yahoo and Google – A recent article by Brandweek, talks about how Yahoo is betting big on Behavioral Targeting.

Web Analytics

• Web Analytics Jobs Trend Update: April 2007 – An update on Web Analytics Job. Also included jobs requiring web analytics tools experience.
• Several Web Analyst interviewed for my series on Web Analyst Interviews
  • Web Analyst Interview: Scott Baldwin
  • Web Analyst Interview: Pere Rovira
  • Web Analyst Interview: Apurba Sen
  • Web Analyst Interview: Jaisri Chety

• Books Recommended by Web Analysts – In this posting I summarized all the books recommended by various web analysts I interviewed.
• Top 10 Web Analytics Blog – I made the list of Avinahs’s top 10 blog list.
• Cookie versus Panel Based User Counting – comScore came out with a study saying that cookie based measurement might be over counting unique users by 2.5 times. My views on this topic.
• The Great comScore Debate – My response to Gary Angle’s comments on my above posting.
• Seattle Web Analytics Wednesday (WAW) May 9th 2007… I made my blog as the unofficially blog of WAW Seattle. This is where I will post any updates to WAW Seattle.