Sunday, April 16, 2017

The Future of Digital Analytics Looks A Lot Like Google


It is no secret that massive companies such as Adobe and Google are the dominate the analytics market. Many say that these companies are the face of the digital analytics future because of not only their scale of measurement opportunities, but also the many services they provide. When Google released their Analytics 360 suite of tools, it changed the way in which companies use and visualize their data. The new suite, which replaced Google Analytics Premium, provided a more in-depth as well as a larger array of options for a business to collect data online.

Google Analytics and Adobe try to be as receptive as possible to the behavior of empowered consumers, in the sense that they know that is the customers, not the brands, that drive online influence. Analytics in general have seen a large shift because of the internet. The internet has played a tremendous role in how analytics work, but it is still a bit of a gray area in marketing. Say you are in Best Buy looking for a new Apple laptop. You are seeing the prices in the store and checking your smartphone to see if Amazon or Apple have better deals before making a decision of where to purchase the computer. Every single move you make on your phone is data being stored which can be analyzed later. The amount of time spent on each the Apple and Amazon website, browsing the laptops online, and even selecting to purchase it online while standing at Best Buy are valuable information companies want to know. Knowing a customer’s exact location when making an online purchase can get a bit iffy depending on privacy restrictions, but nonetheless is not impossible.

Why use Google Analytics?
In this digital era, anything and everything done online is important, trackable information for a company. Going back to the laptop example, something as simple as knowing where a purchase was made can have a significant impact for a company. If a company such as Best Buy knows that there are several people that walk into their store to compare prices and purchase from a different website, it can mean a lot. First off, it’s probably not all too common that Best Buy would have information like this in their hands. But if their Google Analytics shows that people browse a product then bounce off the page, chances are they may be purchasing it from another site. This would mean that Best Buy has some remarketing to do if they would like to stay in business.


Large companies often have teams focused solely on observing their online analytics. Call-to-actions, click-through-ratios, and traffic count scratch only the surface of a deeper marketing realm. The analytics collected assist in the way a company positions themselves as well as how they see/engage with their customers. When you think about it, even Google uses their own analytics platform. Whether it is using it to measure traffic on YouTube or which things are searched the most on the website, this data collected plays a role in the algorithm to determine which videos, products, or content should be displayed higher up or featured on a page. Sure, money is also involved because companies can pay to display advertisements, but for the most part, Google relies on its own analytics for them to conduct business themselves. The future of data analytics looks like Google because of the way Google keeps improving their suite of tools. The digital world is moving rapidly, thus forcing Adobe and Google to constantly think five steps ahead. While some tech or digital companies are focused on staying relevant in the present, both companies are working to not only stay relevant in the future, but continue to set the bar and standard high for those who turn to them for analytics.

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