Web Analytics & E-commerce (EN)

5 Questions on the next version of Adobe Analytics to Bill Ingram, VP for Adobe Social & Analytics

While at Adobe Summit in London, I had the great chance to interview Bill Ingram, VP for Adobe Social & Analytics, on the next version of Adobe Analytics. This version will integrate SiteCatalyst, Datawarehouse, ReportBuilder, Discover, Insight, Genesis and Tag Manager into a single offering. Bill shares some insights about what's coming in the interview below.

Nicolas Malo: The next version of Adobe Analytics was demonstrated this morning at Adobe Summit in London. Compared with the current version of SiteCatalyst, what's new and what's the same?

Bill Ingram: In addition to a brand new and unified interface (see screenshots below), we are adding a new layer of collaboration capability that Adobe Marketing Cloud brings to the table. Thanks to a collaboration engine and framework, Web Analysts will be able to easily dissiminate information across the organization. For instance, Pinterest-like boards will be available to provide advanced dashboarding features as well as anomaly detection. Our guiding principle is velocity: we want to help you dissiminate information in order to quickly realize value from your data.

We also don't want Digital Analysts to worry about commercial issues. There will no longer be Discover licences, ReportBuilder licences and Genesis integration fees to buy on top of a Adobe SiteCatalyst / Analytics licence. It's now all included in the Adobe Analytics offering.

Some new features will be available like contribution analysis and regular expressions support to automate the classification of our data.

What will stay the same? There will be no reduction of functionalities. All the power and features of individual tools stay the same.

 

Nicolas Malo: What are the main benefits that users should expect with this new version?

Bill Ingram: First, integrated workflow really changes the way Digital Analysts will share data and insights within the organization. 

Secondly,Digital Analysts will be able to use the right tools and features to do their jobs. If they need to analyse audience and segments in more depth, they will be able to leverage all the functionality of Discover out of the box. If they need to analyze multichannel data, they will be able to use the power of Insight.

To sum up, with new Adobe Analytics version, Web Analytics will be maturing into Business Analytics with a marketing focus. 

 

Nicolas Malo: Will retagging be required to benefit from the new version of Adobe Analytics?

Bill Ingram: Not at all, but you need to have upgraded to SiteCatalyst version 15 already. If you want to take advantage of the multichannel analytics capability, you will benefit from bringing in your external data sources (for instance: CRM data). 

 

Nicolas Malo: Once the new version of Adobe Analytics will be released, what will happen with the current SiteCatalyst version?

Bill Ingram: SiteCatalyst will still be supported as a standalone product until all existing SiteCatalyst customers have upgraded to Adobe Analytics. New customers will start with the new Adobe Analytics solution. All historical data from SiteCatalyst will be available in Adobe Analytics. Basically, your Web Analytics data will stay the same. What will change is the user interface, analysis and reporting capabilities.

 

Nicolas Malo: When will the new Adobe Analytics version going to be released to all existing SiteCatalyst users?

Bill Ingram: We are planning a Fall release for all SiteCatalyst users. Once you have access to the new version, you will get access directly through Adobe Marketing Cloud.

 

Nicolas Malo: Thank you very much Bill for this interview!

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The new interface is very inspired by Pinterest and other social medias.

In the next version of Adobe Analytics, an "Anomaly Detection Report" will be available to alert on significant and incoherent changes in the data.

Another great new feature is the ability to analyze contribution to an anomaly detection, as well as to create a segment based on contribution analysis. Once a segment is created, ability to reuse the segment to target users in campaigns.

Cluster Analysis is also a great new feature of the next version of Adobe Analytics.

 

Velocity and Change Keynotes @ Adobe Summit EMEA 2013

For the afternoon keynotes of the first day of Adobe Summit EMEA, Mark Zablan, President EMEA Adobe, started by sharing his vision on velocity and change:

1. Engage everywhere your consumers are (Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, etc...) whatever device they use (smart phones, tablets, desktops, etc...). Last year, tablet shipping increase 76% while desktop shipping decreased 40 %.

2. Embracing rocket science: data is most useful when it can be related to indivuals, customers or segments. Better decision on marketing & targeting. Being able to execute the perfect marketing campaign. Being able to refine & to improve constantly.

3. Connect the dots: breaking silos and being able to deliver personalized and relevant experience.

 

Royston Seaward, Partner Deloitte Digital Consulting, shared some interesting insights and best practices from their digital consulting practice:

1. under 26-year-old: 50 % of people social first when starting Internet browsing. Over 26-year-old: 50 % of people search first when starting Internet browsing

2. Strategy : knowing who you want to target and how to reach them

3. People : 3 things you need . people who know to run. Being able to change things rapidly. Leadership to accept direction. Do you have this in your organization ?

4. Process: agility in processes. But element of control is needed as well.

5.Technology : ERP was the technology that was going to revolutionize the back office. Today, we have the same revolution in the front office. Technology is more than just the implementation. Hearts and minds are needed too.

 

Bastien Schupp, VP Marketing for Nissan Europe, explained Nissan Digital Marketing strategy and challenges as a car maker. He started to describe car makers as dinosaurs trying to adapt. Nissan Europe Marketing team manages 27 websites in 20 languages, using Adobe Marketing Cloud. According to him, Nissan is obsessed with tracking activity to point of sale. In a multichannel world, consumers know more than the salesperson, so added value of offline experience needs to evolve. The retail experience needs to be more digitalized. Nissan is also trying to engage their audiences by synchronizing TV ads with mobile using Shazam.

 

The last keynote was led by Stefan Olander, Vice President, Digital Sport, Nike, and Ajaz Ahmed, CEO Akqa. They shared the insights from their best-selling book "Velocity: The Seven New Laws for a World Gone Digital".

4 Velocity principles: Speed, Direction, Acceleration, Discipline

The 7 laws of velocity (source: http://velocitylaws.com/the-seven-laws/=

1. A Smith & Wesson beats four aces: velocity doesn’t care who you are or how good you were yesterday. It’s coming for you anyway. Don’t be a sitting duck. See the big picture. Find the pain points, see patterns taking shape, and act.

2. It's easier done than said: Velocity takes courage, focus and determination, but gives back efficiency and rewards intuition, iteration and gutsiness. There has never been a better time to go out and be disruptive. Can you think of one thing someone else could do that would destroy your business? Then what is stopping you from creating it? 87% of the Fortune 500s in 1955 were no longer in the Fortune 500 in 2011.

3. The best advertising isn't advertising. It's less about 'saying' and more about 'doing'. Instead of interrupting people, serve them and make them feel something.

4. Convenient is the enemy of right: most of the time, the most inconvenient path is the right thing to do. '. Disneyland has underground system of garbage cleaning because someone cleaning garbage is not a magic land experience.

5. Respect human nature: Digital is the means, not the end. Technology sometimes obscures this ultimate truth, and makes it easy to forget that at the far side of an app, a tweet, an anything, there’s a person.

6. No good joke survives a committee of six. No way to deliver on velocity when staying in committees while the world is moving fast around. To live a life of velocity, you cannot have endless meetings for a decision. Have the balls to make a call

7. Have a purpose larger than yourself. Dreamers and visionnary blows us away. Innovating for the benefit of the athlet. Brand promise : just do it. Not enough to say it. You must enable, inspire and help me to just do it. Purpose that is larger than us.

The keynote and the day ended with a great quotation "The most powerful force in the universe isn't technology. It's imagination." 

After a cocktail reception, and a spanish-style dinner, the party started with a show by Jessy J.

Not everybody in the audience knew who she was before the show, but she convinced everyone with a great live performance!

The Last Millisecond Keynotes @ Adobe Summit EMEA 2013

The EMEA version of the Adobe Summit started this morning at ExCeL London, a conference center based in the Docklands. This year's ediition gathered 2,500+ attendees from 38 different countries, a 40 % increase compared with last year's.

Brad Rencher, General Manager at Adobe Marketing, started the morning keynotes title "The Last Millisecond". According to Brad, Digital Marketing is becoming incredibly complex and fast. Digital Marketers are being asked to be doing more with more data. Ultimately there is more pressure on Digital Marketing. At the same time, customers expectations are changing every day. While 3-5 days shipping used to be acceptable for E-commerce, the new customer generation is expecting same-day delivery.

As a baseball fan, Brad Rencher explained that when Brad explained that from the moment a pitcher throws the ball, the batter has no more than 250 milliseconds to react and hit the ball cleanly. The same thing happens with digital marketing. Digital Marketers need to deliver on the last millisecond:

1. Listen to signals (behavorial information, third party information, entreprise data, point of sales systems, CRM systems, social data)

 2. Predict behavior based on data

3. Assemble the data (pictures, pricing, product information, etc...)

4. Deliver on different screens and platforms according to the device being used by the user

All of this needs to be done in under 300 milliseconds every time a customer is taking a decision on a web site.

Adobe is focused on delivering this experience. Silos slows down digital marketers. Two hurdles : 1. systems in silos and 2. organization. Content supply chain has to be optimized. What needs to be done is not more tools, but existing tools that work together. Adobe is focused on integrating tools for a unified user solution.

From 27 solutions presented at last year's Summit, Adobe is unifing its Marketing Cloud offering around 5 solutions today:

1. Adobe Analytics (SiteCatalyst, Discover, ReportBuilder, DataWarehouise, Insight and Tag Manager): collecting, analyzing and sharing data

2. Adobe Experience Manager (DAM, Scent7, CQ5): content management and publishing + social community building.

3. Adobe Target (Test & Target, Recommandations, Search & Promote) : targeting of customers and content personalization

4.  Adobe Social (Context Optional, Social Analytics) : social media measurement and optimization + prediction of popularity for Facebook posts

5. Adobe Media Optimizer (Efficient Frontier, SearchCenter, AdLens): media management

Brad Rencher recommends to create centers of excellence to break silos. To encourage collaboration and knowledge sharing, Adobe has developed a social user interface right in the heart of Adobe Marketing Cloud.

Philippe Baumlin, Global Digital IT Program Director at Chanel, shared his insights on how to overcome organizational challenges. Digital cannot be a department within a company. Digital should be spread throughout the organization. The whole company needs to become digital. Digital should be a project organization within the company while keeping the existing reporting structure. Digital resources in the same geographical space to foster collaboration. Steering committees with creative directors and CIOs in the same room. Digital is a new way for creating brand awareness. 

 

Baumlin's presentation was followed by a comprehensive demo of the new 5 solutions of Adobe Marketing Cloud, that are also integrated with the Adobe Creative Cloud. While the features demonstrated were quite similar to last year's demos during the main keynote, what really stroke me were the huge improvements in terms of usability and integration between the different solutions. Also, users will be able to share creative assets between the Adobe Marketing Cloud and Adobe Creative Cloud applications.

The new interface is very inspired by Pinterest and other social medias.

In the next version of Adobe Analytics, an "Anomaly Detection Report" will be available to alert on significant and incoherent changes in the data.

Another great new feature is the ability to analyze contribution to an anomaly detection, as well as to create a segment based on contribution analysis. Once a segment is created, ability to reuse the segment to target users in campaigns.

Cluster Analysis is also a great new feature of the next version of Adobe Analytics.

In the new Adobe Social application, users will be not only able to manage and publish directly on Twitter and Facebook, but also to get measurement on impressions, engagement and revenue per social activity, like a Facebook post.

At the end of the demo which was very exciting, it was a little bit disappointing to learn that these new interfaces and features will not be available until next summer or fall depending on the applications (exact public availability dates to be announced).

Alessandro Colafranceschi, Global Head of Online and Mobile Banking at Unicredit Group, was the last keynote speaker of the morning. He shared very interesting insights:

1. The new territory for a bank is the Web

2. It is no longer a web site, it is the bank

3. Analytics has become the oxygen we are breathing in the online team. 

4. Need both technology and skilled persons

 

 

MORE ON THE SAME TOPIC

- News Rundown at Adobe Summit EMEA – 2013, blogs.adobe.com

- Adobe Marketing Cloud Integrates with hybris + Lionbridge, cmsnewswire.com

- The Last Millisecond Keynote Video during Adobe Summit in Salt Lake City, tv.adobe.com

- #adobesummit 2013: the last millisecond, live.orange.com

- Adobe Updates Its Social Marketing Tools To Predict The Popularity Of Your Facebook Post, techcrunch.com

- Events : News from Adobe Summit EMEA including Predictive Publishing for Facebook, themarketingblog.co.uk

- Chanel: 'Digital should not be a department', marketingweek.co.uk

- Afternoon reflections & musings of #adobesummit, storify.com

- Adobe Summit 2013: Predicting the Last Milliseconds of Truth, socialmediatoday.com

- Samsung smartphones gain popularity with Europeans, blogs.adobe.com

1st MeasureBowling Europe Event on June 6th, 2013!

After two successful London events in Sept ’11 and Dec ’12, MeasureBowling is making a return on Thurs 6th June, 2013. But this time it is happening across Europe!

Co-organized by Peter O’Neill and Nicolas Malo, this event aims to gather the Digital Analytics community all across Europe around a fun activity. There are currently nine cities signed up to MeasureBowling with more expected to get involved.  All events are being organised locally, just joining under a common theme (and twitter hashtag).

MeasureBowling is intended for all members of the Digital Analytics community with anyone working in Digital welcome.  So please come join us on the 6th for a fun evening out, where ever you are located.  And if there is no local event, let us know if you would like to run one yourself!

You may also join the MeasureBowling Facebook group, Linkedin Group andGoogle+ community to stay in touch with the latest updates and aftermath.

5 questions to Neil Morgan on the upcoming Adobe Digital Marketing Summit in London (April 24-25, 2013)

For the second year, Adobe organizes the EMEA (Europe Middle East Africa) version of its Digital Marketing Summit in London on April 24-25th, 2013. If you missed, last year's edition, you will find a summary in these articles of my blog. Neil Morgan, VP Digital Marketing Solutions at Adobe & Big Chief Organizer of the EMEA Summit, shares some insights about this year's edition hightlights in the interview below.

Nicolas Malo: Hello Neil, compared with last year's edition, what's new and what's the same?

Neil Morgan: Ever since Adobe Summit last year, we’ve been busy thinking about how to make this years event bigger and better than ever before; we belivee that Adobe Summit 2013 is the premier event for digital marketers and advertisers to learn and share key strategies for driving market innovation.  With the explosion in social, video and mobile content, as well as the continuing trend of ad-spend to move online, today’s marketers are faced with the challenge of how best to use digital content to engage and acquire customers, as well as how to monetise and measure success – including ROI in the social media channel. 

With more content than ever, new announcements and an Olympic venue, Summit 2013 is a totally revamped conference. Based on your feedback, we are delighted to introduce 2 new tracks - Tech Labs and Marketing Innovations.

Our Tech Labs will allow your marketing developers to get hands-on experience at every lab and walk away with code assets that they can implement in their own digital marketing initiatives.

Our Marketing Innovations track;   from industry luminaries to innovative business leaders, these individuals are at the forefront when it comes to digital marketing. They come to Summit to share their expertise, vision and experience on how to take digital marketing to the next level. Marketing Innovations combines their leadership insights, marketing strategies and the solutions that enable them to build the next generation of marketing. They include people like Loïc Le Meur,Founder of Le Web, no doubt a familiar face in France, Christian Kurz,Vice President, Research, Insights and Reporting Viacom International Media Networks, and Alain Heureux , President and CEO IAB Europe .

Stay at the forefront of digital marketing with over 60 educational breakout sessions emphasising real-world customer successes based on solutions from Adobe Digital Marketing. Many sessions will feature an in-depth case study highlighting best practices from technology experts providing takeaways for attendees to implement immediately.

This year's tracks include:

• Digital Analytics
• Web Experience Management
• Digital Advertising
• Targeting & Optimisation
• Social Marketing
• Marketing Innovations
• Tech Labs

So Summit is very relevant for Digital Marketers, Analysts, Social, Advertisers and Publishers.

And if you want to be the first to witness the exciting new product innovations, developments and announcements that we have in store, since we plan fto make several new announcements.

 

Nicolas Malo: What are the hot topics for this edition?

Neil Morgan: We are looking at the key issues facing digital marketers today; how to personalise experiences in a millisecond, how to deliver on multiple devices, taking the leap into new areas, transforming businesses into digital. 

 

Nicolas Malo: Who are the top speakers lined up?

 Neil Morgan: This is probably the part that we are most excited about.  We have four ‘Main Stage ‘Acts’ across the two days.  They include global names from custoemrs,authors, luminaries, visionaries, CEOs, CMOs and more.

One we are really excited about is. Stefan Olander, Vice President, Digital Sport at Nike will talk about the book he has written, Velocity’ together with Ajaz Ahmed, CEO of AKQA

 Phil Fearnley, General Manager News & Knowledge, Future Media at the BBC, will talk about how their digital coverage of  Olympics was as transformational to the BBC as the invention of colour TV.

There are several major brands showcasing how digital is transforming their businesses; They include Chanel, Unicredit, SAP, BBC and Nissan.

 

Nicolas Malo: Which takeaways could attendees expect to bring back to work?

Neil Morgan: I hope that attendees will take away enough inspiration, best practices and ideas to last them for the next year!  We have around 50 hours of best practices content spanning Budget optimisation, Social Media marketing, experience management and optimisation. 

 

Nicolas Malo: How could my blog readers convince their bosses to fund the trip & conference fees in these challenging economic times?

Neil Morgan: We know it’s tough to justify a trip and time out of the office, but I can promise your readers that we design Summit to enale them to maximise the ROI of their digital marketing investment.  It really is the conference full of Europe’s leading digital marketers.

Of course, Paris based readers can be in London in just over two hours and the venue is in the east, near to the City Airport.  Finally, come for the rain! London is the best city in the world to get wet whilst at an event. The Adobe Marketing Cloud is likely NOT to be the only cloud you experience. However bring your umbrella and enjoy London for all it stands for!

Summit starts in under two weeks, we hope that you can make it!

 

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND TO REGISTER: http://summit-emea.adobe.com/