The Online Business Measurement Quadrant
It is somewhat naive to believe that controlled on-site measurement is all that’s needed in this brave new world of User Generated Content (or if you want; Consumer Generated Media) – And I am happy to see that my good friend Avinash continuously preach that web analysis is not a thing you do in a silo.
I was trying to simplify this fact to a client not that long ago and ended up creating a structure that you might find useful. For the purpose of this post I named it the “Online Business Measurement Quadrant” .. .. which is kind of catchy.. heh? :-)
The Online Business Measurement Quadrant structure, try to shed some light on what we have to measure and in particular the very different environments we have to measure it in. The 4 quadrants represents:
- Controlled On site Content
- Controlled Off site Content
- Uncontrolled On site Content
- Uncontrolled Off site Content
Let me try to exemplify this by providing a set of content types.
Where I think it becomes obvious that even something as supposedly simple as collecting the activity becomes an obstacle. It is still fairly easy to collect good click stream data (Controlled On site Content), but I think you (as me) can see the difficulty in figuring out what to collect when somebody comments on your brand on some random blog (Uncontrolled Off site Content) - not even considering HOW we would want to analyze it and even more exciting HOW we would like to relate it to the data collected in other Online Business Measurement Quadrants.
Types of content
Controlled On site Content
Traditional marketing messages published on the corporate website, micro websites etc.
Controlled Off site Content
Traditional marketing messages published on third party website sites, widgets etc.
Uncontrolled On site Content
Brand commentary, Ratings and other User Generated Content published on the corporate website, micro websites etc.
Uncontrolled Off site Content
Brand commentary, Ratings and other User Generated Content created and published on third party websites.
JUST concluding that it is difficult moving beyond traditional web analytics measurement is hardly any help :-)
Let me provide you with a Random selection of vendors playing in each Online Business Measurement Quadrants and their typical measurement tool naming.
Find the list from the picture above expanded with links and markings (bold and a *) on some of the tools I use for this petite analytics blog.
Web Analytics - (Controlled On site Content)
(Measurement typically provided by your traditional enterprise Web Analytics Vendor)
- www.omniture.com
- www.webtrends.com
- www.indextools.com (*)
- …
(Measurement provided by both large sample data vendors, but also channel specific vendors)
- www.nielsen-netratings.com
- www.comscore.com/
- www.feedburner.com (*)
- www.indextools.com (*)
- …
(Measurement typically provided by CMS, Blog or other community application)
- www.wordpress.org
- www.blogger.com (*)
- www.indextools.com (*)
- …
(Measurement provided by a set of relatively new tools working specifically around Sentiment )
As you can see, I added my traditional Web Analytics tool into the mix in other quadrants that the one we named “WEB” – and the reasoning is that enterprise analytics systems today CAN do a bit of data collection amongst other quadrants – just not as perfect as we would want to. A subjective and personal attitude on how much we can do would be visualized as follows:
This whole Online Business Measurement Quadrants chat is a work in progress – so please do email or comment so I can refine this to something even better :-)
Happy holidays to anybody actually reading this over Christmas..
Cheers
Dennis
December 26th, 2007 at 8:59
Very nice. Thank you.
December 26th, 2007 at 11:50
Hi Patrick,
Thanks a lot; and do feel free to use it!
Cheers mate
Dennis
December 26th, 2007 at 17:51
Dennis: This is the first post I have read after no internet access for a week, what a gift!! :)
Very thoughtful analysis, and I am going to steal a slide or two here - since you have already given Patrick permission!
Hello from Hong Kong.
-Avinash.
December 27th, 2007 at 4:36
Hi Avinash,
Hong Kong…Damn you! :-) I am knee deep in snow in Budapest.
.. and you can of course use it any way you want.
See you soon.
Dennis
January 13th, 2008 at 4:01
A couple of thoughts on this (not yet well structured)
1. In China, but I assume in other countries as well, marketers still have a strong urge to control as much of the conversation as possible. This old reflex limits the reach of their message. Web 2.0 is a reality in China and marketers need to move away from a shouting mentality towards communication mentality, that emphases listening to the “voice of the customer”.
2. Separating online marketing and PR becomes increasingly difficult, especially when looking at user generated content (or IWOM to use another term). Marketers need to find ways to tear down the organizational barriers that prevent better integration especially on the analytics side. Otherwise their understanding will be limited to one or two quarters of Dennis’ quadrant.
3. Measuring user generated content (quantity, quality, key messages) is a new challenge for most advertisers in China. With the amount of conversation going on in the millions of blogs & BBS’s in China, manual tracking and counting is not scalable. While Sam Flemming’s CIC owns the conversation an IWOM tracking in China, looking at other alternatives might pay off, especially regarding integration with current analytics efforts.
4. Measuring off-site content provides a new challenge to advertisers as well. While some of the large advertisers in China just get comfortable with Web Analytics on their own site, some of our client already move away from viewing their site and their banner campaigns as the main medium for communication. They increasingly communicate with 3rd party vendors (e.g. video, sharing sites, business communities) to engage their audiences more effectively. While that makes a lot of sense from a marketing perspective, analytics team need to find solution for tracking the effectiveness of these cooperation. A low trust environment like China adds its own challenges (tip: never trust your vendors numbers). The best solution we have found thus far is forcing vendors to integrate our tracking codes on the pages / experiences they create for our clients. While this opens a whole different can of worms (explaining the differences between “our” numbers and “their” numbers anyone?) it seems like the best available solution.
5. Making your own content “mobile” will significantly increase your reach. Many brands in China have experimented with viral videos, hosted both on their mini-sites and video sharing sites and our numbers show a huge boost reach. Who says video’s are the only “mobile” / “viral” content brands can create? Think about making your downloads available on third party sites, your mini-games and your widgets and you will be rewarded with an explosion in reach. At least as long as you can measure it. Users seem to be more willing to engage in advertisers content when they are in the “mood” to watch, play or download.
January 15th, 2008 at 15:48
Hi Florian,
First. Thank you very much for your thorough input - and I think you are spot on and could not agree more when you say that – “Separating online marketing and PR becomes increasingly difficult”.
But I am even more excited to hear the following from you: “…advertisers are increasingly communicating with 3rd party vendors (e.g. video, sharing sites, business communities) to engage their audiences more effectively”
Because this is how is see the future as well (and that future is today). I actually wrote a post about it: Your most popular page is likely NOT to be your most popular page
Cheers
Dennis
January 18th, 2008 at 2:30
N.B.
a chinese translation of The Online Business Measurement Quadrant
Dennis
January 28th, 2008 at 18:27
Now I realize that I am only focusing on controlled onsite measurement for my site. Thanks for the profound insights. Can I tell you about the Young Entrepreneur Society from the http://www.YoungEntrepreneurSociety.com? A great resource for entrepreneurs.
January 29th, 2008 at 5:58
Hi Bond,
Thank you for the comment. AND as an entrepreneur, any resource recommendation is appreciated! :-)
Cheers
Dennis
June 12th, 2008 at 16:05
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