Why you need to understand Digital Analytics

Ivy Mar 31, 2015 No Comments

Before I do a blog on the latest craze in the hiring landscape – ecommerce analytics, I’d like to cover digital analytics in its new avatar.

As this article in Forbes magazine says, 2014 was the Year of Digital Marketing Analytics, when the ‘digital’ took over the marketing landscape. According to analytics pundits, the trend spills over to 2015, with Digital Analytics continuing to dominate the analytics space.

We have already covered web analytics, and explained marketing analytics. So let’s examine digital analytics.

What is Digital Analytics?

Digital Analytics is defined as

“the collection, measurement, analysis and reporting of data for optimizing channel usage…”

The most popular definition is from Avinash Kaushik.

Digital analytics is the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data from your business and the competition to drive a continual improvement of the online experience that your customers and potential customers have which translates to your desired outcomes (both online and offline).

So what it does, is collect, measure, analyse and report data residing in digital media for optimum usage, answer questions and offer insights for business actions.

In the larger picture,

web analytics < digital analytics < marketing analytics < e-commerce analytics

Where is Digital Analytics used?

Why Digital Analytics?

 

 

Why you need to equip yourself with Digital Analytics skills?

Today every activity, opinion or event is digitised. Social media, cell phones and the internet have greatly influenced consumer behaviour and the way businesses work. There is a seamless flow of information across the digital space, waiting to be harnessed for insights.

• Every firm, commercial venture and store, has a digital presence – website, mobile apps, e-commerce, social media, content or comments on the web, and digital advertisements (video, TV and web).
• Businesses are adopting a data-driven approach for maximizing ROI on the digital spend.
• Social media, websites, cell phones, TV viewership and even store footfalls have become digitised points of data collection.
• Digital analytics has become an integral part of every functional area – marketing, fraud detection, retail, social media, healthcare, banking and so on.
• Organizations are moving their marketing budget to digital channels. Growth in digital ad spending is the fastest at 30%, expected to account for 9.51% of all ad spending in 2015. The e-commerce segment has seen the highest digital ad spends, growing at a CAGR of 59 % since 2011; followed by the Telecom and FMCG

• 70 % of companies intend to increase investment in third-party social media services like Facebook.
• Businesses like hotel booking and travel portals are tripling their spends on digital assets (investments in digital media management).

It is a ‘digital’ environment today.

So whether you are engaged in analysing the reason for the failure of a new product, or tracking repeat defaulters of a particular loan scheme, you will need to engage tools of digital analytics at some stage/s. It is no longer about digital marketing alone.

Bottomline – While web analytics may soon be passé, digital analytics is here to stay.  So it is time to hone your skills in digital analytics too.