ANALYTICS PROVIDERS
(Click on the column headers to change sorting order.)
| Rank | Agency | Turnover from this specialism | Year to | Previous year | UK staff |
Founded in UK |
Owner |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coremetrics Europe | 35 | 2005 | independent | ||||
| Foviance | 35 | 2001 | independent | ||||
| Intellitracker | £1,000,000 | 12 | 2000 | independent | |||
| Lynchpin Analytics | 6 | 2004 | independent | ||||
| Maxymiser | 25 | 2006 | independent | ||||
| Mediaplex | 16 | 2001 | Valueclick | ||||
| Nedstat | 22 | 1999 | independent | ||||
| Omniture | 365 | 2006 | Adobe Systems |
Sector overview
Before the recession, site owners saw optimisation as "a quick fix, and never fully invested in collecting data of a good quality", Logan Tod CEO Matthew Tod told new media age in April 2010. "But the tough economy has made them realise they need to invest in collecting data to identify fundamental performance issues."
Against this backdrop, key performance indicators based around customer journeys and user experiences are coming to the fore. And the more they delve, the more granular analytics is becoming, looking at additional steps to conversion or a particular segment of traffic.
Combing over your site data isn't just a priority for ecommerce sites. Over 40% of members surveyed for the Association of Online Publishers' annual census reported that ROI measurement would be a significant challenge in 2010, while database and data analysis skills were identified as a top-three priority by participants.
So the need to drill down and make sense of what's happening on your site is as pressing as ever. It wouldn't be unfair to say the need to know is sometimes leading to awkward behaviour. A survey conducted for new media age found that the majority of the FT's top 100 global brands, such as Honda, KFC and Starbucks, were using a single tool to track customer journeys (nma 15 April 2010). But that means the rest are employing multiple tags in an attempt to bottom out their view of what's going on. This increases page weight and, arguably, the risk for discrepancies and confusion. Research by Tagman claims site owners lose 10%of visitors for every four tags on a page.
So there's a need to streamline tagging and wherever possible adopt a one-tag-fits-all approach. In response, analytics providers are rolling out tools that even track what's happening in social networks like Facebook, as marketers try to weigh up the value of their social media efforts. Whether one tool can ever really rule the mall remains a moot point, however. The pace of development often means site owners still turn to niche tools, when measuring video, for example.
When design software giant Adobe bought Omniture for $1.8bn in September last year, the aim was to embed analytics into the tools that create content. Omniture was certainly the single most popular analytics provider for nearly four out of ten of the FT's global brands. Hard on its heels, though, is Google Analytics, the free tool offered by the search giant. It was being used by a third of brands surveyed, and it's not uncommon for this to be the backup or even only tool. The effects of a powerful, free tool on the sector are still panning out, and it wouldn't be surprising to see further consolidation.