A DAY IN THE LIFE

OF A DIGITAL ANALYST
BY JIM STERNE

WHI TE PAPER
 ABOUT JIM STERNE

Jim Sterne is an international consultant who focuses

on measuring the value of the Web as a medium for
creating and strengthening customer relationships.
Sterne has written eight books on using the Internet
for marketing, is the Founding President and current
Chairman of the Digital Analytics Association and
produces the eMetrics Summit and the Media Analytics
Summit.

AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / ABOUT JIM STERNE 2

 SUMMARY

Introduction 4

Start of a new day 5

Chapter 1: First Interruption: Advertising 6

Chapter 2: Second Interruption: Product Marketing 12

Chapter 3: Third Interruption: Product Merchandising 15

Chapter 4: Fourth Interruption: Customer Experience 19

Chapter 5: First Actual Meeting: 22

Lunch with the New CMO

AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / SUMMARY 3

 INTRODUCTION
Do you know if your company’s digital strategy is truly
working? Is your digital performance reflective of your
business goals? When it comes to making choices, are the
best decisions immediately clear?

Our solutions are designed to help crystallise insights,

enabling you to answer these questions with a confident
"yes." Intuitive and fully customisable, our tools let everyone
at your company access, visualise and share the specific data
they need, right when they need it. The result? More agile,
effective, intelligent decisions.

In this white paper, renowned digital analytics expert Jim

Sterne explores how different teams might use AT Internet’s
tools to go beyond the data and make truly agile business
decisions. Step into the shoes of John – a digital analyst on
a mission to ask the questions that truly matter – and learn
how to awaken decision-makers company-wide to the power
of real-time, flexible data.

AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / INTRODUCTION 4

 START OF A NEW DAY

AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / START OF A NEW DAY 5

 CHAPTER 1: FIRST INTERRUPTION:
ADVERTISING
"We want to know if the
new campaign is having
a good start and how the
audience is responding
to it."
AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER
"Hey, John. Sorry to pop in unannounced but I was sent to
get the first trends of the new campaign on our fives top
sites. We started it yesterday with our top ‘sponsors’. We’ve
got this meeting this afternoon and we really need to show
that display ads on identified websites are performing."
JOHN
"Good morning, Andrew. Nice to see you. I hope you had a
nice weekend."
"I, well, yes. Uhm, thank you and, uh, you too."
JOHN
"Thank you."
"The numbers?"
JOHN
"Not this time. This time, we’re going to discuss what
business decisions you’re making with these numbers and
why it’s so important to show those particular ads are better.
That way, I can actually help your whole team accomplish
your goals."
"Well, it’s no big thing... it’s just a meeting... We want to know
if the new concept/campaign is having a good start and how
the audience is responding to it."
JOHN
"And what if they’re not?"
/ CHAPTER 1 / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 6

"You can do that tagging
thing yourself. We can
show you how to create
your own tags...And then
we can give you all the
results."
AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / CHAPTER 1 / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST
"Well, then... We might stop it sooner after giving it a try for
a few days. Depends on the results. Actually what we are
expecting is that the KPIs are above the average so we can
justify extending it to more sponsors. That’s the second step
of the campaign plan. Can you show me those numbers?"
JOHN
"Certainly. What was the campaign label?"
"We didn’t get the chance to label it."
JOHN
"I see. Tell me something. Last night, did that 2012, blue
Peugeot drive by this office faster than the 2013, green
Citroën?"
"What? I’m sorry... I didn’t... I wasn’t..."
JOHN
"My point exactly. You want to know how well your ads
performed after the fact, but you didn’t ask us to track
them."
"But we only had an hour to get that ad delivered and it
would take days for the 20 sponsors to add the tag..."
JOHN
"You know, you can do that tagging thing yourself. We can
show you how to create your own tags and make sure
nothing leaves the building without one and then we can
give you all the results. And fortunately, AT Internet, that’s
our digital analytics tool, has this great feature called the
Data Manager. This is one of those tricky situations where
it can save the day. You sent that banner ad to 20 partners
and I can, right here, integrate a custom source for the 20
different referrers."
Fill in the referer URLs
They will be associated with
the right campaign
7
 Just need to push it live

JOHN
"So here’s exactly what you were looking for. But for next
time, we have a very straightforward process for tagging
anything we put out there so we can track it and tell you how
well it did."

"But if we only have an hour to..."

JOHN
"Then you’ll have to squeeze in another fifteen seconds to
get the right tagging in place."

"Fifteen seconds? And I can do that?"

JOHN
"Yep."

"But we need this for display ads and search ads and emails
and sponsored links and we need to track which did the best
in a given campaign."
JOHN
"We’re all set up for that and we can show you how to use
our Data Manger in about half an hour. Each banner within
a given campaign is uniquely identified and we can see how
many times it was displayed and all the traffic generated to
your landing page by traffic source."

"But we’ve got so many requirements from publishers.

Sometimes it’s JavaScript or in an iFrame and sometimes
they use different adservers like DART, and then we’ve got all
the search engines."
JOHN
"Yes, we can handle all of that. See, the thing I’m trying to
explain is – if you will take just a moment to put the tags
onto whatever promotion you’re running – we can manage
all the data collection and report generation...

AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / CHAPTER 1 / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 8


"There’s a lot of interesting
behavioral and contextual
information that can
help you leverage your
campaign globally."
AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER
JOHN
That means you and I can talk about what you’re trying to
get out the other end rather than spending all this time on
the minutia of tagging. So now, let’s shift this conversation a
little. What do you want to know about your campaigns?"
"Like I said, we need the regular campaign KPI for each of
our five websites and the details per sponsor, and then need
to compare it with the sales of the promoted product as well
as the ‘side effects’ on other products..."
JOHN
"Why?"
"I beg your pardon?"
JOHN
"What do you hope to learn from those particular numbers?"
"Well obviously, we want to know which ads are doing better
when shown on which websites or networks."
JOHN
"The campaign optimization is mainly based on campaign
performance comparison. Do you use other metrics and
analyses feeding the optimization?"
"Where is this going?"
JOHN
"My question exactly. There’s a lot of interesting behavioral
and contextual information that can help you leverage your
campaign globally. For instance, if we look at the timing,
here, you see that generally all the navigation and content
consumption is happening during the day, but if we add the
conversions, we see they’re mostly made in the afternoon or
on weekends."
/ CHAPTER 1 / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 9

"Our system is flexible
enough to accommodate
all the weird things that
happen in real life."
AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / CHAPTER 1 / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST
"That’s interesting! Especially for basket abandonment,
special offers and all the campaigns we’re running to
accelerate the purchase process and..."
JOHN
"And there is a lot more to dig into and get, but for that
we have to get away from the Emergency Tagging thing.
Basically, you want to know which ads are getting the most
attention, bringing the most people back to our landing
pages, encouraging the most engagement with our website
and eventually causing more people to buy stuff so you
know where you should spend your advertising budget next
time, right?"
"Yes, of course."
JOHN
"Great! Let’s focus on that end of the conversation instead of
on the bits and bytes. First, let’s map out your next campaign
and together, we’ll set up the tracking, the reporting, the
dashboards and the majority of the work we do will be in
place for next time. And, our system is flexible enough to
accommodate all the weird things that happen in real life,
like grabbing data from a live event on a tablet or tweaking
our dashboards on the fly."
"Can you come to our meeting this afternoon and explain..."
JOHN
"Explain why I didn’t just give you the numbers your boss
wanted? Sure, but I’m going to send Margaret instead. She’s
our liaison to your department and you’ll be working directly
with her. She can walk your whole team through insight
creation and data-driven business decision-making, and sign
up the right people for do-it-yourself tagging training. I’ll let
her know."
10
 "That would be great."
JOHN
"Glad I could help. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I see the head of
Product Marketing wants a word. Come on in, Michael..."

AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / CHAPTER 1 / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 11

 CHAPTER 2: SECOND INTERRUPTION:
PRODUCT MARKETING
"What is the end game?
What are you really trying
to learn when you ask for
those numbers?"
AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER /
"You didn’t give me the pageviews per visit by source I asked
for and I need to create my PowerPoint deck for my meeting
this afternoon."
JOHN
"Right. And I see you didn’t respond to my question about
your request."
"You mean your snide, ‘Why do you want to know?’ I want to
know so I can do my job!"
JOHN
"Oh dear. I’m so sorry. I meant that question in the best way
possible – really. Please have a seat and let me explain. What
I wanted to know was this: What is the end game? What are
you really trying to learn when you ask for those numbers?"
"Well, if I know which promotions are driving the most
pageviews then I can do more of those types of promotions."
JOHN
"Right. But when you’re counting pageviews, what are you
really after? What is it that pageviews represent?"
"Oh, I see what you’re saying. I’m trying to figure out which of
our product launches in the past two weeks are generating
the most interest. We’re only going into production on half of
them so I need to know which are the most interesting to the
public."
CHAPTER 2 / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 12

"The last time I asked
for that, it took days."
AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER
JOHN
"Let me show you how easy it is to pull solid information
out of our system so we can refine the question. Pageviews
won’t inform you about sales. Pageviews per product may
be interesting to get a view of the global interest in the
product, but we can reveal some interesting phenomena if
we overlay that indicator with the click-to-basket rate and the
conversion rate per product."
"Yeah, but the last time I asked for that, it took days."
JOHN
"Not any more. I just drag and drop this, and then drag and
drop this, and here it is. We can call this first group Popular
But Non Seller. People are really after those products
– there’s a huge number of pageviews but almost no
conversion. So we have to figure out what’s blocking sales. Is
it uncompetitive pricing? Delivery time? Negative feedback?"
"OK, I know who can chase that down for me."
JOHN
"Then you have Missed Best Sellers. These products have
impressive conversion rates but really low pageviews. These
are the ones you have to promote and really push in your
merchandising. They just need more exposure. Or try to see
how to help people find those products more easily. Is it a
wording or search engine problem, or maybe we didn’t list
them on affiliate sites?"
Popular but non seller Missed best sellers
/ CHAPTER 2 / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 13
 "OK, wait. This is great but I have to run. Is there some way I
can access this report, just like you have it now?"
JOHN
"Sure. Like this... here it is. I just integrated it into your
current dashboard. Look over these numbers but come back
next week and we can examine more interesting aspects like
the profitability per product."

"Thanks. We’ll talk more. This is going to be really useful. I

can’t wait to tell Melissa in product merchandising, but I have
to go now."
JOHN
"Don’t worry, I will. She’s right behind you. Thanks for
dropping by, Michael. Come on in, Melissa."

AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / CHAPTER 2 / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 14

 CHAPTER 3: THIRD INTERRUPTION:
PRODUCT MERCHANDISING

"I feel like I should have been in this meeting. Product

marketing and product merchandising should be looking at
the same info at the same time, right?"

JOHN
"That’s a really good idea. In fact, it’s crucial! I can manipulate
the data but only those responsible for getting the work done
can really understand what it means. I can point things out,
but it’s the synergies between the right people and the data
that make the magic happen."

"Well, I don’t need magic at the moment, I just need to know

how long it’ll take to find out what’s selling in the stores
compared with what’s selling online."
JOHN
"Not long at all. But if you tell me the question behind the
question, I can come up with some useful insights."

"That would be great. Now that we’ve changed our strategy

to the web supporting the stores instead of competing with
them, we’re trying to understand why people buy some things
online and some things in the store. There’s a lot involved in
a consumer decision like that, so I want to start with in-store
versus online sales by geographic regions just to see what it
looks like."

JOHN
"And what do you think the reasons are?"

AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / CHAPTER 3 / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 15


"Can we correlate weather
data to our online
behavior and in-store
sales figures?"
Gender
Age
Revenue
Education
Household
AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER
"I’ve been in this business for a long time and the one thing
I know for sure is that my guesses are wrong about as often
as they’re right, and the only reason I’m still in this business
is that I can quickly change my mind when I’m wrong. I want
to know what’s actually happening instead of flipping coins
or depending on pundits."
JOHN
"You just made me happy. You are going to love how flexible
our data collection and management tools are."
"I want to really be able to dig into the numbers and have a
conversation with the data we have and a lot more besides."
JOHN
"A lot more?"
"Whatever I can get. If store sales are down and online sales
are up in the same location for all our product lines then I
assume the weather is bad. Can we correlate weather data
to our online behavior and in-store sales figures?"
JOHN
"Yes."
Gender
Age
Revenue
/ CHAPTER 3 / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 16
 "And segment our customers by age, location, hobbies and
topics of interest?"

JOHN
"We have relationships with third-party data brokers and
can segment by gender, size of household, employment
status, income, number of kids in the house, stuff like that.
We integrate sociographic and demographic data made up
of nearly 100 criteria per profile just based on anonymous
surfing habits. And I can set up periodic reports or give you a
dashboard once we settle on what view works best for you."

"OK, good. But dashboards are good for sales or finance,

not for me. Oh, sure, I want to be notified if something goes
haywire, but what I really want is to have the keys and drive
the data myself."
JOHN
"OK, you just made me very happy. Jessica is your
department liaison. I’d like to set up a one-hour, initial
training session and then weekly meetings so you can get to
know how to bend the system to your will."

"I’ve done this before and frankly, I find it too frustrating."

JOHN
"Really? Why?"

"Twice, I’ve spent hours learning about system limitations

instead of learning how to make it answer my questions. ‘We
don’t have a variable for that,’ or, ‘That tag was implemented
the wrong way and we didn’t collect that data,’ or, ‘We can
only show that sort of thing on a monthly basis.’ Really
frustrating."
JOHN
"Wow, you really have been down this road before, haven’t
you? Those are the exact reasons why we chose AT Internet.
We can correct tagging mistakes without tearing everything
apart and starting from scratch. We can create our own
custom variables and there’s no limit. And it’s pretty near
real time so you won’t wait a month or even a day to see
up-to-date data. Look at this dashboard we just put together.
This is what the CEO sees, and here is a much more detailed
view for the managers. You don’t have to think about the
limits – just think about what information would be useful for
each group and we’ll build the dashboard. This is extremely
flexible. We can add or modify any information on the fly so
think of it as a ‘continuous improvement process’."

"Which way is Jessica’s office?"

AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / CHAPTER 3 / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 17

 JOHN
"Right over here. Let me introduce you. Jessica, I’d like you to
set up some meetings with Melissa and get her up to speed.
She’s our latest convert and wants to get her hands on the
data."

"Wonderful! Nice to meet you, Melissa."

JOHN
"I’ll leave it to you two while I see what Edward wants.
Hi, Ed."

AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / CHAPTER 3 / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 18

 CHAPTER 4: FOURTH INTERRUPTION:
CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
"You want to be sure
you’re tracking from, say,
a mobile ad to an app to
our website to the store?"
AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER
"Hi, John. I’m hoping you have some magic data that can tell
me how our customers are acting differently on different
devices."
JOHN
"I’m headed over for lunch with our new CMO. Care to walk
and talk?"
"Yeah, that’d be nice. Listen, I just got back from a
conference where the head of one of the biggest retailers
and the head of one of the biggest online publishers talked
about how people of different ages are behaving differently
on tablets versus phones, and how they act differently
depending on whether they started their product search on
one or the other. We’re putting hashtags on billboards so
tracking website data alone just doesn’t cut it."
JOHN
"So you want to be sure you’re tracking from, say, a mobile
ad to an app to our website to the store?"
"Yes, I know, it’s too much to ask, but that’s the direction we
have to go in."
JOHN
"We are going that way. In fact, we have the technology to do
that now."
/ CHAPTER 4 / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 19

"We can do this without
fingerprinting or IP
addresses?"
AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER
JOHN
"We just need to sit down with you and your team to figure
out how to incentivize people to identify themselves on each
of their devices."
"But nobody does that."
JOHN
"I do that with Amazon. I want Amazon to recognize me on
every device I have and if they had a store, I’d use my loyalty
card every time."
"That’s right. Me too. So we can do this without fingerprinting
or IP addresses?"
JOHN
"That’s right. We just have to get them to want to log in, like
we do on Amazon. Once they log in, not only will we have a
clear vision of each specific behavior on each device, but we’ll
have it at the visitor level so we can correlate it to any action
made on any platform."
"Like, did he put the product in his basket on his mobile
phone, and later buy it on his computer?"
/ CHAPTER 4 / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 20
 JOHN
"Right, and we can combine mobile, tablet and computer
funnel performances... the whole thing. We’ll have a real end-
to-end, multi-device perspective. Then, we just have to ask
the right questions. So, when can you come by? We’ll map
out the next few months of promotions to see how we can
capture the brand experience from the customer’s point of
view."

"How soon can you convince our new CMO that it’s a good
idea?"
JOHN
"In about a minute when I sit down to lunch with him. That’s
him over there."

"Good luck!"
JOHN
"Thanks."

AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / CHAPTER 4 / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 21

 CHAPTER 5: FIRST ACTUAL MEETING:
LUNCH WITH THE NEW CMO

JOHN
"Hello, Paul, I’m John."

"Thanks for making the time, John. Have a seat."

"How can we dramatically
improve things within
our current resources and
solution?"
JOHN
"Thank you. I understand you’ve worked with our new CEO
before."
"Twelve years. That’s why I’m your new CMO. Mary brought
me in to help get this place into shape. We’re certain that
this company is primed for leveraging data so we’re here to
shake things up."
JOHN
"Once we shifted our focus to getting a decent data
governance plan in place, we zeroed in on the best analytics
engine we could find. I’m enthused by our tech, so now it’s all
about people. We simply have to have more people..."

"You know we have zero budget for new hires? Let me ask
you a straight question. How can we dramatically improve
things within our current resources and solution?"
JOHN
"Indeed! My current team could pull so much more value
from the data and tools we already have if only we could
be insights creators instead of just generating thoughtless,
useless reports. The people who do come in see the value...

AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 22

"I want to raise revenue,
lower costs and increase
customer satisfaction...
How well is the money
we’re spending
contributing to the
growth of our higher
value customers?"
AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER
JOHN
...I just had four encouraging conversations this morning,
but I can’t get everybody to see the whole picture all at
once. I don’t need more people, I just need managers to
switch gears and start leveraging the data. We have to have
more buy-in to the idea that analytics is a tool and not a
judgment."
"This is all about the business value of our analytics
investment. Is our current implementation of AT Internet
easy enough to use that we can get our business decision-
makers comfortable slicing and dicing?"
JOHN
"Yes, it is. But let’s start with the business problems we’re
trying to solve. If you want to drive from Paris to Berlin, our
conversation about data is very different than if you want to
get from Paris to London."
"Well, I want to do both and get to San Francisco as well.
So here’s the problem: I want to raise revenue, lower costs
and increase customer satisfaction, but the most important
question to answer is how well the money we’re spending on
all our different promotional efforts in different marketing
channels is contributing to the growth of our higher-value
customers. For example, we have a content marketing
program but no strategy. We barely have a content
marketing philosophy. How can we measure the success of
our videos, white papers and blog posts so we know what we
should be doing more of and what we should stop doing?"
JOHN
"Well, first we have to define success. What’s the goal?"
"Standard marketing metrics, right along the customer life
cycle: intent to purchase, purchase, customer satisfaction."
JOHN
"OK. So, Jennifer runs the Behavioral group and they share
intent with Research. Research does the text analysis stuff
– what people say – and Susan’s group looks at what people
do: clicks, time on site, recency, frequency and such. Think of
it as Research looking outside the company and Behavioral
watching what happens on our own properties."
"OK. But I’ve been thwarted by tools that offer a massive
number of reports, but throw up technical roadblocks or
charge exorbitant fees when we want to drill. People learn
not to ask really good questions because of how long and
how much money it takes to get answers. I’m not as familiar
with the AT Internet suite as I’d like, so walk me through it."
/ FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 23
 JOHN
"It’s a really flexible system but without the pain and
suffering of a raw SQL query so yes, we can slice and dice
without the questions needing to go through a programmer.
We just need to get people trained on asking really good
questions."

"OK, fine. Let’s say people get beyond the regular, basic
behavioral or consumption stuff. Can we readily derive more
important metrics like customer lifetime value?"
JOHN
"Well, this is a bit more complicated because of the variables.
I mean, one piece of content can be consumed in multiple
versions across multiple devices and even on lots of different
websites because we syndicate it through affiliates. It’s not as
daunting as it sounds; with the content tagged appropriately,
we can tell you which type of content in which format works
best on which devices."

"But let’s say some new business unit wakes up to the power
of analytics, comes to your team and starts asking a bunch
of questions. The first answer is inevitably, ‘We don’t know,’
because they haven’t followed your tagging protocol. Their
data is meaningless. How do you keep them interested?"
JOHN
"The AT Internet Data Manager is powerful, but like any tag
management system, it relies on a straightforward tagging
protocol in order to assure current and historical data quality
and consistency. So, to keep them from walking away and
not coming back, maybe our new CMO can make our tagging
protocol law. Then we could answer questions, provide
insights and turn this place into a data-driven insights
machine."

"Are we getting enough detail out of AT Internet to let

product managers and merchandisers and store managers
freely ask a wide variety of questions?"
JOHN
"We’re tagging and tracking the usual stuff from up at the
category level to monitor the marketplace, down to internal
search to see where our menus are failing. We can do
multivariate testing. We can watch Flash content and mobile
sites..."

"But what if we want to create something new, like a tag that

denotes a specific interaction like a combination of behaviors
over a certain time period that indicates interest in one
product segment over another?"

AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 24

"We can analyze the
interaction between
online and offline. ...AT
Internet’s system gives us
a real end-to-end view."
AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST
JOHN
"Yes, we can create custom metrics which means unlimited
customer dimensions. In other words, we have a true
analytics engine instead of pre-canned reports."
"Alright, let’s try this: We have multiple stores online and
offline, selling the same product in different colors and sizes
sometimes under different brand names. Can you tell me
how many blue, size 6, cap sleeve, knee-length dresses we
sold in each store and in total, and what sort of customers
bought them and what got them to us in the first place?"
JOHN
"Yes to all of that. You can also break it down by zip code
or customer catchment area, which not only shows the
sales turnover generated on and offline, but identifies
cannibalization between the two. We can even integrate
our CRM data or use an AT Internet profiling partner to
link consumption to specific profiles. We can recognize
the difference between online and offline shoppers and
serve relevant content and offers in real time and then we
can analyze the interaction between online and offline. For
example, a customer who bought online and picked up their
order in store, but cancelled one item. AT Internet’s system
captures the updated order information and gives us a real
end-to-end view."
"Good. But how well are we doing with data integration?"
JOHN
"We look at three types of data integration. First, new
data sources come into the Analytics Center of Excellence
and I monitor all of that. Second, we make sure those
numbers show up properly in dashboards. We’re very big
on automating reports, so we spend a lot of time getting the
dashboard right and as little time as possible grinding them
out. Think of these two as input and output."
"I’ve found reports are fine for accounting, but we need to
operate based on thresholds, alerts and the development
of insights. I have yet to see a new idea pop up out of a
dashboard."
JOHN
"Our delivery team prides itself on providing meaningful
dashboards with standard gauges to assure you things are
running fine. We show pops-and-drops, which are the alerts,
and then comments, which are inklings and hunches and
questions. This is where they work with our senior analysts
who are the discovery folks...
25
 JOHN
...They are the ones who liaise with business units and the
product managers to figure out if they can glean meaning
out of the numbers and come up with insights to drive the
business."

"To do that well, we need ultimate flexibility with the data.

Lay out the restrictions for me. How far back can we go and
how granular is the data we can look at?"

JOHN
"This isn’t a black box. We own all of our data. It doesn’t go
away unless we want it to, and I believe we want at least two
years in order to do seasonal comparisons."

"How much do you trust the data?"

JOHN
"You mean, data quality?"

"I mean, if an analyst comes to me and says the data

suggests we should place all of our bets on red products this
season, how seriously should I consider it?"
JOHN
"That’s a matter of confidence. I trust our behavioral data
and our transactional data with 97% confidence and..."

"Not 100%?"
JOHN
"Stuff happens – real life. But there are quality assurance
steps throughout – when we capture the data, when we
process it, when we plug it into dashboards and when we
export it to other systems."

"Once we get people to understand that some data is more

trustworthy than others, how do we get them comfortable
asking questions?"
JOHN
"’The data suggests,’ is the important thing here. So far,
intellectual capacity and gut feel are more capable – flawed,
yes, but capable – of weighing a massive number of variables
and coming to a conclusion. The data might suggest
something, but people with years of experience are much
more astute at ‘knowing’ if the advice makes sense or is a
statistical anomaly."

"So you’re not all about the data, all the time."

AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 26

"The magic happens
when people understand
the possibilities, and their
ad hoc questions are
less about proving last
quarter’s good decisions,
and more about making
informed decisions today."
AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST
JOHN
"A clock tells me it’s lunch time, but can’t tell me if I’m
hungry."
"Your watch should be able to someday."
JOHN
"And your product managers should be able to determine if
there’s a market for it."
"Now I want to ask about the real value that comes out of
the far end of all this data diving. I need to really understand
where, how and when we get orders of magnitude return on
our investment on technology, process and people. I need
to defend all of this to the Board. They get it, but they don’t
quite believe it yet."
JOHN
"Well, now we’re back to the fact that we have a decent data
governance plan and a solid analytics engine in place. So
now, it’s all about people."
"We need to bring them on board."
JOHN
"Right, and there are multiple issues. First, they have to
understand the upside. For that, we have Lunch-and-Learn
sessions, success story case studies and online tutorials,
but they won’t come or read or participate until they are
convinced, and they won’t take the time to be convinced
unless there’s a downside to staying away. Put analytics
in their performance reviews to make them viscerally
interested in the process rather than just the result, and
they’ll stop ignoring the analytics. Once they see what the
ACE can do for them..."
"ACE?"
JOHN
"Sorry, Analytics Center of Excellence... Then they’ll start
getting creative about using data. That’s when you start
getting orders of magnitude return on investment. The ACE
can get them started, but the magic happens when they
really understand the possibilities and their ad hoc questions
are less about proving that they made a good decision last
quarter and more about making a more informed decision
today."
"But you’re still going to have to get them to tolerate this
governance scheme you have in mind."
27

"This is a new way of
thinking about business.
...Gut feel has worked for
humans for millions of
years, but data-informed
gut feel is demonstrably
better."
AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST
JOHN
"We have to get them to comply with the data governance
structure we have in place. First they get it, then they like
it, and then they want it. That makes them willing to do the
work to make it work."
"You sure you don’t have some marketing experience hidden
in your resume?"
JOHN
"Scout’s honor. So, you motivate them, I educate them, their
peers convince them by example and once they’re on board
with the governance process..."
"So spell out the orders of magnitude return."
JOHN
"This is about a new way of thinking about business. Once
our directors and managers understand the depth of our
data and the ways we can slice and dice, they will start to ask
more kinds of questions. That’s going to make all of them
more willing to turn to data as part of their decision-making
process. Gut feel has worked for humans for millions of
years but data-informed gut feel is demonstrably better."
"You want to see all of them to log in and start asking
questions?"
JOHN
"Some of them, certainly. But not all of them have the time
to acquire the in-depth knowledge about which data are
trustworthy, and to what degree."
"So you’re not a proponent of data democratization?"
JOHN
"I’m also not a proponent of everybody managing their legal
problems or medical diagnoses. There are certain skills that
take a while to hone and business decision-makers are not
usually trained in those areas. That’s why we have policies
and oversight committees."
"But you agree that we want to get them to the point where
they can ask ad hoc questions."
JOHN
"Yes, that is the goal. If we can get everybody excited enough
to really get creative with their questions then we end up
with orders of magnitude return on investment."
"But if they get good at it and ask a lot, then they overrun
your ACE with query after query. I’ve seen whole reporting
processes grind to a halt because too many people
started asking too many questions and since they couldn’t
manipulate the data themselves..."
28

"This engine is capable
of interactive, drag-
and-drop, on-the-fly
segmentation that
lets me slice on any
dimension, preview the
results to see if it makes
sense before pushing
it out to a hundred
dashboards."
AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER
JOHN
"I’ve seen that too and that’s another reason we went
with the AT Internet approach. This engine is capable of
interactive, drag-and-drop, on-the-fly segmentation that lets
me slice on any dimension, preview the results to see if it
makes sense before pushing it out to a hundred dashboards.
We need the business side of the house to use their intuition
and experience to see if our results make sense in terms of
reality on the street, but we can’t give them the keys or it’s
too easy for them to tweak their questions ever so slightly to
get the answers they want, rather than surfacing new truths.
That’s where the analyst and the business person need to
work together. And that’s why I think we have the technology
and the processes... now we just need to get the people
in this company to see data as a valuable tool and not an
accounting of their abilities."
"I get your point. But I want to be very sure your team and
tech are up to the task. Let’s say somebody comes up with
a unique, custom variable and then wants to use it in other
calculations that get used elsewhere? Like people do with
formulas in spreadsheets?"
JOHN
"Not only can we create those kind of metrics, we can
encode them so that when somebody asks a complex
question that references that calculation, the query for that
variable executes against the most current data we have.
You can create a multidimensional variable and stick it in a
dashboard and then it’s built in."
"But if we really get on a roll, I don’t want my people to be
stymied in the middle of a brainstorming session by being
told they’re asking for too much, too fast. For instance, how
long would it take you to give me a report highlighting which
content elements and on which platforms were most likely
responsible for driving sales of red shoes in the past two
weeks?"
JOHN
"About three minutes."
"And if I said I wanted it to be month-over-month by
demographic and personality type... by region?"
JOHN
"Another three minutes."
"Updated daily with three threshold alerts to be emailed to
five different people."
JOHN
"One more minute."
/ FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 29
 "And show the difference in profit between purchase
journeys that started on a phone versus those that started on
a tablet versus a desktop."
JOHN
"Two more minutes."

"Broken down by whether they received and/or opened a

promotional email."
JOHN
"Another minute."

"Who were also exposed to a specific display ad."

JOHN
"Another minute."

"For people who purchased within two days, five days and ten
days."
JOHN
"Another two minutes."

"As compared to blue shoes, by size and brand."

JOHN
"Three hours."

"Wait... Why?"
JOHN
"Because it will take the first hour to round up all of the
people whose business decisions will be based on the results
of that query, and the next hour to find out why they are
asking the question. Then I’ll know enough to use other
data they are unaware of to give them much more nuanced
answers they can use for lots of decisions."

"And the third hour?"

JOHN
"Lunch."

AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / FIRST ACTUAL MEETING / A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A DIGITAL ANALYST 30
 About AT Internet
AT Internet is one of the world’s major players in Digital
Analytics. Its decision-making solutions and services
provide companies with an integral analysis of their
performance and presence on all online digital platforms:
the web, mobile and social media. The strength of AT
Internet’s technology and the quality of its customer
relations are recognised worldwide. AT Internet has more
than 3,500 clients all over the world from all sectors. The
company, which has more than 200 employees, is present
in 32 different countries through its clients, subsidiaries
and partners.

Credits:
Author: Jim Sterne
Illustrations: Mark Hill
Layout & graphics: Romain Zampieri
Copywriting & editorial coordination: Ashley Kibler, Bernard Segarra

Legal notice:
The brands and logos contained in this document are registered or non-
registered trademarks, property of the AT Internet Corporation, or third
parties.
Any use not explicitly authorized by the holders of the aforesaid brands
is strictly prohibited.
Any reproduction, partial or total, of this document without the express
authorization of AT Internet is prohibited.
AT Internet reserves the right to update the current document at any
time and without prior notice. Non-binding document and informations.

© AT Internet - 2014

AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER 31

Contact

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