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  • Roku Enables Nielsen Four-Screen Measurement

    Roku Enables Nielsen Four-Screen Measurement

    Roku has enabled Nielsen four-screen measurement across traditional TV, connected TV, mobile, and desktop.

    Nielsen ratings are the gold standard for gauging the popularity of TV shows. Nielsen’s Four-Screen Ad Deduplication is a major step forward in its Nielsen One plans. Nielsen One is slated for release in December 2022 and will be a cross-media measurement platform.

    “Marketers are increasingly investing in CTV to follow consumers. However, brands want consistent measurement across screens,” said Kim Gilberti, SVP, Product Management, Nielsen. “Marketers can now better evaluate CTV inventory’s unique reach and frequency in conjunction with their entire Roku buy in a comparable and comprehensive manner, and advertisers can reduce waste and help ensure that relevant ads are delivered to the right audiences across devices. This release brings us one step closer to providing comparable and deduplicated metrics across screens with Nielsen ONE.”

    “We believe that all TV ads will be accountable and measurable,” said Asaf Davidov, Head of Ad Measurement and Research, Roku. “Our direct consumer relationship, our scale, and our tech all make us uniquely positioned to work with Nielsen to make measurement simpler and more accurate as marketers shift spend to TV streaming.”

  • Google Analytics 4: What You Should Know

    Google Analytics 4: What You Should Know

    Data analysis services like Google Analytics are critical for millions of businesses worldwide to understand their customers. It’s also a lucrative industry; by 2028, the data analytics market is expected to be worth $550 billion. The field has come a long way since the early days of the internet.

    The History of Web Analytics

    Web analytics is almost as old as the internet itself. Just 3 years after the internet came into existence, hit counters became available for use. Hit counters are familiar features to most internet users. They consist of simple code that displays the number of page views. Hit counters can be used without any kind of IT expertise.

    Slightly more complicated is log analysis, which helps people interpret server logs and identify traffic sources to their website. Yet as websites morphed from plain text to images, audio, and video, log analysis developed gaps in its data. That’s because caching, or temporarily storing a file in the system to avoid multiple HTTP requests was a common occurrence that wouldn’t show up on the log. Eventually, the gap was filled by JavaScript, which followed user behavior using a tag-based system. JavaScript could track more than just hits, which moved analytics into the field of marketing. 

    The Dawn of Google Analytics

    By this point, marketers were able to create targeted advertisements, optimize website copy, and more. Yet there were limits; in the late ‘90s, large companies could take as long as 24 hours to process their website’s data. Along came Urchin, a web analytics company that could process the same data in as little as 15 minutes. At one point, Urchin worked with 1 in 5 of the Fortune 500. Urchin continued its upward trend until Google bought them in 2005 for $30 million, giving birth to Google Analytics.

    Google Analytics is a service that ties in directly with Google’s web marketing offerings. They offer in-depth, tag-based data that focuses on the quantitative side. For the past decade, their most popular offering has been Universal Analytics, which launched in 2012. Universal Analytics lived up to its name by enabling the tracking of users across multiple devices and platforms. It can monitor offline behavior, and it combines demographic data with real-time monitoring for the most detailed consumer insights possible.

    Google Analytics 4 is Coming


    The expansive reach of Universal Analytics made it one of the targets of certain governments as they passed online privacy laws. One of the most well known laws of this nature is the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR for short. In part as a response to the new regulatory environment, Google launched Google Analytics 4 (GA4) in October 2020. GA4 is in compliance with the GDPR in that it only uses first-party cookies and has a Consent Mode that adjusts data collected on users based on said user’s permissions. At the same time, GA4 has all the insight capacity of its predecessor.

    In Conclusion

    GA4 has added new features like debugging mode, consistent collection methods for mobile and web data, and cross-platform reporting opportunities. Is your website ready to switch?

    History & Future of Web Analytics
    Source: InfoTrust
  • Data Collection in a World of Internet Privacy

    Data Collection in a World of Internet Privacy

    The use of online tracking tools is one of the primary methods that businesses can use to inform their marketing efforts and therefore grow revenue. In order to do this, companies with an online presence most often use cookies and tags, also known as web beacons, to gather data about their consumers and their habits. Cookies are small text files that a website can place on a user’s device that enables them to recognize and track their online behavior. Similarly, tags are the technical mechanism by which cookies are stored on a user’s device, collecting data including but not limited to the pages they view, products they purchase, and how they accessed the website.

    Because of the expansive technology that businesses can use to gather personal data on their customers, there are many privacy regulations that have been put into place to protect the rights of the user when online, which may be part of why cybersecurity insurance rates are rising. For example, in Europe, ePrivacy Directive is the governing body of user experience and privacy, and secures one’s right to privacy in terms of online tracking, personal profiting, unsolicited marketing tactics, and nonconsensual data harvesting by third parties. Similarly, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) addresses data protection regardless of data type, giving users multiple rights and powers over where and with whom their data is shared. In the United States, state-specific legislation gives users rights related to the processing of their personal information. California, Colorado, and Virginia are only a few of the many states that outline specific guidelines for how data and private information is handled.

    If too many users refuse to consent to sharing their data, businesses struggle to gather sufficient data and analytics may be rendered useless. When websites are unaware of the proportion of consenting users, what cohort is reflected in collected data, and if a sufficient sample is present to make accurate optimizations, it is increasingly difficult for businesses to make accurate inferences about user behavior. In addition, if these regulations are violated, there are heavy fines associated with non-compliance. In May 2018, the EU issued over 800 fines, and to date, big name companies like Amazon and Google have incurred millions of dollars in fines. It is tedious for users to read the consent agreement and give permission to a website to store their data, therefore a smaller proportion of users are consenting, leaving companies with insufficient information and a higher likelihood of fines and violations.

    There is now a new approach to online privacy law compliance that allows businesses to make the most of the data that they have in an ethical way. This measurement methodology involves collecting data anonymously without the use of cookies, and suggests that websites prompt users to provide a login or to register early in the user funnel. Both of these methods will allow for data collection in common scenarios where consent is not necessary or when it is given voluntarily under the guise of account creation with a certain business or web page. This data is vital to marketers and users alike, as it allows a company to make informed decisions about their user’s interests in the most ethical way, which is important to customers. Data in today’s world is so powerful, and it’s important to present the best tools to harness that power, lawfully.

    Data Collection in a Post-Cookie World
    Source: InfoTrust
  • France the Latest Country to Crack Down on Google Analytics

    France the Latest Country to Crack Down on Google Analytics

    France is the latest country to crack down on Google Analytics, over concerns it violates the GDPR the EU’s privacy legislation.

    In mid-January, the Austrian Data Protection Authority ruled that Google Analytics was illegal due to conflicts with the GDPR. Essentially, the GDPR prohibits countries from exporting EU citizen data to the US. Much of the concern stems from the fact that US intelligence agencies can force companies to give them access to such data, without the protections EU citizens are normally afforded.

    France has now joined Austria, according to Le Monde, via AppleInsider. The National Commission for Informatics and Liberties (CNIL) has ordered a company to stop using Google Analytics.

    “The CNIL notes that Internet users’ data [collected by Google Analytics] are transferred to the United States in violation of…GDPR,” reads the statement Le Monde gained access to. “It therefore requires the site manager to bring these processing into compliance with the GDPR, if necessary by ceasing to use the Google Analytics feature (under current conditions) or by using a tool that does not result in a transfer outside the EU.”

    The CNIL has given the site manager one month to stop using Google’s platform. This latest development does not bode well for Google. When Austria made its ruling, experts believed other countries would soon follow suit. Austria and France are likely just the first elements of what may become a wave of losses for the Google Analytics platform.

    National Commission for Informatics and Liberties (CNIL) has issued a formal statement regarding the unnamed company. “The site manager has one month to comply,” says the statement (in translation), as seen by Le Monde.

    “The CNIL notes that Internet users’ data [collected by Google Analytics] are transferred to the United States in violation of…GDPR,” continues the statement. “It therefore requires the site manager to bring these processing into compliance with the GDPR, if necessary by ceasing to use the Google Analytics feature (under current conditions) or by using a tool that does not result in a transfer outside the EU.”

  • The Analytical Benefits of Using Web Heatmap Software

    The Analytical Benefits of Using Web Heatmap Software

    Wherever there are customers, there’s always a desire to understand their needs and behavior. Understanding customer behavior can lead to significant benefits for a business. Often it comes down to generating interest in a product or service then figuring out ways to convert the customer to use it. A positive user experience on your website can generate plenty of leads and eventually lead to conversions along the way.

    A website must be user-friendly, easy to navigate, and have a clear purpose. Otherwise, users will just move on to the next best thing. To understand user behavior on your website, you can use a tool known as a heat map. Heat maps are an excellent way to take an analytical approach to understanding your users and eventually your customer’s behavior. Here’s a quick look at the analytical benefits of using heat maps. 

    Heatmaps Defined

    As you enter the exciting world of audience analytics and consider using web heatmaps, it helps to understand what they are and how they work. A website heat map is a suite of software tools that creates a visual of what’s happening with a website. It uses color-coding to display different metrics. Think of it as a visual representation of data. Heat maps aggregate data from whatever metrics you’ve defined using certain tools.

    These tools might include session recording which logs and tracks how users interact with websites, conversion funnels analysis tools, and other tools to help you analyze and optimize forms/user feedback tools. While there are many different providers of heat maps, sometimes the best way to go is with a suite of heat map tools that help you optimize your website’s user experience to ultimately create more conversions by understanding customer behavior/interests.

    Understand How Users Interact With Your Site

    The entire point of analytics is to understand data. When it comes to the ideal e-commerce website, you want to have something that’s easy for users to interact with while allowing them every opportunity to conveniently make purchases. When visitors interact with your site, heatmap tools can help track interaction vectors like where they click, how far they scroll, keyboard input, which pages they’re visiting, how long they stay on a particular page.

    A session recording tool can track and measure all of those vectors in a private way without breaking any compliance standards (such as GDPR) or jeopardizing their privacy/security. Using this tool, you can understand the outcomes of AB testing, figure out how to optimize the website experience based on what users are actually doing when they visit your site, and deploy a better marketing strategy from understanding customer interactions on your website.

    Save Time

    Time is a finite resource, even for the best of us. Heat maps are useful and practical for saving time when you’re building a marketing strategy. Understanding the insights provided by the software allows an entire team to build a better plan, fix any bugs in the software, redesign the user interface, and increase traffic. Moreover, analytics can help save time and money by complementing the user testing process to create a much more efficient website in the long term. A better user experience/website leads to more interest which can in turn eventually create those conversions over time.

    Create Conversions

    Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is pretty nuanced. You need to understand what users are looking for when they come to your website and how to provide it for them in an uncomplicated way. Through the CRO process, you can analyze and optimize every point where a conversion can take place. Powerful website heatmap software tools offer several methods for creating more conversion opportunities at every stop along the way. Whether it’s mouse movement, seeing how far users scroll, or understanding when and why they are putting items in their carts, you can use a heat map to leverage The conversion process to your advantage by paying attention to the tools/insights provided with the software.

    Increase Online Revenue

    At the end of the day, the goal of increasing revenue is pretty important. So how do heat maps help accomplish this? Well, the more conversions a keymap creates, the more customers make purchases. Heatmap analytics help you learn how users are making purchases on your site as well as what they’re buying. In this manner, you can find products to fit your customers which can ultimately increase sales/revenue. When you’re spending a great deal of time trying to get your customers to make the purchase, you need to make sure that the purchase page is optimized enough to actually create that conversion.

    Conversion funnel tools as part of the heat map software suite can’t help with this. Other tools also provide ways to generate revenue. The key is to implement the tools as soon as possible and use them as often as possible. That way, you are taking advantage of any insights you can glean and fully optimizing the customer experience to maximize your gains.

  • How Heat Maps Can Be Useful To Your Business

    How Heat Maps Can Be Useful To Your Business

    The purpose of a heat map is to measure the density of data in a particular area. To differentiate different levels of density, heat maps employ various colors. In general, red and orange are utilized for higher densities and blue for lower densities. 

    Although other maps can measure data density, heat maps are a tidier way of doing so. For instance, a pin map displays density by identifying each datapoint with a marker. However, these maps can become messy and difficult to analyze. By contrast, a heat map makes it easy to identify areas where particular information is more prevalent in representing density with colors. For example, if you wanted to see where your sales are coming from, you would start by plotting all your sales locations. Then, by applying a heat map to this data, you would be able to quickly identify where sales are highest and where they are lowest. You can then use this information to make important changes to your sales strategy. 

    Types of Heat Maps

    There are three primary types of heat maps. These are: 

    Traditional

    This type of heat map represents data points as color-coded circles with a specific radius of influence. In general, the densest areas of these circles will be colored red and then fade to blue or green as the data becomes dispersed. However, most heat maps will allow you to choose colors to suit your preferences. 

    Area-Based

    If you want to compare data between one or more different geographic areas, you will use an area-based heat map. Geographic areas can be defined by either zip codes, counties, or states. These areas are then colored based on the amount of data located there. For example, if a large number of customers aged 30-50 live in the state of Illinois, it would be colored red. However, if only a few customers aged 30-50 live in the state of Georgia, Georgia would be colored blue. Consequently, you’ll get a quick overview of where these types of customers are located in the US. 

    Point-Based

    Often compared to dot-density maps, point-based heat maps use points to represent data. The larger the cluster of points, the higher density of data. The more sparse the cluster, the lower the density of data. 

    How Can You Use Heat Maps for Business

    There are a variety of ways that heat maps can be useful for your business. For instance, as previously mentioned, heat mapping is a valuable asset for planning your sales strategy. This is because heat maps demonstrate the strength of data’s presence in some areas and its absence in others. As a result, a business can gain valuable insights. 

    A heat mapping tool measures a business’s performance based on several key metrics. These include:

    • Revenue
    • Customers
    • Sales
    • Service calls
    • Deliveries 

    Taking revenue as an example, heat maps tell a company what areas bring in the most money. Businesses can decide what areas require more attention and what areas are already well served using this information. This can be particularly useful when designing a targeted marketing campaign. For example, for areas that bring in a great deal of revenue, the company might create ads that encourage repeat purchases. However, they might need ads that encourage new customers to trust their product or service for areas where revenue is low. 

    Another way to use heat maps is to employ them to manage salesperson distribution or delivery driver management. For example, by plotting your sales reps or delivery drivers and locations, you can see which territories have plenty of personnel and which are lacking. As a result, you can fill gaps and move people around to serve your customers better. 

    Lastly, heat mapping is a great tool for research. Heat maps can measure a vast array of demographic data, including:

    • Income
    • Housing
    • Gender
    • Population
    • Race
    • Age 

    Using this data, you can determine where your target audience is located, allowing you to plan strategic marketing campaigns and choose sites for new business locations. 

    Businesses that Heat Maps are Particularly Well Suited For

    While virtually every business can benefit from using a heat map to analyze its data, there are a few types of companies that heat maps are particularly well suited for. These are:

    • Sales
    • Healthcare/Medical professions
    • Finance
    • Franchises
    • Real Estate
    • Delivery businesses
    • Governments
    • Service businesses 

    Main Advantages of Using Heat Maps

    Heat maps are beneficial to businesses for many reasons, but let’s look at the advantages they provide in a little more depth. 

    Heat Maps Measure Performance

    To improve your company, it’s essential that you know which parts of your business are performing well and which are not. Using a heat map, you can determine where you’re hitting your targets and where you’re falling behind. With this information, you can compare business locations and territories to determine where you perform best and which areas need work. 

    Heat Maps Help You Understand the Market

    Developing a successful marketing strategy requires that you have a good understanding of the people you’re targeting. Therefore, a heat map is an excellent way to learn more about where your target audience is located based on demographic information. You will also learn more about who your customers are and how you can sell to them. Furthermore, a heat map can show you potential new areas for expansion. 

    Heat Maps Help Uncover Hidden Patterns

    Business data contains a lot of valuable information, but some of it might go unseen if not portrayed in the right manner. For instance, it can be hard to decipher patterns in geographic buying habits by looking at numbers in a spreadsheet. By contrast, if you were to visualize your data using a heat map, you can compare the buying habits of one area versus other areas.

  • Ecommerce Nearing $1 Trillion

    Ecommerce Nearing $1 Trillion

    “We’re forecasting that ecommerce spending this year will be somewhere between $850 billion and $930 billion,” says John Copeland, Vice President of Marketing Science and Customer Insights at Adobe. This would be a 14 percent increase over last year. That would be more typical of what we see year over year in the ecommerce channel.”

    John Copeland of Adobe, predicts that ecommerce spending could be $930 billion, or just under $1 trillion, in 2021:

    COVID was a catalyst to the ecommerce channel last year. What we saw when you look at the full calendar year of 2020 was $813 billion dollars in ecommerce spending, 42 percent growth over 2019. That’s like combining two years’ worth of growth into a single year. Consumers have really embraced the online channel to meet their needs during these challenging times.

    We’re all kind of wondering what (the vaccine rollout) is going to do in terms of ecommerce. We’re forecasting this year somewhere between $850 billion, only a 5 percent over last year, and up to $930 billion, which would be a 14 percent increase over last year. The 5 percent increase would be if everybody gets vaccinated and rushes out and we see kind of a slowdown. The $930 billion, 14 percent increase, would be more typical of what we see year over year in the ecommerce channel.

    Buy Now Pay Later Up 215 Percent Over Last Year

    Buy Now Pay Later is very much good for retailers. In fact, what we’ve seen in February this year relative to February 2020, which is kind of on the cusp of the pandemic, is a 215 percent increase year over year in buy now pay later orders. In terms of retailers, it comes along with larger average order values. What we’re seeing is 18 percent larger orders when customers are using that service. Unlike layaway, with buy now pay later you actually get the goods upfront, you don’t have to wait until the payment’s done.

    Another trend is Buy Online, Pick Up In-Store, also known as BOPUS. In February of this year, we’re already seeing it growing 67 percent year on year. It’s always been huge and growing during the holiday season but now people are clearly working it in as part of their fulfillment options. Picking up in the store gives consumers the ability to schedule it according to their availability and knowing that stock will be there for them when they want to pick it up.

    Ecommerce Nearing $1 Trillion, Says John Copeland of Adobe
  • Google Sheds Light on Organic Search Drops

    Google Sheds Light on Organic Search Drops

    Google has posted information shedding light on why sites experience drops in their organic search results.

    Google routinely updates their search algorithms, with the most recent being in June and July of 2021. Unfortunately, changes to Google’s algorithms often lead to some sites seeing major drops in traffic. For many, the causes and potential solutions are unclear, making it difficult for sites to regain the traffic they once enjoyed.

    Google is now shedding light on the causes behind a drop in organic traffic: technical issues, security issues, manual actions, algorithmic changes and search interest disruptions.

    Daniel Waisberg, Google Search Advocate, outlines how each of these can impact traffic:

    Technical issues: Errors that can prevent Google from crawling, indexing, or serving your pages to users – for example server availability, robots.txt fetching, page not found, and others. Note that the issues can be site-wide (for example, your website is down) or page-wide (for example, a misplaced noindex tag, which would depend on Google crawling the page, meaning there would be a slower drop in traffic).

    Security issues: If your site is affected by a security threat, Google may alert users before they reach your site with warnings or interstitial pages, which may decrease Search traffic.

    Manual Actions: If your site does not comply with Google’s guidelines, some of your pages or the entire site may be omitted from Google Search results through a Manual Action.

    Algorithmic changes: Google is always improving how it assesses content and updating its algorithm accordingly; core updates and other smaller updates may change how some pages perform in Google Search results. To keep track of future updates, subscribe to our Google Search News YouTube series or follow us on Twitter.

    Search interest disruption: Sometimes changes in user behavior will change the demand for certain queries, either as a result of a new trend, or seasonality throughout the year. This means your traffic may drop simply as a result of external influences.

    Waisberg’s post should be a valuable resource for all webmasters, both those whose sites have experienced a drop and those that want to avoid one.

  • Google Piloting Three-Strikes Policy for Repeat Ad Policy Violators

    Google Piloting Three-Strikes Policy for Repeat Ad Policy Violators

    Google is cracking down on those repeatedly violating the company’s ad policies, piloting a three-strikes program.

    Google has a number of policies aimed at preventing harmful or inappropriate ads. The company prohibits “ads promoting deceptive behavior or products such as the creation of false documents, hacking services, and spyware, as well as tobacco, drugs and weapons, among other types of content.”

    Unfortunately, companies often try to circumvent Google’s policies, leading the company to try a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ approach.

    “That’s why we are introducing a new pilot program to test a three-strikes system for repeat ad policy violations,” writes Brett Kline, Product Manager. “Starting September 2021, warnings and strikes will be issued for violations of our Enabling Dishonest Behavior, Unapproved Substances and Dangerous Products or Services policies—this includes ads promoting deceptive behavior or products such as the creation of false documents, hacking services, and spyware, as well as tobacco, drugs and weapons, among other types of content. These types of ads have long been prohibited, but now we are introducing increasing penalties with each strike applied.”

  • France Upholds Apple’s Privacy Changes

    France Upholds Apple’s Privacy Changes

    In a win for Apple and privacy advocates, the French Competition Authority has upheld Apple’s right to proceed with its iOS privacy changes.

    Apple has been warning developers since last year of upcoming privacy changes to iOS that would prevent apps from tracking users without their permission. Apps are also required to include a privacy label that outlines exactly what data they collect.

    Needless to say, the advertising industry has been up in arms over the changes, clinging to the archaic belief they should have the right to collect detailed, personal data and track users across services and devices, without their knowledge or consent. As a result, the advertising industry is trying fighting on multiple fronts to force Apple to back down.

    According to Fortune, the French Competition Authority said Apple’s plans did not appear to be abusive, since “a company, even if it is in a dominant position…has the freedom in principle to set rules to access its services, subject to not disregarding the laws and applicable regulations and that these rules are not anticompetitive.”

    The Competition Authority said it would continue to investigate to make sure Apple is playing by its own rules, and not gathering and tracking more data than it allows third-party developers to track.

    “We’re grateful to the French Competition Authority for recognizing that App Tracking Transparency in iOS 14 is in the best interest of French iOS users,” Apple said in a statement.

  • Microsoft Makes Desktop Analytics Available Commercially

    Microsoft Makes Desktop Analytics Available Commercially

    Microsoft has announced the commercial release of Desktop Analytics, a “cloud-connected service that integrates with System Center Configuration Manager.”

    The software helps organizations “view into the endpoints, applications, and drivers” being managed. It also provides a way to “assess application and driver compatibility with the latest Windows feature updates and receive mitigation recommendations for known issues, as well as advanced insights for line of business apps.”

    Desktop Analytics replaces Windows Analytics, which Microsoft has slated for end-of-life on January 31, 2020.

    Microsoft says the commercial release of Desktop Analytics has the following new features and improvements:

    “Since announcing the public preview of Desktop Analytics, we made a point to deliver new features on a regular basis. For example, in August we helped streamline the workflow by eliminating the need to manually evaluate applications (such as system components published by Microsoft) that are known to be compatible with new feature updates. Then, in September, we delivered on one of our most requested features: The ability for customers to migrate existing data from Windows Analytics Upgrade Readiness to Desktop Analytics during the onboarding process.

    “In addition to these updates, the 1906 release of System Center Configuration Manager further integrated Desktop Analytics with phased deployments, which means you can automate your pilot and production deployments with the health insights from Desktop Analytics. Looking ahead, we’ll soon enable customers who have already onboarded to migrate their administrator data. And we’re constantly investing in longer-running service enhancements like performance and reliability improvements.”

  • SAP and Verizon Partnering to Develop Next-Gen IoT Analytics Solution

    SAP and Verizon Partnering to Develop Next-Gen IoT Analytics Solution

    SAP and Verizon have announced a collaboration to help applications process data where it is generated, thanks to Verizon’s network and SAP’s edge computing platform.

    Edge computing allows companies to reduce data processing time by processing the data collected by Internet of Things (IoT) devices at or near the data collection point, rather than sending it to a data center.

    Verizon’s 5G network, paired with SAP’s Leonardo Internet of Things and Edge Services and analytics, will give customers in the supply chain, field service management, assembly line and retail industries real-time data processing.

    “We are unleashing the next generation of cloud capabilities through global data centers, across the edge of the network,” said Eric Stine, Chief Customer Innovation Officer, SAP North America. “With data volumes growing exponentially and the capabilities of new wireless technologies like 5G to further expand the reach of IoT and enterprise computing, SAP and Verizon are uniquely positioned to drive a new class of data analytics, management and services at scale to help the world’s great companies create amazing customer
    experiences, and unlock new business models and monetization strategies.”

    “Our ability to integrate our ThingSpace platform into the SAP Cloud portfolio provides a secure and agile way to deliver instantaneous, end-to-end operational analytics at the edge while lowering the cost of IoT management,” said George Fischer, president, Global Enterprise, Verizon Business Group. “This combined solution is not just about massive IoT. We are also enabling computer vision, augmented reality, blockchain and machine learning using Verizon’s network. These are a truly comprehensive set of capabilities to help our customers better manage critical functions including asset lifecycles, supply chains, customer experiences, human capital and plant operations.”

  • The Latest Tool For Cybercriminals: Google Analytics

    The Latest Tool For Cybercriminals: Google Analytics

    According to cloud security firm Akamai, cybercriminals are using Google Analytics to gauge the success of their phishing campaigns.

    The report highlights that just over 56.1% of all websites are using some form of analytics, with Google the leading analytics platform with 20% market share. Analytics packages provide important information, including geolocation, browser type, operating system and more.

    Akamai researcher Tomer Shlomo, who penned the report, said:

    “As phishing has evolved over the years, criminals have learned that technical markers, like browser identification, geo-location, and operating system, can help adjust the phishing website’s visibility, and enable more granular targeting. In order to evaluate these metrics, kit developers use third-party analytic products, such as those developed by Google, Bing, or Yandex, to gather the necessary details.

    “Akamai scanned 62,627 active phishing URLs of which 54,261 are non-blank pages that belong to 28,906 unique domains. We discovered 874 domains with UIDs and 396 of the UIDs were unique Google Analytic accounts. Moreover, 75 of the UIDs were used in more than one website.”

    Before companies go ripping out Google Analytics from their sites, it’s important to know that Akamai believes additional analytics are the solution to the problem, helping companies trace attackers and mitigate the damage.

    “Using analytics can help you understand the full scale of a phishing campaign, and defenders can use this data to compare with internal signatures, for a more rounded detection and remediation process. Analytical data also helps understand domain targeting approaches.”

  • KENTECH Launches ClarityIQ, Bringing Predictive Analytics to the Hiring Process

    KENTECH Launches ClarityIQ, Bringing Predictive Analytics to the Hiring Process

    The challenge for business startups is focusing your time and money on the things that will be most impactful to your business success. Kenneth Coats, founder, and CEO of KENTECH Consulting says that “the lesson I would pass on to other entrepreneurs is to simplify.”

    CEO Kenneth Coats of KENTECH Consulting, an investigative background check technology company recently discussed on Entrepreneur his business challenges and offered advice to other small business founders:

    Simplification is Key to Going to Market Quickly

    I’m the founder and CEO of KENTECH Consulting. We help the world make clear informed decisions. We are an investigative technology firm. We help our clients navigate risks and hire superior human capital. The biggest challenge I experience in my current role as founder and CEO is having many ideas and not enough time to execute on them all.

    The challenge that it created was the ability to go to market. How we resolved it was to simplify the process which was harder than it appears on paper to cut out things we knew we couldn’t possibly do in the time we have. The lesson I would pass on to other entrepreneurs is to simplify. There are many great ideas that are constantly running around in our head. Those are great, but it’s good to just journal them and simplify and execute.

    KENTECH Launches ClarityIQ, Bringing Technology to the Hiring Process

    Security has continuously been a challenge throughout the world whether it’s people, or access or technology. What we are looking at is tackling police and law enforcement recruitment. Policing in the US is not so good. There is not a great relationship between the community and police. Part of that challenge is stemming from the hiring practices.

    We’ve been looking at how to resolve that problem by ensuring that the right people are being hired in these positions. We now have a patent pending product called ClarityIQ which is built on providing predictive analytics, a “FICO” score of sorts on the success probability of a person becoming a law enforcement officer that can orient into the community.

    Entrepreneurs Should Expect the Unexpected

    As a leader how do you prepare for the challenges that you may face? The simple answer to that is to expect the unexpected at all times. Being an entrepreneur is living inside the Matrix where two plus two does not equal four. If you understand that from the outset two plus two can equal whatever you want it to. You can always plan and 80 percent of the time things will work out, but leaving about 20 percent unforeseen and expect it is the challenge.

  • You Need Smart Analytics that Drive Better Actions

    You Need Smart Analytics that Drive Better Actions

    At the recent Salesforce Dreamforce conference, Salesforce announced Einstein Plus, a visually improved no-code version of their artificial intelligence platform. Prior to announcing this new product release, Ketan Karhanis, SVP & GM of Salesforce Analytics discussed why AI insights are potentially transformative to businesses who have the guts to trust them.

    Ketan Karhanis, SVP & GM, Salesforce Analytics at Salesforce talks about the need for smart analytics in businesses in order to drive better actions:

    Technology is Simply an Enabler

    We must be clear about one thing, technology is simply an enabler. Real transformation requires trailblazers. We live in a time of tremendous technological change with lots of good stuff happening AI, AR, voice. This is not about the technology, it’s simply about you. The single biggest question is how does all this enable your success and what does this mean to you?

    You all know the world of business applications, such as sales, service, marketing, you know this world very well. Then there’s the world of analytics, some call it visualizations and some call it reporting,. No matter what you call it it is important because it’s crucial to see what is happening in your business and why.

    AI and Analytics Need to Come Together

    Now we have AI, the game-changing power of AI insight. What does that mean? Now we can get a glimpse of the future. We get predictive and prescriptive, very exciting technology. But are you going to be swivel chairing three different boxes, three different logins, different stats for everything, one stack for ML, one stack for visualization?  

    That’s probably not going to be fun because here’s one simple thing we need to realize, these are not three separate boxes they are facets of the same experience. AI and analytics need to come together and they need to be infused in your business applications.

    You Need Automated Discovery

    What you need is not just a digital experience but an intelligent experience where analytics is built right in and if done right analytics becomes invisible but you get the benefits of it, and the benefits are pretty spectacular. We are drowning in data, lots of data everywhere. Making sense out of millions of data points in sub-second speeds to derive insights, that’s kind of hard, our brains are not really wired to do that.

    You need automated discovery. Automated discovery helps you discover the story in your data and the intelligent experience comes built with automated discovery. Insights have to be outcome focused.

    You Need Smart Analytics that Drive Better Actions

    Of course, you need charts which tell you about the past, but you need recommendations and explanations. You probably don’t need yet another dashboard which tells you what happened. You need better outcomes for the future and you should not settle for incomplete. From visualizations to predictive to prescriptive you need it complete in one experience.

    You need smart analytics. AI stands for actionable insights because an insight which does not lead to an action is just a dumb chart. That’s why connecting to the business process is key. Insights need to drive better actions.

    You need to be able to leverage your existing teams and bring them to this new world of no-code AI, of a completely different way of interfacing with your insights. AI’s role is amplifying your effectiveness, it’s about augmenting your skills but how will you trust it. That’s why accountability is key, transparency is key, and you need all of this.

  • WPN Today: Facebook Adds Analytics Tools to Increase Conversions for Business

    WPN Today: Facebook Adds Analytics Tools to Increase Conversions for Business

    Facebook has launched new tools in their analytics suite to help businesses using their platform to better convert visitors into customers or subscribers. At F8, Facebook’s developer conference, the company announced Journeys from Facebook Analytics that anonymously aggregates data from visitors to inform businesses on patterns that lead (or don’t lead) to sales and conversions.

    “For example, you may find the people most likely to convert first browse your website on mobile before ultimately making a purchase on desktop,” Facebook noted. “Or maybe, the people who interact with your business on Messenger ultimately spend more in your mobile app. You can then use these insights to optimize your marketing strategy and grow your business.”

    To make it work a business would simply add custom parameters to their events in Facebook Analytics enabling them to automatically receive key user insights. One of the ways to do this is via funnel conversion insights, which will provide key data on where in the process visitors tend to convert or go away.

    VR Now Available for Brands Using Facebook Messenger

    Since Facebook’s opened the Messenger Platform in 2016 to businesses and developers it has become a critical customer interaction tool for many brands. Facebook noted at F8 that there are over 8 billion messages exchanged between people and businesses each month on the platform. That is 4x more than last year and signifies widespread adoption of Messenger by businesses of all sizes including some of the largest brands.

    At F8 Facebook announced that the Messenger Platform now includes the ability for brands to integrate custom uses of augmented reality into their Messenger experience. “With this launch, businesses large and small can leverage the Camera Effects Platform to easily integrate AR into their Messenger experience, bringing the virtual and physical worlds one step closer together,” says David Marcus, VP of Messaging Products at Facebook. “So, when a person interacts with your business in Messenger, you can prompt them to open the camera, which will be pre-populated with filters and AR effects that are specific to your brand. From there, people can share the image or video to their story or in a group or one-to conversation or they can simply save it to their camera roll.”

    The value for marketers is that they can incorporate better visualizations of their products. This is especially important to brands that have products that customers feel more comfortable buying after touching, seeing up close or trying on, such as apparel. Facebook announced that ASUS, Kia, Nike, and Sephora will be including AR effects in their Messenger experience soon.

    If you are interested in using these new AR effecting in Messenger you can sign up for their waitlist.

    Facebook Enters the Dating Business

    Also at F8, Mark Zuckerberg announced “Dating,” a new service by Facebook. It will let users create a second profile that is specifically for the purpose of introductions to others that they might want to date or hook up with. The key here is that your friends on Facebook won’t be able to see your other profile and they also will not show up as potential matches. This will hopefully eliminate the awkward situation where somebody uses their Facebook friendship as a vehicle to hitting on another person, which in the past often led to unfriending.

    Facebook’s dating algorithm will use various signals to determine potential matches including if two people are attending the same Event or are a member of the same Group. You can assume that your bio info, likes and geography will play leading roles in making potential romantic matchups as well.

    Not everyone is impressed by Facebook’s foray into dating:

  • Salesforce Improves Einstein Analytics to Make it Easier for Customers to Extract Data

    Salesforce Improves Einstein Analytics to Make it Easier for Customers to Extract Data

    A lot of people find it challenging to use the different analytics tools at their disposal. But Salesforce hopes to change all that by making it possible for businesses to extract data by using conventional conversational language.

    Salesforce has been developing and filling artificial-intelligence features into its system so that users will be able to utilize their marketing and sales data to the fullest. The company introduced Einstein Analytics in June 2017. Now it has made improvements that allow the service to accept natural-language inquiries, thereby making it easier to use.

    Dubbed “Conversational Queries,” the feature recognizes popular phrases the user is typing and provides an automated method to develop queries and access data. For instance, a sales executive can type “show top accounts by yearly profit” into the Salesforce dashboard and it will immediately generate a report. Marketers previously had to set up the parameters and fields to get the data they need. Now Einstein Analytics can even suggest possible search terms to use, as well as the correct output vehicle, like a graph or a map.

    Technical users have used similar tools effectively for building queries, but it does require extensive knowledge on how to extract the data you need and fashion it into a specific query. By simplifying the system and using plain language to make queries, more people can access key analytics.

    According to VP of Product for Einstein Analytics Amruta Moktali, “Conversational Queries offers a new way to explore data and get answers to questions faster, eliminating clicks and the training required to create and drill down into charts.”

    There’s no question that enterprise tech is focusing on improving AI and machine-learning but for certain services, like customer-relationship management, ensuring that people can use the technology without having to hire a data scientist or going back to school is more critical.

    Salesforce’s Einstein Analytics is currently available in beta.

    [Featured image via Salesforce]

  • Top 5 Instagram Analytics Tools for 2017

    Top 5 Instagram Analytics Tools for 2017

    Contrary to popular notion, Instagram is not all about celebrities, food, fashion, dogs and cats, or homes and gardens. It’s also a great way for brands and businesses to engage with their target market and close sales. However, many marketers and business owners are still trying to get a clear picture about their accounts. Luckily, the Internet always has something for everyone. Here are five awesome Instagram analytic tools that you can use.

    Iconosquare

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    This is a great app to start your journey into the realm of Instagram analytics and management. Iconosquare evaluates a user’s Instagram account and displays key metrics like audience or market engagement, growth over a period of time, and top followers. Its editorial calendar easily assists the user to draft and schedule posts and to monitor comments and interactions on each post. It has an expansive media library of high-res images and can also be utilized to find the top bloggers and influencers. More importantly, users can do all these from one dashboard, making Iconosquare the perfect app for freelancers or companies with multiple clients.

    Keyhole

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    What sets Keyhole apart from other tools is the real-time feedback it provides its customers. For instance, it can show users how many likes, impressions or retweets a campaign has garnered or how many people have posted using one specific hashtag. It can also track and narrow down the people or influencers who are engaging their brand. Users can do all these from Keyhole’s user-friendly interface. What’s more, clients and colleagues can also easily see how well a campaign is doing either through a link to the user’s Keyhole dashboard or a printable PDF.

    Picture.io

    If you’re just starting to get the hang of social media, particularly Instagram, or are on a tight budget, then Picture.io Influence Score is the app for you. This simple and free analytics tool provides users with an Instagram influence score that designates weights to their engagement, network size, and community interactions. This gives users critical data that can help when making decisions about using Instagram.

    Simply Measured

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    As the name implies, Simply Measured is designed to provide much-needed analytics metrics of audience engagement, content analysis, and keyword analysis in a simple and straightforward manner. The app can daily track and identify new options, plan social media campaigns, optimize strategies for better outcomes and give reports on ongoing campaigns to show how it fares on social media. Simply Measured is the go-to analytics tool of over 100,000 digital marketers and has been vouched for by social media giants like Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.

    Sprout Social

    Image result for Sprout Social

    Like Iconosquare, Sprout Social has merged analytics with management and content creation tools that larger companies would undoubtedly appreciate. It’s a web-based app that allows users to manage numerous social profiles across a swath of social media networks all from one interface. The app has a centralized media library with built-in editing tools and a push notification feature that updates users about the next step to do. Users can also make use of a social CRM that can help improve conversions or check hashtag performances. All these metrics can also be compiled into insightful reports that can be downloaded by clients.

    [Featured image via Pixabay]

  • Pre-Roll Ads and Analytics Coming To Periscope Video

    Pre-Roll Ads and Analytics Coming To Periscope Video

    On the heels of the scoop that Twitter is considering paid premium subscriptions comes news that Twitter will be expanding pre-roll ads to live video streaming app Periscope to help boost the company’s dwindling ad revenue.

    “As video viewership on Twitter continues to grow, video has become an increasingly important channel for publishers, creators and brands to reach their audiences. Today, we’re introducing a new opportunity for publishers and creators to monetize their content, and for brands to advertise against it, with pre-roll ads on Periscope video within Twitter.”

    “The experience will mirror how ads currently appear on all Twitter video: when consumers scroll through their timelines or search for content from a specific publishers or creators, Periscope videos – live and replay – can start with a short ad.”

    The Amplify program that manages ads in Twitter video will now allow creators and publishers to monetize their live video content on Periscope while marketers “…will have a new source of brand-safe video advertising.”

    Periscope also announced that videos can now be watched directly in Twitter Moments which should boost both live video viewership and advertising. Additionally, two new important features have been added to Twitter Periscope: Activity to see how people are interacting with users’s livestreams and Analytics Dashboard whichs gives broadcasters an in-depth look at their viewership and engagement on their videos over time.

    With Wall Street having seen a Q4 revenue shortfall from Twitter, expect more programs expansions like this to be announced in 2017.

  • Using Cloud Analytics for a Winning March Madness Bracket

    Using Cloud Analytics for a Winning March Madness Bracket

    Welcome to the first of two days of low workforce production and nail biting moments that lead into 3 glorious weeks March Madness. The first round of 2017 NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament tips off today and it should be another doozy of an experience. With everyone scrambling to get their brackets in before the 12:15pm EST, hundreds of thousands bracketologists spent the last few days studying stats, algorithms, trends, match ups, or just favorite mascot to complete their winning pool entry(s).

    But for Nic Smith, Global VP of Product Marketing for Cloud Analytics at SAP, it’s all about the data and analytics. In a clever and fun way to jump into March Maddness, Nic and his SAP Data Genius team are using their company’s BusinessObjects Cloud to breakdown which teams will advance in this year’s college basketball tournament.

    Using analytic capabilities that include data preparation, modelling, data exploration, planning and what-if analysis, visual storytelling, and automated smart data discovery to uncover hidden patterns for which teams will perform best in the tournament, Nic outlines the steps his team used to create the winning bracket.

    Nic’s team is planning to share results as the rounds of the tournament unfold and provide updated analysis, what-if scenarios, and insights based on college team performance. He also challenges anyone to see if they have what it takes to beat the SAP DataGenius bracket and begin and share (trash talk) their results using #vizthemadness with @SAPAnalytics.

  • Amazon Kinesis Analytics Announced for AWS Developers

    Amazon Kinesis Analytics Announced for AWS Developers

    Amazon Web Services (AWS) is making available Amazon Kinesis Analytics, enabling continuous querying of streaming data using standard SQL. This allows developers to create SQL queries on live and continuous data for real-time analysis. No new programming skills are needed.

    “AWS’s functionality across big data stores, data warehousing, distributed analytics, real-time streaming, machine learning, and business intelligence allows our customers to readily extract and deploy insights from the significant amount of data they’re storing in AWS,” said Roger Barga, General Manager, Amazon Kinesis. “With the addition of Amazon Kinesis Analytics, we’ve expanded what’s already the broadest portfolio of analytics services available and made it easy to use SQL to do analytics on real-time streaming data so that customers can deliver actionable insights to their business faster than ever before.”

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    Amazon Kinesis Analytics processes streaming data with less than 1-second processing latencies, enabling you to analyze and respond in real time. According to Amazon it provides built-in functions that are optimized for stream processing, like anomaly detection and top-K analysis, so that you can easily perform advanced analytics.

    “You can now run continuous SQL queries against your streaming data, filtering, transforming, and summarizing the data as it arrives,” said AWS Chief Evangelist Jeff Barr. “You can focus on processing the data and extracting business value from it instead of wasting your time on infrastructure. You can build a powerful, end-to-end stream processing pipeline in 5 minutes without having to write anything more complex than a SQL query.”

    “When I think of running a series of SQL queries against a database table, I generally think of the data as staying more or less static while the queries come and go pretty quickly,” Barr explained. “Rows are added, changed, and deleted all the time, but this does not generally matter when considering a single query that runs at a particular point in time. Running a Kinesis Analytics query against streaming data turns this model sideways. The queries are long-running and the data changes many times per second as new records, observations, or log entries arrive. Once you wrap your head around this, you will see that the query processing model is very easy to understand: You build persistent queries that process records as they arrive.”

    AWS customers can employ Amazon Kinesis Analytics in minutes by going to the AWS Management Console and selecting a Kinesis Streams or Kinesis Firehose data stream. Amazon says that Kinesis Analytics takes care of everything required to continuously query streaming data, automatically scaling to match the volume and throughput rate of incoming data while delivering sub-second processing latencies.