In 2010, IBM acquired the
website analytics software system Coremetrics. At the time of the purchase
Coremetrics was a direct competitor to Google Analytics and offered enhanced
features beyond web analytics such as impression monitoring outside of the
site. Coremetrics at that time was also at the forefront of pioneering industry
class benchmarking for web analytics metrics (WAR, 2011) .
IBM has since
re-branded the platform to IBM Digital Analytics as part of its IBM
Marketing Optimization Solution. This platform is now an enterprise level
digital marketing tool which is generally designed for larger organizations
with larger marketing analytics budgets who engage multiple digital platforms. IBM
Digital Analytics primarily competes with other digital analytics solutions
like Adobe Omniture, WebTrends as well as Google Analytics, among others (Ciotti, 2014) .
Much like Google Analytics,
IBM Digital Analytics is a cloud based platform which enables easy
integration with other digital marketing optimization platforms. One of IBM’s objectives
with this product is to construct the capability to enhance engagement with other
marketing segments such as ecommerce through its Websphere program, and cross
channel marketing campaign management managed through IBM’s Interact software. Right
now IBM’s digital programs include a wide array of plugin platforms and API
reporting capability (IBM, 2016) . These additional
tools enable IBM Digital Analytics to cover a broader spectrum of digital
customer relationship management capabilities and presents additional analytic
options than the Google Analytics platform currently offers.
While Google Analytics
is a great tool for understanding how users are engaging with a site, many
organizations today are looking for an integrated solution in terms of data, and
engagement tracking beyond website analytics. For many the goal is to create a
view of the customer experience and journey, and intuitive reporting
capabilities which marketers and business leaders can act upon quickly (Miltimore,
2016) .
Through IBM Digital Analytics the organization is looking to meet that need and
create a customizable turnkey solution which creates actionable insights for
its clients. It accomplishes this by integrating the ability to not only track
and store information about website visitors over an extended period of time it
can deliver the ability to track activity beyond the website. For example if an
organization sends out an email to a prospect, it tracks the response even if
the prospect searches and purchases a product from a competitor it can track
that as well.
The Google Analytics
free program offers robust website analytics reporting. In contrast to bring on
the IBM Digital Analytics platform there is a cost for the product and as it is
built out and customized it can become an expensive solution. Google Analytics
is a great platform, particularly since it is free, to improve organizations
knowledge, skills and abilities surrounding website analytics. As organizations
evolve their acumen and capability in using Google Analytics it can greatly
assist in helping a business develop its goals and objectives as it evolves its
capabilities. In other words since Google Analytics is a free service, it is a
great place to learn before making a pricey investment in a product such as IBM’s
Digital Analytics.
IBM Digital Analytics
is a strong offering for retail ecommerce businesses. The native functionality
includes metrics available around product views, items added and abandoned, as
well as the ability to remarket to the individual user based on that
information (Runyon, 2014) . From this
perspective the IBM Digital Analytics tool offers more functionality than the
standard Google Analytics package. However when you couple programs such as
Google AdWords and Google AdSense, the Google Analytics package does then
present some of the same metric and tracking functionality.
Reporting
Some of the reporting
functionality in IBM Digital Analytics is slightly limited. For example
historical segmentation can only be run for the last 93 days. To gain deeper
analysis reports have to be run in a secondary system. Comparatively Google
Analytics reporting is highly customizable and can generate data for historical
reports dating back to 2005.
In the IBM Digital
Analytics Platform certain reports cannot have segments applied. This makes
answering some simple questions more difficult. The IBM system is also limited
in some aspects of inverse reporting. For
example the systems allow the creation of a segment around mobile devices and applying
it to a marketing channel report. However the system cannot create a marketing
channel segment and apply it to the mobile reports (Runyon, 2014) . While Google
Analytics does not match all objects in all reporting features it does allow
deep inverse reporting in many instances (Ciotti, 2014) .
Customizations
The IBM Digital
Analytics platform helps users determine how to share credit for conversions
among multiple touchpoints by choosing from a variety of standard and custom designation
models. In the conversion arena Google Analytics offers similar functionality,
for example both deliver the capability of evaluating individual channels as
well as the combined effect of multiple marketing touchpoints. Each system also
provides users the option to assign different values to each attribution
segment.
For example in Google
Analytics a linear model can be set up in both systems to track a conversion
journey and enables the ability to assign credit values to custom segments. In
the linear model the second example provides additional credit to paid
advertising.
Conversion Tracking
Google Analytics Multiple Marketing Touchpoints
The IBM Digital
Analytics platform offers similar features in the option to create custom
conversion models. In this example the program enables the user to customize
conversion tracking by setting up ad hoc goals. This tracking is set up
specifically for iPhone users who place an order on the organizations website (IBM, 2016) .
Conversion Tracking
IBM Digital Analytics Custom Segmentation
The IBM Digital
Analytics platform appears to be more comparative to a combination of Google
AdWords, Google AdSense and Google Analytics when it is bundled as one
platform. From a pure web analytics reporting compared to the IBM system,
Google Analytics generally appears to be not as strong out of the box. This consists
of areas such as depth of product reporting including metrics such as product
views, and abandoned carts (Miltimore, 2016) . With some customization however Google
Analytics can generate the same end results achieved through custom variables,
but that does require custom coding. In
other areas Google Analytics does enable a reporting API, it is however not
nearly as streamlined as IBM's (Runyon, 2014) .
Works Cited
Ciotti, G. (2014). The Top 10 Best Web Analytic
Tools. Retrieved from Sparring Mind:
http://www.sparringmind.com/best-web-analytics/
IBM. (2016). IBM Digital Analytics. Retrieved
from IBM: http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/digital-analytics
IBM. (2016). IBM digital analytics features.
Retrieved from IBM:
http://www-03.ibm.com/software/products/en/digital-analytics
Miltimore, J. (2016, February 16). Review:
"Google Analytics: the perfect tool For understanding how users engage
your site". Retrieved from Trust Radius:
https://www.trustradius.com/reviews/google-analytics-2016-02-16-11-16-38
Runyon, J. (2014, May 22). "IBM Digital
Analytics Review". Retrieved from Trust Radius:
https://www.trustradius.com/reviews/ibm-digital-analytics-2014-05-21-11-38-15
WAR. (2011). Coremetrics 2010 review.
Retrieved from Web Analytics Review:
http://web-analytics-review.toptenreviews.com/coremetrics-review.html
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