Saturday, June 11, 2016

Comparing IBM Digital Analytics with Google Analytics

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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