Measuring Success

Predicting the future invariably means you will be wrong most of the time. However, it is an interesting process to go through as even getting just one prediction right can have a significant impact – to me personally, my business or my client’s business. So I was honoured when Daniel Waisberg asked me to look into my crystal ball for what may happen in the world of web analytics in 2011. Here’s the summary of my predictions:

I have been following some interesting posts on the recent IBM acquisition of Coremetrics. The following three are from respected sources that all glow positively about the potential upside of the deal - Econsultancy, Eric Peterson, Stephane Hamel. However, I am not so convinced that the deal will lead to great success for IBM, or is the start of a coming “revolution” for the web analytics industry… and here’s why. Whilst the deal makes perfect sense – its a logical and smart with obvious synergies, remember that in 2006 IBM *sold* their commercial web analytics tool, Surfaid, to Coremetrics in the first place (though Coremetrics only used the WebSphere client base and not the technology). Clearly IBM did not understand the significance of web metrics in 2006 and nothing makes me feel that they do now… For me, the success of the web metrics industry today is due to the “simplification” that Google [...]