There’s Data, Then There’s Business Intelligence

01
May
2013
05/01/2013

Simpli.fi CEO, Frost Prioleau, spoke on panel entitled “There’s Data, Then There’s Business Intelligence” at MediaPost’s Search Insider Summit today. He spoke along side WordStream’s founder and CTO: Larry Kim, BloomReach Head of Product Development: Will Uppington, Infolinks CEO: Dave Zinman, and Steve Rowe CRO and Co-founder of MyCityWay. 

The focus of the panel was data firms that don’t just create more data, but more data insights or business intelligence, rather than getting caught up in the bells and whistles of measurement systems, whether MediaPost Search Insider Summitan analytics package or data from ad management, other paid media, or earned media. Unfortunately for many businesses, the process of adding meaningful insights often falls by the wayside. The panel explored questions around balancing insight with data management process to extract true and actionable business intelligence. Panelists debated strategies for big data, small data, and everything between.

Some of the more interesting points covered by the panel were:

  • Whatever it is that you’re doing – the next iteration of your next marketing efforts is to make it smarter. Turn insight into foresight – leverage data to inform tactics and strategy.
  • 10/90 rule – invest 10% in data and tools and 90% in the people to analyze data. Everyone heard of this rule, not many doing this.
  • Data gives opportunity to get rid of silos and use data available across other mediums, for example keywords from search marketing for use in display or Facebook. Use the data to grow and optimize other media.
  • When asked what some of the wrong metrics the panels sees being tracked Dave Zinman spoke to attribution and the wrong attribution models employed currently.
  • What engagement metrics matter? Frost Prioleau, Simpli.fi CEO, spoke to CPA and conversions over CTR.
  • Data sets being obfuscated by new browsers or search engines and always changing moving parts – how do we adapt? Predict behavior and better understand the intent of the audience coming to your site.
  • Understanding why someone coming to your site and what their intent is in that moment is fundamental to conversion rate, response to pages and serving relevant ads

Follow any of the panelists or the moderator on Twitter:

Simpli.fi CEO: Frost Prioleau: @phrossed

Infolinks CEO: Dave Zinman @davebehappy

Moderator: Rob Garner – @robgarner