applied analytics for real-time decision support

White Paper

Applied Analytics for Real-Time Decision Support

http://anametrix.com

of 5

SUMMARY

Anametrix is the only marketing analytics platform to combine real-time performance feedback with multichannel predictive

modeling for comprehensive insights and powerful decision support. By collecting, analyzing and making sense out of data

from virtually any source, Anametrix enables marketers to act on multichannel data to drive revenue and profitability.

Our real-time dashboards present a unified view of paid, owned and earned media to assess marketing performance. Our

next-generation analytics platform also enables marketers to perform diagnostic analysis, drill-down segmentation and

predictive modeling to improve campaign results, lower acquisition costs, drive loyalty, increase ad monetization and expand

customer lifetime value.

Founded in 2010 by the trailblazing web analytics team behind WebSideStory, Anametrix is headquartered in San Diego,

California. For more information, visit our website (anametrix.com), Twitter (@anametrix), and our blog (blog.anametrix.com).

Our Vision

At Anametrix, our vision is to become our client’s primary decision-support system, the one place where marketers can

see, analyze and act on the data they have – whatever the data is and wherever it comes from. The key to solving the

multichannel problem − and turning marketing into a revenue driver − is combining and making sense of all vendor and

internal data to enable data-driven decisions. When the vast amount of customer and market-facing information is pulled

together and analyzed smartly, it can provide unprecedented insights to reveal entirely new revenue opportunities.

Anametrix transforms high volumes and variety of raw data into something that’s going to make the marketers’ lives

considerably easier. Better decision-making. More efficient allocation of resources. Higher revenue and profitability. And,

we firmly believe this approach will become nearly universal, because only the companies using real-time decision support

systems will thrive.

Why Anametrix

Designed for both ease of use and flexibility, the Anametrix technology platform was built from the ground up to power a

wide range of marketing analytics capabilities – from streaming data collection and web and mobile analytics to real-time

queries, segmentation, dashboards, reporting and predictive analytics. This common platform promotes integration and

consistency, differentiating Anametrix from vendors who have developed or acquired their tools separately and attempted

to cobble them together. With a completely unified cloud-based analytics platform like Anametrix, users can combine and

correlate information across a myriad enterprise data sources and leverage the power of real-time data collection. The

output is right-time results returned completely in context with accuracy and relevancy across all access layers and delivery

methods.

Anametrix is focused on delivering on the marketing vertical and is the only analytics platform to natively combine real-time

marketing performance feedback with multichannel predictive modeling for comprehensive insights and powerful decision

support.


of 5

The Anametrix technology platform has many significant differentiating capabilities compared to other cloud-based business

intelligence (BI) and traditional analytics solutions:

STREAMING AND BATCH DATA COLLECTIONAll popular data platforms support the batch loading of transactional data. These transactions, such as purchases or call

center records, contain a wealth of information in a single packet of data, and are thus easy to collect, store and analyze.

But an increasing portion of marketing data is streamed – often derived directly from consumer activities on a web site or

social networking site – where each individual piece of data, such as a page view, contains minimal information. It is the

steady accumulation of data from these streaming sources that begins to form a picture of individual consumers, important

trends or overall marketing performance.

Anametrix is unique in that it was originally designed to collect both batch and streaming data sources. This is done via

Anametrix’s own tagging technology, integrations with the major tag management solutions, support of major web analytics

data stream formats and APIs, and connectors to dozens of popular marketing solutions. The Anametrix streaming data

collection capabilities draw on our experience with large-scale web analytics systems, enabling the import and reporting of

data the instant it becomes available, and ensuring marketers will have the data they need, when they need it.


of 5

Unified data warehousing and reportingBeyond merely collecting data from disparate sources, Anametrix maintains the data in a cloud-based data warehouse that

is seamlessly combined with the Anametrix analytics components into a single coherent platform. This is in stark contrast to

many BI platforms that only provide reporting tools that merely connect to disparate sources without first combining the data

into a single, logical data store.

By having a centralized warehouse, Anametrix is able to discover correlations that span sources – correlations that would

be difficult or impossible to find otherwise, such as the effect social mentions have on web site conversions or the degree to

which online support minimizes call center activity. This is all done without the need to license a separate data warehouse

technology or to involve IT.

The Anametrix warehouse is a modern, high-performance no-SQL database specifically designed for large volumes of

streamed and batch marketing data. And because the analysis tools are fully integrated with the warehouse, users can

easily service their own analysis needs without understanding how the data is stored.

Common metadataOne of the primary advantages of combining data from multiple sources and vendors into a centralized warehouse is that

it facilitates a common metadata layer. Simply put, different vendors often use different names and formats for the same

fundamental data, making it complicated for users to join data across these systems.

For example, web analytics systems use the term “visitor” to describe a human visiting the site, while email or CRM systems

may use “subscriber” or “customer”. The same is true for many metric values, such as “sales” versus “revenue” or “single

page visits” versus “bounces”, as well as the many different date and currency formats. Even worse, the same term may be

used for different values. For instance, advertising vendors use “clickthrough” to define the number of clicks on an ad, while

web analytics vendors use the same term to count the number of visits referred by ads. These values are almost always

different.

Anametrix eliminates these issues with single, customer-defined metadata that permits common business terms and formats

across all data sources. This ensures users will be able to create accurate reports using their own business terminology and

without having to understanding the naming conventions and data structures of numerous disparate systems.

Data Visualization and ExtractionFrom the user interface perspective, Anametrix provides a comprehensive set of tools for visualizing, reporting and exploring

all the data we bring into the Anametrix cloud – including web browser, email and Microsoft Excel, to name a few. Anametrix

also provides comprehensive data extraction capabilities, suitable for both programmatic connections through our API suite

and connections to various other services, languages and tools that can consume federated data.

Anametrix is specifically designed to support rich customization of multiple data extraction models along with predefined

reports that are specifically designed to visualize the multichannel marketing process throughout the customer engagement

lifecycle. This interface is built on top of the data model and works very well for all sorts of data types and data structures. It

allows for extensive filtering, custom elements and complex calculations – all critical features when it comes to system-based

reporting.


of 5

Predictive ModelingPredictive modeling is a form of statistical analysis that requires a significant amount of data analysis and cleansing before

the proper statistical techniques or algorithms can be selected. Many BI and web analytics providers claim predictive

capabilities with rudimentary uni-variant projections of individual metric values. Not surprisingly these projections rarely turn

out to be accurate, and thus users often cease to rely on these solutions after a short period of time. Anametrix understands

that predictive modeling is not a one-size-fits-all situation.

Anametrix Predictive Analytics is built to give marketing organizations access to sophisticated statistical and forecasting

models directly within the Anametrix interface, leveraging real-time, historical and contextual reference data unified by

Anametrix. Anametrix Predictive Analytics supports a continuous optimization process, combining the power of rapid

response enabled by real-time data and enhanced accuracy achievable with multichannel analytics. The result is agile

marketing:


of 5

• Clients use real-time response, engagement and conversion rates as leading predictors to assess social and paid

campaign effectiveness, and optimize ads, content marketing or social media strategy on the fly.

• Clients validate and improve the accuracy of their predictive models by enriching and contextualizing real-time data

with lagging predictors, such as sales, revenue, and CRM actuals, as well as reference data sources.

Real-time updatesMost data warehouses or SQL-based solutions are staged with data that is rarely updated more than once per day, if that.

Meanwhile, some cloud-based BI solutions claim to be real-time, when in fact what they provide is “on-demand” reporting

– i.e., they can report on data soon after it is loaded into their local data store, but the data itself may be more than 24 hours

old.

Anametrix blends streaming data collection, processing, aggregation, analytics and reporting to create a single unified

platform that is updated the same second the data reaches the Anametrix collection servers. This may not be important

for BI platforms designed for finance or IT, but marketers need to move at the speed of the Internet and their consumers.

Anametrix permits marketers to make changes to online content, ad spend, direct communications and other marketing

programs as the data becomes available.

Scale-out designAnametrix is the only cloud-based analytics platform designed for the high volume and dynamic nature of digital marketing

data. Anametrix has created a true scale-out, share-nothing architecture for all data collection and reporting. Querying and

data collection capacity is linearly increased and load is re-balanced on the fly as new server capacity is added.

This is especially important for major media outlets, social sites, ecommerce and ticketing sites where sudden data spikes

are common and can occur with little warning. It’s during these periods of peak visitor/consumer activity when real-time data

analysis is most critical. The Anametrix design ensures that real-time data access is uninterrupted during unexpected surges

in data volumes, while other systems suffer significant delays in data availability.

Conclusion

Anametrix is the only vendor that combines the key aspects of real-time streaming data collection and consolidation,

reporting, predictive analysis, visualization and unmatched scalability in a single platform. Unlike other cloud-based BI

and analytics solutions, the Anametrix architecture was specifically designed for marketers, by an experienced marketing

analytics team. The platform was built for the demands and unique characteristics of marketing data.

Anametrix provides both the technology platform and the built-in, best-practice reporting to give decision makers a holistic

perspective into how customers are engaging with their brand throughout the lifetime of their engagement. We enable

businesses to identify the correct levers to continually optimize marketing performance to drive revenue and profitability.


applied analytics for real-time decision support

Technology