#OX2
My Early Days on the Internet and the Sale of My First Digital Agency
Yes, I confess. Ever since I got my first Internet connection in 1995, while I was studying in Louvain (Belgium), I’ve been in love with the online world. I didn’t quite know how or why, but my gut told me I’d end up working in Internet. Since then, 25 years have passed (for the Internet and for me, inevitably, too…) and the Internet and its possibilities have evolved tremendously (mine, fortunately, too…).
A New Life Starts, But Some Things Don't Change
As you might have read, Aurélie and I had a great moment in our lifes this week with the birth of our son: Luca
Luca Dechamps Pols was born this Wednesday at 20h34, he weighted 3,260 kg and measured 50cm. It’s too soon to tell from whom he got his looks, but I can tell that he has his mother’s eyes (Russian influence).
I wanted to thank all emails and messages (sms, facebook, skype & twitter) that we have received. It is really a special moment and now we will start discovering how this is going to change our lifes. A friend of ours told me that without doing too complex statistics he could tell that we would spend less time facing computer screens ;-)
OX2 Web Analytics Day 2007: Thank You & Feedback
Here’s a little video presenting the Web Analytics Day that took place last week here in Brussels done by Roberto, one of our Design team members.
[Video embed - OX2 Web Analytics Day 2007 highlights video, needs manual recovery]
I wanted again to thank all the persons that made this unique event possible and specially to:
– Eric for having accepted to deliver 3 outstanding presentations that really made the day worth it.
Visiting Avinash at Google in the Valley
The Friday following Emetrics, while Aurélie was attending the Predictive Analytics two day course, I was invited by Avinash to visit him at Google. I have to admit that I was pretty excited with the idea to visit Google’s offices as I didn’t attend the GAAC training in Dublin. So after a nice breakfast with Matthew and Jim I took a cab and went ahead to Mountain-view.
I had a taximan from Morocco that while driving was always looking to the back as we were having a very engaged discussion about the political situation of his country (in a Arabic influenced french). I have to admit that I regret to have launched the conversation as when we arrived at the highway I was afraid that we would get into an accident. But fortunately I got safe to Google’s HQ (a bit shaky I have to admit ;-)).
First Web Analytics Wednesday in Brussels
This week, the Web Analytics Association and OX2 just organised a Web Analytics Wednesday here in Brussels. It was the first time we had this event in the capital of Europe and it was a nice event IMHO. I wanted to thank again De Persgroep for hosting this event in their magnificent premises.
18 people showed up (I hope to increase this number for the next edition in a couple of months). As you know, the agenda included some presentations delivered by Michaël Notté, Julien Coquet and myself (I’ll publish another post with a copy of these later on. You can read the agenda here) and it was followed by a networking cocktail. The audience was mainly composed of practitioners, but we had also 1 consultant (beside us) and 2 vendors (WebTrends and ClickTracks).
NeuroMarketing, Web Analytics & Ethics
Last Wednesday, Aurélie and I were exhausted from our previous days (since London we haven’t stopped talking, writing and working), so we decided to buy some easy cooking meals at Delhaize (our closest supermarket – 100 meters) and watch some TV to change our minds while relaxing on the sofa.
We then saw a documentary about the future of advertising on the RTBF (Belgian french speaking public TV station). What kind of publicity will we have in the future? Then a new concept appeared: NeuroMarketing. I was already familiar about NLP, but I never heard of NeuroMarketing.
Web Analytics ROI (WAROI) in the Advertising Business Model
Last week Aurélie and I were discussing about ways of calculating the ROI of a Web Analytics project. As we see that many companies (specially in the media sector) don’t find WA a priority, we wanted to present them with a formula that would allow them to view the tremendous ROI made possible with Web Analytics.
As we often say when making presentations, accountability is becoming more and more a must reach for marketers and companies in general. This means that when dealing with any investment we need to be able to define the ROI of this investment. We see more and more marketeers needing to report and justify their budgets. Based on this, we propose a little help for the eMarketeers in the media industry wanting to invest in Web Analytics.
OX2-Panos IAB Best Efficiency Case + Audience Award Winner
[Image unavailable — original source offline: IAB logo]
This thursday, I arrived from eMetrics at 8 am. I went to a have a little nap as I needed to prepare myself for 2 presentation. One that I was addressing at the CMS Congress and one at the IAB NetCafé as we had been winners (along with other 2 cases) of the Efficiency IAB Best Case of year 2006.
It was an hectic day and I was completly jet lagged…
Web Analytics Journey Index (WAJ)
This morning, I was surfing through different blogs to get some insights about people’s thoughts on the eMetrics Summit. Aurélie and I just attended it. It was a great event. Jim, I think it’s the best investment I’ve done this year! And I must admit that we’re still digesting… ;-)
While surfing Technorati, I saw on Robin’s blog a title that quickly cached my attention: “eMetrics Summit: Eric Peterson vs. Matt Belkin”. When I saw the title, I was intrigued to read the content. The post describes the different views of Eric that has proposed processes as the next Web Analytics next ‘hot topic’ versus Matt defending the importance of quick wins.
Digital Convergence & Future of Web Analytics
This morning I was reading an article in the magazine CNBC European Business (September 2006) by Joe Figueiredo “Come Toguether”. It starts like this: “Although sometimes obscured by the fog of hype, a real convergence of the information, communication and entertainment industries is under way in Europe.”
It’s not a magazine that I read often but Aurélie told me to read the article. So I took my cup of coffee, a little cigarette and started reading. All kind of thoughts & ideas were emerging as I was reading so I took notes and I wanted to share with you some of them in a brainstorm mode.
Web Analytics & Multivariable Testing (MVT)
It’s been almost over a year that I’ve been looking into A/B & Multivariable Testing (MVT) and was thinking of integrating these kinds of capabilities inside our content management systems. As we have been building CMS since more than 6 years, for us building up the different pages and combinations was really a simple thing. The questions began to emerge when we wanted to report.
The following questions were raised by the IT and Web Analytics business units.
Future of Web Analytics Vendors
Following a very thoughtful comment of Avinash in my previous post, I’ve decided to answer in a new post. Avinash, even on a Friday afternoon, your comments remain pertinent and I quite agree on most aspects.
We can’t imagine where we’ll be within 10 years time as very little people saw things like ICQ, Google or even blogs coming. Fact remains, and you know that as well as I do, that the mathematical and statistical rules that determine success or failure of initiatives have not changed that much over time. It’s always a matter of how much money you’ve spent and how much you gain in order to determine return on investment and how to define who you’re going to target with your communication in order to assure this return. I think it’s more access to and use of this information that will have to change and even though Web Analytics products suppliers are racing for new features faster and faster, it’s clear that the ones that will win will be the ones open to their partners and listening to what the clients actually need.