The world of analytics continues to evolve from basic traffic stats to more behavioral indicators. Well, enter the newest of analytics...Sentiment Analysis. With all of the user-participation online with ratings, comments, and so on, there is a wealth of "feelings" about brands and products online.  Some companies have begun to analyze this data to get a sense of how people feel about a movie, a product, or a company. While there is still some limitations about how the technology tr ...

Seems that the dance will never end, but there is a real strong possibility this time that Microsoft and Yahoo will finally work out a deal.  With the dollars Microsoft is putting behind Bing, it may have been enough to get the attention of Yahoo! execs.    The last sticking point is related to an upfront cash payment Yahoo is seeking.  The driving factors driving the deal really boil down to: Microsoft has more money to develop better tools and doesn't really want to be in the ad busin ...

Yes, I own Thriller and Off the Wall (on vinyl!), but this is not about the work of Michael. The impact of his death on the Internet was pretty remarkable. Twitter, music sites, AOL's Instant Messenger, Facebook...you name it, they got rocked by the King of Pop's death. Twitter alone saw a peak of 5k Jackson-related messages per minute! Akamai's Net Usage Index reported traffic to leading news sites in North America was 20% above average.     See more of the details on the LA Times Website ...

Whenever I begin to dig into a new client’s analytics, I often start with the Bounce Rate.  This is the percentage of single-page visits to your site.  If you are spending a lot of money on pay-per-click or other methods and you have a high Bounce Rate, you need to often ask yourself these three questions: Are the people I am driving to my side truly qualified prospects? Are the pages that I am driving users to optimized in terms of layout, message, etc? Is the ad content consistent with ...

Any project whether building a new website or planning a campaign starts with a basic question. We can talk about goals and audiences, but simply put, What is Success? How will the organization, key stakeholders, etc measure the success of an initiative. The idea of ROI (Return On Investment) is thrown about and is vital to be able to quantify. But before you should even dig into that, you should be able to simply answer the success question. Once that is determined, you can start down the pa ...