DIGITAL
MARKETING
ANALYTICS
In Theory And In Practice
Second Edition
KEVIN HARTMAN
Copyright 2020
Kevin Hartman
Digital Marketing Analytics
In Theory And In Practice
Second Edition
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Kevin Hartman
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing April 2020
First Edition April 2020
Second Printing September2020
Second Edition September2020
ISBN: 979-8638631321
To my family who has loved me,
my friends who have supported me,
and my colleagues who have inspired me.
PRAISE FOR DIGITAL MARKETING ANALYTICS
Kevin has made science accessible. With the immense potential Digital holds, Im confident this book will allow you to unlock new ways to deepen customer relationships and fatten your profits!
Avinash Kaushik Digital Marketing Evangelist - Google, Author
Web Analytics: An Hour A Day and Web Analytics 2.0
Kevin combines the experience of a skilled analytics practitioner with the expertise of an academic. In this book, he presents a fresh look at the field through the lens of history: from its earliest beginnings to its modern incarnation.
Mike Chapple Director, M.S. in Business Analytics Mendoza
College of Business, The University of Notre Dame
Digital Marketing Analytics is an important resource for all marketers, whether you are early in your career and learning or a seasoned practitioner who wants to remain sharp. This book will help you understand the changing dynamics and apply that thinking to maximize your business results.
Karen Sauder Vice President Google
This book is an excellent examination of data analytics, providing both a solid theoretical foundation and a deep dive into practical application. Readers of all levels of digital savvy will benefit from Kevins expertise across platforms, tools, and approaches.
W. Brooke Elliott Associate Dean and EY Professor
Gies College of Business, University of Illinois
The power of Digital Marketing Analytics is that it provides an insightful approach to the art of analytics while demystifying its science. Whether youre a big brand or small company, Kevins book is a fantastic resource for any marketer who wants to do more with data.
Mike Clarke Director, Research Facebook
Kevin has honed wisdom gathered over decades as a practitioner and lecturer to develop a strong foundation of analytics. As the evolution of marketing analytics continues to accelerate, this foundation will prepare you to successfully tackle any new challenge, approach, or data source you will encounter throughout your career!
Stan Balanovskiy Head of Ads Measurement and Insights Quibi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
E ven if you know nothing about digital marketing analytics, digital marketing analytics knows plenty about you. Its a fundamental, inescapable, and permanent cornerstone of modern business that affects the lives of analytics professionals and consumers in equal measure. This book is an attempt to provide the context, perspective, and information needed to make analytics accessible to people who understand its reach and relevance and want to learn more.
The contents of this book reflect my decades of work in the digital analytics space, with most of that time spent leading large analytics teams at a major advertising agency and a global technology company. Ive also had the privilege of teaching analytics at the graduate level for nearly 10 years. This textbook represents the synthesis of those two worlds: the academic and the actionable, the history and the hands-on, and the analysis and the application.
I hope readers find this book to be a valuable, enlightening, and engaging review of the ever-evolving analytics field. Im profoundly grateful for the opportunity to share my experience, knowledge, and insights with you.
Kevin Hartman, September 2020
PART 1: The Day the Geeks Took Over
Lesson 1 The ART+SCIENCE Mind
Lesson 2 The Early History of Data Analytics
Lesson 3 The Contemporary History of Data Analytics
Lesson 4 The Rise of Modern Data Analytics
The ubiquity of data analytics today isnt just a product of the past half-centurys transformative and revolutionary changes in commerce and technology. Humanity has been developing, analyzing, and using data for millennia. Understanding where digital marketing analytics is now and where it will be in five, 10, or 50 years requires a holistic and historical view of our relationship and interaction with data.
Part 1 looks at modern analysts and analytics in the context of its distinct historical epochs, each one containing major inflection points and laying a foundation for future advancements in the ART + SCIENCE that is modern data analytics.
PART 1 | LESSON 1
The ART+SCIENCE Mind
Five things discussed in this lesson: Data analytics affects every aspect of business Opportunities for data analysts have never been greater, and expectations of data analytics to influence business decisions have never been higher Analysts should focus on skill development in three important roles: the Data Strategist, the Techie, and the Data Designer Analysts roles have evolved over time, moving from focused areas of expertise to broad and balanced skills Successful analysts develop deep skills but, just as importantly, develop a mindset that helps set them up for success
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Digital marketing analytics, in my humble opinion, is the most vibrant and undiluted blend of art and science in todays business world. No other pursuit requires its practitioners to balance such a depth of scientific application with a more poignant need to communicate with audiences who neither understand nor have patience for the technical underpinnings of that science. The science of digital marketing analytics presents as verbose and academic. A purely artistic display of analytics output suggests the same lack of substance as a charlatans medicine show. This pursuit only works through a harmony of the two: ART+SCIENCE.
Data analytics the broad science of applying data analysis to solve business problems affects every aspect of business. From finance to operations to human resources to marketing (and everything in between), its understood the worlds most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data. As a result, everyone in a business today becomes an analytics consumer. Moreover, the stakes have never been higher for analysts as the opportunities for data analysis and the expectations for their benefits have reached unprecedented levels.
Given this predicament for the analyst (whether that word is in ones title or not) a broad, yet balanced skill set is required.
The Three Roles of the Analyst
Analysts should develop skills and expertise in three functional areas. Think of these functional areas as hats that successful analysts wear throughout any analysis project or endeavor. Each area of expertise has always been an important skill for successful data analysts, regardless of their industries or titles. These skills are interdependent: strength in one area will be throttled by weakness in another. As a result, analysts should seek to balance their abilities across the three roles.
