#cmw

Live coverage of the Digital Strategies Conference, part of Canadian Music Week (CMW) in Toronto.

Data is King.  Gain a Competitive Advantage Using Online Analytics and Behavioral Targeting

Panelists:

• Michael O'Donnell, CEO, Skytide (USA)
• Rob Begg, Director, Business Development, Radian6 (Canada)
• Eric Garland, CEO, BigChampagne (USA)
• David Bakula, SVP of Analytics, Nielsen Entertainment (USA) 
• Moderator: Jay Friedman, Digital Mktg Expert, Goodway Group (USA)

It's your information, so try to obtain it, control it.

• Garland: Call your Congressman.  "Lean on distributors to get you information" that will better inform your campaign and strategies.  But show some restraint, the flood of information has its limits.  Start with what business objectives you need to accomplish, and then decide what data you need.

The best freebie alternatives?

• Among the panelists, a few names were floating around - compete.com, quantcast.com, Tweetdeck - though Google Analytics stood out strongest, especially if you're on a 'budget of $0'.

Okay, Google Analytics, but what's missing?

• O'Donnell: It only answers engagement questions, not necessarily costs like royalties, content delivery, etc.  That makes it only a partial solution for bigger companies and enterprises. "Those need to be built into the overall formula."

But all that information, is the flood drowning the thirsty man?

• Garland: Sifting past the stuff that doesn't matter is critical.  "The trick now is to get to the stuff that matters," and stop wasting time on unimportant data points.
• Bakula: It's all about the Benjamins.  A lot of the data is just noise, 'so what is going to make you money?'
• Begg: 'Pick something you want to count and grow, and just do that'.
• Garland: Transparency has given everyone access to similar information.   But weighting is key.  One area where weighting is not being applied so well is Twitter.  One tweet carries so much mileage, and even a few comments can motivate huge changes in approach.  "We have in some sense lost all perspective, we're guilty of that".
• Begg: Number of tweets must be placed into context, relative to the event, artist, etc. at hand.  
• Bakula: "It must be indexed to average."

The over-emphasis on clickthroughs.

• Friedman wonders why clickthroughs are given so much emphasis, so much importance.  In reality, the panel agreed that clickthroughs are just one measure of success, and often don't make sense as a core metric in many campaigns. 
• Friedman: Citing study, 8% of the online population makes up 85% of all clicks.
• O'Donnell: What happened to the golden law of three?  "When the web emerged, the formula was inverted," and "advertising is still valuable if you don't click on it," though a lot of media buyers do not place enough emphasis on impressions and other aspects of engagement.

So much data, who's getting it right?

• O'Donnell: cites MTV as doing a solid job getting data on videos over the web, globally.  They are looking at actual access and engagement, plus video stops, starts, stalls, download times, etc.  But so many metrics, the most important measure is what is making money and showing positive ROI.  "[MTV is] spending millions of dollars in content delivery", which must be matched by advertising and other assets.  Others are watching this, using analytics to get more profitable, "there's a tremendous amount of pressure on P&L."
• Begg: 'not a ton of people that use the data in a meaningful way,' at least this early.  But, using free tools, 'you can find 10,000 doing things right', you can find bands and people that 'really, really, really get it'.
• Garland: Names the Bonnaroo festival as a shining example.  'Artists are partnering with Bonnaroo in ways that could never have happened before,' and 'that was really data-driven'.
• Bakula: 'there are record labels coming to us with data requests they have never had before.'  They say, 'we think these may mean something to us,' a reflection of an expanding, experimental field.   This includes TV, theater, other types of out-of-category data, 'that has never happened before'.

Does data make labels less important?

• Garland: Lot of value to dividing expertise, outsourcing to specialization, though the basic relationship has changed fundamentally. 'The pressure is on to up our game, literacy is way up.'

Suddenly, the relationship between licensor and licensee has changed...

• Garland: Content suppliers are increasingly demanding more information from downstream licensing partners.  Things like plays, accesses of :30 clips, a large basket of other information.