Aggregated Stats Are Key to Social Media ROI

Omniture Facebook integration screen shot (Social Media Monitoring from Omniture)

A couple of weeks ago I received a lot of feedback when I hypothesized that charging for in-depth viewer statistics could generate almost a billion dollars in revenue every year for YouTube. Whether you agree with my estimates or not, it’s hard to argue with the fact that one of the biggest opportunities in the market today is the aggregation of disparate analytic data. As more and more organizations start to distribute their content at very specific online destinations, the need to aggregate, analyze and correlate data across platforms grows deeper.

What the hell am I talking about?

Let’s get something out of the way right now: I’m not talking about Social Media “listening” or “sentiment monitoring.” That stuff is in its infancy. I’m talking about the real, hard stats already collected on almost any platform; and I’m talking about bringing them together in a way that allows a human (or eventually the machine) to draw correlations between channel activity and something like e-commerce sales.

Magnifying our world

We, for example, distribute our videos on two platforms: Vimeo and YouTube. We participate on Twitter and at Junta42. We add imagery to Flickr and upload documents on Scribd. And we have this blog and our TippingpointLabs.tv site. Today, if I want to get a good look at what’s happening in our web universe, I have to log in to each of those channels, pull the data into some spreadsheet (or write the data down), and then attempt to do my own analysis. This is inefficient and silly.

What if there are specific sites that I want to monitor — like a blog that frequently mentions us? Perhaps I want their RSS feed integrated into my analytic pool so I can see a correlation between stories they write and an increase in traffic? I’m no API genius, but this doesn’t seem overly complicated.

An example of aggregated analytics

Okay, so I’ve looked at tools like Omniture and WebTrends (both long-time players). I’m a huge fan and a heavy user of Google Analytics. No tool, to my knowledge can do aggregated analytics. The only thing that comes even close is something Eric Sagalyn introduced me to called Mint. Not the Mint.com just acquired by Intuit that tracks finances, but HaveAMint.com, which aggregates web analytics with some external information.

Vimeo Pepper from Mint

Mint is an open source solution charging $30.00 for a site license. Currently, we use it as a real-time dashboard to monitor our websites’ activity. What’s great about Mint is that they have ‘panes’ that are created as separate plug-ins called PepperMill. People like Yoast have created great PepperMill panes for things like Vimeo stats, Feedburner integration and even panes that integrate SlideShare stats.

Mint and Peppers (as they are referred to) are really powerful. Right now, there’s not much integration (if any) among the Peppers, but the concept is sound and the information is priceless.

How could you exploit the opportunity?

The real opportunity in this market is not in creating a new analytics tool or suite (we don’t need another WebTrends or Omniture). The real money will be made creating a dashboard tool (similar in concept to Mint) that allows for the integration of an unlimited number of types of statistical analysis.

Imagine, if you will, opening an Adobe AIR app, in which you connect your Google Analytics stats with your Vimeo, Feedburner, YouTube, RSS feeds, SlideShare, your e-mail marketing tool, and UStream account. All your stats in one place. Imagine being able to overlay view counts from YouTube and e-commerce sales to see where the correlations occur. I’d like my Compete.com data for specific referrers brought into one interface. I want Quantcast demographic data available with a simple click. This is what I need, and I can’t be the only one.

About the author

Andrew Davis -

In 2002, Andrew founded Tippingpoint Labs with journalist James Cosco. Since then, he's spent countless hours exploring the online universe and building a methodological approach to developing digital strategies that drive revenue or reduce costs.

Andrew's always asking big questions and analyzing data to understand markets, online forces and even business models. Andrew's research has resulted in the creation of innovative online metrics including Online Brand Value and Category Brand Value, eye-opening graphical representations of website evolution through the New Media Life Cycle and even using online data to predict offline revenue.

When he's not surfing the web, Andrew's traveling the globe speaking to a wide-variety of audiences about everything from social media to the future of print. Andrew is a frequent contributor to the Tippingpoint Labs website and has been creating valuable content since the early 1990s for The Jim Henson Company, CNN, The Today Show and MTV.

He's contributed to a book of short stories, called The Way Things Were and produced and co-wrote Roadside Ambition a documentary film about one small town with two huge balls.

"In a world where content is consumed as rapidly as it's created, companies need to develop a sound strategy to creating valuable online experiences that can, and should, be leveraged enterprise-wide. There is a content solution to every business challenge."