Applied Analytics for Real-Time Decision Support

White Paper

Applied Analytics for
Real-Time Decision Support

SUMMARY
Anametrix is the only marketing analytics platform to combine real-time performance feedback with multichannel predictive
modeling for comprehensive insights and powerful decision support. By collecting, analyzing and making sense out of data
from virtually any source, Anametrix enables marketers to act on multichannel data to drive revenue and profitability.
Our real-time dashboards present a unified view of paid, owned and earned media to assess marketing performance. Our
next-generation analytics platform also enables marketers to perform diagnostic analysis, drill-down segmentation and
predictive modeling to improve campaign results, lower acquisition costs, drive loyalty, increase ad monetization and expand
customer lifetime value.
Founded in 2010 by the trailblazing web analytics team behind WebSideStory, Anametrix is headquartered in San Diego,
California. For more information, visit our website (anametrix.com), Twitter (@anametrix), and our blog (blog.anametrix.com).

Our Vision
At Anametrix, our vision is to become our client’s primary decision-support system, the one place where marketers can
see, analyze and act on the data they have – whatever the data is and wherever it comes from. The key to solving the
multichannel problem − and turning marketing into a revenue driver − is combining and making sense of all vendor and
internal data to enable data-driven decisions. When the vast amount of customer and market-facing information is pulled
together and analyzed smartly, it can provide unprecedented insights to reveal entirely new revenue opportunities.
Anametrix transforms high volumes and variety of raw data into something that’s going to make the marketers’ lives
considerably easier. Better decision-making. More efficient allocation of resources. Higher revenue and profitability. And,
we firmly believe this approach will become nearly universal, because only the companies using real-time decision support
systems will thrive.

Why Anametrix
Designed for both ease of use and flexibility, the Anametrix technology platform was built from the ground up to power a
wide range of marketing analytics capabilities – from streaming data collection and web and mobile analytics to real-time
queries, segmentation, dashboards, reporting and predictive analytics. This common platform promotes integration and
consistency, differentiating Anametrix from vendors who have developed or acquired their tools separately and attempted
to cobble them together. With a completely unified cloud-based analytics platform like Anametrix, users can combine and
correlate information across a myriad enterprise data sources and leverage the power of real-time data collection. The
output is right-time results returned completely in context with accuracy and relevancy across all access layers and delivery
methods.
Anametrix is focused on delivering on the marketing vertical and is the only analytics platform to natively combine real-time
marketing performance feedback with multichannel predictive modeling for comprehensive insights and powerful decision
support.

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The Anametrix technology platform has many significant differentiating capabilities compared to other cloud-based business
intelligence (BI) and traditional analytics solutions:

STREAMING AND BATCH DATA COLLECTION
All popular data platforms support the batch loading of transactional data. These transactions, such as purchases or call
center records, contain a wealth of information in a single packet of data, and are thus easy to collect, store and analyze.
But an increasing portion of marketing data is streamed – often derived directly from consumer activities on a web site or
social networking site – where each individual piece of data, such as a page view, contains minimal information. It is the
steady accumulation of data from these streaming sources that begins to form a picture of individual consumers, important
trends or overall marketing performance.
Anametrix is unique in that it was originally designed to collect both batch and streaming data sources. This is done via
Anametrix’s own tagging technology, integrations with the major tag management solutions, support of major web analytics
data stream formats and APIs, and connectors to dozens of popular marketing solutions. The Anametrix streaming data
collection capabilities draw on our experience with large-scale web analytics systems, enabling the import and reporting of
data the instant it becomes available, and ensuring marketers will have the data they need, when they need it.

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Unified data warehousing and reporting
Beyond merely collecting data from disparate sources, Anametrix maintains the data in a cloud-based data warehouse that
is seamlessly combined with the Anametrix analytics components into a single coherent platform. This is in stark contrast to
many BI platforms that only provide reporting tools that merely connect to disparate sources without first combining the data
into a single, logical data store.
By having a centralized warehouse, Anametrix is able to discover correlations that span sources – correlations that would
be difficult or impossible to find otherwise, such as the effect social mentions have on web site conversions or the degree to
which online support minimizes call center activity. This is all done without the need to license a separate data warehouse
technology or to involve IT.
The Anametrix warehouse is a modern, high-performance no-SQL database specifically designed for large volumes of
streamed and batch marketing data. And because the analysis tools are fully integrated with the warehouse, users can
easily service their own analysis needs without understanding how the data is stored.

Common metadata
One of the primary advantages of combining data from multiple sources and vendors into a centralized warehouse is that
it facilitates a common metadata layer. Simply put, different vendors often use different names and formats for the same
fundamental data, making it complicated for users to join data across these systems.
For example, web analytics systems use the term “visitor” to describe a human visiting the site, while email or CRM systems
may use “subscriber” or “customer”. The same is true for many metric values, such as “sales” versus “revenue” or “single
page visits” versus “bounces”, as well as the many different date and currency formats. Even worse, the same term may be
used for different values. For instance, advertising vendors use “clickthrough” to define the number of clicks on an ad, while
web analytics vendors use the same term to count the number of visits referred by ads. These values are almost always
different.
Anametrix eliminates these issues with single, customer-defined metadata that permits common business terms and formats
across all data sources. This ensures users will be able to create accurate reports using their own business terminology and
without having to understanding the naming conventions and data structures of numerous disparate systems.

Data Visualization and Extraction
From the user interface perspective, Anametrix provides a comprehensive set of tools for visualizing, reporting and exploring
all the data we bring into the Anametrix cloud – including web browser, email and Microsoft Excel, to name a few. Anametrix
also provides comprehensive data extraction capabilities, suitable for both programmatic connections through our API suite
and connections to various other services, languages and tools that can consume federated data.
Anametrix is specifically designed to support rich customization of multiple data extraction models along with predefined
reports that are specifically designed to visualize the multichannel marketing process throughout the customer engagement
lifecycle. This interface is built on top of the data model and works very well for all sorts of data types and data structures. It
allows for extensive filtering, custom elements and complex calculations – all critical features when it comes to system-based
reporting.

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Predictive Modeling
Predictive modeling is a form of statistical analysis that requires a significant amount of data analysis and cleansing before
the proper statistical techniques or algorithms can be selected. Many BI and web analytics providers claim predictive
capabilities with rudimentary uni-variant projections of individual metric values. Not surprisingly these projections rarely turn
out to be accurate, and thus users often cease to rely on these solutions after a short period of time. Anametrix understands
that predictive modeling is not a one-size-fits-all situation.
Anametrix Predictive Analytics is built to give marketing organizations access to sophisticated statistical and forecasting
models directly within the Anametrix interface, leveraging real-time, historical and contextual reference data unified by
Anametrix. Anametrix Predictive Analytics supports a continuous optimization process, combining the power of rapid
response enabled by real-time data and enhanced accuracy achievable with multichannel analytics. The result is agile
marketing:

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• Clients use real-time response, engagement and conversion rates as leading predictors to assess social and paid
campaign effectiveness, and optimize ads, content marketing or social media strategy on the fly.

• Clients validate and improve the accuracy of their predictive models by enriching and contextualizing real-time data
with lagging predictors, such as sales, revenue, and CRM actuals, as well as reference data sources.

Real-time updates
Most data warehouses or SQL-based solutions are staged with data that is rarely updated more than once per day, if that.
Meanwhile, some cloud-based BI solutions claim to be real-time, when in fact what they provide is “on-demand” reporting
– i.e., they can report on data soon after it is loaded into their local data store, but the data itself may be more than 24 hours
old.
Anametrix blends streaming data collection, processing, aggregation, analytics and reporting to create a single unified
platform that is updated the same second the data reaches the Anametrix collection servers. This may not be important
for BI platforms designed for finance or IT, but marketers need to move at the speed of the Internet and their consumers.
Anametrix permits marketers to make changes to online content, ad spend, direct communications and other marketing
programs as the data becomes available.

Scale-out design
Anametrix is the only cloud-based analytics platform designed for the high volume and dynamic nature of digital marketing
data. Anametrix has created a true scale-out, share-nothing architecture for all data collection and reporting. Querying and
data collection capacity is linearly increased and load is re-balanced on the fly as new server capacity is added.
This is especially important for major media outlets, social sites, ecommerce and ticketing sites where sudden data spikes
are common and can occur with little warning. It’s during these periods of peak visitor/consumer activity when real-time data
analysis is most critical. The Anametrix design ensures that real-time data access is uninterrupted during unexpected surges
in data volumes, while other systems suffer significant delays in data availability.

Conclusion
Anametrix is the only vendor that combines the key aspects of real-time streaming data collection and consolidation,
reporting, predictive analysis, visualization and unmatched scalability in a single platform. Unlike other cloud-based BI
and analytics solutions, the Anametrix architecture was specifically designed for marketers, by an experienced marketing
analytics team. The platform was built for the demands and unique characteristics of marketing data.
Anametrix provides both the technology platform and the built-in, best-practice reporting to give decision makers a holistic
perspective into how customers are engaging with their brand throughout the lifetime of their engagement. We enable
businesses to identify the correct levers to continually optimize marketing performance to drive revenue and profitability.

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Applied Analytics for Real-Time Decision Support

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