In a sign that at least some people read this blog, I got an email from Edelman two weeks ago, sharing WebTrends success working with CCTV. Props to Edelman for their outreach efforts. Leaving a comment on my blog might have been the more “web 2.0″ thing to do, but sending me an email is fine with me. At least is strokes my ego 
Now the news:
- “CCTV, China’s largest TV broadcaster, is using technology from WebTrends to track online video and other content during the Olympics. [...] By bringing WebTrends in, CCTV will be able to uncover visitor trends and customize content for hundreds of millions of Chinese Internet users throughout the Olympics.” (highlights are mine)
Some thought:
- WebTrends is certainly the best established global analytics solution in China. Their partnership with a local distributor gave them and edge and an 8
year lead on Omniture and other competitors. They have done especially well in large state owned companies (more in an older post).
- The rumor mill says Webtrends didn’t see any money from the CCTV deal. Some underhand deal from their local distributor left them in the rain. Well, at least they got the press release. Lesson: there are opportunities and risks working with a local distributor.
- One great illusion is that a tool (any tool) will enable a company to do anything. It’s the team that runs the analytics that makes the difference. Without them, the tool is just a useless piece of software collecting data.
- I am not sure what WebTrends “online analytics” means. It could be interpreted as CCTV using “WebTrends on Demand”, which is their hosted solution. I don’t think that would make any sense for CCTV. Considering CCTV.com gets more traffic than NBC.com , it is critical for large site that the growing volume of analytics data (Javascript, tracking pixels) is hosted on a local server. (I am assuming that JS is the only way of effectively tracking video, please correct me if I am wrong). To my knowlege Webtrends does not have any servers in China. Looking at the HTML code of CCTV.com, it becomes clear that they do indeed use WebTrends SDC tags, but that the JS is hosted on CCTV’s own servers. This fact, practical reasons, China’s manical need to keep online and TV data out of foreign hands and WebTrends standard sales pitch in China argue for a WebTrends software installation (read: not on demand, not hosted by Webtrends). Plus, this way noone at headquarters needs to find out there is a large installation running (at least until they want to send a press release )
Any additional info about Web Analytics and the Olympics? Please let me know in the comments.
Generously sponsored by
Web Analytics Demystified, we hosted our
August Web Analytics Wednesday event yesterday
at Club Camp. In the spirit of continuous improvements we changed from
a normal dinner set up to a buffet style arrangement, and I won’t look
back. I was happy to observe and join the many small group discussions,
that would have been impossible before. Plus we could easily host all 18 – 20 participants and have room for more.
Attentive Listeners
The main attraction of the day was the presentation of Feedsky CEO
Lv Xin Xin. The most interesting point for me was actually the audience
reaction after the presentation had started. More that 50% of our
audience were not familiar with the concepts of feeds in general and
RSS in particular. While there are 50 – 60 million blogs in China, the
way to follow them is still very different to the US and Europe. While western users often use their browsers and RSS readers to subscribe to
RSS feeds to feed their news habit, Chinese blogs are mainly personal journals set up on
platforms run by IM companies (Q-Zone by QQ, LiveSpace by MSN) and
portals. In order to keep updated users just check their corresponding
IM client to see if their friends have updated their blogs. The “old
way” of bookmarking blogs and checking them directly remains popular
too. Google reader or other RSS readers are still only used my a
minority of users. Lv Xin Xin mentioned that only 2 million users subscribe to
Feedsky feeds, while the online population is estimated at 253 million users.
LV Xin Xin in from of his slides
Other point from his presentation:
What is Feedsky?
- A Feedburner clone in China (Feedburner is blocked in China by the GFW)
- It provides are platform for publishers, mainly bloggers, to publish and track their RSS feeds easily
- Publishers can also merge multiple feeds, change the layout of the feed, add advertising and online bookmarking links
What data is Feedsky tracking?
- Number of subscription
- Tools use to subscribers
- Number of clicks
- can enable / disable
- most popular articles (Just the top 5, and no exact clicks
- real time subscription data (Geo, tools, time of last 20 – 30 subscribers
What is the business model?
- Advertising on feeds and blogs
- Working with advertisers to recruit bloggers that participate in their campaigns
What is unique about Feedsky?
- The company provides an open API that allows partners to provide plugins and formats for the RSS feeds
From
an analytics perspective I highlighted the important paradigm shift RSS
enables. Users who subscribe to your content., implicitly give you
permission to push your content to them, while users who come to your
website “pull” you content, only when they have time or look for specific
answers. That makes subscribers a highly targeted audience that needs
to be well understood / tracked. Services like Feedsky and Feedburner are the tools
currently at our disposal to learn something about these subscribers,
that often cannot be tracked by our standard analytics tools, since they
can consumer your content without visiting your site.
But even with these tools, may questions remain unanswered. I for one
would like to set the RSS subscription as a Goal in Google Analytics to
see which kind of users convert to subscribers, but so far I have seen
no such solution.
Is there anything I missed? Any questions you have? Please leave a comment.
One of our regulars, Feedsky CEO Lv Xin Xin, is the main speaker this Wednesday at the all new Web Analytics Wednesday in August. Xin Xin will focus on using RSS feeds for measuring the effectiveness & stickyness of online communication channels. Especially for bloggers and social marketers this should be a very interesting conversation. I also can’t wait to ask about using RSS in BBS’s. It you are as curious as me, please RSVP
- by commenting on this post
- or on the Web Analytics Wednesday Website
We have changed the format this time, so it will be standing room only with a buffet dinner. This should be more conductive to smaller face to face discussions and networking. As usual part of the cost will be covered by our sponsor Web Analytics Demystified. Be prepared however to spend about RMB 50 for the evening. As usual the knowledge you get in exchange is invaluable
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