One of my favourite evening reading sites is TV By The Numbers and Bill Gorman’s Renew/Cancel Index. Bill uses ratings to build a predictive index – all based on the insight that you don’t have to outrun the cancellation bear, you just have to outrun the other guy! By comparing a set of ratings against the network average, Bill can deduce which shows are likely to be renewed, on the bubble, or cancelled. The usefulness of a predictive algorithm is in how accurate the predictions are. And I’d say that his index is pretty predictive. Excluding renewals and taking his index value of.90 as the cutoff for renewal or cancellation, his model yields 95% precision and a 77% recall. The[…]
Month: April 2012
Two intersecting themes for you today – attribution and decision making. This paper from Google Analytics and eMarketer really got me started, and you can download it here. It’s a survey of marketers and agencies (n=179) gauging attitudes, expectations, and objectives in attribution. Which is so hot right now. Thank you, Google. Great stuff. There’s a big difference between satisficing decision making behavior, and optimizing decision making behavior.Satisficing decision making behavior is characterized by: Good enough because it’s good enough. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. We only really have to do the minimum to satisfy our expectations. Optimizing decision making behavior is characterized by: Searching for better. Thinking forward and thinking backwards. Seeking to maximize an objective. People[…]
Many of my good friends and successor staff are off to build their own analytics or marketing science practices abroad. Some are going technology side. Two are going agency side. I’m happy for all of them. Those companies chose wisely because they’re all starting off with a solid keel. Here’s what I tell them: On Hiring Your first hire is critical and most strategic – choose somebody with strengths that complement your weaknesses. You’re building an orchestra: each ones strengths will have incrementally complement each others weaknesses, when you get to a team of 4 or 5, hiring strengths to reinforce existing strengths really pays off. (Architect your orchestra.) If you can’t eat with them or have a beer with[…]
There are a few spurious variables to look for in digital analytics. There’s a whole world out there outside of a website. And it’s not just social. Macroeconomic factors impact marketing performance. Consumer trends impact marketing performance. Competitor marketing activity impact marketing performance. More data than ever is open, and available to you: The best trove of US macroeconomic data can be found by at FRED, which also has an excellent API. The best trove of US consumer trends (and seasonality) can be found at Google Trends. The best (free) trove of competitor display ad activity can be found at moat.com To address some doubt: You don’t need a degree in economics to know how to read definitions and examine[…]