Rubén Gallardo is Manager of Audience, Web Analytics, Search and Social Media in Prisa Digital. Previously responsible for Web Analytics and Business Intelligence in Telefonica Publicidad e Información, later called Yell Publicidad.
He holds a degree in Statistics from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and has specialized in the last 10 years of his career in Web Analytics and in the integration of the different tools with the rest of a company’s information systems (CRM, Servers, etc …). Extensive experience in the development and implementation of Web analytics systems, both internal development (logs and tags) and external tools (Omniture, Unica, Webtrends and Google Analytics). In addition, he is professor of the V Master of Web Analytics of KSchool.
With him we chatted to thoroughly analyze everything related to web analytics and digital media in an interesting interview that we offer exclusively.
How is a Web Analyst’s day-to-day life in a medium of communication?
In PRISA, different types of digital analysts coexist depending on the structure of the Group and its media. We find analysts who are more closely tied to the business and the newsrooms and other more strategic and cross-cutting analysts.
First, they direct all their efforts in obtaining insights of the data and the available tools, with the aim of optimizing the alignment of the interests of the users with the distribution of the generated content. The latter are more focused on the search for Group synergies, cross-sectional and regional analysis, constant support in specialized tasks, the development of tools and the coordination of all business analysts so that, by sharing knowledge and learning, all Evolve faster and better.
How does Web Analytics help a journalist?
It provides you with valuable information about the contents that are working best, where they are being made dynamic and the life cycles they have. Real-time monitoring of the content that is growing the most, those that are being consumed the most, and those that are dying from the source of input, is already a habitual tonic in the screens of the editorial offices of our media.
What is the future of Internet media?
The constant struggle and innovation. No one is clear about the future of the media, but what is clear is that the free model, with the prices that are handled in the current advertising market, is hardly sustainable as a unique model. Only perseverance in the struggle to improve products, to find differentiated value propositions, focus on user knowledge and maximize cost-benefit can guarantee a future beneficial to the media. All this should be accompanied by great doses of innovation and in this case I consider that mobility presents itself as a great opportunity.
With the competition that exists in digital media How does the measurement arise from a business point of view?
Evidently as a key factor. All the efforts of analysts should focus on two important development paths. On the one hand, internal or census measurement, more focused on optimization and user experience. Better knowledge of your customers and your interests is a clear competitive advantage today. On the other hand, we can not lose sight of the external measurement, more focused on controlling that our audiences appear correctly measured in the tools of the market and in contextualizing as we are with respect to the competition.
Although both measurements are logically connected, especially the comScore Hybrid system, we could say that the first is indispensable to optimize the relationship with our users and the second to take into account our means when investing in advertising. Omniture and comScore are the tools used in both processes.
Is there a true integration between “traditional” and digital media?
Currently the large communication groups are making real efforts to maximize the relationship between the generation of content and its distribution in the different media. The convergence between printed and online editions of the media is increasing, both in the generation of content and in the marketing of their advertising space. In this sense, I consider that the steps that have been taken to unify the newsrooms in the process of generating content and creating multimedia equipment for the commercialization of advertising space are an important advance and represent the correct line of work to follow.
What metrics do you consider fundamental in a medium of communication?
I honestly do not think that the fundamental is a matter of defining standard metrics. Each medium has its own particularities. Measurement in the digital environment is complex and explaining far-fetched metrics means that everything is still more complex. For me the key is an optimum analytical configuration (tags, variables, content structures, mobile, video, etc …) and once you have guarantees that your measurement is robust, start the analysis for knowledge and recommendation.
We analyze users, cookies, frequency, recency, depth of visit, drop-outs, average visiting times, attention and reading percentage in articles, downloads and consumptions of apps, comments, dropouts and errors in registration forms, video consumptions, interactions With social networking buttons …. Once we analyze all this, we try to give insights that are based on knowledge and that use for their explanation how much fewer metrics better. Only in this way will we be able to make life easier for the decision maker and for the analyst’s work to be recognized.
Are you a teacher in the KSchool Web Analytics Master Are there trained professionals in this field?
Fortunately more and more professionals with a good analytical base for our projects. Although it is true that with a master is not enough to be considered an expert analyst, I would have given anything because I had the opportunity that other colleagues of profession, with more experience than I, had taught me what in a Master like Of Kschool is taught. Even so, I firmly believe that one must struggle day by day to continue learning and evolving. In fact I think our profession will continue to evolve.
Where does Web Analytics evolve?
Generally speaking I would say that clearly towards customer analytics and with a clear focus on maximizing revenue. This does not mean that specialized profiles in our profession (it is impossible to know at all) continue to develop, experts in other fields of analysis equally relevant in the digital environment.
Personally and from my beginnings in as head of Business Intelligence, I have focused analytics with a more customer perspective and I will continue along this line with the conviction that it is the most valuable aspect that contributes to the companies and more personal satisfaction reports to the analyst .
And I speak of customer analytics because everything seems to indicate that the trend in the market is increasingly complicating the analysis of anonymous users. Legislative changes, Do not track or the cookies-free world of Mobile Apps, are increasingly complicating the tracking of anonymous users that relate to our products and even more if we analyze the “multi-device” effect.
If we want to have a real knowledge of our customers and their moments of consumption, we should concentrate all efforts on a true analysis of customers and the personalized behavior of each one of them, being this analysis without doubt one of the most Pretty we have the digital analysts.
In summary, the digital analyst should tend to the profile of the traditional Business Intelligence analyst, although with more technological capabilities given that, not only must he handle the information capture ecosystem (labeling and data sources) but also the technology of the Digital environment.
It would be a shame to overlook the lessons learned from traditional business intelligence analysts in data processing, segmentation, modeling, and prediction. All these core analyzes that fall under the responsibility of any good professional of traditional Business Intelligence, should be assumed and evolved by the digital analysts of the future.