September 28th, 2009
Welcome back to the third installment of my Blog. This week we are going to discuss web analytics and how, with the advent of the Digital Native, marketers need to develop more sophisticated ways to gather their information. If your new to the idea of web analytics then a good resource to brush up on it is a blog by Robert Pothier in which he gives a good overview of web analytics and what it means to marketers. But, after our talk in class I began to think about some of my own activities on the web and some of the security measures that I take to prevent things like identity theft and such. Now, because web analytics, like Google Analytics, is essentially based off of being able to trace your ip address through the websites you visit and build a user profile from that. And the desire for anonymity on the net by the Digital Native, there have sprung into existence programs to help mask all traces of a person on the internet. Now the fact that applications like Hot Spot Shield, and Hide IP have developed in response to needs outside the scope of blocking web analytics there is still time for marketers to take advantage of the information and also to change how the information is gathered. However, as those of the Net generation become more and more technologically savvy and better versed on the tactics of marketers, which realistically is only a few google searches away. Marketers need to understand that with the rising knowledge of the digital native web analytics are going to become more, and more difficult to rely upon unless we as marketers find new avenues of information gathering that can be considered more reliable. Or find new ways to interpret the data so that numbers don’t become skewed one way or another and lead marketers of the future down the garden path so to speak. Now take some time and visit the biggest of the web analytics power-houses on the net, Google Analytics and see for yourself first hand the type of info that we, as marketers, are collecting.
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