I have been in the web/digital analytics industry pretty much from the beginning. Yet it still remains a highly dynamic and evolving industry that I keep learning from. Recently, Piwik Pro asked for me to review and summarise what has happened during that time, as well as what challenges still exist, and what future opportunities there are.

Below is the result of that long discussion. From Urchin and log files, to Universal Analytics, GA4 and everything in between. A four part interview series about the past, present and future of the industry. Professionally edited by the Piwik Pro team into easy to digest 5 minute videos. I hope you enjoy.

PART 1 – Life before Google and that infamous launch

• From IT-focused to Marketing-focused analytics tools.
• The launch (and stall) of Google Analytics v1 and a paradigm shift of the “freemium” model.
• The dominance of Universal Analytics – from 30K to 30M accounts in 10 years.
• GA4: A challenge for Google, an opportunity for competitors.

Blog post to go with videos 1-3.

PART II – The rise and importance of data privacy

• The rising importance of privacy and ethics in the analytics industry.
• Differences between approaches to privacy compliance in Europe and the US.
• Treating user privacy as an asset not a tick-box exercise.
• Best practices for privacy compliance.

Blog post to go with videos 4-7.

PART III – Data democratisation and its unanticipated pain

• Democratisation of data has been great, but who is in overall charge? Who is responsible for the data?
• Avoiding data silos and learning to work with the legal department.
• Historically maintaining data quality was a big issue. Things have improved, but building “data trust” with your customers is now the bigger challenge. Will they give you their data in the first place?

Blog post to go with videos 8-10.

PART IV – The Future

• In my view we have to step back from the current surveillance economy. Data is not evil, but we do need to get back to basics of benign/aggregate data collection – away from hyper personalised tracking and targeting. Convincing the industry to take this path is my current passion. If not, we may lose far, far more than a few extra customers from remarketing.
• New AI tools make my job at least 10x faster. That means the analysts’ job becomes more interesting/fun – so we do more of it. AI will not replace human analysts imo.

Blog post to go with videos 11 and 12.

Have we as an industry become over focused on bling technology and forgotten the basics of good analysis? For me, “advanced web metrics is about doing the basics really well and applying it in a clever way”.

With thanks

It was great to have the opportunity for a longer talk about the bigger picture of working with data. Who normally gets time for that? Many thanks to Marcin Pluskota and the Piwik PRO team for the thoughtful questions and high quality production that converted my long ramblings into snappier, easier to digest insights.

---

Brian Clifton is a measurement and data privacy strategist, author, and founder of Verified Data — the auditing platform for data quality and governance. Formerly Google’s Head of Web Analytics for EMEA, Brian has spent over two decades helping organisations build trust in their digital data. He is the author of the best-selling books Successful Analytics and Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics. He is a certified member of the European Association of Data Protection Professionals.