Hi everyone,
Recently updated the blog and as some of you may notice there are some problems I’m experiencing with the images in most of the older posts. Please hold tight, working to get this fixed soon.
Mike
Hi everyone,
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been working on a new utility to improve upon an issue that has bothered many Omniture SiteCatalyst users for years: traffic source reporting. I’m very pleased to announce the release of the Omniture Traffic Organizer plugin available at:
Omniture Traffic Organizer is a JavaScript library that users of Adobe’s Omniture SiteCatalyst can use to achieve a better and more detailed understanding of incoming traffic sources to their website. The plugin is:
The plugin allows you to:
This project is released as open-source under the MIT and GNU GPL licenses and contributors are very very welcome!
Please check out the wiki for more information and feel free to download and begin using the plugin!
Comments or questions, please feel free to leave them here, on the github project page or contact me directly at mike.sukmanowsky@oddinteractive.com.
Happy analyzing! 
Mike
Hi everyone,
I’ve started a new position as Product Manager, Digital Analytics at The Globe and Mail. Stay tuned for posts to come as I get a bit more settled in the new role.
Best,
Mike
Today the web analytics industry suffered a tremendous loss.
Hosam Elkhodary, President of The Web Analytics Company and a very close friend of mine, passed away yesterday as a result of a severe heart condition.
Having seen Hosam just last week at the eMetrics conference in Toronto, Ontario, Canada this news came as a huge shock to me today.
Beyond helping me personally in my career, Hosam was arguably the most influencial and important person in Canada for web analytics. Few people were often aware of Hosam’s efforts, but he was often known for being subtle.
Beyond helping numerous companies in Canada build their web analytics infrastructure (Rogers Media, Loblaw Companies Limited, Mazda, and so on), Hosam was also very actively involved in the Web Analytics Association and taught courses at the University of British Columbia. Hosam also mentored a great deal of us.
Had it not been for Hosam, I would not have the career I do today nor my understanding and passion for web analytics.
Hosam leaves behind a wife, daughter studying at the American University in Cairo, and a son attending high school in Ajax, On.
Hosam’s funeral services will be held at 2pm on Friday Apr 10th at the Islamic Foundation of Toronto (Nugget Mosque). The address is 441 Nugget Ave, Scarborough (map below). I understand that all are welcome. The family is leaving that evening for Egypt.
You will be very missed Hosam.
It looks as though the guys at Quantcast have been busy!
If you haven’t heard of Quantcast yet then I strongly recommend you check it out. Quantcast (as well as Google Trends) are looking to give companies like comScore and Neilsen a run for their money.
A long standing problem in the Canadian marketplace has been the difficulty of finding viable alternatives to comScore. By all means, comScore isn’t some evil corporation but there are a few major problems with it:
It’s a situation found often in Canada because we just don’t have the population to support the marketplace needed for real competition in some of these industries. Luckily though, companies like Google and Quantcast are changing all that.
Before I dip into the “big three” I’ll warn that Quantcast’s panel is composed completely of US citizens. Before Canadians take the big Quantcast plunge, I’d urge that we ask Quantcast to look into panels that are composed of Canadian-only audiences – I know the big media companies would really support this kind of move.
I think it’s kind of enough said here.
Quantcast’s data collection model combines both that pesky panel-based data as well as JavaScript-tag based data (like the stuff collected by Google Analytics, Omniture, WebTrends or Coremetrics). Using some pretty sophisticated mathematical techniques, Quantcast is actually able to combine these two data sets to improve on the weaknesses inherit in both.
Recently released (and very much needed), Quantcast has released a Media Planner tool on their site specifically designed for ad agencies. This is a critical feature that they’ve been needing and I’m so happy to see they’ve taken this step.
After all, our media industry moving towards a new measurement standard isn’t much good if all of our advertisers and their agencies are still tied to the old one. If we’re going to switch to Quantcast or a similar tool, we need the backing of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and I can’t see those guys giving a blessing to any tool that doesn’t support some kind of a media planning tool.
I would be more than happy to work with any of the media companies in Canada to support Quantcast and look into opportunities to support their growth in Canada. Just send me an e-mail or post a comment if you are interested!