That’s right, you’re on my bad side at the moment. You’ll notice I put the “T” in there, because I’m mad enough at you that if I knew your middle name, I’d be full-naming you in anger at the moment. But since I don’t know what the “T” stands for, I’m just going to make it up throughout this post so you can fully experience my momentary ire.

Now I’m not a rock star in the web analytics field like you are, but I lurk on just about every website and forum devoted to it. Imagine my happiness when I saw you write this post the other day. Unique visitors! The bane of our existence of web analysts… how do we know how to measure them accurately? IAB has a plan, so let’s ponder it. Okay, I’m with you. Then you had to go and call out one of the most dedicated WAA volunteers I know… Jodi… and then talk smack about the WAA. As my dear departed grandmother would say, shame on you. Shame on you on two counts – 1) making a bad call on how you personally are going to report on unique ‘cookies’ and 2) having the poor taste to go and make a personal attack on an analyst when you’re really just annoyed with the WAA. So Mr. Eric Theodore Peterson, you just sit on down because I have to give you a little talking to here.

Bad Call on the IAB Thing, Hoss
First off, I love accuracy as much as the next HIPPO. I’m one of those annoying suits – by day – that wants to be able to tie a web visit back to a household and then rub my hands together as I wistfully plot how to go sell stuff to that household. I’m a Director at a large media company, that’s what we do in the morning over coffee. So, in that capacity, I love the idea that I’m tying a web visitor back to a household and an actual, physical person. After all, you should know as well as I do that the IAB primarily serves advertisers like me and we ruthlessly use their data and audits to determine how much we’re going to pay for web-based advertising based upon the audiences you can assure me that you draw.

HOWEVER, you – Mr. Eric Thomas Peterson – are ALSO as a big of a nerd as I am. I know it, we had coffee together once, we spoke geeky talk. And you KNOW that the IAB can stomp their foot all day long and demand we track a web visit back to an individual human being… but there is not ONE analytics solution that can do that right now. To try and adopt language that makes this fact abundantly clear doesn’t accomplish one darn thing other than to once again draw into question the overall value of web analytics as a profession in the first place.

We spent YEARS trying to get a seat at the executive table to show how we need to use data, testing, and analysis to make customer-focused decisions. Yet – for reasons unclear to me – you plan to go to that table and make a statement like “100,000 unique cookies accessed our new website this month – what a record month for us! It’s up 110% over prior month!” Seriously? I’m one of those suits and the first thing I’d say to you is, “Unless you actually have a warm chocolate-chip cookie on your person, and you are going to give it to me, I don’t want to hear about cookies. What are my customers doing?” Once again, you’d stick to your guns and respond, “I can’t tell you what your customers are doing because I can’t prove that there’s a human being on the other end of those cookies. Even if there is, I don’t know who they are. My web analytics software doesn’t say that.”

Uh-huh. Yeah. I shake my head in wonder at that, Eric Tobias Peterson.

Jodi Embodies Everything Wrong With the WAA. Really??
Okay, so you didn’t actually say that, but you sure as heck implied it. And that’s CRAP. A giant, steaming unique cookie-filled pile of it. Jodi McDermott is one of the most dedicated, selfless, passionate, talented, and intelligent volunteers we’re lucky enough to work with over at the WAA. She – and all the others on the Standards Committee – work their proverbial buns off, in their spare time, to try and advance the field of web analytics by creating definitions that attempt to put us all on the same playing field. For years, they labor and argue over how to define something in a way that can both be constructed into a software solution – most software solutions – as well as be easily explained to an executive. Their focus is not on forcing definitions or enforcing standards, but rather herding and unifying a disparate group of terms and making sure everyone knows that at the end of the day, they mean the same thing.

I’ll stand behind what Jodi said. Until unicorns walk the earth again, this is the world we live in. The IAB’s definition makes advertisers happier because it makes us feel like we can quantify our target audience. But those of us who really understand it know that it’s a myth, because the technology doesn’t exist to allow us to measure with that level of precision. Even if it did, privacy laws would likely prevent it.

Yes, Eric Truman Peterson, you haven’t served on the Standards Committee or the Board. And clearly you’re not feeling the love with the membership thing either, given that you’re lapsing. That doesn’t give you the right to blast those who do love it and work hard to make it a better organization. Blast the organization all day long… we can take it and then some… but there’s no need to body-slam the people that work so hard for it.

That’s about all I have to say to you. Go to your room, young man, and think about what you’ve done.