Future of Digital Analytics. The latest developments in digital analytics: top trends in 2018

Modern digital analytics requires knowledge of programming languages, understanding of deep and machine learning algorithms. There is a need for strategic thinking skills: business needs specialists able to understand the request for an analyst, see the processes systematically and confirm them in numbers.

Here are the top trends in digital analytics in 2018:

The market is moving towards an increase in the competence of both service providers and customers. Big advertisers do not want only the standard reports - Google Analytics, so they develop their own reports that map data from CRM or internal databases to data from web analytics systems.

Another trend is an increase in mobile traffic and the development of mobile analytics systems. In 2016, Google introduced Firebase Analytics, AppsFlyer and other similar systems. Working with the attribution of mobile traffic is somewhat more complicated than in the web: applications are installed usually through stores - Google Play or AppStore - and only they know the source that led the user to the installation. Therefore, data in mobile application analytics systems may be inaccurate. A feature of the mobile market is a wide variety of advertising networks and systems of analytics, and not all of them work correctly with each other.

Data collection is increasingly automated:

The demand of the digital analyst in the future will determine the knowledge of programming languages, machine learning, and the ability to work with big data.

However, it is necessary to check the consistency of the data, the results of the research - with this the machine cannot cope yet. That’s why the digital analyst becomes today the designer, the architect of the analytics system. And technology complements the human mind, creating a holistic picture.

 For example, the case of the US operator Sprint. The company used to terminate the service agreement with those customers whose cooperation with it seems unprofitable to it. One client often contacted the operator's support service with a request to understand the reasons for the connection failure. The quality of the connection was low due to poor coverage. Based on the machine analysis of the frequency of calls to the call center, the cost of processing and revenue, the company decided to break the contract with a non-profitable customer. At the same time, Sprint ignored the reason for the calls and did not solve the communication quality problem. After a while, according to the materials of the forum of its own support service, the company found out that the husband of this client, the owner of a small business, transferred all corporate numbers to another telecoms operator. Trusted by the decision of the machine, Sprint lost several customers at once.

There is a transition from descriptive analytics to predictive and prescriptive.

 In the nearest future the need for forecasts will become more massive. Therefore, analysts need knowledge of machine learning algorithms and programming basics that help analysts use a large array of data to make forecasts and improve their accuracy.

The approach to metrics is changing. There is a noticeable shift from the usual quantitative indicators (visitors, clicks, orders) to deeper, more calculated (user satisfaction, user experience). A few years ago, approximately companies did not analyze the buyer's way from the first contact with the product to the fact of the transaction, did not understand the conversion and therefore did not know what to focus on the promotion. Now it is important to measure not the sales but the behavior of the user.

Digital-marketing in the form of an unsystematic and unreasoned set of steps ceases to exist. Companies, where the analytical work is not adjusted and instead of the KPI system are considered separate indicators, will remain ever less. For analysts who do not act systematically, but by instinct, who understand only certain tools and do not know how to analyze complexly, there simply will not be room in the market. They will be replaced by people who have not only tried tools but understand the logic and interrelations have a systemic strategic approach.

For more trends you can check this article out https://www.forbes.com/sites/kateharrison/2017/01/09/top-10-trends-that-will-transform-digital-marketing-in-2017/#5f9efedb3bf5