Interview With Joe Davis, CEO of Coremetrics

April 8th, 2009 by Lars Johansson

I caught up with Joe Davis, the CEO of Coremetrics, to discuss the future of paid web analytics, conversion attribution, and more.

Joe, do you think the ambitious additions to Google Analytics may “force” companies like Coremetrics, and all other vendors offering paid solutions, to release a basic version for free?

Google has done a good job of really raising awareness of the power of analytics across their customer base, and their customer base is huge. And for that we’re grateful. Think of all of the little companies – I’m talking one or two-person shops – all over the world who use Google Analytics, but who would never otherwise have invested in an analytics solution.

But now take a step back and think about larger companies, those in the small-to-medium business range and above. Those companies have more complex business models, and they see the value of purchasing their analytics solution from a neutral third party. They’re usually looking for a more sophisticated solution than what they can get for free and they’re willing to pay for cutting-edge technology. So we’re not really worried about Google forcing us to offer a free solution. We’re focused on pushing the envelope of what an analytics solution – and complementary applications – can do, and we believe there are customers willing to pay for that.

What is your strategy to address conversion attribution?

I feel very passionately about attribution. The reason so many companies don’t tackle attribution at is that it’s really, really hard. It’s much easier to just count clicks or impressions and not give true attribution a thought.

But these old models are hopelessly flawed. If you’re assuming that they’re giving you any kind of actionable insight into your business, I’ve got news for you: you’ll either lose your job or your competitor is going to eat your lunch. Period.

As a marketer, you should demand to know the ROI of your many campaigns because they represent a huge expense. They shouldn’t be a black box. The ROI should be backed by hard and defensible data, not by strange double counting and convolutions. As CEO, I demand that of my team. And my board of directors demands it of me.

What kind of services can we expect to see get added to your offering?

I don’t want to give away too many state secrets here. But I’m happy to give you an idea of the things we’re thinking about right now. We’re thinking about how to make numbers matter to different stakeholders in an organization.

It’s not about the data (and this is a mistake a lot of our competitors make); it’s about what the data allows you to do.

We’re looking at ways to make it easier to drive data-driven marketing and business decisions in an organization. We’re looking at delivering even more personalization, at ways to better target people to fundamentally improve their online experience. We’re looking at bridging the gap between the online and offline worlds. And we’re working with our clients to help them identify ways to invest in analytics and applications today so that they can leapfrog their competitors as the economy starts to pick up steam.

Where do you think web analytics will be in a year?

Well, I’ve left my crystal ball at home, but I can say that it’s a very interesting time to be in analytics. We have customers whose in-store sales have fallen off rather dramatically, but whose online businesses are still growing.

More and more companies are shifting their marketing investments to online not only because it’s measurable, but also because it’s improvable. In some ways, the economic situation has been something of a lightning rod for our industry because marketing is under greater scrutiny than ever and CMOs need to build the case that their departments are delivering measurable value.

And our customers are seizing on analytics as a means of creating extremely personalized, targeted and brand-relevant experiences for people. I think we’ll see personalization accelerate and become more sophisticated. We’re excited to see the ways in which social media, especially Twitter, are adding to the analytics picture and I expect to see some more innovation in that arena.

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