The Analytics Power Hour

The intro bumper for this podcast says "the occasional guest," and, yet, the last five episodes have had guests. That's hardly "occasional," so Tim and Michael had a choice: either change the intro or do an episode on a topic for which both of them have experience, interest, and, hopefully, at least modest authority. In this show, the guys dig into hypotheses: how to identify and articulate them,...

The machines are coming! The machines are coming! Artifiicial Intelligence is here. But what is it, and how long will we have to wait for the technology to completely take over all analysis work? Dennis Mortensen -- founder of x.ai -- joins us on this episode for a deep dive into the topic. You will be surprised by how pragmatic and real AI seems as Dennis describes how he approaches it. And...the...

Somebody wants to overthink their analytics tools? Tell 'em their dreamin'! We wanted to talk about open source and event analytics and Snowplow sits right at that intersection. Our guest Simon Rumble is the co-founder of Snowflake Analytics and one of the longest users of Snowplow. We wrap up the show with all the places you can find Simon and Tim in the next few months. Fun fact: You will also l...

Once upon a time, in an industry near and dear, lived an analyst. And that analyst needed to present the results of her analysis to a big, scary, business user. This is not a tale for the faint of heart, dear listener. We're talking the Brothers Grimm before Disney got their sugar-tipped screenwriting pens on the stories! Actually, this isn't a fairy tale at all. It's a practical reality of the an...

What IS customer intelligence? What is a customer? Is the customer best understood by breaking the word down into its component parts: "cuss" and "tumor?" Would that be an intelligent thing to do? Will these and related questions some day be answered by self-aware machines? Will any of *these* questions be answered on this episode? Give it a listen and find out! The mish-mash of companies, product...

In this episode, we dive deep on a 1988 classic: Tom Hanks, under the direction of Penny Marshall, was a 12-year-old in a 30-year-old's body... Actually, that's a different "Big" from what we actually cover in this episode. In this instant classic, the star is BigQuery, the director is Google, and Michael Healy , a data scientist from Search Discovery , delivers an Oscar-worthy performance as Zolt...

As Dr. Phil says, "Never put more into a relationship than you can afford to lose." Not sure what that has to do with Excel but it sounds vaguely wise, which is the whole point. Tim and Michael try to be your relationship coach for Microsoft Excel. Despised by data scientists, but used by everyone else, where are the boundaries and who has what it takes to enforce them. Join us in an exploration o...

To outsource or not to outsource -- that is the question: Whether 'tis more efficient to tap The skills and talents of those who bill by the hour, Or to bring resources inside as full-time staff, And, by doing so, manage them. To contract, to outsource -- No more -- and by outsource to say we get Our insights and our implementation work Managed by others -- 'tis a scenario Devoutly to be wished. T...

If you're like most analysts, you've probably changed jobs since the last episode of this podcast hit your earbuds two weeks ago. Or, if you haven't actually changed jobs, then you've at least been hounded by recruiters who wish you would. No matter how you look at it, digital analysts have lots of opportunities to bounce between companies at a frequent pace, and many analysts do just that. On thi...

Back by popular demand: attribution! This time, we brought in an adult on the subject: Jim Novo of The Drilling Down Project. A lot of questions get tackled in this episode: Should "gut feel" ever trump "the data?" Which is a better analogy for attribution: PV=nRT or the distillation of bourbon? Will this podcast *ever* have flawless audio quality? These questions and more definitively answered. A...

Are you a data scientist? Have you pondered whether you're really a growth hacker? Well...get over yourself! Picking up on a debate that started onstage at eMetrics, Michael, Jim, and Tim discuss whether a fundamental shift in the role (and requisite skills) of the web analyst are changing. You know, getting more "science-y" (if "science" is "more technical and more maths"). all in 2,852 seconds (...

I know what you're thinking: they're world-class podcasters when they hide behind editing tools and autotune, but can they do it LIVE? This special recording from the final keynote spot at eMetrics has the three amigos of insight taking questions from Twitter and a live audience. There was bourbon, Jim Sterne, and a disagreement over the future of the industry - all in under 45 minutes. So, turn u...

You know what it's time we do? It's time we make analytics great again. How can we do that? With three guys who know about winning. Maybe not winning with real estate. Or with steaks. But winning with analytics. Are these three guys winners? Well, for the sake of 40 minutes of audio, let's say they are. And then we'll let you, the people, decide. Gratuitous pop culture references in this episode i...

What is life but a series of questions? Does that question even make any sense? We'll never know, as this wasn't a question that got asked on this episode. Instead, Tom Miller , co-host of the Measured Direction podcast , joined us to give us a taste of the format of his show: user-submitted analytics questions asked and answered on the fly. What do you do when you lose a room of executives 15 min...

We've got the technology. We've got the behavioral data. We've got the content (or at least tell ourselves we do). We're all set to develop personalized experiences that knock consumers socks off and leave them begging us to take their money. Is it really that simple? If it is, why aren't more companies realizing the dream of 1-to-1 marketing? Matt Gershoff joins us to discuss how the pieces of th...

As an analyst, it's never a good idea to make predictions without data. With that said, for our first predictions episode, we've chosen to make some big and small predictions for the digital analytics space for the remainder of 2016 -- using only experience and intuition! Join us in Episode 30 as we rely solely on intuition to predict the next 9 months of a multi-billion dollar industry - all in u...

Philosopher, poet, and essayist George Santayana wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." We thought we'd have him on to reflect about the history of digital analytics...but he died in 1952. Ambrose Bierce wrote  The Devil's Dictionary , which we think is brilliant, so we thought we would have  him on...but  he died in 1842! Lucky for us, we landed the best of both w...

Attribution is like a box of chocolates. It can be really expensive, or it can be really cheap. It requires making a lot of decisions as to how you actually want to consume it. It may leave you feeling ill! Join the guys for a 45-minute walk across the attribution landscape. And back. And back again. Because mama always said you shouldn't stop at the last click.

What better time to ask Big Questions about analytics than the start of a new year? In this episode, Gary Angel from EY joins us to talk just a little bit about his new book , and to talk a lot about digital transformation: what it means, what's holding large enterprises back, where digital analysts fit in the effort... and a whole-whole lot of thoughts and ideas that aren't nearly as lofty and ne...

One year of shows. It was our initial Big Hairy Audacious Goal, and we did it. We hoped you had as much fun this year listening as we did recording, and we'd like to take a chance to reflect. Did we hit our initial KPIs (because of course we had them)? Did we have a favorite show? Is there something we'd like to do next year? Tune in and end 2015 by listening to a podcast about a podcast. We think...

We had a hypothesis that our listeners might be interested in hearing an expert on digital optimization. In this episode we test that hypothesis. Listen and learn as Kelly Wortham from EY runs circles around the lads, and brings them to an understanding of what digital testing means in 2015. In an hour so optimized it only takes 45 minutes, it's 2015's penultimate episode of the Digital Analytics...

Have you noticed that neither Michael, Jim, nor Tim are women? They did! But that didn't stop them from taking on the subject of women in digital analytics (with diversions into the subjects of women and scotch, and women in professional poker). Joining them for this episode (because they may be a little misguided at times, but they're not absolute morons) was Krista Seiden from Google. Krista is...

From a sophisticated analysis of the names and timestamps of many of our commenters, we discovered something that surprised us: digital analytics is a profession that is practiced outside of North America! This fact blew our minds, but ,curious analytics types that we are, we set to work finding someone with whom we could chat about digital analytics in Europe...and found Matthias Bettag. Join us...

It's hard enough keeping up with the times when digital analytics is exclusively Desktop/Mobile/Tablet devices. Now, what if we had to work with data that came from everything? Join us this episode where we lean heavily on the wisdom and experience of Intel 's David McBride , and talk about the Internet of Things, Measurement, and perhaps Millennials - all for the low low price of 50 minutes of yo...

In this episode, we've simulated a lobby bar at the end of Adobe Summit, with Ben Gaines dropping by and everyone temporarily tapped out on talk of eVars, s. Props, derived metrics, and classifications for a bit. The result? A conversation that quickly turns to an adjacent passion of many digital analysts: sports analytics. Baseball, basketball, football, e-sports, the CFL, and even a fairly obscu...