2021 is behind us, and in a year that saw an increase in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and further evolutions of data privacy laws like the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), naturally, we have been thinking about what could happen in the digital analytics space in 2022.Â
While it’s common to make industry-specific predictions about the coming year — though sometimes less common for those predictions to come true — I have seen my fair share of major shifts in the digital analytics industry. After authoring the book on Adobe Analytics, more than 200 analytics-focused blog posts, and more than two decades in the industry, here are my three key predictions for the digital analytics space in 2022.
Privacy Laws Will Cause Digital Advertising Spend to Decrease
As global privacy laws continue to evolve and with browser changes related to third-party cookie deletion and intelligent tracking prevention (ITP), it will be increasingly difficult for digital advertisers to prove the impact of their digital ads. While the advantage of digital advertising has traditionally been its ability to micro-target audiences, in 2022 and beyond, digital advertisers will be unable to identify audiences adequately, and their reliance on modeling will lead to decreases in overall ad spend. Consumers have made it clear that given a choice, they will opt-out of advertising tracking and this trend will only accelerate. According to Flurry AnalyticsOpens a new window , only 4% of iOS users were willing to opt in to allow the apps to track them. We also may see new U.S. legislation that prevents advertisers from using certain algorithms that are essential to their advertising model.
In a strange twist of fate, a lack of targeted advertising could lead to a resurgence in the type of brand advertising and major campaigns we haven’t seen in decades. An example of this is Domino’s recent advertising campaignsOpens a new window , a larger, multichannel campaign that the company will roll out across TV, radio, and out of home (OOH). They were the combined product of advertising, creative and media buying agencies. Alternatively, privacy laws may speed up M&A in the digital analytics space as major technology companies like Apple become more entrenched in the mobile advertising business.
Websites Will Now Be Built Like Apps, to the Other Way Around
As mobile apps increase their share of visitor traffic in relation to desktop websites, according to StatCounterOpens a new window , website owners will have to decide how much time and money they want to pour into website development. It’s expensive for businesses to maintain a website and a mobile app. They are often very different technologies, codebases and experiences. As the younger generation, most of whom don’t frequent websites, continues to prefer mobile apps, it will become harder and harder to justify massive investments in desktop websites. Even today, some website owners only use the website for new customer acquisition and get visitors to download their mobile app.
While I don’t see websites going away anytime soon, organizations will begin to make their websites look and act more like their mobile apps. A few years ago, building “responsive†websites, ones that adapted the website experience to look good on apps, were the rage. Now the reverse may be true in which desktop websites borrow the code, look and feel of the mobile app. You can start to see the beginnings of this in apps, such as Slack, that behave identically in the browser as they do on a mobile app.
Digital Analytics Extends Beyond Marketing, and This May Impact Organizational Structures
For over a decade, digital analytics has lived in the realm of marketing, mostly because the initial use case for digital analytics was reporting on the success of digital marketing and advertising campaigns. Even though digital experiences have become increasingly complex and interactive, in many organizations, marketing has held onto the ownership of the digital analytics function and dictated which analytics tools are used. This is why organizations have continued to use legacy marketing analytics vendors even though they are now using full-blown applications versus static content websites. At the same time, most digital interactions are moving to mobile apps, which are often owned by product, and thus managed outside of marketing. So then, why are the overwhelming majority of organizations using marketing analytics tools to track mobile applications?
As the accuracy of third-party marketing data dwindles due to privacy regulations and browser changes, the importance of digital product experience data will increase. Customers expect and demand cohesive digital experiences, and the only way to achieve that is by having the same experience and data across all digital channels. Today, many organizations split digital experiences by platform, with the marketing team managing the website and the product team managing the mobile app. This is not sustainable. In 2022, these teams will have to merge or become highly collaborative to ensure that the customer is the focus instead of the digital platform. While marketing data will still be part of the digital analytics data stack, I expect it to merge with the enormous amount of product data collected within product applications.
Once organizations combine marketing and product behavioral data into one platform, the power of these data insights should be made accessible to all. In the past, marketing had ownership of digital analytics data, but that type of centralized model will not work in the future. Many other teams are hungry for data. Product teams, data science teams, and all customer-facing teams need the ability to collect, analyze and run data experiments regularly. This will mean that organizations have to decentralize many of the data functions, including data collection, interpretation and activation, requiring everyone in the organization to agree upon what data is being collected and the establishment of a common nomenclature for data taxonomies.Â
‘Expect the unexpected’ is a saying for a reason. As we enter the new year and keep an eye on evolving trends, we can also expect new surprises in the market. Whether that comes in the form of an uptick in digital and product analytics M&A, new public companies, hot new startups, or existing industry giants laying stake in the analytics space for the first time, if 2022 is anything like the past few years, we can at least expect some shake-ups. I, for one, am excited for the future of digital analytics, and as I’ve always done,
What do you think the digital analytics space will look like this year? Share with us on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window .