An Interview with Daniel Waisberg, Head of Web Analytics at easynet search marketing
Our company always dabbled in the global market, but over the past 15-18 months we have really focused on building our network in the UK, EU and Australian web analytics and search marketing communities. Just as in the US, each market has sub-markets. Learning the nuances of the attitudes, cultures, needs, wants, proficiencies, etc. in each country has been really cool.
Recently I connected on LinkedIn with Daniel Waisberg, the Head of Web Analytics at easynet search marketing. He has some excellent credentials in the search marketing and web analytics community: he is a contributing author for Search Engine Land, is a frequent speaker at eMetrics Summits and he is the current Marketing Chair for the Web Analytics Association. I was really curious to know about the Israeli community and the type of work that they are doing. He was kind enough to agree to the following interview:
1. How would you describe the level of sophistication around web analytics and search marketing in Israel and the greater Mediterranean?
In general, Israel is a hub of innovation. With more than 3,000 high-tech companies and startups, Israel has the 2nd highest concentration of hi-tech companies in the world (the first is Silicon Valley in the US). Many startups fail, and some succeed, with a few growing to be big players in the Internet scene with a strong focus on conversion. For example, some of the strongest companies in the online gambling, adult entertainment and FOREX verticals that have pushed online marketing to the edge in many aspects have started in Israel.
It is important to highlight that the above companies naturally consider Israel to be a relatively small market, and they target the international market. This approach also applies to easynet search marketing.
2. How much of your business is with Israeli-based companies at the moment?
There is an Israeli proverb that says: "Don’t look at the pianist, look at his hands". In the same way, we believe it is more relevant to understand the target audiences and geographies of the clients than where their employees are sitting. What we look at is where businesses are operating, not where they are based (in the same spirit as in the best seller The World Is Flat from Thomas Friedman).
Some of our clients are based in Israel, others are not. We look at our clients and focus on where and what we need to do with their activities (in over 50 countries), the number of languages (currently 36), how their users’ perceptions may change from one geo to another, and how to make sense of all the complex data within our optimization operation.
3. How hard is it to find talent in your disciplines within Israel? Do you recruit globally and relocate people to Israel?
Finding talent is always a challenge. And finding talents that fits into a certain organizational culture is even harder.
Still, on the execution end, Israel is a fruitful center for innovative people that think outside the box and hold a high self-motivation to excel. Also, Israel has the highest percentage in the world of home computers per capita, so people are quite computer and Web savvy from the get-go. We don’t recruit globally for people that do the delivery, they are from Israel.
The harder part is finding sales and business development people that can reach out to prospects and potential partners abroad. And on this end, we do have some global recruitment. In general, we seek the appropriate international partners that may be interested in cooperation.
4. How large are the web analytics and search marketing communities in Israel? Are they active / passionate about the space?
It is quite small, it is not well established and far from what it is in the US and UK. Yes, there are innovative people that are self-taught and some have gained rare experience, but as a community it is still in its early stage. easynet search marketing initiated and launched ‘Lost in Conversion’, the first Web Analytics event in Israel in early 2009. This session took place at the underground venue of the GarageGeeks (another interesting hub for innovation, Sergey Brin also visited there when he was in Israel) and aimed to start a more public discussion about web analytics methodologies, best practices and some emerging Israeli companies in the field – including ClickTale, NuConomy and Feng-GUI.
There is still a long way to go to make the community more established, despite the individuals within the space being very passionate. As of today, they are sporadically active on the Web as well as within some events in the US and UK.
5. easynet’s website says that they work with clients in over fifty countries. Where are the clients in your personal portfolio based?
As mentioned above (see #2), my claim is it is more relevant to analyze your client portfolio in regards to where their target audiences are. Some of our clients are based in Israel, others are not. Today, we manage SEM activity in over 50 countries. Not all our clients appear in our portfolio for various reasons.
6. What does the company generally lead with in the market? Do they generally lead with their products and then sell the services around them or vice versa?
We are a full service SEM company. We use our proprietary technology (easynet edge) internally to deliver ROI for our clients. We don’t sell products, we sell a full service. In general, we believe that you need a pilot with the plane to actually drive results. Sometimes, you’ve got a plane but not the appropriate pilot. Sometimes, you don’t have the plane. You need both in today’s harshly competitive SEM and analytics field, where many are fighting for the user’s attention, click and conversion.
A bit about our technology -
PPC optimizers of the Web’s most competitive markets know that their competitive edge lies in effective analytics and decision making. Search engine marketing (SEM) accounts span thousands of keywords, ads and multitude KPI’s. In order to improve the results of search advertising, optimizers need to constantly analyze numerous dimensions to reveal opportunity and loss in conversions and client values. We’ve got a platform, built by hands-on experts in the fields of SEM and BI (business intelligence), that enables our optimizers to:
- Using BI technology, quickly and effectively "slice and dice" numerous segments of the search advertising activity, in any granularity level
- Analyze search marketing profitability by integrating search traffic data with advertiser’s CRM (e.g. salesforce) data
- See a holistic picture of search engine marketing by integrating data from various traffic sources, including Google AdWords, Yahoo, Facebook, Bing, organic search engine results, Google Analytics and others
- Set and monitor specific performance targets and alert mechanisms around them. Optimizers and their managers can easily check on if targets are achieved on an ongoing basis
Gain insight into numerous unique selling points, revealing why they may or may not be working within certain regions and/or sections of the content network
7. What do you personally enjoy working on the most: Search optimization, site analytics, competitive intelligence, etc…
What I really enjoy about Web Analytics is that it gives you the possibility to diversify, it enables tasting from the better of all worlds. I love learning new things and our field never gets boring. But if I would have to choose one field that always brighten my eyes, it would be competitive intelligence; that’s where I started and from there I got introduced to Web Analytics. It is amazing to be able to understand your competitors’ customers and reach them where they are most likely to be. Tools like Hitwise are like an oasis in a desert, they provide you with valuable information to help you deciding what to do.
However, in a recent paper I published with Avinash Kaushik, Web Analytics 2.0: Empowering Customer Centricity, we write about the importance of an holistic approach, which builds the complete picture of customer behavior in websites: in-site and off-site, online and offline, quantitative and qualitative. So you got to love it all!
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