More On Investment Banking And Web Analytics

October 5, 2006

On Tuesday, I talked to yet another investment banker (Morgan Stanley, the company that took Omniture public.) I don’t want to turn these guys away, because it’s good for the WAA and the industry to have this kind of exposure, but damn! I wish they could link to my site. Can’t you see it now, a link from Morgan Stanley’s web analytics research to LunaMetrics? Well, I can dream, right?

We agreed that we would keep it to a half an hour. I don’t remember all the questions (and should leave something for him to write himself), but as usual, he started with the assumption that web analytics “has made it,” and I maintained that web analytics will not really make it until marketers can do most of the work in really easy-to-use interfaces and not have to wait for IT to code an onclick event or a custom eVar. At a certain point I said, “OK, this is your last question.” So he asked his question and I answered and then he rolled right into another question. “Sorry,” I said, “That last one was your last question.” He was very nice and sent me the research on the pricing for the Omniture IPO as a thank you gift and then — he asked his last question again, in email. It was an interesting one, though. He wanted to know when I thought that Google would release their upgraded, non-free version. (This was one of the topics that they raised in their research report, “Google also plans to sell a more comprehensive product offering shortly.”) I considered telling him that Paul Muret writes me daily and tells me all the insider knowledge, but decided to stick with the truth: I really had no insight into that particular issue, and thought that Google would be smart to spend their time bullet-proofing the current free version.

Robbin Steif
LunaMetrics