My Take: “Digital Marketing Analytics” by Kevin Hartman
Being from the “Chief Analytics Evangelist at Google,” I had high expectations for this book.
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I had high expectations for Kevin Hartman’s book. I was hoping to use it for a revamped edition of the digital analytics course I’ve been teaching to MBAs and MScs in marketing for a decade now.
For such a complex topic, the actual content of the book is only 200 pages long… It starts with a (too long) history of data analytics, and in some cases it only scratches the surface or is too long and wordy.
In the second part, Hartman talks about video, search, display, and social measurement, but not a single word about web analytics! In fact, aside from Avinash’s praise at the beginning of the book and the definition of the term in the glossary, there is only one paragraph dedicated to this discipline — for a total of less than 200 words! How can website analytics be completely overlooked when talking about digital marketing analytics?
For me, the biggest failure of this book is the total absence of a very important topic: website analytics!
I noticed that the author wrongly attributes the pyramid model of web analytics data to Eric Peterson in 2004, when in fact it was Jim Sterne and Matt Cutler in “E-Metrics: Business metrics for the new economy” who introduced the concept back in 2000. For me, this paper marks the real beginning of “web analytics” and is a definitive reference I still use in my class.
While the book lacks depth, it is also too long in some areas. In Part 5, Lesson 6, although very interesting, when explaining the “McCandless Method,” the author explains what it is, then re-explains it with an example.
Despite the title’s claim, there is plenty of “theory,” but I didn’t see how this book had much “practice”…
Nevertheless, I found some interesting points and examples. I liked the overall structure, but the book lacks a more formal textbook format with in depth topics, cases, examples and exercises.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to use this book as a primary reference for my digital marketing analytics course — the only way I could use it is to pair it with a really good book focused on web analytics (hint to “Learning Google Analytics” by Mark Edmondson, O’Reilly, due out December 2022).
If you know of a great recent book dealing with digital marketing analytics, please comment!
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Stéphane Hamel is a strategic advisor, pre-seed investor, analyst, speaker, teacher with a keen interest for privacy and ethical data use in a marketing context.
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