Next Sunday afternoon I am moderating a panel at eMetrics San Fran.  The panel is called ”Web Analytics -vs- Audience Measurement.”  Andrea Hadley at NetSetGo was the brainchild of this panel idea (and yes that is her picture on her site :).  In fact, I was a panelist on the same panel at eMetrics Toronto, filling in for my friend Marshall Sponder.  Since he’s going to be in San Fran, I yielded my seat 0n the panel and decided to stand up at the podium.   Other panelists include Jodi McDermott, Director of Product Management, at ClearSpring, and some other surprise guests (from comScore and IAB maybe)… You’ll have to show up and find out…

The panel description is as follows:

Are you confused about the number of customers visiting your website? Are the metrics reported by your web analytics tool different from the metrics reported by your online media, or by audience measurement organizations? The WAA invites eMetrics Marketing Optimization Summit attendees and the local San Francisco business community of web marketers, publishers and agencies to attend this community meeting. A panel of experts will discuss the value of the metrics, methods and tools used by web analytics practitioners, online advertising media and audience measurement organizations. Find out how-to use these metrics and tools to better understand your customers, your website’s competitive standing and overall website value.

The goals for this panel include:

• Adding clarity around the tools and data associated with each set of technology and metrics - web analytics technologies and website data, ad servers and ad data, and audience measurement tools and data.
• Learning how each data source can be used to expand our understanding of customers, how effective our website is as a business channel, the website’s competitive standing and value, and so on.
• Providing insight into the role of the web analytics practitioner and how this role is growing in importance and influence over business, marketing, product, and strategic decisions.
• Discussing the role of the Web Analytics Association (WAA) and how the WAA serves the practitioner.  That the WAA is an unbiased organization that doesn’t serve advertisers, publishers, or technology vendors, rather that the WAA serves and exists for the benefit and betterment of the the practitioner and the web marketer/strategist.
• Articulating the announcement made at eMetrics Toronto on the important collaboration between the IAB and the WAA for standards review.

My goal as the moderator is not to critique, demean, or criticize audience measurement, Internet advertising technologies, or to embellish or hype up web analytics tools.  Rather I hope to clarify the differences between the technologies and speak about the value they hold together - like I did in my article for MediaPost called the Yin and Yang of Online Metrics.

So why am I telling you all of this on my blog???  Well it’s because I really want your help, whether you are going to eMetrics or not…  Since I’m the moderator, I get to ask the questions, and I don’t want to just ask “my” questions, I want to know what questions YOU would ask if you had the chance to ask.  Of course, those of you reading this and attending the panel will be given the microphone if you raise your hand.

Please help my crowdsource by telling me in comments or via email to judah (at) webanalyticsdemystified.com:

What questions would you ask to clarify the differences and value between web analytics and audience measurement tools?

Any questions you think worth asking from “why don’t the numbers match?” to complexly “what are the differences between audience measurement and web analytics systems in terms of data collection?” would be awesome and appreciated.  Thanks in advance for your help!  I’m eager to see if this social media experiment in blog-based crowdsourcing actually works!