2016 Awards for Excellence Finalists

Congratulations to the 2016 Awards for Excellence Finalists

Digital Analytics Rising Star (Individual)

Akhil Anumolu, Manager, Digital Optimization and Personalization, Delta Air Lines
Akhil joined the digital analytics industry in February 2011, after graduating from the University of Georgia with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Management Information Systems. Since joining the industry, he has spent the majority of his time learning more about digital optimization, personalization, on-site analytics, and front-end development. He also has experience with SEM, SEO, paid advertising, statistical modeling, data analysis, shipping logistics and offshore manufacturing.     Akhil is a trailblazer in the industry. He helped launch, build, and grow the digital optimization and personalization platform at Symantec, and revamped their Latin America SEM and SEO practice, growing bookings 50% year over year. He spent time building a startup, Wonder Workshop, from initial inception through a crowdfunding campaign and their first ecommerce platform with revenue $5M+, in less than a year.

Akhil’s results speak for themselves. At Symantec, he built the first personalization and optimization system to connect offsite ad creative (whether text or display), to the onsite experience. This led to an overall global increase in bookings of 8% YoY and 50% YoY bookings growth within his assigned Latin America territory. He also redesigned landing pages via A/B and multivariate testing to create distinct experiences based on customer region, keyword, referral site, ad placement, and language, which contributed to improving global ROI for all Symantec markets. He was nominated by multiple Symantec executives for the Digital Analytics Rising Star Award in 2015 and named a finalist.

Since joining Delta Air Lines, he has taken on the role of leading and refining the on-site advertising deployment process, optimization, personalization, and marketing technology in order to improve the customer experience across Delta’s digital touch points. Early success from process and technology improvements have yielded a record-breaking increase in the number of American Express co-branded card acquisitions and card approval rates, an increase in internal metrics via optimization for major areas of Delta.com & Delta Vacations. He has also provided thought leadership regarding Delta’s deployment of tag management and optimization tools, to improve site performance and test quality.

Akhil proactively seeks opportunities to demonstrate thought leadership and share his learnings with others. He presented and/or helped create presentations for speakers at Adobe Summit, eMetrics, Click Summit, and Ensighten Agility. He actively participates in Quora, Reddit, and Growth Hacking forums, by answering questions on digital analytics. He has an active personal Twitter account. A few of Akhil’s accomplishments in the community include:
- Adobe Target Customer Advisory Board
- Quora, Reddit, and GrothHackers forum submissions and answering of questions
- Mentor to startup incubator FourAthens specifically for Digital Analytics and Marketing
- Advisor to 2 startups for counseling on data driven growth
- Discussions via Twitter on the hashtag #measure
Nominee LinkedIn Profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/akhilanumolu
Justin Goodman, Lead, Digital Analytics, Analytics Pros
Justin is an exceptional partner and a key to our reporting success -- always willing to help us navigate complex issues and find sustainable technical solutions, while considering our business and brand needs. Our team relies heavily on his knowledge of the digital marketing and analytics landscape. Moreover, he's an absolute pleasure to work with. Justin is absolutely someone you want on your team to get the job done right.

Industry expert. Knows all aspects down the little details.

Justin is incredibly responsive with any analytics questions we have ever asked. When we get an answer it is far above and beyond our immediate need. Justin has proven time and time again that the actions that come from research and data can greatly impact business and he has a passion for making a difference. Truly a Rising Star.

Justin has conducted many workshops for the American Marketing Association over the years on the topic of Google Analytics. Each workshop has been very well received by attendees and Justin continues to tweak and update his sessions to provide the most timely/topical information on quickly changing subject matter. He has developed as a go-to leader/expert on this topic for the American Marketing Association.

Consistently shows excellence in analysis and solution design.

Justin has been a great contributor to the San Diego Tableau User Group, including presenting excellent tips and tricks for doing complex calculations and page design.

He helped our company building a series of new reports for our eCommerce business with Tableau and those reports allowed us to analyze facts and make a decision more quickly. They are very valuable not only DTC team but also other teams within the company.

Justin Goodman is an incredible teammate, and probably the most innovative problem-solver I have come into contact with yet. The way that he approaches his client work shows that the practice of digital analytics is both his hobby and his passion. I have worked alongside Justin in building out and implementing unique data models for Princess Cruises, Whole Foods, and ASICS - all in just a year. He singlehandedly drew out the blue print for meaningful data that will serve these companies for years to come.

Aside from being talented at every "hard skill" I can think of, he also is experienced in treating his clients as if they were on his own team. He puts his foot down where applicable, but always with a great explanation & humorous anecdote of why the client's suggestion is going to, "screw up their data." I cannot think of a more deserving person for this Rising Star award!

Justin has grown his professional capabilities year over year and provided consistently excellent work to the companies he supports. He has personally played a key role in the process to mature the digital analytics capabilities of numerous global brands, including ASICS, a leading online travel agency (who must remain nameless), and many others. Justin's skillset and practice has grown not only in depth but also breadth, including mastery of GA Premium, Google Tag Manager, Tealium, and some insanely awesome Tableau based reporting. Additionally, Justin has contributed to several conferences and notably done a number of events with the American Marketing Association. This stands out to me as a key attribute of a rising star in our industry because it champions not only sharing knowledge and furthering our industry, but expanding it beyond the typical boundaries. Traditional marketers, such as what the AMA has a large membership of, desperately need to better understand digital analytics. Justin's efforts with the AMA have evangelized digital analytics to these audiences, something of worthwhile note.

Extremely client-focused, excellent work and communication, team-player.

Nominee LinkedIn Profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/justinmgoodman

Supporting Nominee Information:
Ignatius Hsu, Manager, Digital Analytics, Capital One

In just over a year since joining Capital One, Ignatius has made his mark within its Digital Analytics Team, contributing to corporate imperatives that empower its product teams to decision off of its enterprise data. Ignatius led the federation of web analytics, aligning tag implementations with the priorities of individual lines of businesses; he simultaneously partnered with IT on adapting a newly implemented model of deploying and listening to web analytics tags for agile software development practices. After the mid-year mark, Ignatius moved from web analytics to mobile app analytics, where he enables its fledgling iOS and Android app teams to rapidly innovate on products with the support of quality data, and enhanced reporting and monitoring. All the while, Ignatius governs over enterprise web and mobile analytics standards, crafting the data collection framework in concert with the core digital analytics team. His daily duties include promoting better interoperability of data within the larger digital analytics ecosystem, including data warehousing, activity logging, customer experience management, voice of customer and testing tools. Ignatius is a believer in transparency and accessibility. To that end, he publishes documentation to demystify complex processes and codify evolving standards, and works with other analytics product owners to minimize jargon and improve analytics reporting capabilities. Ignatius is plugged in to the world of digital data today. However, he steadily accumulated his responsibilities in analytics as he moved into different digital positions. Ignatius owes his start in analytics to Georgetown University nearly a decade ago. He had his first taste of web analytics on a project with the university's Office of the President and immediately knew where he belonged.

Nominee LinkedIn Profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ignatiushsu
Ryan Sleeper, Director, Data Visualization, Evolytics
Ryan Sleeper has quickly escalated as an analytics rising star within the Tableau Data Visualization discipline. Ryan has proven his thought leadership and digital analytics expertise as the Director of Data Visualization at Evolytics. He has also earned industry recognition and several prestigious Tableau awards including:
- 2015 Tableau Public Viz of the Year Recipient (voted #1 data viz out of 80,000 shared on Tableau Public)
- 2013 Tableau Iron Viz Champion (an international data visualization competition)
- 2013-2015 Conference Speaker (Tableau Conference, eMetrics Summit, among others)
- 2013-2015 Tableau Public Guest Blog (Invited)
- Founder and leader of the Kansas City Tableau User Group
Ryan actively blogs about Tableau how-to tips and tricks at http://www.evolytics.com/blog/, providing the data visualization and analytics community with some of the most actionable training and advice on maximizing the performance of Tableau while building individual skills and capabilities. Ryan is a member of the DAA. He has an unparalleled passion for data visualization. His impressive contributions to the industry have set the foundation for many great Tableau-based data visualization tools to come in the future.

Nominee LinkedIn Profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryansleeper

Supporting Nominee Information:
http://www.evolytics.com/blog/evolytics-ryan-sleeper-earns-tableau-public-viz-of-the-year/
Ken Williams, Manager of Analytics, Search Discovery
Ken is an exceptional analytics manager who specializes in helping clients maximize the value of Analytics through custom implementations, training, and automated reporting. He is an expert in tag management, strategy, data visualization, and optimization who has led analytics projects for clients in nearly every industry, from e-commerce to nonprofit. In addition to his client work, Ken also manages Search Discovery's strategic partnerships with Google and Optimizely.

Last year his work with American Cancer Society was recognized by Google with their Google Analytics Award for Excellence. Ken earned his undergraduate degree at Texas A&M and his MBA from University of Georgia.

Ken has truly exploded on to the Analytics scene this year. Most recently being recognized for the Google Analytics Award for Excellence by Google. Ken is also Google Tag Manager certified and knows GA and GA Premium better than anyone in the industry.

Nominee LinkedIn Profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kennethcwilliams

Supporting Nominee Information:

Practitioner of the Year (Individual)

Brandon Bunker, Sr. Director of Customer Analytics and Intelligence, Vivint

I recently read a great case study from Ensighten featuring Brandon and Vivint. Basically Vivint is finding new ways to make the most of the data it is collecting and Brandon and team. Because of Brandon's team Vivint is able to syndicate the data it collects to any location and in any format it chooses. By doing this makes it easier for them to synchronize and have consistent tagging across iOS and Android and collect latent data that is not connected to a screen view. Pretty Impressive. Below is a Quote from Brandon. This changes the game for us,” says Bunker, “especially when it comes to post- launch app support. If anything goes wrong, we can catch it before most of our customers are even aware of it. We also avoid the dirty data problem. When you’re tracking across different operating systems, variables get different names, data comes in formatted in different ways. It’s a mess. Once you decouple the tagging from the development process, you can get granular in your metrics.”

Nominee LinkedIn Profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandonbunker

Supporting Nominee Information:
https://www.ensighten.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/vivint-case-study.pdf
Rachael Gerson, Product Marketing Manager – Testing and Optimization, Google
Rachael is a very experienced and talented digital analyst. Over the past year, she has transitioned from the agency side to the practitioner side to run the testing and optimization program for the Google for Work team. In this role, Rachael has excelled at bringing multiple groups of stakeholders together to drive design and innovation, ultimately improving the bottom line of the business through her experienced leadership. In addition to running experiments across a portfolio of sites, Rachael shares her expertise with cross-functional teams to ensure the ongoing optimization of sites and to foster a data-driven culture, as well as advising external organizations on the benefits and best practices of performance marketing.

Prior to joining Google, Rachael launched the analytics division for a Philadelphia digital marketing agency. Rachael has been a frequent and highly-rated presenter at digital and marketing conferences, primarily speaking about analytics, experimentation, and SEO, and the role of analytics in the broader spectrum of marketing and advertising. She has worked on multiple DAA initiatives, including co-chairing the Professional Development & Membership committee, planning local symposia, and volunteering for prior galas.
Rachael exemplifies what a great digital analyst should be and thus I strongly believe she deserves to be recognized as the 2016 Digital Analytics Association Practitioner of the Year.

Nominee LinkedIn Profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachaelgerson

Supporting Nominee Information:
- Website
- Twitter
Terri Kochersperger, Director, Digital Analytics, Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc.

Terri Kochersperger joined the newly formed Digital Center of Excellence as one of the first charter members in 2011. She has built a best in class digital analytics practice for the Consumer organization, and in the process established core fundamentals including global implementation of tag management and Adobe Analytics. She created the digital analytics practice, building her global team and curating our standards, IT integration, and a data driven optimization based company culture -- a daunting task in a decentralized leading CPG company. In particular, Terri has established a global KPI framework and workshop approach - immersing our cross-functional talent in analytics as a way of life and competitive differentiation. She has also integrated analytics into our company wide training and talent development programs, and tirelessly works to embed the practice in our aggressive global campaigns for iconic brands such as Johnson's Baby, Listerine, Neutrogena, Clean & Clear, Band-Aid, Tylenol, Zyrtec, and more. Along the way, Terri has integrated data analytics into our digital platforms (e.g., global website, CRM, Mobile), and helped to launch our real-time marketing dashboards. Terri is a rock star who is uniquely able to demystify complex data concepts and requirements into action oriented must-haves. She always seeks to further her fluency in our marketing initiatives, and has achieved impressive results (and ROI) with very limited resources.

Terri created the digital analytics practice at Johnson & Johnson Consumer. She is responsible for oversight, strategy, execution and training globally; over 1,000 marketers, analytics and various agencies are embracing the practice. With nearly 1,000 websites and a growing mobile application presence, global standards, common technologies, governance and a well-structured organizational model, the strategy is paying off. Silo'd reporting is a thing of the past and real time optimization and predictive analytics is being embraced across the division.

Nominee LinkedIn Profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/terri-kochersperger-5605581
Hannah Poferl, Senior Manager, Newsroom Analytics, New York Times
Hannah brings a fierce passion for analytics to every conversation. She has demonstrated a well-rounded understanding of analytics - business strategy, data modeling and reporting - to provide The New York Times with data that is both deep and wide for everyone in the newsroom. Hannah consistently brings best practices to the table, ready to move from insights to action within her team.

Hannah has taken on a massive effort in growing the analytics capabilities of a wide array of users and played a key role in deploying an upgraded digital analytics capability across the Times. From training dozens of people in using analytics to masterfully managing the day-to-day needs of a robust implementation, to supporting hundreds of data consumers, Hannah demonstrates what is excellent about our industry and deserving of practitioner of the year.

Nominee LinkedIn Profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannahpoferl
Supporting Nominee Information:
- http://www.washingtonian.com/blogs/capitalcomment/media/new-york-times-reporters-too-will-get-access-to-web-traffic-data.php see notes at the bottom where Hannah's involvement is noted.
- http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/media/2014/12/8557509/memo-emnew-york-timesem-alex-maccallum - see where Hannah's contribution is called out
Sushmita Pilaka Saha, Sr. Manager & Head, Global Analytics & Insights, GoPro

In her time at GoPro, Sushmita has overseen the creation and growth of a global analytics and insights team. In her leadership, she has enabled data-driven decision making for enterprise-wide Products and Services at GoPro including analytics for hand-held devices like cameras and drones, Mobile and Desktop Apps, GoPro Apps on TV consoles, Web, Ecommerce, Online Marketing, Social Media and CRM.

GoPro has become data-driven, leveraging BigQuery data and combining it with device usage logs in innovative ways and continuing to refine their implementation strategies and dissemination of their data.

Nominee LinkedIn Profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sushmitapilaka

Most Influential Industry Contributor (Individual)

Simo Ahava, Senior Data Advocate, Reaktor

Simo Ahava, Senior Data Advocate, Reaktor This guy just gives, gives and gives to help others. His blog has been invaluable to me in my work. He has answered comments I've posted there and questions I've posted on the GTM forum. I had the pleasure of meeting him at Loves Data Melbourne where I asked him if he got any payment from Google for doing this. He replied that he didn't, so I asked him how he had the time to reply to everyone. His answer was that he has an understanding wife, and also that when you have knowledge, you have the responsibility to share it. I now feel I have the responsibility to share my belief that he is truly worthy of this award. He has helped me directly with analytics problems, advanced my knowledge and inspired me to learn javascript and hopefully, at some stage, start blogging.

Nominee LinkedIn Profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/simoahava
Supporting Nominee Information:
http://www.simoahava.com
Brent Dykes, Analytics Evangelist, Adobe
With more than 15 years of enterprise analytics, digital marketing and consulting experience, Brent Dykes has brought a wealth of knowledge and practical skills to the analytics industry, including some of the biggest brands in the world, such as Microsoft, Sony, Dell, Comcast and Nike, among many others.

In his current role at Adobe as an Analytics Evangelist, Brent works closely with the Adobe Analytics product team and its customers to help guide their analytics initiatives with expert advice and feedback. His contributions have helped numerous organizations create a data-driven culture, turn more insights into action and generate a higher return from their analytics investments.

Outside of his day-to-day role at Adobe, Brent is an ongoing contributor to the analytics community:    --He’s a published author, including his first book "Web Analytics Action Hero" and follow-up eBook "Web Analytics Kick Start Guide." “Web Analytics Action Hero” was recently translated and published in Korean, its first foreign language.

He directs an annual collegiate digital analytics competition, Adobe Analytics Challenge, which has exposed thousands of students to the power of enterprise-level analytics over the past 10 years, and doubled in size this year to nearly 1,000 students from 24 universities.

He regularly writes thought-provoking articles aimed at helping companies thrive in today’s data economy and evolve their digital marketing, including regular contributions to Forbes and notable placements at industry publications such as VentureBeat and Entrepreneur. He also published a paper in the October 2015 issue of Applied Marketing Analytics Journal: “Data storytelling: What it is and how it can be used to effectively communicate analysis results.”

He's recently been referenced and interviewed by influential media about digital analytics, such as TechRepublic and SiriusXM/Wharton Business Radio.

Brent also enjoys speaking on various data-related topics at many industry events. In 2015 alone, Brent participated in the following:
- Keynote speaker at eMetrics Boston 2015 with Jennifer Yacenda, “Data Storytellers of the World Unite” (top-rated session)
- Panelist on the “Do’s and Don’ts of Data-Driven Marketing” at Data Marketing 2015 in Toronto
- Keynote speaker at Conversion Hotel 2015 in Netherlands, “Storytelling with Data: That’s what you need for data-driven impact!”
- Speaker at MinneAnalytics Farcon 2015 in Minneapolis, “What’s So Special About Mobile App Analytics?”
- Speaker at UMSL Digital Marketing 2015 conference in St. Louis, “How to Become a Web Analytics Action Hero”
- Speaker at Adobe Summit 2015 in SLC and London for two breakout sessions, “Analytics Idol: America voted—the top tips are here!” and “Data storytelling: Create a happy ending for data-driven decision-making”
Nominee LinkedIn Profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/brentdykes

Supporting Nominee Information:
- Twitter
- Blog
- Website
Thought Leadership:
- Web Analytics Action Hero book
- Web Analytics Kick Start Guide eBook
- Adobe Digital Analytics Competition
- Forbes Contributor Profile
  - Forbes article: Introducing a blog to help you survive and thrive in the data economy
  - Forbes article: Five key milestones in the digital analytics journey
  - Forbes article: The age of data democratization: How to effectively share data across your business
  - Forbes article: Five roadblocks to becoming a data-driven business
  - Forbes article: Analyzing big data: 8 Tips for finding the signals within the noise
  - Forbes article: 4 Questions to consider before you launch your next mobile app
  - Forbes article: 5 Data-driven business trends for 2016
- VentureBeat article: Why smart companies will start giving data back to their users
- Entrepreneur article: Marketing's unhealthy best-practice addiction
- TechRepublic article (quoted): 5 Powerful data trends to watch in 2016
Notable Events:
Nick Iyengar, Associate Director - Digital Intelligence, Cardinal Path
If you’re like me when I look at some of the names in this category, you’re probably asking “who is Nick Iyengar?”. Good question and one that I look forward to answering. To begin, he is Associate Director of Digital Intelligence at Cardinal Path and in that capacity works with companies like Intel, Google, Universal Music, and Papa John’s to bring advanced digital analytics thinking to their digital marketing and planning. Here’s what one of his clients has to say about him:

“Nick is one of the smartest people in digital analytics that I’ve ever run across. His depth of knowledge both tactically and strategically is a very rare thing. If you need to know how to do some kind of very complex operation in Google Analytics, Nick makes it look easy. If you need to know how to interpret and use the data to change your business for the better, Nick can quickly and easily get you to where you need to go. Best of all, he does all of his work with a quiet calm and humility that belies his vast experience and intelligence in the digital analytics industry.” Dan Linton, Global Web & Digital Analytics, Intel Corporation (one of Nick’s clients, and a former colleague)

In addition to his technical smarts, Nick is a team player, a can-do guy who lives the Cardinal Path Purpose of “To know. To share. To BE our partner’s competitive advantage”.

When one of his colleagues suffered a back injury, he didn’t hesitate to step up on very short notice and fly to Europe to deliver a talk on analytics in front of packed auditorium. He believes in mentorship and leads his team of data scientists, analysts, and developers (all rising stars in their own right) by example, going above and beyond and executing with excellence. In the past year alone he has:
- Written articles for Marketing Land on analytics and digital marketing
- Co-presented webinars with Internet Retailer, the American Marketing Association and SiteTuners on attribution, analytics and marketing
- Co-authored the State of Digital Marketing Analytics in the Top 500 Online Retailers report, the first report of its kind to look at the use of analytics within top online retailers
- Played a key role in the development of content to support Google’s Digital Garge, the online learning center for acquiring digital marketing skills (currently UK, expanding to the EU)
- Spoken at industry conferences in the US and Europe, including Google’s Agency Day in Prague;
- Published multiple blog posts
- Delivered training seminars on Google Analytics and Adwords in Ireland, the US, Japan, and France;
.

Nick began his career at Google in 2006, managing Google’s "Analytics Guru" team from 2008-2010, which he transformed from technical support into a consulting team with $25 million in revenue. He also managed a multi-million dollar book of business for clients in Consumer Electronics. He then joined Cardinal Path as a consultant, before leaving in 2012 to do earn an MBA from the University of Michigan (focus on corporate strategy and marketing). He is now on what he likes to call his ‘’2nd tour of duty’’ with Cardinal Path.

His diverse skillset includes:
- Deep analysis and strong ability to turn findings into a business case
- Up-front measurement strategy that clearly connects analytics to profitability
- Structured vision for how to improve clients' analytics maturity
- Mentorship and coaching - he has trained tens of thousands of industry professionals on Google Analytics through both public and private engagements
There is a lot more I could say about Nick, but the key reason that I’m nominating him for this award is that he truly embodies what it means to be a rising star: great at what you do, active in the community, actively sharing your knowledge, mentoring and leading staff and colleagues, being considered a “go-to” person within the company, and a trusted advisor by his clients. In short, he is making a difference and I’m sure we’ll see and hear more of him in our community as time goes on. That’s why I’m nominating him, and why I hope that you will see why he is worthy of your vote.

Thank you.

Nominee LinkedIn Profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickiyengar

Supporting Nominee Information:
- Nick’s work with online luxury marketplace, 1stdibs, led to a 47% lift in transactions, 34% increase in email click-through rates, 24% increase on conversions quarter over quarter, and a holistic view of the customer across devices and digital assets. This success led to the creation of Google Premium case study that was featured on the Google Premium web site (see link) http://www.cardinalpath.com/collateral/CardinalPath_1stdibs_CS.pdf.
Marketing Land articles:
Webinars:
- http://pages.cardinalpath.com/Analytics-for-Ecommerce-webinar-video-page.html
- http://pages.cardinalpath.com/State_of_DM_Analytics_Panel_Discussion.html
Case study:
- http://www.cardinalpath.com/collateral/CardinalPath_1stdibs_CS.pdf.
Deepak Nair, Vice President, Head of Digital Intelligence, Marketing & Optimization Technologies,
US Bank
Over the last four years at U.S. Bank, Deepak Nair has revolutionized the bank’s digital analytics practice. His vision transformed the company from an early stage web analytics implementation to a mature, advanced customer intelligence organization at the forefront of the industry. By leading both the analytics and marketing technology organizations, Deepak was able to first shape how U.S. Bank collects data, which then opened the door for his vision of integrating all customer touch points applications and using that data to improve customer experiences and cross platform marketing opportunities. His innovation in creating the next best action engine has transformed how U.S. Bank thinks about customer experience, evolving their practice into a model for the industry.

Here are some examples of how Deepak has gone out of his way to use this transformational experience and knowledge to help shape and guide the industry forward:
- Helps shape numerous vendor roadmaps (he is on the customer advisory board of DAA members Adobe and Ensighten)
- Counsels industry analysts such as Forrester on explaining U.S. Bank’s practice and vision for the future
- Advises countless practitioners and companies on shaping their analytics and optimization teams
- Works with partners such as Cognizant to help shape their analytics practice
- Evangelizes his experience and views on how to advance the analytics industry (see below for links)
By sharing his use cases and experiences across a wide variety of mediums, Deepak has certainly influenced the vision for the future of big data and customer intelligence practices. By working with both practitioners and vendors he has helped to shape the future of the industry. Vendors like Adobe, for example, regularly ask Deepak to present to executive and product leadership about how U.S. Bank is refining and expanding its digital marketing and analytics deployments.

Nominee LinkedIn Profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/deepakn5

Supporting Nominee Information:
Krista Seiden, Analytics Advocate, Google
Krista is a proven leader in her field, driving product and industry growth as one of the leading educational voices in the analytics industry. Over the past several years she has written and promoted content to teach the world’s small and large businesses the value of data driven marketing, how to most effectively optimize their websites and prove ROI, and how to make a name for themselves online. Through these efforts Krista has reached more than 100,000 people with her unique approach to teaching online advertising and digital marketing through scaled programs such as the Analytics Academy and regular online trainings that she hosts.

Internally at Google, Krista has been a leading force in moving the marketing organization to keep data, optimization, and quantifiable measures of impact, both to the end-user and the business, top of mind in everything they produce. She successfully built and ran an A/B testing program for the Google for Work group that resulted in a 30% year over year increase in website results and measurable satisfaction improvement from users. Her methods were revolutionary within the company and she has since worked with several other teams across the organization, including her current team, to implement similar programs to focus on improving the digital experience for everyone. As her online reach has grown, Krista has also been a strong supporter of equality and avoiding unconscious bias in the workplace. She’s been an outspoken advocate for women in tech (see her LinkedIn post below) and a mentor to both men and women looking to grow their careers in digital marketing. She is spearheading an effort within the Digital Analytics Association to create an inclusive digital community for 'Women in Analytics’ to collaborate, share inspiring stories and articles, ask questions and receive support, and participate in mentor/mentee relationships with industry peers. Her recent podcasts on getting started in digital marketing and The State of Women in Analytics are great examples of how she shares her own story to help others develop their own careers and paths.

Krista was recognized globally as the Digital Analytics Rising Star in 2014 and the Digital Analytics Practitioner of the year in 2015 by the Digital Analytics Association. She deserves the ‘Most Influential Industry Contributor’ award because she is an industry expert, works tirelessly to share her knowledge about digital marketing, advertising, and analytics to help others grow their businesses, and on top of it all, is a strong advocate for improving the workplace and creating an environment where everyone is recognized for the skills and successes that they bring to the table rather than their gender.

Nominee LinkedIn Profile:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristaseiden

Supporting Nominee Information:

New Technology of the Year (Technology)

Analysis Workspace, Adobe Analytics
In just the four months since release, Analysis Workspace has changed the way analysts and marketers interact with data both at speed and at scale. Analysis Workspace is a new tool in Adobe Analytics which allows users to query data flexibly and quickly to answer questions at the speed of thought. With no limit on the number of queries, breakdowns or comparisons, as well as compelling new types of data visualizations, Analysis Workspace has become widely adopted by analysts and marketers worldwide as their primary tool for doing impactful analysis. It also features project curation, which allows an analyst to provide business users with customized analysis experiences that provide limitless flexibility, but limit them to the dimensions, metrics, segments, and visualizations that make sense and are relevant to them. Comments from users include:
- "I’m very impressed and delighted by all the new functionality! Analysis Workspace has already completely changed my analysis process and the updates to it are phenomenal."
- Another user has said, "The projects and intuitive setup are better than any I have seen."
- Finally, from a CMO: "The new Analysis Workspace is awesome... Overall, the product is being developed in an f'ing awesome way!"
As the new centerpiece of the Adobe Analytics product portfolio, Analysis Workspace is a transformational technology worthy of consideration for the DAA New Technology of the Year award.

In 2015, Adobe launched Analysis Workspace, an original way for companies to analyze, share and utilize marketing data through Adobe Analytics. Inspired by Adobe’s creative heritage, Analysis Workspace changes how data is organized and visualized within an organization. Analysts can manipulate views of data to create polished analyses that they can then curate out to those who need actionable data to make business decisions. This frees up data scientists’ and analysts’ time, and enables marketers and business users within the organization to work with complex data sets – equipping a new wave of “citizen data scientists.”

Key features of Analysis Workspace include:
- Simple, Photoshop-inspired workflows: In Analysis Workspace, it’s simple and quick for users to create and share useful reports. Inspired by Adobe’s legacy creative tools like Photoshop and Elements, they simply drag and drop dimensions, metrics and segments into a flexible data “canvas.” Manipulating complex data sets and sharing “curated” workspaces becomes highly instinctual, without the need for extensive training.
- Intuitive data visualizations: Seeing data in easily understandable and simple visuals (of the user’s choosing) is as important as building the workspaces. Whether it’s a bar graph or a donut chart, visualization is a key part of the analysis and reporting process, allowing users to quickly interpret the information. Leaning on Adobe’s creative heritage, new data is visualized instantly following a simple drag-and-drop of the relevant components. Data sets large and small can instantly be rendered and easily manipulated, allowing for interactive resizing, renaming and swapping between different chart and graph types.
- Unprecedented power, flexibility and speed: Analysis Workspace allows users to compare and dissect data in ways not previously possible. For the first time, it includes powerful industry-leading tools such as Anomaly Detection, Contribution Analysis, Calculated Metrics and a new Cohort Analysis tool. Leveraging Adobe’s experience with tools for creatives, it removed the complexity of traditional analytics’ tools, creating an understanding of data sets that encompass hundreds of dimensions and metrics, thousands of segments and millions of data combinations.
Supporting Nominee Information:
CampaignAlyzer, E-Nor
CampaignAlyzer is a web-based application that acts as a central repository platform where organizations can store their marketing campaign values in one database. Marketing agencies and digital marketers across your organization have the ability to collaborate in tagging various online and offline campaigns to ensure consistency in their campaign tagging.

Our philosophy is to provide robust and simple campaign tagging management solutions. We help digital marketers develop their online and offline campaign strategy and provide support to streamline and simplify the campaign tag management process.

CampaignAlyzer offers more useful features than any other tagging solution. So you can do more to customize the experience.

Main Features:
- Clean Channel Reports
- Role-based Access
- Bulk Campaign Management
- Data Export
- Attribution Model
- URL Shortener
- Analytics-Tool Agnostic
- Tagged URL Case
- Tracking Campaigns Across Multiple Analytics Tools
- Annotations
CampaignAlyzer was built by recognized digital marketing leaders who have proven hands-on experience in campaign tagging. As digital marketers who work directly with organizations of all sizes including Fortune 500, feedback from clients have led us to believe the tagging process today is very inefficient and suffers from many deficiencies:
- It’s cumbersome. The process is manual and often built in spreadsheets, utilizing email to distribute the tagging sheets between divisions and departments.
- It’s slow. The process requires days to weeks of unnecessary time to execute, validate and share. Traditional and manual tagging is also a very labor-intensive which typically involves multiple human resources.
- It’s error-prone. Spreadsheet-based processes requires multiple custom formulas, which have the potential of being miscalculated and updated incorrectly.
- It’s rigid. Manual tagging by nature is not capable of easily adapting to and incorporating changes that occur in business, such as: changing the campaign tracking variables or changing the attribution model; adding extra campaign tracking variables for a new analytics tool; or changing the analytics reporting tool all together.
CampaignAlyzer streamline your campaign tagging into a process that is:
- Efficient
- Timely
- Accurate
- Adaptive
- Business Critical
With CampaignAlyzer, your analysts wouldn’t worry about campaign tags and where they should go, instead they’ll now have more time to do what they should be doing in the first place; “Data Analysis” and measuring the success and the impact of the marketing campaigns.

You need CampaignAlyzer:
- To accurately track your customer Journey
- To successfully manage the tagging naming conventions when multiple marketing agencies are working on various campaigns
- To move all your campaign tagging solutions to the cloud for easy usability and accessibility.
- To separate your campaign management from the Analytics tools for data security.
- For more accurate and clean traffic channels’ report
CampaignAlyzer will help you:
1. Unlock the Power of your Analytics Tool!
Move beyond the visits and pageview reports and see how your marketing campaigns help in creating sales and conversions.
- Discover which Channels Influence your Buyers
Tag, validate, and manage your online marketing programs to ensure you reach your business goals.
- Measure the Real Value of your Marketing Campaigns
Measure the success and impact of your marketing campaigns by aligning them with your on-site conversions and ecommerce transactions. Identify which channels deliver the highest impact.
Supporting Nominee Information:
*In Progress
Ensighten Mobile, Ensighten
Today’s mobile landscape is surging with activity. In fact, Internet Retailer recently projected that the largest 378 U.S. mobile merchants will see 36 percent growth in sales via smartphones and tablets this year, reaching $88.44 billion in revenue. However, according to Forrester Research, more than one half (57 percent) of digital business professionals are still not using any type of mobile analytics to measure and optimize experiences on mobile apps. Ensighten Mobile is the industry’s first unified tag management and optimization solution for mobile apps. Launched as an integrated solution in November 2015, Ensighten Mobile enables marketers to seamlessly deploy third-party analytics and other technologies into their mobile apps, as well as conduct on-the-fly A/B and multivariate testing to ensure the best customer engagement possible, all in real-time.

Ensighten Mobile features the company’s patented no-SDK (that is to say, no software development kit required) technology for mobile apps. Previously, marketers struggled with optimizing native mobile apps, which typically rely on integrating SDKs into the app one by one – a very manual process. If marketers desired to optimize or personalize content within native mobile apps while using SDK tag management or optimization technology, they would need to work with software developers to make every single menial change, then re-submit to the app store and wait for changes to be accepted. And of course, it relies on consumers downloading the latest version of a company’s app to make sure the changes make it onto their devices. These dependencies on average add three months to the app release cycle, increase development and agency costs, as well as opportunity costs when an app isn’t optimized to its fullest potential. Ensighten’s patented technology short-circuits all this process, enabling marketers to optimize native mobile apps instantly, avoiding the time-consuming cycle requiring software developers, IT release cycles and re-submission to app stores.

Furthermore, Ensighten Mobile is the industry’s first mobile optimization solution to incorporate three critical marketing functions into one solution: analytics, tag management and optimization. As Ensighten Mobile is integrated with Ensighten Manage, the company’s tag management solution, users are able to extend any third-party technology into their apps.

Ensighten Mobile provides out-of-the-box lifecycle metrics, empowering marketers to immediately understand how users are engaging with apps. Moreover, Ensighten Mobile allows the easy and real-time test and swap of any mobile technology on mobile apps, allowing marketers to measure ROI of those technologies before fully committing to their mobile marketing strategy. In addition, Ensighten Mobile allows A/B and multivariate testing within apps, enabling marketers to easily see which pieces of content – copy, images, etc. – are resonating and impacting conversion.

With mobile apps, both marketers and app developers have a role to play. Marketers need to be empowered to change tagging and experiences on the fly, as they do in Web environments, and app developers need to make it happen from a technical perspective. With that in mind, Ensighten Mobile allows users to access the solution from the persona of both a business and technical user. Ensighten Mobile facilitates workflows across both groups, helping establish consistency and governance across technical mobile teams and non-technical marketing teams. For example, marketers can use the solution to notify technical teams to complete a workflow. The tool unifies both groups and ensures a quality app experience, from all perspectives, without requiring traditional months-long publishing cycles.

Customer Success: Vivint, a leading smart home technology provider, uses Ensighten Mobile to easily implement analytics tracking in its mobile apps. The need for flexible app development is central to the success of Vivint since its Vivint Sky mobile app is the primary interface to the customer’s home. Before using Ensighten Mobile, Vivint’s app cycle was severely slowed due to the long App Store approval process. With Ensighten Mobile, Vivint is now able to take control of their software, enabling the company to optimize their mobile apps in real-time, simultaneously reaching end users and improving the customer experience.

Dozens of other major brands are using Ensighten Mobile, including Home Depot, United Airlines, Getty Images, RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland), and Marriott International.

Supporting Nominee Information:
IQ Envoy for Branding, Visual IQ
Over the past few years, more and more marketers have embraced advanced attribution as a way to measure, predict, and improve their marketing performance. But to date, attribution has primarily been a direct response (DR) exercise, providing DR marketers with a clear line of sight between their efforts and conversion behaviors such as leads, purchases, and registrations, as well as financial factors such as ROAS, ROI, and lifetime value.

Marketers responsible for branding, on the other hand, have followed a much bumpier road. For decades, brand marketers have had to rely on survey-based methodologies to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. But survey-based methods pose a number of challenges, including small sample sizes that skew results, insights that lack statistical significance, and infrequent reporting that comes too late to inform campaign optimizations.

Moreover, many organizations wrestle with analyzing and optimizing multiple brand engagement activities into a single “common currency” in order to understand performance. In fact, a 2015 Visual IQ study (attached below) revealed that 80% of US and UK-based brand marketers feel that measuring the impact of branding efforts is more challenging than measuring the impact of direct response efforts. When asked what obstacles they face when it comes to measuring brand performance, 46% of marketers cited they lacked advanced measurement tools and/or methodologies, with another 40% percent citing an inability to calculate a single engagement score metric.

In September 2015, Visual IQ introduced IQ Envoy for Branding, a revolutionary new technology specifically designed to overcome the measurement challenges that have plagued brand marketers for years. IQ Envoy for Branding is changing the way brand marketers operate by providing the tools they need to effectively measure the true impact that each media channel and tactic has on brand engagement.

IQ Envoy for Branding offers brand marketers more control and accountability than ever before by providing a single currency to measure and optimize brand engagement across channels and tactics on a more frequent and granular basis than survey-based metrics. Leveraging the Visual IQ platform’s core algorithmic attribution model, the product automatically incorporates multiple brand engagement activities, such as website interactions, video views, rich media ad interactions -- or any other brand engagement activity defined by an advertiser -- into an overall key performance indicator (KPI) metric known as a TrueEngagement Score. For the first time, brand marketers have access to a unified view of their media’s true impact on brand engagement, and the ability to optimize their efforts at a granular level (keyword, placement, creative, etc.) in order to drive incremental brand lift. Additionally, brand marketers can measure de-duplicated reach across channels, devices, and publishers, and quantify each brand engagement activity’s impact on conversions.

Since its release, Visual IQ’s branding measurement solution is already proving to have a demonstrable impact on organizations and the effectiveness of their branding efforts. During the initial beta period, three brands representing the retail, financial services, and technology sectors recognized a staggering 19% average lift in brand engagement in just three month as a result of using IQ Envoy for Branding. Following the beta tests, the first live client achieved at 23% lift in brand engagement across three digital channels and 16 different brand engagement activities.

Supporting Nominee Information:
- Branding Measurement in Today’s Accountable World: A Tale of Two Marketers
- Visual IQ Introduces Advanced Attribution Platform Upgrades Designed for Brand Marketers
Watson Trend, IBM
Digital Analytics has been long defined as the set of activities that transform digital data into insights that create business value. Practically speaking, Digital Analytics has long been the domain of aggregated analytics on clicks and purchase behavior. During the Holiday 2015 shopping period, that definition was dramatically expanded.

Over the summer, IBM had been thinking about how shoppers tend to use their social networks to inform their purchase decisions -- especially during the holidays. However we realized the inherent limitations with this approach - that the people who may be best suited to provide the best purchase advice may not be in my immediate social network. We dreamed about using the cognitive power of Watson - the Jeopardy winning computer system - to harness the collective digital conversation of BILLIONS of people on the planet. And we set out on a fast paced, three month initiative to see if we could put the power of a new breed of digital analytics into the hands of SHOPPERS, as well as retailers.

On November 11, 2015 IBM Watson Trend (www.ibm.com watsontrend) was introduced as an app on iTunes, Google Play and available online at www.ibmwatsontrend.com. Watson Trend was built with the same digital analytics know-how as IBM's traditional Digital Analytics Benchmark, which has for years delivered insights into HOW shoppers were buying digitally. But this year, the Watson Trend app was introduced to deliver deep digital analytics insights to shoppers on WHAT was trending, and WHY. Now, digital analytics was being leveraged in the form of Watson Trend to put the power of cognitive computing in the hands of individual shoppers!

Watson Trend delivers these unique insights by analyzing tens of millions of digital conversations about purchases on social media, blogs, message boards, forums and ratings & reviews on eCommerce sites. Using the cognitive power of IBM Watson, the app then understood each conversation, grouping them into trends, and determining the overall strength of each trend on a daily basis. Furthermore, the app uses Watson natural language capabilities to uncover the WHY behind each trend, often uncovering unique insights into what was the driving reason or demographic behind each trending product. Lastly, the app forecasts the trend strength of each trend three weeks into the future so that shoppers could see whether this trend had staying power or was just a blip on the radar.

Consumer and news outlet response to Watson Trend was overwhelmingly positive. The app was featured in The Wall Street Journal, NY Times, CNBC, Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, CBS, Fox Business, AdAge, and countless other quality news outlets. In fact, the app received coverage from around the globe in over 15 different languages. Shoppers responded by downloading the app and giving it an average of a 4+ review on both iTunes and Google Play. For the week surrounding Black Friday, iTunes featured the app as a "Best New App" as well.

Watson Trend was able to shine a bright light on trends that were on the cusp of going mainstream (e.g. Apple Watch) before it happened, while also introducing shoppers to new, emerging products that they may not have otherwise heard about (e.g. Meccanoid robot). In some cases, such as with Lego bricks, Watson Trend was able to inform shoppers as to what sets were likely to sell out during the holiday season so that they could make their purchases early!

Supporting Nominee Information:

Most Influential Vendor/Agency (Company)

Adobe
As the cornerstone of Adobe Marketing Cloud (AMC), Adobe Analytics is the world’s largest enterprise marketing analytics solution, measuring nearly 8 trillion server calls annually for 140,000 marketers, business users and analysts around the globe. Its enables customers to create a holistic view of their business by turning customer interactions into actionable insights through advanced analysis capabilities and intuitive and interactive dashboards and reports that users can sift, sort, and share in real-time. This past year, Adobe Analytics continued to increase its market share of enterprise analytics customers, reaching an impressive 62 percent of Fortune 50, 57 percent of Fortune 100, and 34 percent of Fortune 500 companies. Adobe Analytics’ Fortune 500 customers include:
- Top 6 Entertainment Companies
- 9 of Top 10 Tech Companies
- Top 4 Healthcare Companies
- Top 5 Telecommunications Companies
- Top 3 Internet Services Companies
In addition, Adobe Analytics has consistently been recognized and praised by analysts, having been noted as a leader in Forrester’s most recent The Forrester Wave™: Web Analytics Q2 2014 report and Gartner’s first Magic Quadrant for Digital Marketing Analytics 2015 report.

Regardless of its current success and influence in the industry, Adobe is continually evolving the solution. Efforts include adding new analytics and visualization capabilities, and building in tighter integration with AMC’s other seven solutions in order to better enable marketers to take more action on big data and make more customer-focused marketing decisions. Adobe Analytics’ 2015 additions include:
- Analysis Workspace: a new smart data discovery platform, which is helping companies democratize data-driven insights and equipping a new group of “citizen data scientists” by making it easier than ever before for marketers and data analysts to get answers from their growing customer and marketing data. Adobe did this by improving the flexibility of Adobe Analytics’ web-based tools and enabling analysts to curate analysis projects for their business partners. With Analysis Workspace, marketers and analysts can move from static reports to flexible reports, giving internal stakeholders a workspace where they have the ability to act on real-time data to inform their decision-making.
- Contribution Analysis: a new big data learning engine that intelligently identifies “causes” or contributing factors for changes in trended data and anomalies. This saves analysts countless hours by automating hundreds of reports comparing and contrasting results to deliver statistically-relevant conclusions about correlation and causation. It also automatically curates actionable customer segments based on its conclusions to drive immediate action from insights.
- Customer Attributes: enables marketers and analysts to combine descriptive data with online behavioral data to augment customer analysis. This enables users to pipe in data from a CRM system or any other source of online or offline enterprise data as an added analysis dimension (e.g. loyalty program levels). By combining online behavior with customer attributes, analysts can uncover new customer segments, behaviors and other insights to optimize their campaigns.
- Calculated Metrics: removes the lengthy implementation period previously required to get a new metric. The calculated metrics builder allows users to create new metrics on-the-fly, that apply historically, without updating implementation. This capability also enables advanced users to segment, share and curate metrics to remove clutter for business users.
Company Website:
http://www.adobe.com/marketing-cloud.html

Supporting Nominee Information:
Analytics Pros

Analytics Pros has been a huge help on projects large and small. When we have an emergency they're quick to respond and invaluable in diagnosing very tricky problems. And when we want to take our analytics to the next level, they have the talent and knowledge to provide the support we need for strategizing, implementation, and doing complex analysis on the new data we're collecting.

Company Website:
https://www.analyticspros.com
Hub'Scan Inc.
After being voted Technology of the Year at the 2015 DAA Excellence Awards, Hub'Scan has gained considerable reputation and proven the value of quality assurance for digital marketing platform. This influence was made even more concrete with strategic partnerships with major digital agencies and by signing deals with worldwide digital brands in luxury, automotive and retail among others. After an extensive evangelisation campaign, Hub'Scan has spread the word about data quality as an essential part of digital business processes. By doing so, the Boston-based software company has garnered considerable influence as an independent, impartial and reliable provider of digital marketing quality assurance services.

Company Website:
http://www.hub-scan.com

Supporting Nominee Information:
- http://www.havasmedia.com/press/press-releases/2015/havas-media-group-launches-a-next-generation-meta-quality-barometer-to-increase-online-inventory-quality-and-tackle-ad-fraud
- http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/hubscan-ex-recognized-by-the-daa-as-most-innovative-disruptive-technology-for-digital-analytics-499061291.html
LunaMetrics
I am nominating LunaMetrics for THE Most Influential Agency of the Year award, for their continued excellence in the field and their dedication to digital analytics education. Started by Robbin Steif over ten years ago, LunaMetrics works with clients to strategically implement and interpret digital analytics, as well as increase traffic through measureable and sustainable tactics.

Already a Google Analytics Certified Partner and Google Analytics Premium Authorized Reseller, in 2015 LunaMetrics joined the inaugural group of Google Tag Manager Certified Partners, demonstrating proficiency and past customer successes with the tool. LunaMetrics continued to grow its impressive client list across all industries: ecommerce, publishing, higher education, technology, and non-profits, to name a few. LunaMetrics cohosted a Google Analytics Premium event with Google in the Spring and added two new case studies throughout the year.

2015 was a great year for LunaMetrics, with many digital analytics achievements and an increased public presence in the digital analytics industry. In October, LunaMetrics published “Practical Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager for Developers,” a comprehensive guide combining analytics strategy, step-by-step instructions, and industry best practices. As one of the first books to tackle the subject in such depth, it received high praise from industry juggernauts Paul Muret, Avinash Kaushik, and Simo Ahava as well as a forward by Daniel Waisberg.

The book was written by Jonathan Weber, LunaMetrics’s data evangelist, with help from the collective knowledge of the entire LunaMetrics team. In addition to the book, Jonathan has also been key in raising awareness of the power of data for businesses of all sizes. With LunaMetrics, Jonathan travels the country leading Google Analytics seminars and Google Tag Manager Workshops. His work in the industry includes initiatives like the Media Impact Project, where along with industry, academic, and metrics experts, Jonathan debates the role of analytics in media and the power of measurement resulting in articles and whitepapers.

In addition to Jonathan, LunaMetrics team members have taken the stage at national conferences, joined academic roundtables, and conducted webinars that focus on digital analytics strategy and its potential uses. It’s this type of visibility that has allowed LunaMetrics to attract top talent and grow its workforce by almost 40% in 2015, largely in the analytics department; growth that was reflected with their second-annual Inc 5000 award.

Not only does LunaMetrics take on projects for nationally recognized clients and contribute to industry events, but it also holds public trainings in Google Analytics, Google AdWords, and Google Tag Manager in 13 cities across the U.S. Thousands of marketers, webmasters, business owners, and agency employees took advantage of these classes in 2015 to build their company’s data power. One of most notable contributions that LunaMetrics has made to the analytics world is through its consistent blog publishing. Taking cues from emerging trends, client experiences, and questions from trainees, the high-traffic blog is updated with the intent to inform a wide audience of data enthusiasts - from those just getting their toes wet to the deep sea data divers. The blog offers simple explanations to complex topics, step-by-step instructional guides, clever workarounds, strategy and opinion pieces, and more that are helpful for individuals implementing analytics solutions or agencies trying to add competencies or clarify best practices.

The discussion section of any blog post is filled with informal Q&A, giving a face and personality to the author and the blog audience. The community created around the LunaMetrics blog is largely unmatched in the analytics community. In conjunction with their book in October and in an effort to ease the learning curve of Google Tag Manager, LunaLabs was formed on the LunaMetrics site in Fall 2015 with an initial collection of Google Tag Manager “recipes.” These downloadable collections of Tags, Triggers, and Variables allow agencies and individuals to implement basic tracking solutions through Google Tag Manager without having to duplicate their efforts.

It really is no question why LunaMetrics should be considered for the Most Influential Agency Award. This diverse group of data lovers is continually sharing its knowledge with the digital analytics industry, whether through consulting and public trainings or through their various contributions with their book and online blog. For over ten years and particularly in 2015, LunaMetrics has been a consistent and influential voice in the analytics industry.

Company Website:
www.lunametrics.com

Supporting Nominee Information:
Search Discovery

Search Discovery has been a leading agency since 2004. Since launching our analytics practice in 2008, we have built a reputation for leadership and collaboration in the industry. It is my pleasure to submit Search Discovery for consideration as 2016's Most Influential Agency. Search Discovery is best known for Satellite, one of the industry's first tag management systems, which was purchased by Adobe in 2013. Since then, SDI has continued our commitment to technical leadership. Search Discovery's consultants have contributed to and continue to evangelize the W3C's Consumer Experience Digital Data Layer as an industry standard for organizing digital data. SDI continues to innovate through dozens of implementations of the data layer, developing best practices for digital data layers, and by building functions to make deployment and management of digital data layers easier. This year, Search Discovery became one of the first Google Tag Manager Partners to become certified through the new GTM certification program.

Search Discovery has built and deployed one of the industry's first processes for extracting raw Google Analytics data via BigQuery, importing it into big data tools, and ultimately visualizing that data for flexible analysis. Search Discovery has partnered with DOMO to become one of the industry's first and leading agencies to be able to deploy customized solutions for the tool. This work with DOMO will pave the way for a new generation of digital analytics practices for streamlining and distributing data analysis.

Search Discovery consultants continue to help others in the industry grow through frequent speaking engagements at several conferences including eMetrics Boston, SuperNova South, DAA Symposia and others. SDI's analytics practice lead is one of the co-hosts of the popular "Digital Analytics Power Hour" podcast where a number of analytics topics are discussed with valuable insight and humor.    Perhaps the most compelling example of SDI's influence is the investment we make quietly and individually in the lives and careers of both our consultants and clients. Our collaborative approach to consulting is based on our commitment to key values of pioneering, humility, creativity, and craftsmanship (oh, the irony of touting "humility" in an award submission). Our earnest and somewhat quirky culture has allowed us to build strong and lasting relationships in the digital analytics community. These relationships allow us to both positively influence, and be positively influenced by other top professionals as we work together to advance the digital analytics industry.

Company Website:
www.searchdiscovery.com