119: Adam Greco: The Future of event-based web analytics and the overlapping landscape of data tools

What’s up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Adam Greco, Field CTO / Product Evangelist at Amplitude.

Summary: Adam is a leading voice in digital analytics and he unpacks event-based analytics and how it’s transformed how marketers interact with data. Data tools are complicating the martech landscape with overlapping functionality and confusing terminology so Adam breaks down the nuanced difference between product analytics, customer data infrastructure and ETL. Adam also walks us through how his team combines marketing, product, and experience analytics getting a fuller view that informs smarter, more effective strategies. We also cover the shift to interactive dashboards as well as warehouse native martech and what it means for marketers. Marketers need to work closely with data teams to ensure these new tools are practical without being overwhelmingly complex, allowing them to lead confidently in their industries.

About Adam

• Adam is one of the leading voices in digital analytics
• He’s managed marketing and customer success teams at enterprise companies and consulting firms
• He’s been Senior Director of Marketing and Analytics at Salesforce 
• He spent nearly a decade as a Senior Partner at one of the best-known analytics consultancies in Analytics Demystified where he’s advised hundreds of organizations on analytics best practices
• He’s been a Board Advisor at various well-known startups, analytics associations, capital funds and universities 
• He’s authored over 300 blogs and one book related to analytics
• He’s a frequent speaker at big-name analytics conferences
• Today he’s Field CTO at Amplitude, where he focuses on providing content, education, and strategic advice on how to build better products

Understanding Event Based Analytics

Adam unpacks the shift towards event-based analytics, a concept that may seem confusing to those accustomed to traditional digital analytics. He explains that back when the internet was simpler and mostly about websites, tracking was straightforward: look at pageviews and sessions and hope for conversions. But as technology evolved—think smartphones and apps—the old methods became less effective.

Mobile apps changed the game. Interactions on these platforms are brief and frequent, shifting the focus from long sessions to brief, meaningful interactions, each marked as an event. Adam points out that his company, Amplitude, was at the forefront of adopting this approach, realizing that tracking every tap and swipe gave a clearer picture of user engagement than the traditional methods.

As both websites and apps became integral to user experience, the analytics field faced a choice: stick with the old or adapt to the new. The answer was overwhelmingly in favor of event-based analytics. Major players like Google and Adobe redefined sessions as just another event, creating a unified model that could track interactions across platforms, be they digital or physical, like visiting a store or calling customer support.

This evolution means marketers can now see a fuller, more dynamic view of how users engage across different platforms. Understanding that a session is a collection of events, rather than a fixed time slot, offers a richer, more nuanced understanding of user behavior.

Key takeaway: Embracing event-based analytics allows marketers to capture the full spectrum of customer interactions, offering a granular view that is vital for crafting targeted, effective marketing strategies. This approach not only keeps pace with the evolving tech landscape but also provides the insights needed to enhance customer engagement and satisfaction.

Product Analytics vs Customer Data Infrastructure vs ETL

Adam explains the evolving landscape of martech tools, focusing on how they intersect and differ, simplifying a topic that can be quite bewildering for even experienced marketers. Initially, the task for marketers was to employ simple tools provided by companies like Google or Adobe, which handled data collection via embedded codes on websites or apps. These tools offered convenience but at the cost of flexibility and depth in data manipulation.

With the advent of more specialized tools, the dynamics changed. Customer Data Infrastructure (CDI) tools like Jitsu, MetaRouter, and Rudderstack focus mainly on collecting first-party data from apps and websites, pushing this information directly into data warehouses. They don’t delve into analytics but excel at gathering clean, structured data.

On the other hand, Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) tools such as Airbyte and Fivetran specialize in integrating data from various third-party tools into a central warehouse. They transform the data during this process to ensure it fits well within the existing structures and schemas of a company’s database, enhancing the data’s utility for comprehensive analysis.

Customer Data Platforms (CDP) like mParticle and Segment represent a more holistic approach, incorporating features of both CDI and ETL. They not only aggregate and organize data but also enrich it, providing a robust platform that supports marketing automation and personalized customer experiences based on the unified data they help curate.

Adam highlights that while CDI, CDP, and ETL tools are vital for data orchestration, they often lack robust analytical capabilities. This is where Product Analytics tools like Amplitude step in. Amplitude starts with some features of CDI but integrates extensive analytics and visualization capabilities, allowing marketers to not only collect and see their data but also to derive meaningful insights and build complex reports directly.

Adam also emphasizes the importance of flexibility in Amplitude’s approach to integrating with the broader martech ecosystem. Despite the overlap with features typically found in CDIs, Amplitude continuously expands its capabilities to better meet the needs of its users. Central to its philosophy is maintaining an open system. Unlike some platforms that might restrict interoperability with competitors' tools, Amplitude encourages its users to integrate as they see fit, whether that means using Amplitude in conjunction with other products or relying on it more heavily for certain functions.

This openness not only provides users with the flexibility to tailor their data strategies precisely but also offers potential cost savings by allowing them to choose the most effective combination of tools for their specific needs. By listening to customer feedback and adapting its offerings, Amplitude aims to provide the most value, ensuring that clients have the best tools at their disposal, no matter the complexity of their data needs.

Key takeaway: Marketers looking to refine their tech stacks should consider how each tool fits into their broader strategy. Integrating platforms like Amplitude that handle multiple functions—from data collection to visualization—can simplify operations and cut costs. This approach not only makes managing marketing technology easier but also ensures that teams can quickly adapt to changes and opportunities in the market, keeping them one step ahead.

Converging marketing, experience and product analytics

When Adam penned his thoughts on the convergence of digital marketing, experience, and product analytics back in 2021, the concept faced skepticism. Fast forward to 2024, and the landscape validates his insights, showing a clear trend toward unified analytics platforms. The separation of marketing, product, and design analytics is becoming obsolete as companies recognize the inefficiencies of siloed data approaches.

In his early career at companies like Salesforce,...