All conferences are always a great opportunity for us to draw inspiration for the coming months. That is why we are glad when one big conference per season is interspersed with meetups, which tend to go into more detail on a specific topic. That then fills our plan of scheduled activities for the next half year.
Many of the topics discussed at the events were a repetition for us, because we are all very active and learn a lot. However, there were also some very nice talks that we were glad to hear. At the same time, at these events we also meet current and former clients and partners across our data and analytics field.
Data Restart is a dense event that takes place every year under the patronage of the agency Taste, where we have a lot of business friends. The event has been held six times in total, and it always brings together lots of web analysts and, to some extent, data analysts and engineers. The conference was packed with information that we, as web analysts, devoured.
The main reason why we enjoy this event so much is the varied networking, getting a sense of what is currently being dealt with in our field and further education on trends and news in the analytics world.
Programme
1. Talk: Jan Tichý – Keynote: Analytics Is Dead. Long Live Analytics!
Honza Tichý nicely summed up the problems and challenges that web analytics met in the past and this year. They include the blocking of cookies by browsers, new legislation in the Czech Republic around consent to data processing and cookies. He also outlined the challenges for next year, such as of course the implementation of GA4, modelling of missing data, identifying users via login and an emphasis on collecting first-party data.
2. Pavel Jašek: How to Run Performance Marketing with Imperfect Data
Honza Tichý was fittingly followed by Pavel Jašek, who, because he works at Google, has an overview of the whole issue and of how the topic is dealt with (or not) across the market. He also outlined four levels of approaches to measuring users and their activity on websites.
3. Dominik Kosorin and Lukáš Šmol: Czech Ad ID
Dominik Kosorin together with Lukáš Šmol presented to us a new unified standard in the Czech environment. It creates a unique identifier, for example on the basis of an email, and an ID is created in encrypted form. This initiative confirms what ran through the whole conference, namely that obtaining a customer’s email or phone number as early as possible in the purchase funnel will be a key point and a marketing question of the coming years. Critics say about solutions like this, which are built on a fingerprint or personal data, that cookies, which were completely anonymous, have been “abolished” and are being replaced with a completely non-anonymous ID built on an email.
4. Radek Kupr: Consent Rate, or How We Solved the Data Loss
Radek Kupr extended his presentation from Data Date and showed us new functions. The talk dealt with how to evaluate the reason for data loss. The reason for a drop in data may be, for example, the rejection of cookies or other reasons (people are simply not buying). Archetix uses a very similar tool for our clients, which deals with so-called zero tracking, and that is Google Analytics 4.
5. Marina Mchedlishvili: How to build strong data strategies in a post-cookie era
Marina Mchedlishvili gave us a great introduction to Cookiebot, with which we are also partners. Marina’s talk is followed by a talk by Marek Čech organised by the Tuesday Business Network, which will take place on 1 December 2022 on the topic of cookie banners.
6. Tomáš Bouma: Data Mesh and Personalisation Use Cases in Reality
At Archetix the principles of Data Mesh are looked after primarily by Michal. Data Mesh in general means that all employees can contribute, after some verification, to an existing data warehouse. In this sense Mesh is supposed to speed up the process of obtaining data. A data analyst no longer has to carry out the whole ETL process,; instead employees pour their data into the warehouse and create datasets, which they then work with as so-called products. Teams lend these products, that is, datasets, to each other.
7. Hana Bartoňková and Vojtěch Říha: How Much Will One Article Earn Me? Or How to Connect Web Analytics with Advertising
Experts from Czech News Center very nicely showed their business case on how much revenue an article brings from advertising, including information about the measurement set-up and what data they obtain. They showed what data they needed to obtain, what the limitations of the data are and whether they finally managed it or not. They also revealed how much advertising a single article can earn, which was interesting for the listeners.
8. Linda Appeltauer: CRM in a World Without Cookies: Opportunities and Pitfalls
Linda Appeltauer very nicely presented the modern approach to working with customers through CRM, that is, collecting first-party data. She showed the audience lots of practical tips on how to work with customer reactivation (re-engaging them), stressed the importance of collecting users’ emails, and drew attention to the well-known but little-discussed problem of forgotten passwords and the seriousness of replying to mass-sent emails. Linda also confirmed what we often find on our clients’ websites: forms that do not work, emails that do not arrive or arrive garbled, and places where a user can leave their email that do not work. Keeping a so-called campaign diary was also a very nice idea, one we definitely identify with, and we often recommend to our clients to keep a record of campaigns, changes in settings and the like.
9. Roman Appeltauer: Activating First-Party Data with SGTM
Through his activity on social networks and at data conferences, Roman Appeltauer has indirectly cast himself in the role of server-side GTM ambassador, precisely because he is one of the most active people in this community. In this talk he summed up his experience with server-side GTM, which is currently a big buzzword and a hot topic for everyone who takes web analytics seriously. He also explained the main benefit of SGTM, pointed out which common arguments from the developers’ point of view the activation of SGTM can resolve, and highlighted the very well-known problem that the market lacks backend developers who look after the running of the application. Roman also pointed to the possibility of offline use of SGTM, into which some data can flow (a branch rating, a parcel pick-up, filing a complaint, …) and then, via the user ID in the database, can be joined with the user’s digital footprint. This can be used for personalising the website for specific key groups, e.g. for VIP customers.
10. Michal Schejbal: Transferring Data to Third Countries Outside the EU
Michal Schejbal devoted his talk to an issue that is not dealt with very often, namely the geographical movement of data. It means that all data is in the cloud, which is a server, but one that sits in a specific place. So just like people, data needs a “passport” to travel between individual states, and this “passport” is made available through agreements between states. The whole issue revolves around the very strict laws in the USA, which allow its federal authorities (most often the FBI, NSA and other security services of the state) to request any data from an American company without any possibility of objection. These principles, however, go against GDPR.
11. David Voráček: Preparing a Media House for the Time After the End of Third-Party Cookies
David Voráček pointed out that third-party cookies will end, and so it will no longer be possible to target users so well and so easily. When users reject cookies, they start to be shown other ads, which will be irrelevant for both sides. This field is a bit more unique still and is specifically called Adblock Revenue Recovery. Thanks to this service, companies are able to implement technology that helps their clients replace losses in the situation where users use ad blockers.
12. David Janoušek: How to Run Performance Campaigns in the Cookie Apocalypse Period
A very expert talk aimed at PPC specialists and focused on campaign set-up. David Janoušek brought to the foreground a problem everyone is aware of: the work of the main performance specialists has become more complicated, because they are able to report much less data. As a result performance campaigns (the so-called cost-to-revenue ratio) reach worse values because there is less data about purchases. He then went deeper into how to build an advertising account, mainly in Google Ads: how to build the campaign structure so that it is resistant to a lack of data and at the same time does not spend money on inefficient campaigns. At the end of the presentation he pointed out a wordplay that is lost in the Czech example, namely the difference between the words efficiency (the performance of a specific activity) and effectiveness (the share of the market).
From all the events of 2022 we are taking away plenty of inspiration, which we will gradually bring into our services and our work with clients. We cannot wait for the next year and for everything that similar organisations, such as Taste, will prepare for us and our community. The next upcoming event, E-mail Restart, will take place on 25 January 2023 and will revolve around email marketing, so if you want to learn practical guides and examples from practice, you definitely must not miss this event.