Within recent memory, consumers were a relatively predictable bunch. Advertising campaigns drove consideration; a high street presence or shop might be visited; and some cutting-edge folks might even order through a website.
The level of sophistication that now exists in the awareness and fulfillment components of the user journey has driven a fundamental shift in how businesses understand their customers and their competition. With advertising, storefronts, and fulfillment now democratized to such an extent, traditional methods of consumer measurement – and competitive intelligence – no longer move quickly enough or account for the sheer range of choice that consumers now face.
How did we make this leap into the future of measurement – and where is the next, breakneck wave of data and analytics taking us? What will the next iteration of competitive intelligence look like?
Surveys and focus groups were once the standard for consumer research, and they can still deliver fundamental value – revealing subjective aspects of consumer decision making and perception that are hard or impossible to infer from other sources.
These methods remain exposed, however, to limitations of memory and users’ own bias of how they may wish to be perceived. As a former colleague of mine would bluntly put it when talking about self-reported data: “Everybody lies.” This becomes an even more important factor when we consider the rise of ‘professional’ survey takers, quality and fraud concerns, and the increasing presence of synthetic (AI-generated) data.
Not surprisingly, surveys and focus groups can deliver some insights on how people feel about the competition’s brands, products, and features – but those learnings need to be taken with a grain of salt.
As the world started to move online, a number of organizations identified an insight gap to exploit. Compete, Hitwise, ComScore, and Alexa (acquired, of course, by Amazon) were all leading players in the nascent market for “clickstream” data that the growth in internet adoption necessitated. For the first time, clients had a number of providers that would allow them to benchmark their digital performance against competitors on a high-frequency basis.
Fatal flaws were, however, lurking under the surface…
Data collection strategies varied between high-cost proprietary panels, acquisition of records from internet service providers, and browser extensions that delivered some benefit to the users that installed them. The level of insight that these providers surfaced was also broadly limited to high level projections around website reach, with lower-level category and journey measurement not being a core specialism.
The majority of these providers were also unable to keep pace with rapidly changing user behaviour as apps overtook websites as the critical battleground. What used to be a crowded space has contracted to a small number of grizzled survivors.
Whilst other providers such as App Annie (later Data.ai) and Sensor Tower emerged to meet the app measurement need that existed, macro trends are rarely enough for demanding clients. To reveal real competitive intelligence, the question inevitably drifts towards “What is happening within these apps?”
To truly measure and beat the competition’s efforts, apps and brands need something more – reliable data capturing the user’s full digital journeys.
Whilst the players may have changed, clients still have the same fundamental questions around return on ad spend and investment, who they are in direct competition with, the desire to identify emerging threats, and how users navigate to, from, and around their digital properties. A number of core changes have made this a much more complex proposition than it used to be:
Organizations seeking to address competitive intelligence and strategic insight requirements, on the buy or sell side, clearly have some high bars to meet. Understanding behaviour within the walled gardens put up by Big Tech is now a core requirement, and no easy problem to solve given the range of features users are exposed to and the pace of technological change we are in the midst of.
In markets that are ever more competitive, executive teams are demanding increasingly sophisticated measurement to drive any advantage over their competitors; particularly when it comes to in-app behaviours. And even if you are able to tick both of those boxes, ensuring that your data collection and processing meets regulatory and ethical requirements is now non-negotiable.
RealityMine® brings unique technology and experience to the task of meeting today’s competitive intel needs. We have been supporting clients in their desire to understand website and application usage since our inception, and this data remains the foundation on which all other insight can be built. We offer clients privacy safe, user level data to enhance their understanding of real user behavior. Our background in audience measurement also means that we’ve built up significant expertise in measuring in-app behaviors that many would believe to be impossible. Our ability to replicate first-party measurement within competitor environments is a significant advantage that we continue to invest in.
What is clear is that a blended approach to competitive intel is essential. Traditional methods are always going to dominate when companies need to understand how users feel about and experience their business. Organizations with bleeding edge insight needs now rely on high-frequency, low-latency behavioural data to provide an unambiguous view of how users navigate to and from their own properties, those of their competitors, and the influences that drive conversion.
From RealityMine’s perspective, we see the consumption of competitive intelligence data changing in three fundamental ways:
Taking competitive learning to the next level is a challenge that digital metrics need to meet – and the task will only get more complex as the years pass.
Billy leads RealityMine’s product roadmap, ensuring it meets the evolving needs of clients across industries. He joined RealityMine in 2018 and has worked in the digital behavioural data space since 2011. With a passion for solving complex measurement and business challenges, Billy plays a key role in shaping solutions that help clients make smarter, more confident decisions.
