What to Expect at eMetrics Summit 2014

Every year we look forward to attending the eMetrics Summit in San Francisco and this year is no exception.

Many conferences come and go, but eMetrics continues to grow, attracting professionals from top brands in almost every industry from financial services and healthcare to retail and technology. Not only because it is one of the major events for the digital analytics community so many of us at Tealium have been a part of for years, but because it never fails to deliver compelling and insightful content. As Jim Sterne, the founder of eMetrics so accurately conveys, “eMetrics is all about the community. What started out in 2002 with just 50 people and spawned the DAA has now grown to over 5,000 attendees.”

We asked a few experts and attendees, what they’re looking forward to at the conference this year and the topics and themes they expect to be the biggest buzz. There were the usual suspects including mobile and social, but surprisingly two subjects seem to be bubbling up to the top of mind: 1) Privacy and 2) Ways to move beyond ‘Big Data’.

Privacy

Privacy is hot on the minds of many, perhaps due to the appearance by Edward Snowden at SXSW, but probably more so due the new set of proposed privacy rules in Europe and how that will affect the US and pretty much everyone around the globe.

Marketing expert and eMetrics marketing keynote speaker Bryan Eisenberg thinks privacy will not only be a prominent topic at eMetrics, but one that should be top of mind for every CMO and marketing professional today. In light of recent events, he insists, marketers need to be discussing these issues, especially involving data breaches.

“The real issue, Bryan says, is that today it is not if your brand will be breached, but only when it will be… Never before have marketers cared about these sorts of issues, but now they are being forced to because they are effecting how consumers interact with their brands.” We’ve seen this already with retailers like Target, Neiman Marcus, Zappos and more popular brands in other industries.

Aurélie Pols, Pan-European Privacy Specialist at and another eMetrics keynote couldn’t agree more about the importance of these conversations and surmises that “the time has come to start seriously caring about security and privacy measures in technology.” Her company, Mind Your Privacy! has been vested in these aspects for a few years now and focuses on advancements in technology by auditing analytics tools from a privacy, security and data governance perspective.

Moving Beyond ‘Big Data’

The other big topic expected to be buzzing at the conference is this concept of data-driven marketers moving beyond ‘big data’ and focusing more on valuable data. Marketers are seeing new technologies available that are giving them the tools to provide much more personalized and targeted methods of collecting and leveraging data in real-time. These developments are making it much easier for marketers to target and optimize campaign results and drastically improve customer experiences with their brands.

Rand Schulman, managing partner at Efectyv Digital adds that, “the Internet recently turned 25 and is primarily driven by optimizable business. People are shocked about the data we gather, but the industry really needs to wake up and explain that nothing is free, and begin to converse about the role of privacy in our freedom. I hope there will be a heighted sense and level of discussion about this.”

We look forward to what will most certainly be another great conference, with no shortage of compelling conversations. Let us know your thoughts on what will dominate the event.

Stop by and see us at booth #606, or look for us at the DAA Awards Gala. We are nominated for the DAA Award of Excellence in the Best New Technology of the Year category!