In The Headlights: July 10, 2019 Issue - Trust Insights Marketing Analytics Consulting

Before we begin, a special announcement. We’re holding a half-day Google Analytics for B2B Marketers Bootcamp in Washington, DC on October 15, 2019. Come get your analytics in shape in this half-day, hands-on event. Click/tap here to learn more and register.

Beware of conflicts of interest.

I was reading a report recently about how Instagram influencer engagement rates are declining, and while I agree from a trend perspective, the data that was being reported differed substantially from my own data by a factor of ~2x. The report said influencer engagement rates were at an all-time low of 4.5%, and the highest I’d seen in Trust Insights data was 2.3% (we’ll be sharing more on this soon). Why such a disparity? Aren’t we all looking at more or less the same data?

Yes and no. In this case, the report I was reading came from… an influencer marketing software company. If brands stopped doing influencer marketing, this company would quickly need to pivot to a different line of business; thus, it’s in their interest to over-report the effectiveness of influencers in order for them to keep accruing customers. They have, in short, a conflict of interest in their data reporting.

Every company, without exception (including Trust Insights), has conflicts of interest in some fashion. That’s why disclosing methodologies is so vital to ensuring that we understand what conflicts of interest may be present. What’s the best practice? We do our best to adhere to the disclosure checklist published by AAPOR, the American Association of Public Opinion Researchers, interpreting it for non-survey data. The checklist we modified looks like this:

Name of the sponsoring organization (us or our client)
Name of the data processor (us, for our research)
The data source
The population or sample from the data source used, if sampled
A description of how the sample was selected, including any known bias if appropriate
The total sample size
The method of data collection and data processing
The timeframe of the sample
The dates of the processing
Disclosure of any weighting or adjustment
Margins of error if appropriate

I encourage you, in your own research and data publication, to use a similar checklist. If you’re doing actual surveys, strictly adhere to the original AAPOR checklist.

The Bright Idea

This week’s Bright Idea is our most popular blog post we’ve ever written, on Instagram Brand Engagement statistics. Learn what the latest stats are on brand engagement, and if you feel like your Instagram engagement has been down recently, you’re not alone.

Click/tap here to read the post, and if you like it, please share it.

Media Landscape

Tools, Machine Learning, and AI

Analytics, Stats, and Data Science

SEO, Google, and Paid Media

Business and Leadership

Join the Club

Are you a member of our free, private Slack group, Analytics for Marketers? Join 300 like-minded marketers who care about data and measuring their success. Membership is free – join today.

Upcoming Events

Where can you find us in person?

MAICON, July 2019, Cleveland
IBM Data Science Boston, July 2019, Boston
BACon, August 2019, Chicago
Content Marketing World, September 2019, Cleveland
INBOUND, September 2019, Boston
MarTech East, September 2019, Boston
Google Analytics for B2B Marketers Bootcamp, October 29, Washington, DC
MarketingProfs B2B Forum, October 2019, Washington DC

Going to a conference we should know about? Reach out!

FTC Disclosure: Events with links have purchased sponsorships in this newsletter and as a result, Trust Insights receives financial compensation for promoting them.