I had the honour of speaking at the OphCon gathering in London this month — an invite-only conference for those who work in data analytics and insights at U.K.-based companies.

Operated under Chatham House rules, the fifth-annual convening gave those working in the same space the opportunity to trade notes, wrestle through problems together, and demo tools that are making audience insights easier to surface.

I presented on research I conducted earlier this year, forming the basis for a report I wrote for INMA: Beyond the Dashboard: 14 Case Studies in Newsroom Metrics. I also participated in the rest of the programming that day and got an inside look at the questions leading data analysts are asking and the ways in which they are interpreting data.

The OphCon gathering of data analysts kicked off with an unconference — an opportunity for those in attendance to jot down their biggest questions and challenges. 

The conversations reflected the evolution of data analysis — the subject of my presentation, as well — from pageviews to deeper engagement. We’ve moved beyond data scorecards to more nuanced and thoughtful discussions about data … and what to do with it.

Once all the Post-its were on the wall, everyone got three stickers to vote on the top topics for discussion. Those with the most votes included: 

     💃 How to get editorial teams excited about data.

     💪 What makes people into loyal/repeat customers?

     🚗 How should we measure impact beyond traffic?

     ⚒️ What are the best tools and metrics to use for video and other multimedia?

     🥅 What are our goals around social/off-platform engagement?

     🤖 Are we embracing AI?

A few others that I particularly liked:

• What’s our strategy for the decline of search?

• How do we visualise long-term trends?

• How do we better integrate analytics into our CMS?

• What’s the best way to standardise analytics across platforms and formats?

I dive more deeply into the question of getting editorial teams excited about data here but wanted to offer a few other insights from the discussions:

• Cultivating loyal/repeat customers requires habituation. Currently, newsletters, push alerts, and commenting can all be good tactics to bring people back to our platforms. But as new platforms emerge, we need to experiment and study new ways of building loyalty. 

• Measuring impact beyond traffic isn’t easy when you consider questions like: How is our journalism benefitting society? There are emerging impact tracking tools, but they are more subjective than pure metrics. In addition, measuring impact can include looking at business factors like revenue generation by platform or piece of content.

• Video engagement is another conundrum: It doesn’t yet seem we’ve found a good formula for measuring the value of on- and off-platform video views and engagement. But as we look toward a more video-heavy future, it will become even more important to understand the data points that answer those questions.

• Embracing AI will likely require stepping stones. Things like transcription tools already show promise. Use AI for lower level projects now before trying it for more complicated endeavors like fact-checking.  

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