The Digital Metrics Field Guide

The Digital Metrics Field Guide is the definitive reference for brands of any size that advertise, market, or engage with their customers and prospects through email, the Web, mobile, or social. Every brand receives performance reports through their providers, which offer a stunning array of metrics on virtually everything that happens on or through the platforms they measure.

Yet, many brands are unsure about their measurement and want to become more confident. They seek to know which metrics are available, what is known about them, how to select them, and how to analyse and report them in ways that help them understand the impact of their digital initiatives. The Digital Metrics Field Guide, published in association with the American Advertising Research Foundation, addresses these needs. This unique, comprehensive resource is intended for those who use metrics and require straightforward, authoritative, non-technical guidance.

To create the book, the author reduced a list of about 350 metrics to 197 and supported these by referencing nearly 150 studies, illustrating the claim that online is the most measurable medium. To make the information accessible, it is organised in three ways: Alphabetical, Category, and Marketing Stage - to cater to different tastes and preferences.

Stephen Rappaport coined the term Humetrics to describe the significant shift from the media industry's longstanding focus on measurement to understanding people by gauging and interpreting their digital lives. As digital measurement captures what people are saying, doing, and feeling, metrics transform into insights into human lives, moving beyond impersonal counts or percentages. Metrics now offer a window into understanding people as individuals living their lives.

Twelve experts contributed essays to this book, discussing measurement today and how to advance it in the Humetrics era.