Last week I attended a selection of virtual talks during the MeasureSummit 2020 event. If you’re wondering what you’ve missed or if you should attend next year, this round-up post will help you make up your mind.
As a web analyst, it’s great to see and attend a conference devoted to data measurement and analysis from a web optimisation perspective. All too often analytics gets a single spot in a broader digital marketing event. This time it was centre stage!
In the post, I’ll talk about what the event was about, how well it was organised and what the quality of the talks was. I’ll try to be specific on who the event could benefit the most so you can decide if the event is for you.
So, in the words of Julian Juenemann: we’ve got lots to cover – so let’s dive in!
What was MeasureSummit 2020?
MeasureSummit 2020 is the brainchild of Julian Juenemann and Chris “Mercer” Mercer. It took place 22-25th September 2020 and hosted 20 talks from data measurement and analysis experts.
Julian is the creator of MeasureSchool, where you can find courses on how to use tools like Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager the data driven way. He’s popular for his YouTube tutorials – his channel has over 100k subscribers, including us!
Mercer, the founder of MeasurementMarketing.io, is an authority in training people how to measure and improve their sales funnels in an easy-to-understand way. He’s also been a popular speaker at multiple analytics and optimisation conferences.
According to the MeasureSummit website, the event is the first virtual event dedicated to leveraging measurement, data, and analytics for business growth. The online setting was very fitting as the whole thing happened in the middle of a pandemic – but it also worked well to make the webinars accessible to a global audience.
The line-up was truly promising, with well-known industry names featuring prominently: Simo Ahava, Brian Clifton and Julius Fedorovicius to name a few.
How was the online experience?
Pulling off an event such as the MeasureSummit must be a great undertaking.
In their initial address to the thousands of people dialing in, Julius was visibly nervous. Probably not so much about the quality of the talks – both hosts looked very excited and confident about all that was to come. It was likely due to the sheer scale of the planning that must have taken place and the threat that in this digital world it could all fall down suddenly due to technology or connection issues.
Fortunately, no such thing happened and the whole experience went smoothly. Julian quickly got back into his stride and it was great to see him and Mercer warming the crowds up for guests every evening (yes, it was evening for me and others dialling in from the UK and Europe).
Supporting everything was a purpose-build website where you could log in and get access to all the talks and more.
Areas you could explore included:
- Live video and chat where all the magic happened and you could see the presenters and engage in the chat.
- Past video recordings – available for 24 hours each if you’re a free pass holder or indefinitely if you decided to invest in the All Access pass.
- Virtual booths where you could learn about the sponsors and companies affiliated with the speakers. These often mentioned a specific offer you could take advantage of too: more on that later.
- Community in a mini-forum where you could ask a question to any of the presenters or to the rest of the community.
The platform is still open to use even after the event so you can continue exploring.
Sponsors and freebies
The main sponsor of the event was Supermetrics, a tool for transferring data between different sources – really helpful for visualisations and reporting.
Other sponsors were MeasureSchool, MeasurementMarketing.io and Verified Data.
Both sponsors and supporting companies offered some great freebies and discounts to all attendees. A few worth noting were the 20% discount at Supermetrics, a free analytics audit from Verified Data and a free yearly subscription to the UTM.io tool that helps manage your campaign tags.
I can imagine that even if you didn’t find the talks engaging enough (doubtful), you could do well using some of these offers.
What was the line-up like?
I have to say, I really was impressed when I first saw the line-up. All the top influencers that I’ve been learning from and have been following for years were there, with Simo Ahava leading the pack.
Here are all the people that took part in the MeasureSummit 2020:
Whether you’re a marketer or a web analyst, you could probably find something valuable for you.
If you were looking for analytics tutorials, there were some useful ones. You could learn about implementing the data layer from Julius Fedorovicius or about making better Data Studio reports from Ahmad Kanani.
For advertisers, there was a talk about maximising your ROI from ads by Mike Rhodes.
Many analysts have likely enjoyed talks from Lea Pica and Khrystyna Grynko about creating better presentations and improving the communication with stakeholders.
I enjoyed the talks that talked about the future of analytics, e.g. by Krista Seiden with her research findings and Web + App overview (now released as Google Analytics 4) or the one from Simo Ahava where he discussed server side tagging in GTM.
One topic close to my heart is the role of analytics in an organisation. It’s a common issue for the teams I’ve worked with, where I helped establish analytics practices throughout the development journey. Speakers like Simo Ahava and Brian Clifton provided valuable input and it was interesting to hear their experiences.
I’ve not mentioned all the great speakers here but there was plenty of new, exciting and practical information from the other experts too. Everyone was a specialist in their field and their content was well researched and useful.
What’s the verdict?
I thought the event was well worth attending for me.
Everything was organised really professionally, with update emails from Mercer summarising the agenda for each day a really nice touch. The website did its job when it comes to letting you access what you need when you need in an easy way.
The only blip I saw was when Julian suddenly stopped the recording in the first session with Simo and then rewound it by mistake. The joys of live streaming! I do think it only added to the charm of it all.
The only downside I can think of is that it’s a shame that I couldn’t see all these great minds in person. At the same time, being an online event has probably positively contributed to global exposure and allowed thousands of people to join – who otherwise would not have been able to.
The verdict from me is: I’m definitely dialling in next year!
Update!
And if you’re reading this now, the MeasureSummit is now three years old and I’ve been tuning in since the beginning. Each year, I write a summary of all the trends that come out as a result of the conference. Here are these posts:
Over to you
Let me know in the comments if you agree with my review or if there is anything I missed that you hoped I would talk about.
And if you’d like to work with me, get in touch. I specialise in tracking complex user journeys, troubleshooting GTM set-ups and developing data and reporting strategies that help generate actionable insights.
