1. The Role of Data Integration and
Context in Measuring User
Engagement
Pracitioner Web Analytics, My 25th, 2010
1

2. The Media Revolution [A historical perspective]
Future
Super 8 mm
Applications
Film
2050+
Cartridges VCR
Lithography 1798 1965 TIVO
1972 TV Anytime
Photography 1860s Late 1990s
User
Digital
Activity Cameras Twitter
Brownie camera 1990s
1900 YouTube
Flickr
Social Media!
Time
2

3. Trend I (Technical)
Increased connectivity, public data, data centers
Integrated devices and services
3

4. Trend II (behavioral)
Strong dependence on computing
On-off line convergence, real time, anywhere
4

5. Trend III (Socio-economic)
Spread of technology, “Flat” world
5

6. Why do we care?

7. Yahoo! is ranked among the top 3 sites in 26 key categories and #1 in 12 of them
Yahoo! Monthly Unique Visitors (000) Noted in Yellow
E-mail Autos Entertainment News Local/Maps Groups Home Pages
1. Yahoo! Mail 1. eBay Motors U.S. 1. omg! 1. Google Maps 1. Facebook Groups 1. Yahoo! HP
2. Win. Live Hotmail 2. Yahoo! Autos 2. TMZ 2. Mapquest 2. Yahoo! Groups 2. Google HP
3. Google Gmail 3. KBB.com 3. People 3. Yahoo! Maps 3. Google Groups 3. Facebook HP
Y! UVs: 106,166 Y! UVs: 6,972 Y! UVs: 20,428 Y! UVs: 13,163 Y! UVs: 7,654 Y! UVs: 118,011
Games Search Finance TV News IM
1. Yahoo! Games 1. Google Search 1. Yahoo! Finance 1. Yahoo! TV 1. Yahoo! News 1. Yahoo! Messenger
2. EA Games 2. Yahoo! Search 2. AOL Money & Finance 2. AOL TV 2. CNN 2. AIM.com/AIM App
3. Nickelodeon 3. ASK Network 3. MSN Money 3. MSN TV 3. MSNBC 3. MSN Msngr
Y! UVs: 18,797 Y! UVs: 90,191 Y! UVs: 21,671 Y! UVs: 15,085 Y! UVs: 48,433 Y! UVs: 38,140
Why do we care?
Movies Travel Music Sports Portals
My (Custom)*
1. IMDB.com 1. TravelAd Network 1. Yahoo! Sports 1. Yahoo! Sites
1. AOL Music 1. My Yahoo!
2. Yahoo! Movies 2. Tripadvisor 2. ESPN 2. Microsoft Sites
2. MySpace Music 2. iGoogle
3. Moviefone 3. Yahoo! Travel 3. Fox Sports on MSN 3. AOL LLC
3. Yahoo! Music 3. My MSN
Y! UVs: 17,942 Y! UVs: 10,167 Y! UVs: 30,718 Y! UVs: 156,506
Y! UVs: 21,889 Y! UVs: 24,644
Shopping (Comparison) Careers Reference Personals Photos Real Estate
1. Yahoo! Shopping 1. Careerbuilder 1. Wikimedia 1. Yahoo! Personals 1. Facebook.com Photos 1. Move Network
2. Shopzilla.com 2. Yahoo! HotJobs 2. Yahoo! Answers 2. SingelsNet 2. Photobucket 2. Yahoo! Real Estate
3. Shopping.com 3. Monster 3. Answers.com 3. PlentyofFish 3. FLICKR.COM 3. AOL Real Estate
Y! UVs: 22,901 Y! UVs: 16,697 Y! UVs: 43,164 Y! UVs: 3,330 Y! UVs: 24,686 Y! UVs: 7,525
Source: comScore Media Metrix, July 2009
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*Not Shown: Yahoo! Green ranks #2 in Environment, Yahoo! Health ranks #3 in Health
Monthly figures unless otherwise indicated
ACM RecSys 2009 Courtesy of Todd Beaupre (Y!) !
5

8. Interaction Experience
(Video of angry PC user..)
8

9. Is he engaged?
9

10. Or enraged..

11. But what do we see?
A click!

12. We have…
 More data than at any time in history
 Better tools to store it, access it, process it
 Better (sometimes) technology for our day to day
 Overly complex systems, information overload
 Larger diversity of “users”
New business models
Patterns, Data Mining, Interaction

13. But…
It is not about the data…

14. Human-Centered Analytics!
User Data
Experience analysis
Human aspects Machine Learning,
Context,
User Modeling,
Engagement
14

15. Human-Centered Analytics
Social-cultural Psychological Context
Economic
Key enabler
15

16. Key Differentiator?
Analytics for customer experience innovation
…. that is what should be optimized for .…

17. But how?
Know your “users”
• What, how, and why?
• Who?

18. Two examples…

19. Example I
Image Search
1.4 Billion anonymous search queries (75 M
unique queries)
100K most frequent queries

20. Example I
Results I
100 most frequent queries account for 5.8% of
query volume
57 of celebrities (52 female)
5 fictional (Spongebob, Hello Kitty, Santa..)
6 tattoo related (e.g., tribal tattoo)
2 “functional” (xmas wall paper)

21. Example I
Results II (top 100K queries)
7% Entertainment_&_Music
8%
Arts_&_Humanities
31%
Sports
9%
Science_&_Mathematics
9%
Beauty_&_Style
Travel
14%
9% Society_&_Culture
13% Cars_&_Transportation

23. Example I
Results III (top 100K queries)
initial
initial next page
next page
2% 11%
2%
2%
2%
15%
15% 11%
more specific
more specific more generic
more generic
5%
5%
minor rewrite
minor rewrite major rewrite
major rewrite
65%
65%

24. Example I
Observations
Most people that “search” for images are
actually browsing!
What is the right engagement metric here?
Impact on experience design…

25. Example II
Web Search [weber & Castillo SIGIR ‘10]
Anonymized Profiles of 28 million users
(birth year, gender, ZIP)
US census data
Data aggregated (not per user)

26. Example II
Example Queries
“Wagner”
“Lindsey”
“Hal”

27. Example II
Examples
Female Male
(Wagner=composer) (Wagner=spray painter)
Hal Lindsey: American evangelist and
Christian writer
Hal Higdon: American writer and runner
(above average education areas)

28. Example II
Observations
Lots of public data unexplored
Information flows? Profiles?
Business strategy…

29. Social Media
 Clickstream
 Favorites
 Purchases
 Social network analysis
 Communities, influence, propagation, & dynamics
 Interest/activity-based user modeling
 Social “Network” of objects-people-interests
 Trend spotting
 Psycho-socio-cultural-economic perspectives

30. User Experience
 Browsing
 Discovery
 Personalization
 New services?
 Eye tracking
 Focus group user studies

31. Design Process
Algorithm Interface User

32. Analytics and Design
Interaction design Analytics
Human abilities, needs
Implementation
Socio-cultural context

33. Human-Centered Analytics
User Data
Experience analysis
Human aspects Machine Learning,
Context,
User Modeling,
Personalization
33

34. Thank you!
Alex Jaimes
ajaimes@yahoo-inc.com
© 2010 A. Jaimes. No portion of these slides can be reproduced
without permission. Personal opinions, not of Yahoo! Inc.