Segment (YC S11) Raises $27M for Its “One API to Rule Them All”
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
For example: I wrote a complex iOS app, and was having app store issues related to metrics; the CEO of Segment came to my office to help, and we looked at the app together, including source code and libraries, to diagnose the issue. This kind of excellent help is why I recommend Segment to all my clients.
On the other hand, that means that I'm giving ten different vendors the ability to monetize all the data my site generates essentially for free. This is great for them, kind of crappy for the users who get tracked and monetized, and terrible for me, because I'm not realizing the value I generate.
I'm frankly rather surprised that Condé Nast doesn't try to prevent third-party tracking of its readers so that it can realize more of that value itself. After all, why should an advertiser buy a high-value targeted add for display on a Condé Nast property when it can buy the same ad with the same Condé Nast-dervied target for much less on a site full of cat pictures?
Presumably you are not directly sending data to any vendors you are not receiving value from. In the analytics world, it is kind of understood that if you use Google Analytics, you should have an expectation that Google is using that data however they see fit. Same holds true with other vendors unless they explicitly say otherwise.
As such, the burden (rightfully) falls on the site owner to properly vet their vendors to make sure they work with companies whose business practices align with the site owner's data policies.
Nobody is forcing you to integrate with vendors who don't adhere to your standards, but not everyone has the same standards.
So at the end of the day, I'm confused by your point about how this is terrible for you since you're not realizing any value that you generate. You are exchanging data, money, or both, in exchange for a service. It is up to you to determine what that is worth to you and whether you are paying a fair price, but it isn't Segment's fault if you decide to partner with companies that give you a raw deal.
I suspect that a lot of sites aren't thinking hard about the tradeoffs, though. The benefits of using these services are immediate and obvious, whereas the costs are rather more subtle.
I heard a fascinating talk last year by John Gruber about ways of monetizing content outside the usual sell-tracking-rights-and-accept-ad-bids model. (Check out what he does at http://daringfireball.net/feeds/sponsors/. The whole site seems to be entirely devoid of third-party tracking.)
I wish there were some sort of public list of companies that operate this way, it's a bummer that the default assumption (which is very reasonable) is that companies are using your data for additional revenue via other sources.
Also, I don't believe the argument you can get away with one provider. MixPanel told me they don't do emojis in email subjects because their CEO doesn't approve of it. Don't want to get anyone in trouble, but I kid you not I have that email and instantly made me look elsewhere for email service - why should 1 person dictate my companies marketing strategy? Segment prevented a lot re-work for this.
Anyway, in short, Segment is good for the market because it means services have to up their game as lock-in isn't as strong...except for Segment's!
They cover a whole spectrum of products so different in their value prop that I think just can't capsulated with a single api
And I know from experience lock in is immense, once you add an analytics tool there is no turning back. With segment you can play the field more easily, ofcourse while being locked in to segment :)
They released an open source version of this library on GitHub, and it just started growing by itself. That forced them to reconsider their focus. What people actually wanted, as it turned out, was a simple analytics API.
I'm not sure I follow this description of the company's pivot. What is the difference between their own analytics service and an abstraction over another company's service? Why do media companies need to use so many similar analytics services, e.g. the 30 odd trackers on many news sites?
Let's see what we can find on CNN right now:
Clicktale, analytics for their design team with things like click heat maps and scroll maps.
Optimizely, A/B testing to compare the results of layout changes by serving variations of each page to portions of their traffic.
Turner corporation's internal analytics tools, for who knows what.
A tag for PostRelease, which distributes media for content-based advertisers, like advertorials and videos.
Usabilla, a tool for surveying user satisfaction.
Dynamicyield, which personalizes page content to specific visitors.
Krux Digital, which is about tracking people across multiple devices for a better measure of how many real people are on the site, and then segmenting that data for the advertising sales team.
Moat, which measures viewability of ads, i.e. what portion are actually seen by people rather than just being loaded below the fold.
Scorecard Research, which is audience measurement and surveys.
Chartbeat, which is real-time analytics specifically for the editorial team. It shows them what stories are hot and trending at that specific moment, which directs what headlines get pushed up, what journalists get assigned to cover, what stories get pushed off the front page, etc.
Outbrain, which adds the "more stories you might be interested in" type stuff to the end of each article, which are actually ads.
The rest are tags for serving banner ads through Google, their own ad server, and various exchanges.
Ultimately, I ended up going with Mixpanel because they offered pretty much everything I wanted in analytics. I have integrated Segment everywhere but ended up ripping it all out once I realized that I had bought into the marketing.