The Istobe eCommerce Analytics Blog

Over the past two weeks, I’ve been watching the fallout from two important conferences taking place on the West Coast (where I would much rather be right now given the latest round of snow in Boston.)  The first annual Predicitive Analytics World ’09 was staged in San Francisco on Feb 18th and 19th and eTail West 2009 took place last week and drew in a host of e-Marketers from around the country. One common theme that I seem to be hearing from the blogs and articles I’ve read from both: make sure you’re using your customer data effectively and, most importantly, keep it simple.
Read Simplicity is Key for Marketing Analytics »

I was reading up on analytics technology today and ran across an interesting article at TDWI (The Data Warehousing Institute) which surprised me.  It was surprising due to the fact that it was a year old but was reporting the same results as today:  predicitve analytics solutions are still novel to many companies and unknown to even more.  Even after dozens, if not hundreds, of successful case studies show how predictive analytics are a low-effort, high ROI solution to help a company achieve strategic goals:

[P]redictive analytics can yield a substantial ROI. Predictive analytics can help companies optimize existing processes, better understand customer behavior, identify unexpected opportunities, and anticipate problems before they happen,” Eckerson writes. For six years running, he points out, a majority of TDWI’s annual Leadership Award winners have used predictive analytic solutions to achieve noteworthy business results.

Before we created our predictive analytics solution for email marketing we knew the benefits of predictive analytics solutions and we realized that marketing has many metrics and data points as well as a very strong set of historical data which we can and do use to build solid, accurate models of customer behavior and desire.   Why are users of predictive analytics still considered Early Adopters?

Read Predictive Analytics Provide Big Payouts For Early Adopters »

I will be the first to admit that our industry, predictive analytics to support retail marketing strategies, is dense with technical words, phrases and methodologies all wrapped up into various umbrella groups or plans such as “Market Segmentation Analysis”, “Customer Analysis”, “Predictive Marketing”, “Retail Pricing Strategy” etc. Although each sounds a bit different all of these approaches strive to reach the same outcome:

• Use available data to describe customers and understand their needs, wants and actions

and each takes a different approach but all the approaches are based on well established principles of computer science and statistics.

Read Market Segmentation Research: Science Fiction or Non-Fiction »

Since every news site and blog I look at seems to be focused on the economy, I felt it only appropriate that I change it up a bit from my usual analytics rants and write a post that looks at the recent financial concerns.

Read What’s happening: the economy and analytics »

Just a short post today to finish off our fantasy sports foray of the last week and a half. In case anyone else noticed, our quarterback predictions showed up on Yahoo, as well as other eminently reputable sites, as MIT-Based Startup Predicts Tom Brady Will Break 24-Year-Old Passing Record. Well, by now we know that this will never happen, with Brady unluckily succumbing to the dreaded torn ACL.

Read Tom Brady and What Might Have Been »

There’s really not much to say about the tight end predictions except to repeat what I said for both the running back and wide receiver predictions. That is, the yardage totals and receptions are depressed. However, when taken in context, the rankings make quite a bit of sense. Well, if you expected Dallas Clark to be the top-ranked tight end. Click for the list.

Read Tight End Predictions for the 2008 Fantasy Football Season »

As I promised yesterday when I gave you our running back picks based on our predictive models, today is wide receiver day. And just like our running backs, you’ll find that the yardage totals of our wide receivers are somewhat depressed. That is, one might believe that some receiver will break out for 1300 yards or more in the season. And it’s likely someone will. But my model is very conservative.

Read Wide Receiver Predictions for the 2008 Fantasy Football Season »

Well, I apologize for not getting these out sooner but my draft just finished this week so there was no gun to my head in getting these models run. But in case you’re still curious about some regression-based predictions for this fantasy football season, I’ll drop the running backs on you today and then come back with wide receivers tomorrow and tight ends on friday.

Some quick notes on the running backs. In general, you’ll notice that the rushing yardage is quite depressed. This is largely because running backs tend toward entropy. That is, once they have a big season, the next season’s rushing total doesn’t quite live up to that previous season. Call it what you will: overwork from the prior year, increased injury likelihood, or teams keying on that back. Whatever the case, you are seeing this effect here. We know that some of these backs will break out and rush for a whole boatload of yards. But my model isn’t going to take risks on backs to do that so it discounts the yards for the whole lot.

The key to my running back model is really to use each player in context. So while LT’s 994 yards may seem too few, when we see him in context, he has the third-highest rushing total. Now that seems acceptable. The same goes for receptions where Brian Westbrook will have the most, even if the total is 33 below his 2007 total of 90.

Without further ado, the list:

Read Running Back Predictions for the 2008 Fantasy Football Season »

Last week I wrote about the Istobe willingness to share with you some of the predictive models that we use in our fantasy drafts. Well, a week later and the Istobe world headquarters is just now kicking the empty pizza boxes to the side and emerging into full sunlight with one hand visoring our eyes. Indeed, it’s been a computer-heavy week running model after model in an effort to win the right to mock our peers.

My quarterback-selection model (like my running back, wide receiver, and tight end models), which I share with you today, is actually a series of regression models that use 27 different predictors to arrive at an estimation of how NFL quarterbacks will fare this year in the following categories:

• Completions
• Passing Yards
• Interceptions
• Passing Touchdowns
• Fumbles
• Rushing Yards
• Rushing Touchdowns

I used these categories to derive a fantasy value based on my league’s scoring system and urge you to the do the same.

The Highlights

1. Tom Brady will have another big season. He’ll ease back on the touchdowns and increase his interceptions. But the yardage? Off the hook. Check out those 5200 yards he’s going to pass for.

Read Quarterback Predictions for the 2008 Fantasy Football Season »

What’s not to like about fantasy football? It raises the importance of the unimportant football games (i.e., those games in which your team is not participating). It allows for some of the finest trash talking on the planet - with few repercussions for losing the Sunday match-up as long as you win the weekly war of words. And, most importantly, fantasy football gives Istobe yet one more opportunity to crunch data in an effort to predict outcomes. So in the next two weeks, we plan on crunching the last seven years of NFL player data in an attempt to predict this year’s fantasy workhorses.

Read Get Ready for the Ignite Fantasy Football Draft Predictions »