Comparing Web Activity Measures for Demand Generation Vendors

I recently wanted to measure the relative popularity of several demand generation vendors, as part of a deciding how to expand the Raab Guide to Demand Generation Systems. This led to an interesting little journey which I think is worth sharing.

I started with a list of 23 marketing system vendors. A couple are fairly large but most are quite small. These were grouped into three categories: five demand generation vendors already in the Guide; four marketing automation vendors with significant demand generation market presence; and fourteen other demand generation vendors. (See http://www.raabguide.com/ for definitions of demand generation and marketing automation.)

My first thought was to look at their Web site traffic directly. The easiest way to do this is at Alexa.com, which tracks site visits of people who download its search toolbar. The number of users in this base is apparently a well-guarded secret, or at least well enough guarded that I would have had to look beyond the first Google search page for the answer. Alexa was originally classified by many experts as spyware, and is still somewhat controversial. But it was purchased by Amazon.com in 1999 and has since become more or less grudgingly accepted.

Be that as it may. I captured two statistics for each of my sites from Alexa: a ranking which basically reflects the number of pages viewed by unique visitors each month (the busiest site gets rank 1, next busiest gets rank 2, etc.); and a share figure that shows the percentage of total toolbar users who visit each site each month. (I think I have that correct; you can check the definitions at Alexa.com.) Ranking on either figure gives the same sequence (except for Pardot; I have no idea why). If you’re creating ratios or an index, the difference in the share figures is probably a better indicator of relative popularity, since a company with twice the share of another has twice as many visitors, but will not necessarily a rank number that is twice as low. (Lower rank means more traffic.)

Here are the ranks I came up with, broken into the three segments I mentioned earlier:

		Alexa - 3 mo average
Already in Guide:		rank	share
Eloqua		20,234	0.0070700
Silverpop		29,080	0.0030500
Marketo		68,088	0.0017000
Manticore Technology		213,546	0.0006100
Market2Lead		235,244	0.0004800
Vtrenz		295,636	0.0003600
Marketing Automation Vendors:
Unica / Affinium*		126,215	0.0008500
Alterian		345,543	0.0002500
Aprimo		416,446	0.0002200
Neolane		566,977	0.0001690
Other Demand Generation:
MarketBright	167,306		0.0005400
Pardot	211,309		0.0003600
Marqui *	211,767		0.0004400
ActiveConversion	257,058		0.0003400
Bulldog Solutions	338,337		0.0003200
OfficeAutoPilot	509,868		0.0002000
Lead Genesys	557,199		0.0001450
LoopFuse	734,098		0.0001090
PredictiveResponse	2,313,880		0.0000330
FirstWave Technologies	2,872,765		0.0000170
NurtureMyLeads	4,157,304		0.0000140
Customer Portfolios	5,097,525		0.0000090
Conversen*	6,062,462		0.0000070
FirstReef	11,688,817		0.0000010

These rankings were more or less as I expected. Within the first group, Eloqua is definitely the largest vendor, while Marketo is probably the most aggressive marketer at the moment. Vtrenz is the second-largest demand generation company, based on number of clients and almost certainly on revenue. But it is a subsidiary of Silverpop, so its traffic is split between Vtrenz.com and visits to Silverpop.com. This means that the Vtrenz.com ranking understates the company’s position, whie Silverpop ranking includes traffic unrelated to demand generation. I’ve therefore tracked both here. Manticore and Market2Lead get much less attention than the other three, so it makes sense that they have much less traffic.

Figures for the next group also seem to be ranked about correctly. Unica is certainly the most prominent of this group, with Alterian, Aprimo and Neolane trailing quite far behind. I would have expected a bit more traffic for Neolane, but it is definitely the new kid on this block and only entered the U.S. market about one year ago. The real surprise here is that this group as a whole ranks so far below the big demand generation vendors, even though the marketing automation firms are in fact larger and probably do more promotion. Perhaps the marketing automation vendors appeal to a smaller number of potential users (primarily, marketers in large companies with direct customer contact, such as financial services, retail, travel and telecommunications) and generate less traffic as a result.

I didn’t have much sense of the relative positions of the other demand generation vendors, although I would have guessed that MarketBright and Pardot were near the top. Marqui has had little attention recently, perhaps because they’ve been through financial difficulties culminating in the purchase of their assets by a private investor group this past August. ActiveConversions I do know, only because I’ve spoken with them, and they rank about where I expected given their number of clients. The other names were somewhat familiar but the only one I’d ever spoken with was OfficeAutoPilot, which I knew to be small. Since I had no fully formed expectations, the rankings couldn’t surprise me.

In other words, the rankings provided by Alexa seemed generally reasonable given my knowledge of the companies concerned.

But Web traffic is just one measure. Where else could I look to confirm or challenge these impressions?

Well, there is another Web traffic site that is somewhat similar to Alexa, called Compete.com. I actually hadn’t heard of them before but they came up in my research. They apparently use their own toolbar but also some other Web traffic measures such as volumes reported by Internet Service Providers (ISPs). You’d expect them to pretty much match the Alexa figures. But do they? Here is a chart comparing the two, with the Alexa multiplied by 10 ^7 to make them more legible.

	Compete.com	Alexa.com
	unique visitors / month	share x 10^7
Already in Guide:
Eloqua	560,288	70,700
Silverpop	293,580	30,500
Marketo	34,244	17,000
Manticore Technology	15,789	6,100
Market2Lead	10,689	4,800
Vtrenz	5,313	3,600
Marketing Automation Vendors:
Unica / Affinium*	23,138	8,500
Alterian	4,497	2,500
Aprimo	5,131	2,200
Neolane	3,927	1,690
Other Demand Generation:
MarketBright	13,993	5,400
Pardot	7,339	3,600
Marqui *	3,282	4,400
ActiveConversion	1,503	3,400
Bulldog Solutions	6,408	3,200
OfficeAutoPilot	1,567	2,000
Lead Genesys	2,630	1,450
LoopFuse	1,930	1,090
PredictiveResponse	1,099	330
FirstWave Technologies	-	170
NurtureMyLeads	-	140
Customer Portfolios	-	90
Conversen*	-	70
FirstReef	-	10

You don’t need Sherlock Holmes to spot the problem: the Compete.com figures for Eloqua and Silverpop seem much too high compared with the others. I could concoct a theory that this reflects the difference between counting unique visitors in Compete.com and counting page views in Alexa, and throw in the fact that Eloqua and Silverpop/Vtrenz host landing pages for their clients. But the other demand generation vendors also host their clients’ pages, so this shouldn’t really matter. I suspect what really happens is that Compete measures low volumes differently from higher volumes (remember, they use a combination of techniques), and thus the figures for high-volume Eloqua and Silverpop are inconsistent with figures for the other, much lower-volume domains.

Anyway, if we throw away those two, the rest of the Compete figures seem more or less in line with the Alexa figures, apart from some small exceptions (Bulldog in particular ranks higher). All told, it doesn’t seem that Compete adds much value to what I already got from Alexis.

So much for Web traffic. How about search volume? Google Keywords will give that to me. Again, we’ll compare to Alexa as a reference:

	Google Keywords	Alexa
	avg search volume	share x 10^7
Already in Guide:
Eloqua	1,900	70,700
Silverpop	1,790	30,500
Marketo	839	17,000
Manticore Technology	113	6,100
Market2Lead	318	4,800
Vtrenz	752	3,600
Marketing Automation:		-
Unica / Affinium*	6,600	8,500
Alterian	861	2,500
Aprimo	1,600	2,200
Neolane	1,340	1,690
Other Demand Generation:		-
MarketBright	186	5,400
Pardot	210	3,600
Marqui *	1,300	4,400
ActiveConversion	46	3,400
Bulldog Solutions	442	3,200
OfficeAutoPilot	0	2,000
Lead Genesys	74	1,450
LoopFuse	260	1,090
PredictiveResponse	36	330
FirstWave Technologies	386	170
NurtureMyLeads	0	140
Customer Portfolios	0	90
Conversen*	170	70
FirstReef	12	10

If we limit ourselves to the first two groups, the search numbers look mostly plausible. The low figure for Manticore could have to do with checking specifically for “Manticore Technology”, since a looser “Manticore” would incorporate an unrelated company and references to the mythical beast. The high value for Unica probably reflects some unrelated uses of the word in other languages or as an acronym. I have no particular explanation for the relatively low value for Alterian or the substantial flattening of the range between Eloqua and its competitors. Perhaps Eloqua’s traffic is less search-driven than other vendors’. Or not. In any event, I think the implicit rankings here are about as plausible as the Alexa rankings.

But things get crazier in the Other Demand Generation vendor segment. I understand the Marqui number, which is high because Marqui can be a misspelling of other words (marquis, marque, marquee) and has some unrelated non-English meanings. Similarly, Conversen is a verb form in Spanish. I think that Bulldog Solutions, FirstWave and LoopFuse also gain some hits because of their component words, even though I tried to keep them out of the search results. The bottom line here is you have to throw away so many terms that the remaining rankings don’t signify much. So, in general, search keyword rankings need close consideration before you can accept them as a meaningful measure of importance.

How about Google hits? I’ll show them alongside the Google Keywords as well as Alexa rank.

	Google hits	Google Keywords	Alexa
		avg search volume	share x 10^7
Already in Guide:
Eloqua	118,000	1,900	70,700
Silverpop	111,000	1,790	30,500
Marketo	103,000	839	17,000
Manticore Technology	9,620	113	6,100
Market2Lead	25,900	318	4,800
Vtrenz	35,200	752	3,600
Marketing Automation:			-
Unica / Affinium*	7,750	6,600	8,500
Alterian	262,000	861	2,500
Aprimo	161,000	1,600	2,200
Neolane	40,200	1,340	1,690
Other Demand Generation:			-
MarketBright	34,500	186	5,400
Pardot	27,600	210	3,600
Marqui *	1,370,000	1,300	4,400
ActiveConversion	16,800	46/p>	3,400
Bulldog Solutions	9,340	442	3,200
OfficeAutoPilot	777	0	2,000
Lead Genesys	5,880	74	1,450
LoopFuse	95,400	260	1,090
PredictiveResponse	21,800	36	330
FirstWave Technologies	13,400	386	170
NurtureMyLeads	1,050	0	140
Customer Portfolios	12,200	0	90
Conversen*	2,790	170	70
FirstReef	18,100	12	10

Here the impact of limiting Manticore to “Manticore Technology” shows up even more clearly (although Manticore truly doesn’t get much Web attention). I limited the Unica test to “Unica Affinium” since the number of hits is otherwise over 100 million; but this seems to excessively depress the results. Note that the low ranking for Alterian has now been reversed; in fact, Alterian has the most hits of all, and the marketing automation group in general shows more activity than the demand generation vendors. That could be true – those vendors have been around longer. Or it could be a fluke.

Once again, the Other Demand Generation group has a big problem with Marqui and perhaps smaller problems with LoopFuse and FirstReef. Even excluding those, the numbers jump around a great deal. As with keywords, these figures don’t seem to be a reliable measure of anything.

Let’s try one more measure: the blogosphere. Here I tried three different services: Technorati, BlogPulse and Ice Rocket.

	Technorati	Blogpulse	Ice Rocket	Alexa
	blog posts	blog posts	all posts	share x 10^7
Already in Guide:
Eloqua	130	267	286	70,700
Silverpop	70	119	188	30,500
Marketo	3	179	229	17,000
Manticore Technology	0	12	56	6,100
Market2Lead	0	7	25	4,800
Vtrenz	0	30	53	3,600
Marketing Automation:				-
Unica / Affinium*	0	6	43	8,500
Alterian	8	119	145	2,500
Aprimo	0	118	139	2,200
Neolane	0	33	64	1,690
Other Demand Generation:				-
MarketBright	1	23	33	5,400
Pardot	0	32	33	3,600
Marqui software*	5	15	19	4,400
ActiveConversion	0	6	12	3,400
Bulldog Solutions	0	30	43	3,200
OfficeAutoPilot	0	5	5	2,000
Lead Genesys	0	1	5	1,450
LoopFuse	4	48	43	1,090
PredictiveResponse	0	0	0	330
FirstWave Technologies	0	5	11	170
NurtureMyLeads	0	1	5	140
Customer Portfolios	0	0	3	90
Conversen*	0	2	0	70
FirstReef	0	0	0	10

Results for all three services are roughly consistent, although Technorati gets many fewer hits and Ice Rocket finds a few more than Blogpulse. The major anomaly is the low value for Unica, but that happens because I actually searched on Unica Affinium, to avoid all the irrelevant hits on Unica alone. Similarly, I searched on Marqui Software to avoid unrelated hits on Marqui. The high values for Bulldog Solutions and Loopfuse are valid (I scanned the actual hits); these two vendors just managed to snag a relatively high number of blog mentions. Remember we are looking at very small numbers here: it doesn’t take much to get 40 blog mentions. Nor, if we trust the Alexa, do they translate into much Web traffic. However, the blog hits might explain the relatively high keyword search counts for those two vendors.

Well, I hope you enjoyed the trip. This is far from an exhaustive analysis of the issue, but based on the information available, I’d say that Alexa Web traffic is the most useful measure for assessing the market presence of different demand generation vendors, and blog mentions have at least some value. Google hits and keyword searches capture too many unrelated items to be reliable.