• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 9, 2009

What’s the proper analytics food chain for understanding online marketing results? It depends.

That was something Monster Worldwide analytics chief Judah Phillips said. And it was something Neo&Ogilvy COO Greg Smith echoed, suggesting there is no simple common denominator of understand how to apply online metrics to measure marketing success.

“It depends on the client,” Smith said during the OMMA Metrics panel, “The Analytics Food Chain.”

“Some are very data savvy. Some are too data savvy,” Smith continued, saying that some clients actually get so hung up on the granularity of certain metrics, that they, “miss the big picture.”

On the other hand, he said, “We have some clients who are quiet nervous about setting a performance measure overall.”

Interestingly, Smith said he’s not all that keen on the term “performance marketing,” even though it seems to be overtaking the traditional brand metrics that used to rule the ad business.

“Performance marketing is a term I dislike now,” Smith said, revealing more of his Ogilvy stripes than his Neo colors.

“Because of all the measures we have now, everything we do is performance marketing, both online and offline,” Smith said, noting that the big issue for agencies is keeping their clients focused on what they are actually tracking and analyzing.

“Remember the metric,” he said. “Here’s how it maps back to what we were trying to do in the first place. It is easy to get lost.”