Andrew Grill and Will Sturgeon have both discussed all that is wrong with the article at length.

But Lewis could have found an example much closer to home of a company that uses web analytics to track and monitor visits online. A quick discussion with my Twitter network finds that The Daily Mail itself is a hardcore user of web analytics.

Thanks to Andrew Smith and Tim Hoang for their insight.

Update: More here from Smith.

It all depends what you want to measure. Influence cannot be measured without direct conversations with your audience before and after a campaign to determine its attitudinal and emotional impact. Its expensive and is likely to dwarf your budget and is why such a rigorous approach is rarely undertaken to support a PR campaign.

The digital environment does enable us to identify audiences with relative ease and get close to a measure of influence by monitoring web traffic at points along a communication framework (brand) or buying cycle (sales). Crucially at low cost and in real time.

Niall calls this reach and reckons that it is not an accurate measure of influence. In absolute terms he is correct, but this metric in the form of readership or opportunities to see has been been a staple of the ad industry for decades.

We have the opportunity to dig deeper using analytics to monitor traffic within a network and a web site destination. By capturing IP addresses we can scrutinise reach to an incredibly granular level (location, company, time, frequency, and more). Better still if the audience is sufficiently motivated to respond to a campaign it will provide data that provides the start of an ongoing dialogue, or sales process.

Some PR agencies are starting to share examples of their work. Steve Loynes at Chameleon PR shared an example this week of how his campaign for Siemens generated a pre-qualified telesales database. Its a smart tactic that works in both the business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets.

I’ve previously blogged measurement examples using web analytics. Have a look at Speed launch stats: social networks trump online ads and Measuring the National Work from Home Day digital communications campaign.

Web analytics is one of the most potent tools at the disposal of the PR industry. Finally we can prove that a given input led to an output and it enables us to connect with the language and metrics of the marketing department.

So we’re the new kids on the block

But I wasn’t prepared for the analytics report this morning that served up a list of more than 20 agencies that have spent more than 15 minutes grazing the Speed site. One firm has spent more than two hours sniffing around. If you’re that bloody interested call us and we’ll send you the source code.

Granted we’ve incorporated a few web 2.0 bells and whistles but it isn’t that fancy. We welcome attention but haven’t you heard there’s a recession on? Move along and crack on with running your business.

Earl wanted me to name and shame. But that wouldn’t be sport.