Artificial intelligence, machine learning, and automation in analytics and marketing (127 posts)
Bots now make more web page requests than humans do. Dara and Matthew cover the OpenAI sandbox escape, Kimi K3 and Apple v OpenAI, then ask what the web becomes when it can no longer serve people and agents at the same time.
As agents take on more of the routine work, what does the analyst's role become? Dara and Matthew cover GPT-5.6, Fable and the cost of AI, then ask where humans add the most value when the resource being automated is intelligence itself.
We spent a week testing OpenAI's ChatGPT, Codex and deep research against Claude, including a blind four-way build-off to make a running-race predictor. Where does each tool win, and would we switch? Plus Anthropic's near-trillion valuation and the case for Clippy.
An AI agent will answer any question about your data, confidently and often wrongly. Agentic analytics works only on a governed semantic layer. Here is why.
Google made data strength central at GML 2026. But it is not a setting you switch on. Here is what actually builds it: consent, server-side, and a warehouse.
Dara and Matthew unpack Google Cloud Next '26 and I/O '26: the Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, Gemini 3.5 Flash, Omni, Antigravity 2.0 and generative AI search. Plus a breaking-news bulletin on Anthropic's new Fable model, and why agents are the headline but governance is the subplot.
Dara and Matthew cover frontier model updates, Mythos, Google I/O, and AI design tools before officially introducing SEAM - Measurelab's semantic governance layer that sits between LLMs and data sources to deliver consistent, audited answers.
Martin Sahlen, CEO of Alvin AI, joins the Measure Pod to discuss automating BigQuery cost optimisation through billing model arbitrage, with no AI in the engine.
Colin Zima, CEO of Omni & Looker veteran, joins the Measure Pod to discuss revolutionising analytics by integrating AI into modern data tools.
AI doesn't fix bad data; it scales it. In 2026, a derelict data warehouse isn't just a nuisance, it’s an existential risk.
In this 30-minute session, we unpacked what we had been experimenting with using Google’s conversational AI to spend less time wrangling data and more time actually learning from it.
AI's revolution is already here. We're too busy debating its future to harness the transformational power of today's models.
Dara and Matthew recap 2025 with 12 top highlights, AI, analytics, and the best moments on The Measure Pod.
NL-SQL tools can transform how you query data - but only if your foundations are solid. Here's an honest look at what works and what doesn't.
AI expert Daniel Hulme, founder of Satalia, shares his journey from UCL PhD to entrepreneur, discussing AI, consciousness & deep tech.
Dara and Matthew chat with Juliana Jackson on her journey, product mindset, and how AI is shaping modern analytics.
Yali Sassoon joins The Measure Pod to discuss Snowplow’s growth, AI innovation, data challenges, and the future of user experience.
Johan van de Werken joins The Measure Pod to discuss GA4Dataform, BigQuery, and the future of analytics engineering and automation.
In this episode of The Measure Pod, Dara and Matthew sit down with Mark Edmondson, AI Engineer, founder of Sunholo, Aitana, and board member at 8-bit-sheep.
In this episode of The Measure Pod, Dara and Matthew sit down with Brian Clifton, the former Head of Web Analytics at Google (EMEA), author, and founder of Verified-Data.com and Advisor to Piwik PRO.
At the start of the year, if you’d asked us whether Measurelab would be standing shoulder to shoulder with Europe’s biggest consultancies by September, we would've been surprised. Not because we don't believe in ourselves, but because these things feel so distant - until suddenly, they’re not. So, here it is: we’ve been awarded the Marketing Analytics Services Partner Specialisation in Google Cloud Partner Advantage. What’s the big deal? In Google’s own words (with the obligatory Zs): “Spec
In this episode of The Measure Pod, Dara and Matthew sit down with Gunnar Griese from 8-bit-sheep to discuss MCPs and their growing role in digital analytics.
BigQuery just got a major upgrade, you can now plug directly into Vertex AI using the new AI.GENERATE function. Translation: your analytics data and generative AI are now best friends, and they’re hanging out right inside SQL. That opens up a whole world of new analysis options for GA4 data, but it also raises some questions: * How do you actually set it up? * What’s it good for (and when should you avoid it)? * Why would you batch the query? Let’s walk through it step by step. Step 1: H
In this episode of The Measure Pod, Dara and Matt welcome Josele Perez, co-founder of Trackingplan, to dive into the evolving challenges and opportunities in data collection.
In this episode of The Measure Pod, Dara and Matt sit down with Roman Petrochenkov, a seasoned marketing analytics leader with deep expertise in data strategy and measurement.
In this episode of The Measure Pod, Dara and Matt are joined by Chad Sanderson from Gable.ai, a seasoned expert in the data space with a diverse background ranging from journalism to data science.
If you’d told me five years ago that I’d be forecasting product demand using a model trained on 100 billion time points… without writing a single line of ML code… I probably would’ve asked how many coffees you’d had that day ☕️ But its a brand new world. And it’s possible. Let me explain What is TimesFM? TimesFM is a new foundation model from Google, built specifically for time-series forecasting. Think of it like GPT for time, instead of predicting the next word in a sentence, it predicts t
In this episode of The Measure Pod, Dara and Matt are joined by Denis Golubovsky from Stape.io, the team making server-side Google Tag Manager implementation as simple as the click of a button.
In this episode of The Measure Pod, Dara and Matt are joined by István Mészáros, founder and CEO of Mitzu - a company who have built a warehouse-native product analytics solution.
In this episode of The Measure Pod, Dara and Mattew are joined by Antony Mayfield to talk about what 15+ years of digital transformation work actually looks like and how it’s changed.
In this episode of The Measure Pod, Dara and Matt are joined by Verónica Delgado-Benito to chat through her journey from molecular biology PhD to data analyst at Springer Nature.
In this episode of The Measure Pod, Dara and Matt dive into a whole mix of marketing analytics news and musings. From new BigQuery features and GA4 updates to ChatGPT integrations and data quality best practices.
In this episode of Behind the Cloud, Matt explores BigQuery’s new Data Preparation feature, an AI-powered, point-and-click tool for transforming data with ease. From natural language transformations using Gemini to automated workflows and scheduled outputs, learn how Google is simplifying data prep for analytics and machine learning. Video transcript [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of Behind the Cloud. Today we are gonna look at a feature or a service, or whatever you wanna ca
In this episode of The Measure Pod, Dara and Matthew take the reins and dive into the biggest takeaways from Google Cloud Next 2025.
In this special episode of The Measure Pod, Dan and Bhav bid farewell as they step back from the show, making way for Dara to take the helm as a familiar voice returning to the podcast.
In this week's episode of The Measure Pod, Dan and Bhav are joined by Jorge Ahumada Garcia from Coppel, one of Mexico’s largest retailers and banks.
In this week's episode of The Measure Pod, Dan and Bhav are joined by Egor Howell, a rising voice in data science and content creation.
In this episode of The Measure Pod, Dan and Bhav are joined by Ole Bossdorf, an analytics expert at venture capital firm Project A, which boasts a portfolio of over 120 companies.
Same same but different At the beginning of the year, I wasn't quite sure what Measurelab would look like by the end of 2024. Altman's assistants had just been unleashed. The robots were on the march. Would the analytics arena be conquered by AI? Would we all be replaced by intelligent agents? As it turns out, no. Things are pretty much the same - on the surface at least. And that's no bad thing. After the tumultuous ups and downs of a rollercoaster 2023, I'll take steady, deliberate progress
In this week's episode of The Measure Pod, Dan and Bhav are joined by János Moldvay from Funnel to dive into the intricacies of Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM), Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA), and the future of marketing measurement.
In this week's episode of The Measure Pod, Dan and Bhav dive into the intricate world of product analytics.
In this episode of The Measure Pod, Dan and Bhav welcome back Adam Greco from Amplitude.
This week's episode of The Measure Pod was recorded live at MeasureCamp London, where Dan and Bhav discussed the future of analytics, specifically what it could look like in the next decade.
In this week's episode of The Measure Pod, Dan and Bhav had the pleasure of speaking with Gabor Mester, a seasoned analytics professional who has spent over 13 years at Sony, specifically with PlayStation.
In this week's episode of The Measure Pod, Dan and Bhav reflect on insights gained from MeasureCamp London, and dive into the thought-provoking topic of "the death of accuracy."
In this week's episode of The Measure Pod, Dan and Bhav welcome back Steen Rasmussen from IIH Nordic, a previous guest known for his insightful perspectives.
In this week's episode of The Measure Pod, Dan and Bhav explore the concept of what a senior analyst looks like and how to reach that level in your career.
In this week's episode of The Measure Pod, Dan and Bhav are joined by Juliana Jackson, who has a diverse background in sales, product, training, and analytics.
In this episode of Behind the Cloud, Matthew delves into the world of generative AI in the Google Cloud Platform, highlighting how Google has integrated generative AI features into its various services. Matthew explores the ways generative AI can be used within BigQuery, such as generating SQL queries and Python notebooks! Video transcript Introduction to Generative AI in Google Cloud [00:00:00] Matt: Hello and welcome to another episode of Behind the Cloud. Uh, today we’re going to cover g
Navigating the ever-evolving landscape of marketing technology, I've come to terms with a key realisation: marketing analytics is marketing. This acknowledgment hasn't always been easy. Years ago, as a humble web analyst, the lines weren't as blurred. However, with the advent of tools like Google Analytics 4 (GA4), stringent privacy laws such as GDPR, and changing browser policies like those of Safari, the role of a web analyst has transformed significantly. In the old world - us web analysts
In this week's episode of The Measure Pod, Dan and Bhav are joined by Ken Williams from DiveTeam to discuss modern marketing and measurement strategy.
There’s a lot of advice right now on why you should adopt and use Google BigQuery for data analytics. But what is SQL? Is it for you? And how can you convince budget holders that it is a good idea?
How Measurelab put our structures and policies in place around generative AI and how our exploration of the technology led us to the create Brian, our very own generative AI assistant
Data is a journey, not a destination. Learn how to navigate the complexities of data work by embracing flexibility and continuous improvement. Dive into practical insights on leveraging existing tools, investing in people, and appreciating partial data.
In this week's episode of The Measure Pod, Dan and Bhav discuss the concept of treating data as a journey, not just a destination.
In this episode of Behind the Cloud, Matt explains how to organise GCP projects by specific use cases, how to automate processes, establish clear naming conventions, and follow best practices around security, tagging, and more. Video transcript Introduction [00:00:00] Matthew: Hello and welcome to another episode of Behind the Cloud. We’ve had a little bit of a brief hiatus but now we’re back and we’re going to do another series of videos. Today we’re going to kick off with what arguably sh
In this week's episode of The Measure Pod it's the end of an era as we bid farewell to our fellow co-host, Dara Fitzgerald.
In this week's episode of The Measure Pod we spoke with Gaurav Tiwari, ex-Meta, currently working as an Engineering Manager at Spotify.
In this week's episode of The Measure Pod we spoke with David Jayatillake, co-founder of Delphi and organiser of the London Analytics Meetup.
In this week's episode of The Measure Pod we spoke with Tim Ceuppens, a creative thinker in the field of data and marketing.
In this week's episode of The Measure Pod we spoke with Alun Lucas, the Managing Director at Zuko Analytics. We spoke specifically about webforms, and the optimisation tool Zuko has built to help businesses.
In this episode of Behind the Cloud, Matthew aims to answer the question: what are the Google Cloud Platform tools of the marketing analytics trade? And more specifically, what are the tools that you should care about in Google Cloud. For a more in-depth write up on Google Cloud tools, check out Matt’s blog post. Video transcript [00:00:00] Matt: Hello and welcome to today’s episode of Behind the Cloud. We’re going to try and answer the question, what are the GCP tools of the marketing analyt
In this week's episode of The Measure Pod we spoke with Matt Jones, a Technical SEO freelancer, and creator of the Freelancing Friends community and podcast.
2023 was a momentous year for Measurelab. It marked a decade of delivering analytics excellence to the world, a year when we were named one of the UK’s best places to work and became a fully-certified GCP partner, a summer that saw the sunsetting of Universal Analytics, followed by the new dawn of generative AI and the beginning of an augmented analytics era. Into the sunset From the very beginning of January, right up to the deprecation deadline of July 1st, we were swamped with GA4 migratio
In this week's episode of The Measure Pod, it's our Christmas special! Dan and Bhav discuss the highs and lows of the past year, and predictions for 2024.
In this week's episode of The Measure Pod we spoke to Adam Greco from Amplitude. We talked specifically around warehouse native analytics, and whether it's a passing trend or an integral part of the future.
There’s nowhere you can hide from AI at the moment. And the Measured Opinions blog is no exception. Here’s what’s changing at Measurelab. And what’s going to remain reassuringly familiar.
Using Zapier AI automation, we aim to build our very own GPT capable of grabbing data from BigQuery for analysis.
The GCP is vast and overwhelming. We aim to sort through the clutter and help highlight what you need to know as a digital marketing professional.
Pret a Manger is a brick and mortar chain of coffee shops serving freshly made food and good organic coffee. They have 600+ stores distributed globally and their analytics team is responsible for over 30 million events every month collected across both web and app. “Measurelab have been a key partner to us as we’ve undertaken a complete overhaul of our app and web analytics. Having access to the wide range of skillsets within the organisation has been invaluable as we’ve embarked on this journ
Full show notes, transcript and (NEW!) AI chatbot - https://bit.ly/3tEDQL8. 00:00 Start 00:15 Intro 00:40 Main topic 00:40 What’s the biggest challenge today which will be gone in five years time? 03:42 What will be the biggest challenge in the next five years? 07:53 Outro ----- Episode Summary:
In this week's episode of The Measure Pod, Bhav reflects on his biggest career failure: self-serve analytics. They discuss the challenges and complexities of implementing self-serve analytics in organisations, highlighting the factors that contribute to its success or failure.
In this week's episode, we dive into the fascinating world of analytics as a data product. Our guest, Weiting Xu, shares their insights and experiences as the head of data at Cazoo.
In this week's episode of The Measure Pod, we speak with Shaun McGirr from Dataiku. We explore the world of A/B testing, experimentation, and the future of analysts' roles as generative AI becomes more prevalent.
In this episode Dan, Dara and Bhav had the pleasure of chatting with Alex, Head of SEO & Marketing Technology at ASOS.
Join Dan, Dara and Bhav dive into the topic of data literacy, discussing the importance of data curiosity, data storytelling, and effective data communication.
Join Dan, Dara and Bhav discuss the future of product analytics tools and the intersection between product analytics and marketing analytics.
Dan, Dara and Bhav are joined by David Mannheim (founder of Made With Intent and author of The Person In Personalisation) to talk about the world of personalisation.
Dan and Dara kick off a new season of The Measure Pod by introducing Bhav Patel as a guest co-host and discussing all things marketing and product analytics.
This week Dan and Dara are joined by Rasmus Houlind - author of the book Hello $FirstName and CXO at Agillic.
This week Dan and Dara chat about quantitative and qualitative data, the merits of each type, and how they need to be used together and not siloed away in different teams.
This week Dan and Dara are joined by Alexis Nicolas from brīt klik. They discuss the reasons why companies would want to move beyond just using Google Ads to use the GMP, and where GA fits into this.
What are custom insights? Sometimes the data available in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) can seem a bit overwhelming especially if you have a complex site with lots of users coming and going every day. It can often seem difficult to quickly identify the most important trends or anomalies. Thankfully GA4’s Analytics Intelligence is here to help bring some much needed clarity. This is a group of features that uses modelling to help you understand your data. Insights is one such feature and it comes in
This week Dan and Dara are back solo this week to talk about the recent news from Google that they are removing most of the rules-based attribution models from GA and Google Ads.
This week Dan and Dara are joined by Phil Gomm and Tony Reeves from Ding, a learning design consultancy.
GA4 doesn’t track people, it tracks users. But users are the closest proxy we have to counting people, so we end up just using it anyway, but do you know what it means?
This week Dan and Dara are joined by Johan van de Werken, creator of GA4BigQuery.com. They chat about how GA4BigQuery started and where it's going, how Johan moved from letters to numbers.
This week Dan and Dara are once again running solo, to discuss the Universal Analytics (UA) sunset timeline and when you should have Google Analytics 4 in place.
Google Analytics 360 (GA360) is worth knowing about, especially if you’re using Google Analytics 4 (GA4) to report on a business that gets a lot of daily traffic; has multiple analytics projects dependent on the BigQuery extract; operates on a lot of different sites and/or apps or has a particularly
This week Dan and Dara talk about the very recent announcement that Google Optimize will be sunset on 30th September 2023.
This week Dan is joined by Usman Qureshi from the CRO agency Spiralyze to discuss all the GA4 features that they need to see in 2023.
This week Dan and Dara are chatting about what they think will change in the analytics industry in 2023.
This week Dan and Dara discuss the recent changes announces from Apple on the way they will be copping 1st party cookie lifetimes - even if being being set via server-side GTM.
This week Dan and Dara are joined by Rowenna Fielding "a warrior on the front line of the fight to defend humanity's rights and freedoms in an increasingly tech dystopia", and helps organisations stitch together technology, law and humanity to make stuff work the way they want it to.
Dan and Dara are back, and this week are discussing the recent update from Google Analytics where they are now enforcing their Data API quotas.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to building an analytics team, but there are four types of people you should look for to advance your in-house analytics capabilities.
This week Dan and Dara discuss the recent announcement that the sunsetting of GA360 has been pushed back 9 months to the 1st July 2024.
This week Dan and Dara are joined by JJ Reynolds to chat about the recent rebranding of Data Studio to Looker Studio and what it means for the rest of us.
This week Dara is joined by fellow Measurelabber Katie to discuss her recent talk at MeasureFest (part of brightonSEO). They run through the talk content around why everyone using GA4 should get onboard with BigQuery.
This week Dan and Dara reflect on the current state of play with Google Analytics 4 (GA4), with migrations being a hot topic at the moment for Measurelab.
This week Dan and Dara chat with Jim Sterne and chat about the Digital Analytics Association and his long and illustrious career in digital.
This week Dan and Dara are joined by Richard Fergie to chat all about forecasting with machine learning models, and the flaws in Google Analytics 4's machine learning approach to watch out for.
This week Dan and Dara discuss the latest Google Analytics 4 release of behavioural modelling with consent mode - possibly the biggest single update to Google Analytics ever!
This week Dan and Dara are joined by Edward Upton to talk about how Littledata are approaching GA4 with all of their ecommerce clients across Shopify and BigCommerce.
Consent Mode is used in Google Analytics 4 to model unconsented user data into the reports, but what is it? This guide will explore what Consent Mode is, and how GA4 and GTM utilises it.
In April 2022, a few Measurelabbers got together for three days to attend brightonSEO and MeasureFest (an analytics-themed fringe event). After the three days, we all got together to discuss our favourite stand-out talks of the event on The Measure Pod podcast which you can listen to below.
This week Dan and Dara discuss how to measure the return on analytics and the different ways that analytics specialists can measure a tangible return for their hard work.
This week Dan and Dara chat through all of the event types Google Analytics 4 has to offer - from automatically collected, to enhanced measurement, to customised.
This week Dan and Dara are joined by Liam Grant and Matthew Hooson to chat about their experiences at MeasureFest and brightonSEO.
How will Google’s machine learning conversion modelling and other models change analytics? Is this the end of real data?
This week Dan and Dara discuss where they think the future of Google Analytics is heading. Spoiler alert - like it or not, it's all GA4.
This week Dan and Dara are joined by Lace-Chantelle Rogers to discuss why it's important to link GA4 to BigQuery as soon as possible.
There are a lot of benefits to linking your GA4 data to BigQuery – we’ve got ten good reasons for you to take your analytics to the next level today.
This week Dan and Dara have guest Mark Rochefort, Technology and Operations Director at Measurelab. They discuss why being impartial is vital in marketing analytics and the skills becoming more important to spot unconscious and conscious biases when working with data. The article from G
This week Dan and Dara discuss how the access to 'real' data in Google Analytics is becoming more limited due to technology and legislation changes.
This week Dan and Dara chat attribution modelling and how/where/if/when it's useful and important to invest in.
BigQuery is literally the next “Big” thing (with a capital B) in analytics. We explain what it is, how some of our clients are already using it, how much it costs and where you can start.
Sometimes less is more; especially when it comes to security access. This simple walkthrough will show you how to use GCP IAM to surface just the parts of your data warehouse to just the right people.
We all need to play our part in promoting a more responsible, ethical approach to collecting and using customer data. If we don’t, there’s a risk we’ll be left with nothing to measure.
Be warned: the risk of sticking with your current Google Analytics implementation may well be greater than any costs associated with the "migration" to GA4.
At Measurelab, we love a bit of data warehousing using BigQuery; in fact, we are obsessed with finding the best approach to managing data warehouses in the most optimal way possible. So in this series, we want to share with you our knowledge and expertise to show what a fantastic and dynamic tool BigQuery is. As you may know, BigQuery has some super powerful features, which allow us to build, manipulate and even run machine learning algorithms within the interface. However, we’re all human, an
At Measurelab we live and breathe the Google Cloud Platform, so our specialists are experts in Bigquery. We have decided in this series to share our knowledge and take you through some great techniques to maintain your BigQuery data warehouse. So firstly-what is BigQuery? BigQuery is a fully-managed, serverless data warehouse that enables scalable analysis over petabytes of data. ...and that means? Simply put, BigQuery is a fantastic cloud-based data warehouse in which you can store huge
There are many different types of image recognition. The main aim of such practises is to correctly match a new picture to an existing group of pictures. In some instances it is not dissimilar to how a clustering algorithm works, in that common features are identified and grouped together (Moosmann et al., 2008). Although several methods of image recognition exist, this blog post will give an overview of the method of facial image recognition that has been patented by Tsai (2004). This inventio
Whether you’re starting on your CRO journey or have been at it for years, chances are you’re after opportunities to give your bottom line a boost during the festive season. Taking some time to plan and carefully curate those optimisation journeys will not only go some way to making sure the additional traffic works better for you, it’ll result in a meaningful set of results and maximise learnings for the post-Christmas wash ups. Having worked 5 years for a well-known UK health and beauty re
In the last couple of months we've had three new starters and I'd like to give them a little nod of recognition, if I may. First up is (Doctor) Dave, who joined us as a Data Scientist in the Summer; he popped along to one of our Brighton Analytics meetups and it just went from there. Dave's background is in terribly clever machine vision stuff - he was recently working in Barcelona (at Universitat Pompeu Fabra) doing Postdoctoral Research involving adaptive image processing algorithms (wher
<strong>IMPORTANT: THE PACKAGE HAS BEEN UPDATED BUT ADAM HASN'T HAD TIME TO UPDATE THIS YET! PROCEED AT YOUR PERIL!</strong> Last time, we had a look at how we could use RGA to pull in account details and suchlike. It’s not essential, but I’d suggest you go back and read through it, as it might make some of what we do next a little easier – and, of course, if you haven’t done so already, read the first piece too and follow the instructions enumerated therein to allow you to do, well, any of
Diving into GA health checks Right, now that some of the basic concepts and industry jargon are starting to sound a bit more familiar, things are starting to get interesting – not that last week was boring but this week I’ve been having a go at one of the most important parts of a piece of “initial discovery” for a client: A Google Analytics Health Check. Our approach to health checks In this document, which the team creates for every single one of our clients, we run a detailed audit of the