Posted by Andrew Edwards on February 7th, 2011 at 6:31 pm

About a year ago I was at a conference where Huffington Post's head of Analytics was talking about how they used data coming off their site, which had just passed the Washington Post in online viewership.

At the time I felt it was of some moment that HuffPo had passed WaPo, but now that WaPo is far back in the dust of HuffPo, it seems like less of a milestone. But I was impressed with what I was hearing about HuffPo's web analytics at the time.

Now that HuffPo is part of Aol, I am thinking either that Arianna has made a mistake by forming a bond with the spun-off good-for-nothing that used to be the first name in that erstwhile media giant (NOT) AOL-Time-Warner; or that web analytics has finally paid off big for someone and she is making yet another smart, bold move towards digital media hegemony.

This is not a tale of technical details. I don't even know what platform HuffPo has been using--a combination of more than one major vendor tool plus a mix of home-grown solutions if I recall the conference session. But what I do remember, and thought at the time would make HuffPo a good bet if I were an investor, was the way it actually paid attention to the analytics it received from its own sites.

The thinking was that, of course the analytics platform itself had to be well-oiled and accurate (no small task for most); but assuming that was all taken care of, the next step was: Pay attention!

In other words, according the HuffPo spokesman, their marketers and their editorial staff watched analytics in real time, all day every day, and reacted to what people seemed interested in.

Then, they in fact made changes quickly based on where they saw user interest.

I remember thinking it sounded so simple. Yet I knew then as now that the crying shame in digital marketing is how infrequently a marketing or editorial department actually makes analytics part of their daily task; and not only analytics itself, but changes based on information gathered from analytics.

It remains simple to talk about and hard to do: put good analytics in place and then use what you find to make rapid, intelligent marketing and editorial decisions.

Often an "old guard" is in the way, ignoring data in favor of seniority or "clout"; or the messaging is controlled by an interested third party such as an agency that does not want to be caught out with a bad campaign; or the data interpretation and use is in the hands of folks not ready to fully embrace the task either with their current knowledge base or their enthusiasm to convince others to move quickly. Or, simply, the corporate culture is mired in red tape and changes can't be made in time to mean anything.

But think about it: HuffPo was kind of a nothing brand at one time. Now they are huge. If you were to ask me what I think put them over the top, I would say two things: a willingness to innovate in general; and a willingness to take action based on data collected.

It really can be that simple.