The final leg of horse racing’s prestigious Triple Crown race, the Belmont Stakes, was held this past Saturday. The favored horse, I’ll Have Another, was scratched due to a leg injury. For gamblers who would likely to have bet on I’ll Have Another for the Belmont, maybe this saved them some money. Why? I will get to that in a moment.

I was just reading an article on the INFORMS Analytics section, intriguingly titled Analytics, OR and INFORMS - Where the three meet. I am responsible for the Analytics department of a growing digital marketing agency and I have a long career in Operations Research behind me, so the question “What is analytics and how does it relate to Operations Research?“ I wrestle with.

Because of its direct response and data rich nature, paid search is arguably the most analytic of digital marketing activities. If you go to Google, Bing, or other search engine and type in a search query your browser will return a new page: the SERP (Search Engine Results Page).  Generally on the left hand side you will see the results that the engine (that’s how the Technorati refer to Search Engines) regards as the most relevant.

Every day I come to work in digital marketing I find everything has been overturned and needs to be radically rethought. It’s a blast. I made the jump from offline in 2000. I already had a 15-year analytics career behind me but there was very little tolerance for my ignorance.