2024 Retrospective
30 Dec 2024 » Opinion
We are at the end of 2024. It feels like events are happening faster than ever. Five hundred years ago, most people spent their entire lives in the same area and rarely experienced significant changes in their way of living. Now, we receive news every month about new inventions, revolutions, and shifts in paradigms that we often do not fully understand. I remember when reading vehicle license plates was considered AI; now this technology is nearly a commodity.
Life
In February 2025 it will be 3 years since I moved to the USA. So far, I can confidently say that it has been a great decision. One of the benefits that New York has brought to me is that I have not owned a car since I left the UK, and I do not plan to buy one.
Before the pandemic, I tried to travel to many places, some of which far from the UK: UAE, China, and Thailand were the most distant countries. Now that I am in the US, and it being such a big country, my focus has shifted to exploring destinations within the country. The most impressive place I visited this year was the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado.
Contrary to the global trend of working more from home, I have decided to work about three days a week from the office. I was there the last two days before the winter break and I was almost alone. However, in general, there is always someone and I have met many people, from many areas of Adobe. I completely understand the benefits of working from home, and many people give that weird stare when I say that I want to go to the office. But I have to admit that I enjoy meeting people and the place to do so is in the office. I have also become an active supporter of HOLA, the Hispanic and Latinx at Adobe Employee Network; I was even interviewed for an internal video!
Blog
Before we dive into the blog statistics, I want to share an important aspect of blogging that I have become more aware of in 2024. When I started this blog, I was completely unknown. Over time, some coworkers shared links to my posts, and search engines began ranking my blog higher. As a result, my blog has become popular amongst those who work with the Adobe Experience Cloud. I have met a few people who first knew of me through my blog, only later to meet me virtually or in person. It makes my day when someone tells me they have been reading my blog for months or years and are happy to finally meet me—either in person or online. This feedback means a lot to me, as it takes an average of 4 hours to write a post, and getting these comments makes it all worthwhile. To all of you regularly reading my blog—THANK YOU!
Metrics
Let’s now review how this blog has been performing for the past 12 months:
| Metric | 2024 | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Page Views | 66,772 | +28.5% |
| Visits | 52,249 | +42.8% |
| Visitors | 44,177 | +69.9% |
Countries
Something happened during the middle months of the year, where the traffic was clearly unusual. I expect these numbers to go down in 2025, when I will get a traffic similar to 2023. This anomaly can also be seen in the countries heatmap, where Singapore has taken the top spot:
The top 5 countries are:
- Singapore: 37.2%
- United States: 22.3%
- India: 13.7%
- United Kingdom: 3.8%
- Canada: 3.1%
I suspect something unusual is happening here. Last year, Singapore was 8th on my list, with just 2.5% of the traffic. One possibility is that many people in Asia are now forced to use VPNs and the egress IP address is in Singapore. Another one is that someone was trying to take down my website or take control of it, I do not know and I will leave it there for now.
Posts popularity
These have been the most popular posts in 2024:
| Pos | Post | Position 2023 | % Page Views | Time Spent Per Visitor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Adobe Analytics vs Customer Journey Analytics | N/A | 4.0% | 316 |
| 2. | Adobe Journey Optimizer vs Adobe Campaign Classic vs Marketo | 1 | 3.1% | 355 |
| 3. | Use Cases vs Capabilities | N/A | 2.6% | 285 |
| 4. | Website Flicker: The Problem | N/A | 1.6% | 252 |
| 5. | Segment Evaluation Methods in AEP | 7 | 1.6% | 328 |
| 6. | Tutorial AEM-Launch Integration | 4 | 1.6% | 333 |
| 7. | Understanding AEP Identities | 3 | 1.5% | 348 |
| 8. | Introduction to Offer Decisioning Engine | 18 | 1.3% | 460 |
| 9. | CDP vs MDM | N/A | 1.3% | 181 |
| 10. | XDM Data Modeling | N/A | 1.1% | 321 |
| 11. | Segments vs Audiences | 5 | 1.1% | 200 |
| 12. | Segmentation in AEP | 6 | 1.1% | 249 |
| 13. | Non-People Profiles in AEP | N/A | 1.1% | 269 |
| 14. | RTCDP vs AAM | 2 | 1.0% | 311 |
| 15. | Introduction to Consent Management | 43 | 1.0% | 402 |
Comparing two concepts or tools has been very popular this year, just as it was last year. Six of the top fifteen posts—including the top three—are comparisons. I am not surprised, as three of these comparisons are between legacy, stand-alone tools and AEP applications. Many of my clients are migrating from the former to the latter, but I can understand the hesitation and, thus, the search for information to make an educated decision.
The biggest surprises to me are the Tutorial AEM-Launch Integration, which is more than 3 years old and still popular, and the rise of Introduction to Consent Management, one of the most boring topics for me.
If you check the previous end-of-year retrospectives, you will see that How to debug an Adobe Analytics implementation was always at the top. It has finally dropped from the top 15, which I think is positive. It is a very old post and there are better ways to debug these days. I am not going to write a new post on this topic, as I am not closer anymore to the topic.
Traffic sources
In previous years I did not talk too much about traffic sources, but I want to start tracking them, as I expect a shift over time.
- Google is the number one traffic source by far, with almost 50% of the traffic coming from one of its domains.
- LinkedIn is the top social network bringing traffic, totalling 8%; I would have expected more, as I share all my posts there.
- Although only a tiny speck, Perplexity is bringing a few dozen visitors, which means that my posts have been used to train its algorithm.
What does 2025 look like?
If I had a crystal ball that could predict the future, I would not be writing this blog. Instead, I would be sipping a cocktail somewhere in the Caribbean! 
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More seriously though, I do not expect many changes in my life. I will be returning to the Adobe Summit in March, to deliver a session with one of my customers. Let’s also see what happens with the new US administration.
Other than that, let’s just wait and see what unfolds.
Happy New Year! Here’s to a great start in 2025!