Analytics

Analytics Roundup – Updates from September 2025

My roundup of recent analytics news and ideas. I mostly work in the Google analytics stack and I’m a little bit obsessed with the intersection of AI and analytics. 

We Can Touch Infinity

“In a world where we can measure everything, or we think we can measure everything, how wonderful it is that you could have poetry or music that actually makes you think you are touching infinity.” – Yo Yo Ma

While I’ve really been enjoying exploring how AI can improve my workflows and help me uncover insights, I’ve also been feeling a bit anxious about the broader implications of AI on the job market and income inequality. I think these are legitimate concerns, but some recent readings have tempered my concerns a bit:

  • LLMs are extremely fallible.
    OpenAI recently shared results from accuracy tests they ran on gpt-5-thinking-mini. TL;DR: it answered questions right 22% of the time and wrong 26% of the time. This jibes with my own experience as I’ve ventured beyond questions that mostly require regurgitation.
  • Fallability may be more of a feature than a bug.
    There are inherent limitations to LLM’s ability to solve problems in unconstrained topic domains.
  • The impact of AI on productivity is mixed.
    Many organizations are finding that the cost of amplified mediocrity is counteracting efficiency gains, and AI is actually making experienced software developers less productive! The latter is an important bellwether because of how quickly AI tools and processes have been incorporated into the dev world.

I recognize that it is early days yet and we continue to see improvements in AI models and applications, but these challenges run pretty deep. 

The parlor tricks LLMs can perform resemble real intelligence because that’s more or less what they are designed to do. What they can’t do well, however, is to navigate poorly-mapped topic domains with no clear boundaries. Humans aren’t always perfect at that either, but it is more or less what we are designed to do.

I will continue to explore ways AI can help with data gathering, cleaning, modeling, routine analysis, and visualization, but I am not quite as concerned about impending human irrelevance as I was a few weeks ago. AI is giving me more time to do the things I love, which are synthesizing, teaching, and creating.  Yo Yo Ma may be better than most, but we all have it in us to touch infinity.

Product Updates

  • Looker Studio added conditional formatting capability to query results variables.
  • Google Analytics added automated advertising cost importing from Pinterest and Snap. They already had support for Reddit, but unfortunately not LinkedIn nor Meta yet.

Workflow

Attribution

Ideas

Nico Brooks

Nico loves marketing analytics, running, and analytics about running. He's Two Octobers' Head of Analytics, and loves teaching. Learn more about Nico or read more blogs he has written.

Recent Posts

Digital Marketing Updates: October 2025

New in digital marketing this month: towards ads in ChatGPT, TikTok to get American owner,…

14 hours ago

Digital Marketing Updates: September 2025

New: ChatGPT using Google's index, LinkedIn and TikTok platform updates.

4 weeks ago

Analytics Roundup – Updates from August 2025

Using AI to create a measurement plan, comparing AEO visibility tools, upcoming iOS privacy changes,…

1 month ago