In this webinar, The Analytics Advantage: Driving intelligent engagement, Richard Dixon, Chief Digital Officer, and Anna Corbett, Head of Search and Analytics at Black Sun Global, explored how analytics can be used to generate deeper insight, support continuous improvement and better understand stakeholder behaviour as AI reshapes digital discovery and engagement.
As websites increasingly serve both human users and AI systems, analytics now extend far beyond tracking traffic. They play a central role in understanding how corporate information is accessed, interpreted and acted upon, often outside traditional digital estate.
Analytics is the process of measuring and analysing the performance of digital communications with the aim of improving effectiveness. This means understanding not just how many people arrive on a website, but whether organisations are reaching the right audiences, engaging them with relevant content, and achieving clear outcomes.
AI has fundamentally altered this landscape. Content is now consumed through search engines, AI assistants and large language models, meaning organisations must consider how their owned digital channels fuel reputations and narratives even if users never visit their site.
Analytics therefore needs to operate across a broader value chain, from reach and engagement through to outcomes, and be viewed through both a human and AI lens.
As AI tools increasingly act as gateways to corporate information, organisations need to understand whether their websites are being used as authoritative sources.
Measurement begins with identifying the types of prompts and topics people are likely to search for and monitoring how AI tools respond over time. As AI‑generated responses vary, this requires large‑scale tracking rather than manual spot checks.
Monitoring AI crawls helps reveal whether AI systems are accessing current, accurate content or relying on outdated reports, third‑party sources or legacy training data. Alongside this, referral data shows how users behave when they do arrive from AI platforms - often demonstrating high levels of engagement despite low overall volumes.
Together, these insights provide a clearer picture of visibility, accuracy and authority across AI‑driven discovery.
Alongside AI measurement, traditional web analytics remain essential. However, real value comes from segmentation by audience rather than viewing performance at a channel level.
By segmenting audiences such as jobseekers or investors, organisations can analyse entire journeys, from initial entry points through engagement with content and, ultimately, to desired actions.
For careers audiences, this may involve understanding how campaigns drive traffic to early careers content, which pages inform decisions, and whether users progress to applications.
For investor audiences, analysis often focuses on how engagement changes throughout the reporting cycle, including interaction with investment cases, results content, webcasts and reports.
This approach allows organisations to identify what content matters most to each audience and where journeys can be improved.
Analytics become most powerful when disparate data sources are brought together.
Integrating AI analytics, web performance data and audience insights into a single dashboard enables organisations to identify trends over time, compare AI activity with website behaviour, and understand how discovery influences engagement.
This includes monitoring:
This unified view supports continuous optimisation and more informed decision‑making.
Beyond anonymous usage data, analytics can also reveal which organisations are visiting a website.
Using company‑level identification that does not rely on cookies, organisations can see which companies are accessing specific pages, downloading reports or exploring particular services. This insight supports investor relations, stakeholder communications and B2B engagement, and can be enhanced through alerts and trend analysis.
Several strategic priorities emerge:
Black Sun Global supports organisations across:
If you’d like a copy of the full webinar recording or support across any of these areas, please contact:
Abbie Dixon, Relationship Marketing Executive
adixon@blacksun-global.com
About Black Sun
Black Sun Global is a stakeholder advisory and engagement agency that's been driving transformation and positive change for ambitious brands for more than 20 years. With deep expertise in disclosure and reporting, ESG, sustainability, and digital engagement, we reshape how organisations connect with customers, investors, employees, and the wider world.
We are trusted partners to some of the most influential global organisations, sparking innovation and sustainable performance through our strategic insights, partnerships, and proprietary technologies.
As founders of the Positive Change Group, we are on a mission to create a new kind of stakeholder relations partner. Our world-class specialists work closely with executive leadership teams to protect reputations, inspire trust, and promote responsible business practices - building resilience and long-term value in a rapidly changing world.
For more information, please visit: www.blacksun-global.com
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