Which country has the best digital analytics skills?
The ability to turn data into decisions is not the domain of any one country. However some regions stand above others with digital analytics skills. You might guess it’d be a country famous for arithmetic. It could be a region associated with chess champions or even for programming skills. But instead you’d find the top country for digital analytics skills–actually the two top countries for digital analytics skills–are also famous for dance, for food, and for.. . siesta. Think you know? The overall results are first by country and then by US time zone.
Digital Analytics Skills by Country
Famous for dance, for food, and for overall digital marketing skills, Spain takes the lead in digital analytics scores averaging 91.3% for the country. Italy ranks second worldwide at 88% with Turkey (the Q1 leader in digital advertising) earning third place for digital analytics skills. Note that Colombia makes its first appearance in the top 10, ranking 7th with digital analytics scores of 75.6%, just above the worldwide average of 73.5%. Surprised? Don’t be. We’ve been hearing that smart hiring managers know to hire digital marketers who also dance or perform music. So we smile when the regions that brought us the piano and flamenco just ‘happen‘ to perform best at digital analytics. ?
The United States ranks 11th in digital analytics skills with some room to improve. Singapore, usually a strong contender (#2 worldwide) for digital marketing skills, also slips off the top 10 list for digital analytics skills along with the United Kingdom and Germany earning below-average scores.
| Rank | Location | Digital Analytics Skills by Average Score |
| 1 | Spain | 91.3 |
| 2 | Italy | 88 |
| 3 | Turkey | 86.7 |
| 4 | Poland | 84.4 |
| 5 | Ghana | 80.8 |
| 6 | Netherlands | 79.7 |
| 7 | Colombia | 75.6 |
| 8 | Switzerland | 75.1 |
| 9 | Canada | 75.1 |
| 10 | France | 74.5 |
| 11 | United States | 74 |
OMCP is sharing digital marketing skill levels by region as derived from a subset of exams served to thousands of candidates over the last 12 months. OMCP is an independent industry association that verifies digital marketing hard skills via online exams. Certification is awarded by verification of experience, education, exam scores, and training from over 900 providers.
The OMCA digital marketing exams cover the concepts of KPIs, mapping to company goals, audience segmentation, reporting and dashboards, competitive intelligence, surveys and qualitative research and experimentation and testing. OMCP competencies add items for proficiency in analytics implementation such as: Data collection, integration, measurement frameworks, custom segmentation, multi channel attribution, audience definition, and tag management to name a few. Many of the skills apply to Google Analytics, or Adobe Analytics but the exams avoid testing for features specific to only one platform.
OMCP has already published the overall digital marketing skills, digital advertising skills by location, and SEO skills by region. We will add Content Marketing, Social Medial Marketing, Marketing Automation, Mobile Marketing, and Conversion Rate Optimization over the next weeks. Follow OMCP on Twitter to know when the new data is posted. Find the methods and sample size and access to the data here and conditions of use at the end of the post.
Digital Analytics Skills by United States Time Zones (e.g. East Coast vs West Coast)
For once we see the typically dominant East Coast falling behind as the Pacific/Honolulu time zone shows the highest digital analytics skills coming in at 85.8% average score on the OMCA digital analytics exam items, followed by US Mountain at 77.9%. So if you want the best digital analytics professionals, it’s time to move your company and team to Hawaii.
US Central and US Pacific trail at 73.6% and 67.4% respectively, showing signs that some digital analytics training could help boost these scores.
We were a bit surprised, and pleased, to see a smaller region deaminate in this area (see methods and sample size below) and suspect this could be influenced by Hawaii’s Workforce Investment Act program which provides government funding for digital marketing courses accredited to prepare professionals for OMCP and OMCA certification. Indeed all exams results from this time zone were indeed from the Island of Hawaii.
Methods and Sample Size
This data was derived from 1,103 exam instances specifically from a subset of OMCA Practice Exams served over 12 months trailing the date of publication. To protect the privacy of candidates, we omitted a high number of exams that could suggest the performance of a team or a college class undergoing digital marketing readiness testing in a specific region. So for example, if a group of 400 staff from an agency office in Singapore all took the exam, we would eliminate those since, conceivably, someone could derive insights about that team from the reported numbers in that region. This is also why we do not report the number of exams per region, however a region must have at least 10 ‘individual’ (non team) instances to be ranked and then we only included the top 20 regions.
These results do not reflect or include the OMCP Practice Exams, the OMCA Certification Exams or the OMCP Certification exams. The OMCA practice exams serve 24 items, 2-3 per discipline, and the items do not regularly rotate. The items test to the OMCA competencies which verify a concept and component level understanding of the primary digital marketing disciplines. OMCA certification is intended for those who manage marketing teams/programs or must communicate digital marketing concepts. The OMCP exams test for implementation-level skills and are not included in this data.
The location data is derived from the IP address as reported by queries to http://www.geoplugin.net and can be flawed.
Meant to be Fun and Constructive
This data is intended to be used for analysis, reporting, and lighthearted constructive competition. Much like the international Olympics, we’ve seen that friendly competition to improve performance can help everyone. We’d love to see one region work to perform better than another! We predicted that it is unlikely that harm could come from this. But if we see it being used with malice towards any region, nationality, ethnic group, etc. OMCP will take it down and stop reporting it.
Use of the Data and Attribution
You may use the data if you attribute any use to OMCP, with a link back to OMCP. Since the numbers will change, be sure to stay up to date on changes by following OMCP on twitter. Request access to the data tables here (Google Sheets Shared doc request).