Category Archives: analytics

Web Analytics: Online Marketing Measurement

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Good news: I’ll be returning to the classroom for the first time this Spring since “Marketing with Digital Media” at Columbia College way back in the mid-90s; teaching a new course that I’ve developed this time at my alma mater .

Here are the main areas that I’m planning to cover in Web Analytics: Online Marketing Measurement:

  • Develop a plan to measure online marketing based on solid best-practices
  • Know the essential technology of Web analytics and industry terminology
  • Learn how to use industry-standard tools like Google Analytics and Quantcast
  • Prepare meaningful actionable reports that communicate essential findings
  • Make fact-based recommendations and identify opportunities for optimization

Analytics has so many definitions – depends who you ask. What do people want to see?

TwitClicks drops Twitter user feature?

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TwitClicks is a good URL shortening and analytics service. At free it is hard to complain too much.

However, there has been a noticeable absence of a key and unique qualitative reporting feature of TwitClicks – “Who Visited – See Best Guess”. While the domain of the traffic source shows up (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN even Ning show up fine) since March or April 2009 there is no more data on specific Twitter users. Previously, this worked great and revealed which users were responding to which messages – essential for understanding response and viral propagation.

A simple test was performed on a recent post on this very blog to determine the source of the problem. A TwitClicks shortened URL was posted on Twitter and functioned fine.

TwitClicks results.

However, when it came to reporting the previously available user name feature TwitClicks consistently provides no data over several more tests. More specificlly, there are absolutely no user names of Twitter clickers anymore. Possibly, related to this it was determined after a referral monitoring test that Google Analytics was being used on a redirected TwitClicks page – basically in the middle between Twitter and the target landing page. While the redirect process is essential, it unclear what value the JavScript-based Google Analytics system brings in the context of TwitClicks.

With all the compeition for URL-shortners and Twitter analytics tools, it is odd that this feature was dropped at this time. Inquiries to TwitClicks have not been successful – would love to hear from other measurement-oriented folks if they are having the same experience.

Advanced Segments in Google Analytics…Advanced turns out to be a Relative Term

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Some caveats if you are contemplating using the free Google Analytics tool (and free advice to the product manager). Before bringing you down, there are some positives of this tool and feature:

Pluses:

  • It’s FREE.
  • Better than filters which are not retroactive.

Minuses (in no particular order):

  • Buried deep in the tool, several tedious clicks to get to them
  • No way to suppress GA’s canned segments
  • No way to export or import segments or filters (get a piece of paper and pen out)
  • Cumbersome drag and drop interface; it feels like a toy
  • Limit of 20 criteria per segment (are you kidding?)
  • Inability to join or combine segments themselves using Boolean operators
  • Segments are tied to you, the user and your GA account; in practice this means that all of your segments follow you across site profiles (no way to manage them) but not across GA accounts.
  • No way to categorize the segments you have
  • Cannot be used with Absolute Unique Visitors (why is this?)
  • Of course it is subject to the limitations that all JS-based site metrics tools have, i.e. ignores all of these accesses. See my other post on the subject.

This post is subject to update…afterall Google Analytics is still in Beta!

Measurement Gobbledygook

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With the proliferation of analytics, there has also been a boom in jargon, semantic-driven miscues and misuse of terminology essential to business management.

Goal – the singular and primary winning state that is desired.

Objective – the measurable milestones that contribute and define the goal.

Strategy – the actions, tasks and/or steps needed to realize the goal.

Tactic – the tools or implements used to support execution of the strategy and reach the objectives.

SM (Success Metric) A subset of metrics or KPIs that communicate the efficacy

KPI (Key Performance Indicator) An important measure that should be tracked and reported.

MVA (Most Valued Action) Like an SM, but generic enough to include clicks or other non-page serving activity.

Precision Exactness of a measurement, e.g. 1.2 Page Views/Visit versus 1 vs 1.2109.

Accuracy Indication of how close a measure is to the generally accepted; it is about the relative difference.

Efficiency Measure of how well desired outcome is achieved per given unit of input, often expressed as a ratio

Efficacy Measure of the ability to produce a avery specific outcome, often a binary determination under given conditions.

Effectiveness Measure of the capability to produce the desired outcome, used more generally and as a relative measure.

The fuzzy math behind digital’s value – iMediaConnection.com

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Interesting take…no mention of the comparative cost of online publishing compared to TV and print.

How can 20 million online users be worth less to advertisers than 1 million print readers? Welcome to digital’s ongoing struggle to decide whether superior ROI and engagement capabilities are worth ad rate equality.

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Branding only Works on Cattle (Proto-Review)

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Chicago-based Ad Age writer, author and otherwise brand provacateur, Jonathan Salem Baskin shared a free chapter from his new book, Branding Only Works on Cattle.


In short, after reading Traces in a Cloud Chamber (Chapter 2), I have added BOWOC to my list of books to checkout although I am on a book diet (digital books don’t count).

While I’m not 100% on-board with the notion that branding doesn’t work or only works on farm animals (just got done reading Unconscious Processing of Web Ads by Prof. Chan Yun Yoo), JSB raises some serious issues about the qualitative world of brand effectiveness/efficacy studies. Nicely coinciding with my return to the agency-side of the world, clients have a voracious appetite and need to third-party justify what they anecdotally know works.

Some key thoughts:

  1. Manifesto? BOWOC sounds like a manifesto for the nascent concept of Behavior-Based Media Planning; More on it here from Atlas Institute and Andy Chen with ClickZ. Agencies have enough challenges to be proactive in this area but it is coming. Every direct marketer (and psychoanalyst) knows that past behavior is a better predicter of future behavior than both attitude and intention.
  2. Faux-Precision. Qualitative brand voodoo dressed up as quantitative precision…financial analysts and brand equity studies are called to the carpet – loved it. The implied precision of measuring goodwill reminds me of Damon Wayans playing the self-educated prisoner on the 80s TV – Show- in Living Color!
  3. CLV. Implicit in JSB’s talk of “connections” is Customer Lifetime Value. Such connections or touch points go beyond advertising and marketing to the front-line impact of Cashiers, Clerks, Customer Service and Sales Reps. Having come up in retail ops, this little ditty is rarely acknowledged.

Looking forward to reading more.