Future of Advertising Event - DoubleClick Insights

This post originally appeared on the DoubleClick Publisher Blog.

There has been explosive growth in ad technology over the last 20 years. From each of our perspectives -- whether you are an agency, an advertiser, publisher or a technology provider -- we can all still see unprecedented opportunities as the digital world continues to grow and diversify. 

We believe that as an industry, we’re on a common digital journey and that the next wave of innovation in ad tech will come from us all working better together.  

However, like all great opportunities, there are challenges and questions, such as:

• How do we unlock the next $50 billion of opportunity for digital advertising? 
• How do we deliver those immersive, interactive experiences to today’s empowered consumer demands? 
• What do we, as part of the ad tech ecosystem, need to build to create even more value for our clients and consumers?

On June 5th we’re hosting the DoubleClick Insights event to start exploring some answers to these questions.  Senior leaders from top agencies, advertisers and publishers will help lead the conversation -- and you’re invited to join via the live stream!  Register here.

The agenda will include topics such as:

Adapting to the Empowered Consumer - Neal Mohan, Vice President, Display Advertising at Google will be joined by David Kenny, Chairman & CEO, The Weather Channel Companies, and James Pitaro, Co-President, Disney Interactive Media Group, to discuss how technology is being used to deliver new content and advertising experiences to consumers.  

If We Build It, Will They (Consumers) Come? Terry Kawaja, CEO and Co-Founder, Luma Partners (and creator of the now legendary LUMAscape chart) will lead a conversation about the ad tech ecosystem, and what it needs to do next to add value for agencies, publishers, marketers – and ultimately consumers. Terry will be joined onstage by:

• Omar Tawokol, Chief Executive Officer, BlueKai
• Greg Stuart, Global CEO of Mobile Marketing Association
• Kurt Unkel, President, VivaKi 
• Shishir Mehrota, Vice President of Product Management, YouTube

Outside the Box: Technology = Creative Friend or Foe? Technology is supposed to make the life of a marketer easier.  For our final conversation, we’re going to focus on the question of:  Is this technology exploring resulting in better marketing?  Or, is it just resulting in mediocre creative and complexity for both consumers and marketers?  Karim Temsamani, Vice President - New Products and Solutions, Google moderates the conversation with leaders from creative agencies, iconic brands and publishers including: 

• Brad Ruffkess, Global Connection, Coca-Cola
• Mike Lowenstern, Managing Director of Digital Advertising, R/GA
• Peter Minnium, Head of Digital Brand Initiatives, IAB 
• John Caldwell, Chief Digital Officer, National Geographic

The live stream will start on June 5, 2012, at 9:00 am PDT, and you’ll be able to watch from your computer, tablet, or mobile device. To learn more about our highlighted speakers go to the Speakers page on our site.

Please register for this virtual event by visiting the DoubleClick Insights Live Stream page.

DoubleClick Insights

Tuesday, June 5th 2012

9:00am - 1:00pm PST

Set event reminder today

Following us on Google+ or Twitter (@DoubleClick and @DoubleClick_pub)? Use the #dclkinsights tag as you're watching the event to ask questions or share comments during the event? 

Posted by Stephen Kliff and Scott Brown, DoubleClick Marketing

Read More

Upgrade now to the new Core Reporting API

Core Reporting API Migration Update
Back in December we launched the Core Reporting API to replace the Data Export API. We also announced that we would be shutting down the old Data Export API and that all applications should migrate to the new version.

The time has come for us to shut down the old version. So this is our last reminder to migrate to the new Core Reporting API.

Starting next week, we’ll begin redirecting a portion of Data Export API requests to the Core Reporting API as we prepare to shut down the Data Export API on July 10th. So you'll begin to see Data Feed requests return a Core Reporting API response, and requests for the Account Feed will produce an error.

If you do not migrate, your application will experience service outages.

For more information, visit:
Reminder: Migrate to the new Core Reporting API
Migration Guide: Moving from v2.3 APIs to v2.4 & v3.0



New Guides To Get You Started Fast
It’s important for the Google Analytics APIs to be open and accessible to all developers. It’s common practice for developers learning a new API to start off with the basics and incrementally build from this foundation.

So with that in mind, we wrote a new Hello Analytics API tutorial to give you that basic foundation. The tutorial includes sample code for Java, PHP, Python, and JavaScript. It also walks you through the basic steps of using the Google Analytics API, including registration, authorizing users, retrieving account and profile information, and querying for a report. Once complete you will have a working example that you can customize.

To make it even easier to build applications, we’ve also updated the developer guides for both the Core Reporting API and Management API. Examples for a variety of programming languages have been included, but more importantly the basic concepts have been highlighted.

So whether you’re just starting, updating, or migrating to the new version, you should check out the Hello Analytics API tutorial and Developer Guides before settling down to write that awesome application.


Posted by Pete Frisella, Nick Mihailovski, and Jeetendra Soneja, Analytics API team

Read More

Answers To Your Burning Google Analytics Questions

Last week we hosted a webinar on Getting Started with Analytics and received so many good questions during the event that we didn’t have time to answer all of them. I’ve sorted through the hundreds of questions and below are answers to the most asked and interesting. If you missed the webinar or want to rewatch, it’s now available on the Google Analytics YouTube channel.




QUESTIONS & ANSWERS:
Can I measure if a visitor plays a video, downloads a whitepaper, etc?
Yes, use Event Tracking to learn about visitor actions like video plays, or PDF downloads that don't correspond directly to pageviews. And once you set up an Event it can also be tracked as a Goal. You can assign a value to these Events as a microconversion. Start with a larger objective that has a monetary value, like landing a big client, then map out the smaller steps leading up to that sale. For example, you may discover that for your business, an average of 7 PDF downloads corresponds to 1 sale. The value of a download would then be equal to an average sale divided by 7.

How do I learn if my website drives phone calls & offline conversions?
Many business’ customers start researching online, but then pick up the phone and call to complete the sale. Think about what activities a user may do on your website that would motivate them to call. Do they spend time viewing your portfolio, reading testimonials, or checking out prices? Set up Goals to measure these micro-conversion actions that will help you learn which of your sources are providing quality visitors. You can also add unique phone numbers to the landing page or ad that will enable you to identify when a user calls you what marketing source they came from. The GA App Gallery has call-tracking integrations and here is an example of how Google AdWords enables call forwarding and tracking by pay per click campaigns.

Can I track actions that happen on a 3rd party page like email newsletter sign up or checkout?
Since this action happens outside of your website, Google Analytics will not be able to measure it. If you work with a third party vendor check with them to see if they can share with you any tracking information they may have. Be sure to check out the Google Analytics App Gallery to see if there are 3rd party integrations like payment solutions, reporting or email marketing that could work with you to solve this problem.

How do I get Multi-Channel Funnels Assisted Conversion reports in my account?
Similar to your other Analytics reports, Multi-Channel Funnels (MCF) are driven by the Analytics tracking code you have already placed on your webpages. No additional code is required to access MCF reports but you do need a Goal set up in your Analytics Account. Once you have goals set up, the MCF reports will be automatically filled with data for the visitor interactions that lead up to the completion of that goal. Keep in mind viewing MCF reports on a filtered profile can skew your data, learn more in our help center. We will also have a webinar focused on MCF reports coming soon.

Why do my visits in Analytics not match with AdWords or my website hosting service?
All of the AdWords reports in Google Analytics import data directly from the AdWords system, and they usually match the data in your AdWords account exactly. But there can be circumstances where the data can differ. For example AdWords clicks do not equal visitors, if a user clicks on your ad twice within thirty minutes without closing his or her browser this is registered by Analytics as one visit to your site, but it equals two AdWords clicks. Also your Analytics profile could be filtered to exclude visits from IP’s within your company, but your web hosting service could count those as visits. Here is a great article from our Help Center explaining this in more detail.

What is the best way to tag my marketing campaigns? And can I use a URL shortener?
If you need help creating campaign tags for links in your marketing campaigns (Search Marketing, Display Ads, Email Newsletters) check out the tagging tool in our Help Center. Remember to turn on AdWords Auto-tagging if you are running AdWords campaigns as this will automatically insert the campaign tags for you. Yes, you can use a URL shortener like goo.gl or other services out there to successfully pass your campaign tags through a nice short link.

If you’re interested in learning more about Google Analytics, we have a great webinar on Reaching Your Goals with Google Analytics. For more advanced users check out our Marketing Attribution Insights webinar, and watch the blog for more details about our attribution webinar series.

Posted by Ian Myszenski, Google Analytics team

Read More

How Two Nonprofits Improve Their Site Performance With Google Analytics

At Google, we’re proud that our products are used by nonprofits to help them better achieve their objectives and improve the world. We believe that data holds amazing power for all types of organizations and it’s inspiring to see some forward-thinking nonprofits live at the edge of adoption. Today we’d like to share two brief case studies we’ve published: how the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) are using Google Analytics. Links to the full case studies are included after each summary if you’d like to dive deeper.

By tailoring the features of Google Analytics, LunaMetrics helps PBS increase conversions and visits by 30%

Top Notch Programming, The Public Broadcasting System’s interactive arm, helps individual PBS producers and local PBS stations create and promote each section within PBS.org for programs such as NOVA, American Masters, and Sid the Science Kid. A selection of web analytics tools had been installed, but these proved difficult to maintain and use. PBS wanted to develop a coordinated approach to analysis and reporting that would inform their future strategic decisions.

Led by Web Analytics Director Amy Sample, the team at PBS needed a cohesive system across the entire enterprise, and for this they turned to Google Analytics. In addition to top-level analysis of PBS.org and PBSKids.org, they also hoped to implement a solution that would allow producers of individual programs to see only the data on those pages and microsites that related to their own shows. It was critical to have a solution that gave Amy the over-arching view she needed, and the microcosm view that each producer needed. To meet these requirements, LunaMetrics devised a custom technical solution for PBS that expanded their existing standard implementation. 

Google Analytics has been a key facilitator in the transformation of PBS online. The tool enables reporting that is robust, tailored and meaningful, which means that stakeholders are no longer focused on static monthly reports. Instead, they are increasingly able to use analytics to inform  critical and timely business decisions on a day-to-day basis. Analysis of search engine trends led to an increase in PBS traffic by 30% during the first year after implementation. PBS also used valuable conversion funnel data to optimize the registration path in PBSKids; this activity increased conversions by one-third. Furthermore, since Google Analytics was set up to allow PBS to evaluate the way users consumed video, the broadcaster created two new portals: PBS Video and PBSKIDS Go!

Read the full PBS case study here.

SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) chooses Google Analytics and masters the art of metrics

In 1995, SFMOMA was one of the first museums to launch an institutional website. SFMOMA.org offers a fluid space of exploration in which visitors can easily navigate an online collection of more than 9,000 artworks and a rich archive of studio and video content. The site also has an online store and a detailed calendar of exhibitions and events. 

Their primary goal was to develop rich, dynamic content that engages visitors and keeps them coming back to the website as well as the physical museum. SFMOMA’s website receives nearly four times the number of visits than the physical museum. Providing compelling digital content that visitors want was as critical as hosting popular exhibitions.

Google Analytics Certified Partner E-Nor helped SFMOMA connect key business objectives to a robust web analytics strategy and recommended Google Analytics as the best solution for their needs. As a result of the switch to Google Analytics with a thorough implementation plan, SFMOMA saw a tremendous increase in available insights about their online presence. They realized a 15% gain in traffic accuracy, and so were more willing to make decisions based on the data. 

They could clearly see what content users liked best, and made changes and improvements to their website to keep them coming back. Their marketing campaigns were tied to sales and other goal conversions, and so they could optimize accordingly.

All this new data is helping produce valuable insights on how the website is used and what marketing efforts and website designs are delivering results. SFMOMA is now prepared to continue its online leadership thanks to careful planning and strategy coupled with an expert use of the advanced features in Google Analytics.

Read the full SFMOMA case study here.

Posted by the Google Analytics team

Read More

Social Reports are now found under 'Traffic Sources'

We’ve recently consolidated the locations of our social reports. The 3 reports, Social Engagement, Social Actions, & Social Pages were previously listed in the Audience section and have been moved to the Traffic Sources -> Social section. Click through to see the reports in your Analytics Account.

In addition we’ve added new social reports and functionality, as detailed on our recent blog post on the launch of our Social Reports. Users now have access to both onsite behavior, the existing data, and off-site social activities of partners such as Google+, Digg, and Reddit among others. Below is a summary of how to access the data from the old reports in the new ones.

To access onsite activities use the Traffic Sources -> Social -> Social Plugins report. Here you see the social activities broken down by content. Selecting a specific page shows you the social activities by network for that page. Click the “Social Source and action” tab highlighted in the screenshot below to see a breakdown of the itemized activities.

Hope you’ll find this information helpful and learn more about how social channels are delivering value to your website.

Posted by Linus Chou, Google Analytics Team

Read More

Join Google Analytics on Google+

Google Analytics users are part of a passionate community. Many of you go beyond using the product and actively seek a connection with Google team members and other GA users to stay at the edge of what’s next. For example, more than 80,000 readers subscribe to the Google Analytics blog through our RSS feed, our videos on YouTube have been viewed more than 3.5 million times and well over 100,000 people follow us on Twitter. 

So it isn’t surprising we’ve received requests from many of you to participate on Google+. We’re excited to fulfill that expectation with a brand new Google+ page for Google Analytics. 

Join us on Google+ today

Check out our Google+ page and add us to your analytics, marketing or related circle. We’ll be sharing the latest and greatest about Google Analytics and digital marketing overall to help you become a better practitioner and achieve more with your efforts. 

Expect everything from how-to’s/tips, technical advice, interesting stats, plus some fun mixed in for good measure. In addition to useful updates, we’re planning to give you the opportunity to hang out live with some of the team members behind Google Analytics. If there’s anything else you’d like to see, please add a comment to this thread on Google+ and we’ll be happy to consider it. 

Posted by Adam Singer, Google Analytics Team

Read More

Two new Analytics webinars -- for advanced and beginning users

Interested in learning how to use Analytics to make better decisions for your business? Here’s your chance; join us next week for two webinars.  We’re partnering with the Learn with Google team to present an introductory session on Getting started with Analytics, and a more advanced session covering one of the most requested topics - Digital Attribution & Conversion. Here’s a little more detail on what we’ll cover:

Getting Started with Google Analytics
Level of content: Beginner
Covers the basics you need to get started with Analytics. Highlights the most helpful reports for ecommerce, bloggers/publishers, and lead generation businesses. Learn how to tag your campaigns and set up goals to measure if your marketing is a success.

Presenter: Justin Cutroni, Analytics Advocate
Date: Wednesday May 23rd, 2012
Time: 12 pm PT / 3pm ET / 8pm GMT

Building Blocks of Digital Attribution
Level of content: Intermediate/Advanced
Learn what marketing attribution is and what it can do for your business. This webinar will cover the basics of how attribution works, and we’ll show you how to set up your Google AdWords and Google Analytics accounts to enable important attribution tools--Search Funnels and Multi-Channel Funnels.

Presenter: Bill Kee, Product Manager, Google Analytics
Date: Thursday May 24th, 2012
Time: 9am PT / 12pm ET / 5pm GMT

These are free webinars, so be sure to register now and take a look here for more great webinars from other Google teams.

Posted by Ian Myszenski, Google Analytics team

Read More

Looking Ahead at Next Generation Measurement

Marketers today have no shortage of data. In fact, there are more than 40 million online touch points measured every minute by Google Analytics. Technology advancements are helping marketers understand their customers more across channels and devices, and better analysis tools are finally making that massive amount of data accessible and actionable. This is fueling what we see as next generation measurement. Today I spoke at the Federated Media Conversational Marketing Summit about the most important trends that every CMO needs to know. Here's what I told them: 

Next generation brand measurement

In many ways, brand measurement thus far has been an article of faith - but it doesn’t have to be. I think that soon you’ll be able to optimize for brand like you do for performance today with concrete results, in real time. This will help brand marketers make smarter decisions while a campaign is still in flight, rather than serving as a static report card given after the fact. To do all of this, we need to bridge the online and offline gap with brand equivalency metrics that translate GRP and TRP into online reach and audience targeting.

Recently we announced our Brand Activate Initiative as a first step, which gives metrics like Active GRP to assess online brand impact using reach and frequency, in the same way marketers are all already measuring GRP for TV. Active GRP is being built into the ad serving tools that our publishers and marketers already use, with the goal of making these metrics immediately actionable. This digital brand equivalency metric for GRP is the first in a series of exciting steps we’re going to see to improve measurement for brand marketers. 

Next generation attribution

Over the last few years, we’ve made great leaps in the art of single channel measurement - identifying the right metrics in isolation for channels like TV, display, search and mobile. It’s time now to bring the channels together and figure out how they impact each other. In other words, we have to move from silo to portfolio.

At Google Analytics, we’re finding that on average, customers interact with a brand 4.3 times over a two day period before they finally make a purchase. We’re also seeing channels like mobile grow tremendously. For instance, mobile is now 8% of all conversions that we’re seeing in Google Analytics, and mobile conversions have grown by about 180% in just the last year. So you can’t afford not to know what paths customers are taking before they ultimately buy from you.

But in a recent study, more than 40% of marketers said that their main struggle with attribution is choosing the right model to even get started. We hear these struggles every day, and provide tools like Multi-Channel Funnels and Attribution Modeling to help marketers get started. Though there isn’t a one size fits all model, what we’ll begin to see in the industry is empirically-derived attribution models customized by industry and marketing objectives, which marketers can use as a base for experimentation. 

It’s an exciting time in measurement, where data and marketing are finally getting married. I’m genuinely excited about what’s in front of us, and I hope you are too!

Posted by Amy Chang, Global Head of Product, Google Analytics

Read More

How Nissan Uses Ecommerce Tracking Without Directly Selling Online

This post originally appeared on the Google Analytics Japan blog.

Google Analytics’ e-commerce tracking allows online merchants to measure items sold and tie those results back to their digital marketing activities. But did you know that it can also be used to track non e-commerce activity?

Nissan Motor Company does just this. Nissan operates in the automobile industry, and owns a network of websites designed to help consumers around the world decide which Nissan vehicle they would like to purchase.

Nissan uses e-commerce tracking whenever a visitor submits a request for a test drive or a brochure. They treat each request as if a car were sold, and record details such as the model, colour, transmission type, and location of the vehicles people inquire after. A traditional Google Analytics implementation for a non e-commerce site would simply use goals to measure conversions. So why did Nissan opt to use e-commerce tracking instead?

They wanted to be able to measure more information about each inquiry within their Google Analytics reports. By implementing e-commerce tracking they are now able to pass additional information to their Google Analytics account, such as the category, colour, and model of car the visitor was interested in. Nissan's Global Marketing Strategy Division then analyses this information to understand which vehicles are in hot demand in each market; it then feeds those insights to their manufacturing plants across the globe to ensure that there is enough supply to satisfy demand. 

One of the benefits of Google Analytics is that you can decide who should have access to your suite of reports. Nissan’s Global Division uses this feature to decentralise access to their different market operations, allowing each country manager to log into Google Analytics and quickly assess the popularity of different models for their market. Nissan employed a Google Analytics Certified Partner in Japan, Ayudante, to help set up their account profiles and custom reports that could then be accessed by each of the country managers.

Nissan’s Global Marketing Strategy division says there are 3 key benefits they gain from Google Analytics as a whole:

1. It is easy to assess product popularity globally and by market. The user experience is seamless and there was no complex setup necessary.
2. Custom reports allow you to easily view complex information in one view. It dramatically reduces the time to summarize multiple reports, document it, and share it within the organisation.
3. Google Analytics gives them access to timely information, which allows for better decision making.

Even if you are a non e-commerce site, you should explore e-commerce tracking as a means of measuring more information about the products or services your visitors are inquiring about. Then share that information with your wider marketing and product teams so that they can make effective decisions to maximise sales.

Posted by Noriyuki Ouchi, Google Analytics Solutions Consultant, Google Japan and Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar, Senior Conversion Specialist, Google Southeast Asia

Read More

Reminder: Migrate to the new Core Reporting API

At the end of 2011 we announced the Google Analytics Core Reporting API as a replacement for the Data Export API. We also announced a 6 month deprecation period for the Data Export API version 2.3, after which all v2.3 queries will return a v2.4 response. Well, it's almost been 6 months since the announcement was made. If you haven't already moved to our shiny new APIs, and we know there are quite a few of you out there who haven't, we urge you to get movin' or risk your application not working come June.

The good news is that we published a new, easy to follow migration guide to help you make the transition and ensure your application continues to work after we shut down the Data Export API sometime in June.

If you are building a new application, we highly recommend using the Core Reporting API v3.0. For existing applications, we also recommend moving to v3.0 but it may be easier for you to migrate to v2.4 as an intermediary step, since it is backwards compatible with the Data Export API v2.3.

The great news is that if you make the move to v3.0, you'll be able to take advantage of any new features, and the compact JSON format that reduces response size by 10x!

To get started, check out the Migration Guide: Moving from v2.3 APIs to v2.4 & v3.0.

Additional details and support:

• Core Reporting API Forum - for any questions you may have
• Core Reporting API Changelog - for details on the change

Posted by Pete Frisella, Google Analytics API team

Read More

New Google Analytics Easy Dashboard Library

Many developers save time by using the Google Analytics API to automate Analytics reporting tasks. For example, you can use the API to create a dashboard to report data across multiple profiles. The Google Analytics App Gallery includes many 3rd party solutions that do this.

What if you want to build something quickly that’s custom-tailored  to your business? You would typically have to spend time learning the API, figuring out how to handle authorization, then deciding how to integrate this data with a visualization library. You could build a custom solution, but it took a lot of effort – until now, thanks to the Google Analytics Easy Dashboard Library.

Four months ago we started a project with a team of University of California Irvine students to simplify all of these steps. As part of this project, together we built the Google Analytics Easy Dashboard Library. This library makes it easy to use the Google Analytics API by distilling the process into three easy steps:

1. Register with Google APIs Console.
2. Copy and paste the JavaScript code.
3. Configure this code to query your data and choose a chart type to visualize it.

So now you can create custom Google Analytics dashboards very quickly, with minimal code.

Here’s a quick example. Say you want to create a line chart plotting visitors and visits for the last 30 days. Besides including the library, the only code required is:

<div id=”chart1”></div>
<script>
var chart1 = new gadash.Chart({
  'type': 'LineChart',
  'divContainer': 'chart1',
  'last-n-days':30,
  'query': {
    'ids': TABLE_ID,
    'metrics': 'ga:visitors,ga:visits,ga:pageviews',
    'dimensions': 'ga:date',
    'sort': 'ga:date'
  },
  'chartOptions': {
    hAxis: {title:'Date'},
    vAxis: {title:'Visits'},
  }
}).render();
</script>

Using the code above will create this chart.



It’s that easy! To find out more about using the Easy Dashboard Library, read our Getting Started guide.

While the current library is very useful, we think we can add more features and make it even easier to use. To reach this goal, we’ve started working with another group of UC Irvine students, this time for three academic quarters. This new project’s main goal will be to further simplify the library. We want the students we’re working with to engage with you and implement your feature requests, if possible. If you use this library, we'd love to hear how you think it can be improved. Feel free to send any feedback to through our new GA-easy-dash-feedback google group.

We hope this library saves you time and helps you get more out of Google Analytics.

Posted by,
Jeetendra Soneja and Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics API Team

Read More

Mark your calendar to ‘Hangout on Air’ and learn how to build a mobile site in minutes

Did you know that 40% of mobile web users reported that they’ve turned to a competitor’s site after a bad mobile experience1? With about half of all Americans now owning a smartphone2, it’s time for businesses to meet user expectations by delivering a mobile experience as good as the desktop experience. In short, it’s time to step up to the plate and build a site optimized for the mobile web.

 

Google can help. We recently teamed up with DudaMobile to release a free mobile site builder.  In three easy steps you’re able to get started with mobile: (1) enter your site’s URL, (2) customize your site and (3) redirect mobile users automatically to the new mobile-friendly version.  It’s free and takes just a few minutes to complete!

Join us on Thursday, May 10th at 1pm EST/10am PST and watch as Google showcases how two businesses, Top Mast Resort in Massachusetts and Sava’s Restaurant in Michigan, go mobile and build mobile-friendly sites--live on air.

You’ll see how Top Mast is preparing to take advantage of mobile travel purchase intent - which is five times higher than online travel purchase intent, according to InsightExpress.  You’ll also see Sava’s move ahead of 95% of restaurants that do not have mobile-friendly sites, according to a study by Restaurant Science.

Finally, you’ll hear from the CMO of Dudamobile, Dennis Mink; he’ll talk about best practices when using the mobile site builder and walk through important questions to ask yourself when building a mobile-friendly site.

Details on how to tune in
1. Sign into Google+ on Thursday, May 10th at 1pm EST/10am PST
2. Go to the Think with Google Google+ page
3. Look for the stream post and click to enter the live stream

Be sure to set a reminder in your calendar! If you have questions before or during the Hangout, post them with the hashtag #GoMoSite as a comment on the Google+ page.

Posted by Suzanne Mumford, Google Mobile Ads Marketing
Source: (1) Gomez 2011 (2) Nielsen February 2012

Read More

Expanding Google Analytics Social Reports: Tracking Links To Your Site Content

Have you ever wondered which other pages on the web link to your own? Wouldn’t it be nice to know which sites are talking about your content, and in which context? Well, a problem no more: now you can see all the backlink URL’s, post titles, and more right within the new Social reports.

The concept of trackbacks, a protocol by which different sites could notify each other of referencing links, first emerged back in 2002. Since then, the blogosphere has grown in leaps and bounds, but the requirement for each site to explicitly implement this protocol has always stood in the way of adoption. If only you could crawl the web and build an accurate link graph. The good news is we already do that at Google, and are now providing this insight to Google Analytics users.

   

If you’re not familiar with Trackbacks, then think of it as automated Google Alerts for all of your pages: you publish new content, we scour the web for pages that link to it and build automated reports for you right within Google Analytics - simple as that.

These reports provide another layer of social insight showing which of your content attracts links, and enables you to keep track of conversations across other sites that link to your content. Most website and blog owners had no easy mechanism to do this in the past, but we see it as another important feature for holistic social media reports. When you know what your most linked content is, it is then also much easier to replicate the success and ensure that you are building relationships with those users who actively link to you the most.

To learn more about the new Social and ROI reporting, take a look at our announcement last month, and also take a look at in-depth example of how to use these new reports to measure your user’s engagement in Google+.

Posted by Ilya Grigorik, Google Analytics team

Read More

Marketing Attribution: Questions and Answers

Last week, we hosted a webinar on marketing attribution. We had a lively discussion about our recent attribution whitepaper, and we looked at Google’s solutions for attribution -- including Search Funnels in AdWords and Multi-Channel Funnels in Google Analytics, and the Attribution Modeling Tool in Google Analytics Premium. During the webinar, many of you wrote in with great questions, and we’ve provided answers below to some of the top questions.

If you weren’t able to join us last week, you can view a recording of the webinar here.

Questions & Answers:
Q: How can I learn more about getting started with attribution using Google’s tools?
A:This webinar was the first in a series on attribution -- please watch the blog for updates and registration information for our next webinar, “Building Blocks of Digital Attribution.” In the meantime, read on for some more tips.

Q: Where can I learn more about setting up conversions?
A: Setting up conversion tracking in Google Analytics is one of the most valuable things you can do to make your reports actionable and meaningful, and getting these set up properly will allow you to use Google’s attribution solutions. There are resources available in the help center to help you set up goals and ecommerce tracking. You can also view the recording of our recent “Reaching your goals with Google Analytics” webinar.

Q: When should I use AdWords Search Funnels compared to Google Analytics Multi-Channel Funnels? 
A: Both tools can give you insight into how your customers ultimately end up converting on your site. If you are using AdWords Conversion Tracking today, Search Funnels is available without any additional configuration. You can see the interactions your customers have with your search ads leading up to conversion, including both clicks and impressions. However, you can only see these interactions for paid search on Google AdWords.

Multi-Channel Funnels in Google Analytics allows you to analyze traffic sources beyond search, including display, social, email, referrals, affiliates and more - putting your conversion path data in a broader context. Using these reports requires installing Google Analytics tracking code on your site, and setting up goals and/or ecommerce tracking (see links above) -- once these are set up, Multi-Channel Funnels reports work automatically. Note that you  are not able to analyze search ad impressions in Multi-Channel Funnels.

Watch this blog for updates on future webinars in our attribution series that will provide more details on Search Funnels and Multi-Channel Funnels.

Q: How much of an impact does the use of multiple devices have in skewing the numbers we see in these reports? 
A: Mobile and other devices are becoming increasingly important. Multi-Channel Funnels will report on conversion paths that take place on a single device, but not across devices. For example, if a user visited your site on a mobile phone, and then completed a purchase in a desktop browser, those interactions would not be included in the same conversion path.

Q: Can I report on both AdWords Keyword and Matched Search Queries in Google Analytics?
A: You have the option to view either the AdWords Keyword or the Matched Search Query by choosing these dimensions in the data table. Multi-Channel Funnels and Attribution Modeling support a wide range of AdWords and non-AdWords dimensions for reporting and creating attribution modeling rules.

Q: Can you add your own models to the Attribution Modeling Tool or they are all built in? 
A: You can create and save custom models in the Attribution Modeling Tool in Google Analytics Premium. Custom models allow you to create rules that adjust credit based on attributes like the traffic source (e.g. search vs. direct), position (first, middle, last) the level of engagement driven (time on site and page depth), and timing (how much time prior to conversion).

Q: How do advertisers take action on attribution data?
A: Attribution data can help advertisers identify marketing efforts that may be undervalued or overvalued under models such as the last click, so they can adjust their marketing programs. For example, a general keyword like “shoes” may show fewer conversions compared to a more specific, branded term for a type of shoe on a last click basis. However, applying a model that gives some credit for searches prior to the last click may show that “shoes” is credited with more conversion value. When making optimization decisions around which keywords to invest in or cut, advertisers can look at multiple models, and then experiment with investing in keywords that show higher value under alternative models. Similar methods apply to channels like display, social, email, and affiliates. This can help identify areas of opportunity that are missed when using only the last click.

Happy Analyzing!


Posted by Bill Kee, Product Manager for Attribution, Google Analytics team

Read More