Individual Visitors Tracking v/s Aggregate Data

Should web analytics tool track visitors as unique individuals or at the aggregate level? John Squire, Chief Strategy Office of Coremetrics says that tracking at Individual level is the way to go and this is how his company is differentiating itself (from Google analytics). Brian Clifton, former heard of Google Analytics in EMEA, responded by saying that aggregation is the way to go.

In my opinion both of them are right. Which route to go really depends on what you want from the web analytics tool?

Aggregate Data

If you are new to web analytics or you just want to track and analyze the overall health of your website, aggregated data will work for you. If you want to know how your marketing efforts are performing in terms of driving traffic or online conversions than aggregate data will just work fine for you. If you want to know which pages of your site are bleeding and then conduct A/B testing or Multivariate testing to improve them then aggregate data will work for you.

Individual Visitor Tracking

However as companies mature in their use of web analytics data they will need individual level tracking.

A company which is ready to do personalization will need to understand each individual browsing/purchase behavior to put the right offers/products in front of her. That is not possible with aggregated data.

It sounds perfectly ok to know that 75% of visitors abandoned the shopping cart but won’t it be nice to know who those 75% are or a way to convert at least some of those 75%? This is where individual tracking will come in handy. If visitors, who abandoned the shopping cart, leave an email during the process then you can send them a targeted email based on how far along they were in the shopping process, what products they had looked at, what product they had in shopping cart, etc. You don’t need to analyze every single data point but you can have business rules that can trigger those emails. However, to do so you will need to track at individual level. Even if you don’t want to send an email if you know the cookie id of the visitors you can put a personalized offer in front of them when they return back to your site and this will require tracking at individual level.

Individual tracking also comes in handy when the sales people call the lead that they just got from the website. Knowing what the person, who filled the contact us form, did on the website could provide a lot of information to sales person who can then tailor their conversation based on this information.

There are several more scenarios where aggregate data just won’t work. You will need individual level tracking.


I agree that tracking individual has privacy implication that need be properly addressed before tracking each person. However privacy issues also exist when you anonymously track visitors at aggregate level and those need to be addressed too.

So should you choose a tool that aggregates the visitor data or the one that tracks them individually? It all depends on what you want to do with that data. If you need help in figuring out what tool will work best for you feel free to email me at batraonline at gmail.com

Comments/Questions?

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Opt-out from Google and Yahoo Ad Network

Online tracking and advertising based on users’ online behavior have got a lot of heat and scrutiny from privacy advocates and lawmakers.

As a result of this scrutiny Yahoo and Google/Doubleclick are now both providing an easy way for user to opt-out of ad targeting on their receptive networks. Yahoo and Doubleclick were part of Network Advertising Initiative (NAI) and allowed users to opt-out from their network via NAI’s opt-out tool.

Google

To find out more about Google network cookie and how to opt-out visit http://www.google.com/privacy_ads.html

Since a lot of you are working in the field of web analytics, you must be wondering how google opt-out will affect the data tracked in web analytics. The simple answer is that this option will not affect Google Analytics. A first party cookie from the site using Google Analytics is used for tracking user behavior on the site using Google Analytics, this cookie is separate from Google ad network cookie. According to Google

“A different cookie is used for each website, and visitors are not tracked across multiple sites…. To disable this type of cookie, some browsers will indicate when a cookie is being sent and allow you to decline cookies on a case-by-case basis. “

Yahoo

Yahoo has been offering that opt-out option for the ads the company runs on it outside partner sites in its network. Yahoo will now extend opt-out option to ads displayed on its own sites. You can read more about this option.
Below is excerpt from Yahoo Press release

Anne Toth, head of privacy and VP for policy, said, "Yahoo! understands the trust of our users is our greatest asset, so we strive to create the most trusted, compelling online experience."
"Yahoo! strongly believes that consumers want choice when customizing their online experience and they have also demonstrated a strong preference for advertising that is more personally relevant to them," continued Toth. "However, we understand that there are some users who prefer not to receive customized advertising and this opt-out will offer them even greater choice."
This new opt-out capability is expected to be available for consumers by the end of August. Users will be able to access the opt-out in the Yahoo! privacy center, which is linked on the home page and nearly every page on the Yahoo! network. Users will also be able to access the opt-out through a link in the public service advertising campaign Yahoo! has been running with online ads across its network to educate users about customized advertising.

Yahoo and Google have taken the steps in right direction but they are not perfect. As I wrote before, both these models are dependent on an opt-out cookie. If you opt-out of these networks and later delete your cookies you will again be automatically opted-in. I have advocated an opt-in model for Behavioral Targeting. This model will remove this dependence on cookie for opt-out. I do realize publishers and ad-networks concern that opt-in model will limit the reach. It is possible that the opt-in model might limit the reach initially but in long run if the value proposition is strong for users then user will opt-in.

What do you think?

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Behavioral Targeting at eMetrics

Behavioral Targeting (BT), as I predicted earlier this year, has become very common term among marketers. Look at any online marketing events and you will see more than one session on Behavioral Targeting. This was also evident at eMetrics in Washington DC, where a full track was devoted to Optimization and Behavioral Targeting and several other speakers, not in this track, also talked included Behavioral Targeting in their presentations.

In my presentation, I gave an overview of behavioral targeting, what it is, why should marketers get involved with it, the difference between On-Site and Network targeting, who the players are in the market for each type of targeting and also talked about the privacy issues surrounding Behavioral Targeting. I gave several examples showing how business can benefit from Behavioral Targeting. I also outlined a process that you need to follow if you decide to engage in Behavioral Targeting. This is one of the main things that I wanted my audience to take away from this presentation. This process is an outcome of conversations with several customers who have engaged in Behavioral Targeting. To make my point, I cited an example of customer who engaged in Behavioral Targeting network. After running BT ads on one of the leading BT networks, they called me complaining that they were not seeing the value in Behavioral Targeting. After few minutes of conversation it became clear to me that they did not have a proper process in place, they did not fully understand how BT worked and what to expect (one of the reasons of why BT did not work is cited in my previous post titled Size of Your Segment and Network Reach Matters in Behavioral Ad Targeting). Result? A lot of effort, time and money was wasted. So, if you are planning on getting involved with Behavioral Targeting make sure you have a proper process in place (I will outline our process in a future post). (Note: If you were, are or planning to use Behavioral Targeting I would like to talk to you, please contact me at batraonline at gmail.com)

At the end, I showed how on-site Behavioral Targeting can be accomplished without using any third party Behavioral Targeting tools. You can use any Web Analytics tool including Google Analytics, persistent cookies and some coding to get Behavioral Targeting going on your site. This is a great way to try on-site Behavioral Targeting before spending money on third party tools.

If you missed the presentation, don’t worry you will have more chances to hear it in near future. In November I will be doing a free Behavioral Targeting seminar in Seattle so if you are in Seattle area I would love to meet with you there. The final date of the seminar will be posted on this blog and also at ZeroDash1 events page. If you would like to schedule one in your city, email me at batraonline at gmail.com

Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cookies

Today there was an article on ZDNET blog about how Google/Doublelclick, Yahoo/RightMedia and Microsoft/aQuantive deals is about cookies more than anything else.

I agree with the author of this article that these acquisition are not about ad serving technology but about user data and reach. I have written in my past article about how these acquisitions by these three giants were a huge steps towards building behavioral targeting networks.

The rich set of user data that these companies will be able to gather by these acquisitions is very valuable. All of these companies had cash to hire smart people and build the ad serving technology for a fraction of what they paid for acquisitions. So it is not about technology. What they could not have done on their own was the reach and rich user data. The only way to gather that kind of information was to acquire the companies which have those.

So why do they need that user data? One of the issues with advertising is that by placing contextual ads advertisers waste lots of impression because they reach a lot of people who are not even interested in their offers or products. This rich user data (tied via cookie) will provide Google, Microsoft and Yahoo understanding of which users could potentially be interested in offers/products of an advertiser. Historical user data will allow them to understand what kind of users have responded to what kind of offers/products in past. The new acquisition will also allow them to reach all those user which were earlier not in their network plus provide them more data. This will allow them to target the ads to right set of users, users who are most likely to click on an ad and convert (buy, register etc.). By generating higher click-thorough and conversion they can command premium from advertisers. Everybody benefits from this, publishers can sell their inventory for a premium, advertisers will reach right set of customers and consumers will get the offers and products they care about. The three giant (Google, Microsoft and Yahoo) make money by providing this rich data and hence taking their cut from publishers (in many cases they will also act as publishers).

Some might argue that cookie deletion will cause a problem in aggregating the past user histories. I agree that cookie deletion is an issue but all these companies have some way for user to login or provide their real information (gmail, hotmail, yahoo mail, google checkout, toolbars, messengers etc.) which can help them tie all the cookies together. I will blog about this more in my future article.

Another issue raised by this article was privacy. I have written a lot about this in past, here is link to my past post which talks about this issue Behavioral Targeting: Audience Of One.

Behavioral Targeting will become a norm (it already is) and these three giants will own (already do) a significant portion of that user data that will make it possible.

Here are my other articles on Behavioral Targeting

The Great comScore Debate

comScore came out with a study saying cookie based system could be reporting 2.5 time more visitors.

I wrote a post with my view on the topic last week. My take was that we should not worry about this study for two main reasons
1. We don’t know the comScore methodology of this study
2. We know that two web analytics systems don’t report the same numbers so we were dealing with estimated numbers anyway. This is the reality of Web Analytics. We should make decision based on trends more than raw numbers.

Gary Angel from SEMphoice wrote a blog post where he disagrees with me and says he is worried about the accuracy of the data after this study.

Side note: Gary took my view and made them appear them as ZAAZ’s (my employer)view. One thing I want to make clear is that these views are mine only and do not represent the views of ZAAZ or any other employee of ZAAZ.

Back to the issue: Well, even before this study we all knew cookies were being deleted but we accepted this fact till comScore study came. We should have been worried all along but we were not. Why? I guess we had to work with whatever we had.

The point I was trying to make is that you have to take everything in context. Going to Gary’s example of a conference, let’s say conference A tell you they attract 5,000 visitors and the other conference B says they get 4,000 visitors. Next day a third party comes out and says that all the conferences numbers reported by any conference are inflated and actual number is 75% of what they state then what’s the net result? Well Conference A is still better than conference B. Only thing is that they each now have 3750 and 3000 visitors respectively. Every conference in the world will have the same issue, their rank is still the same. I don’t think based on this information conferences will start charging less for the booth. However the rate per visitor has gone up for you but you can’t do much, that’s the market rate. Same argument goes for sites that sell advertising based on how many users they reach.

I recently moved a customer from one web analytics tool to another, guess what? The unique visitors count was different (so was repeat visitor and visit count). They were using old system for 3 years, all their decisions were based on those numbers. We could have spent days to figure out which one was correct old or new. Was it worth it? No, I don’t think that would have made any difference to their business. We could have waited to get the perfect data but that was not going to happen no matter what. So what did we do? We verified the new system to make sure it is accurately configured. We have tagged all the pages, proper excludes and includes are there, Cookie is first party etc. and the accepted it, developed our baseline and started working from there.

I strongly believe in accuracy of data but accuracy is also within context. The system you are using has to be perfectly configured, has to be accurately measuring but accuracy is defined based on how that system works.

I am pretty sure that if you take logs from your server and process them with an old version of any tool of you choice and then with the latest versions you will get different numbers (DisclosureI used to work for a tool vendor). Which one is correct? Old or new? If new is correct than all your old decisions based on wrong numbers were wrong. How do I know for sure that new is good? All I know my trends were similar in both new and old system.

Now lets say based on cookies counting, one site reaches 2 times visitors than their competitors (assume both use same 3rd party cookie). Will this site be more or less valuable if both the sites were told they were over counting their visitors? They would still be the same. How they will compete is how much more visitors (or visits) they get. Panels have a potential to be faultier than cookies if panels are not true representation of the site’s visitors. Panel based counting is just like log file sampling, sampling at least is a true representation of your visitors but we all know that those numbers are not accurate.

I understand Gary’s issue about repeat users and new users. But again, if you use two different systems they will report different numbers so which one is correct?
As Jacques Warren pointed out as a response to Gary’s post, the right solution (at this time) is to provide a reason for users to not delete their cookie (or give a reason to login). If Gary care’s about repeat users then I am sure he has strategies to get them engaged and give them a reason to login (or not delete cookies). Give users a reason to be loyal and they will be. Then you won’t have to worry about cookie deletion and hence your numbers will be accurate. Till you get to that level any number is a close estimate weather it is panel based or cookie based; and is not worth loosing sleep over.

I am not going to be worried till I have concrete proof that 1st party cookie system is completely flawed. Right now I don’t have any basis to be worried. IAB has asked comScore and NNR to show their measurement process, let’s see what comes out of that

Cookie versus Panel Based User Counting

comScore released the results of a study they did which claimed that cookie based measurement overstate Unique Users by as much as 150%.

I was not surprised by the results, not because I knew that cookies was over estimating because this is what I would have expected based on who was sponsoring the study. Since the study was conducted by comScore I wouldn't have expected them to come up saying panel data is worse than cookies based counting. If this study were done by Omniture or WebTrends we would have probably heard a different story. For example, if we were to compare wine and coffee and see which one is bad for health, wine company’s research will say wine is good for health while coffee is not. Coffee company will come with their research which will say coffee is good and wine is bad.

It is very likely that the users who participated in the study knew that they were being tracked (and they participated to get freebies) so they developed a tendency to clear cookies and hence skewed the results. There could be several reasons why comScore survey might be correct or not but comScore did not publish those so we can’t say for sure if panel based is really better than cookie based count.

It is likely that comScore is trying to solidify its position as a standard in audience calculation by releasing this study. In my article on Google and Behavioral Targeting I mentioned that Google is putting it’s cookie everywhere and could potentially get in the business that comScore is in currently (measuring audience size). This possibly could be a preemptive move by comScore. Don’t know for sure since I don’t have the details on how this study was done.

The crux of the matter is that no matter what system you use you will never get an accurate count of UU's. Even pages views are reported differently by different systems. Two panel based systems don't report the same numbers and two web analytics tool do not report the same number. To assume one system is not accurate or is better than other system is jumping to conclusions without basis. Both systems have their own advantages and disadvantages.

For individual site owners you need to pick one system, cookie based or panel based, and stick with it and accept the numbers. How does it matter if I told you that you actually get 3,000 users (or visits) and not 5000? What will change? What will you do differently? Have you ever moved from one web analytics system to another? You know they don't report same numbers. Say, your new system reports lower number than your old system than what are you going to do? Which one is correct, old or new? It is about trending and growth. You will probably use same growth and retention strategies no matter what the number is. If you goal is to increase the visitors by X% no matter what visitor count you use you will try to do X% of your current system weather that is cookie based or panel based.

If you are trying to compare sites then do the same thing, choose one system for comparison and stick with it. The same goes with advertising, if you are buying or selling ad inventory based on Unique Visitor count both buyer and seller will have to settle for one system and stick to stick to it.

However, one thing that surprised me in this study was a quote from Tacoda. Their whole business (Behavioral Targeting) is dependent on cookies and now they will validate with panel data because....(...they don't believe the size of their segment? Does that mean they will adjust the reach they claim they have?) Can someone from Tacoda please help me understand it?