THE IMPACT OF COOKIE DELETION ON THE ACCURACY OF SITE-SERVER AND AD-SERVER METRICS A STUDY FROM COMSCORE

Did anybody ese read the above report from comScore " The Impact of Cookie Deletion on The Accuracy of Site-Server And Ad-Server Metrics: An Empirical Comscore Study By Dr. Magid Abraham And Cameron Meierhoefer" who analyzed the first-party “B cookie” from Yahoo! and the thirdparty ad server persistent cookie from DoubleClick, The study examined the degree to which Internet users clear these cookies from their computers, thereby causing site-servers to deposit new cookies and potentially leading to overstated estimates of unique users in cookie-based site-server data.

The results of the study seemed to indicate that approximately 31 percent of U.S. computer users clear their first-party cookies in a month (or have them cleared by automated software), with an average of 4.7 different cookies being observed for the same site within this user segment. Using the comScore U.S. home sample as a base, an average of 2.5 distinct cookies were observed per computer for Yahoo! This finding indicates that, because of cookie deletion, a server-centric measurement system which uses cookies to measure the size of a site’s visitor base will typically overstate the true number of unique visitors by a factor of up to 2.5 times.

In a departure from conventional wisdom this study found that 3rd party cookies were not deleted more frequently than 1st party cookies. This is particularly interesting as in my work I observe that Doubleclick consistently reports Unique Visitors to be approx 20% higher than JDC web analytics solutions such as Coremetrics and Google Analytics. I believed this trend to be caused by greater deletion of 3rd party cookies - may be not?

Rugs Direct increase sales by 30% using first-click analytics

RugsDirect.com boosted sales by 30% after implementing Coremetrics` technology that tracks multiple customer interactions to determine which marketing tactic first put a consumer on the path to making a purchase.

Prior to using Coremetrics, Rugs Direct attributed online sales based on the last marketing tactic that influenced the buyer. For example, a customer might have visited a web site by clicking on a paid ad, then visited a second time after clicking on a banner ad, and finally purchased following a click on a link in an e-mail. Under the last-click approach, the sale would be attributed solely to the e-mail campaign.

Coremetrics’ flexible attribution management platform enables marketers to view transactions in the context of multiple customer interactions over time, giving a comprehensive picture that allows them to allocate digital marketing investments appropriately, the company says.

See full article at Internet Retailer

Google Analytics Reverting Back to Original "Average Time on Site" Calculation

Read this from the Official Google Analytics blog

"We recently introduced a new way of calculating "Average Time on Site" that removed visitors who "bounce" from your website (people who hit one page of your site and then leave). This updated calculation attempted to give you a better idea of how long engaged visitors spend on your website. However, many of you prefer the original calculation: the total time on site for all visits divided by the total number of visits. So today we are changing it back".

Web Analytics Association Delivers 26 Standard Definitions to Promote Consistency across the Rapidly Evolving Web Analytics Community

WASHINGTON, DC - August 23, 2007—At Search Engine Strategies in San Jose, CA, today, the Web Analytics Association (WAA) announced a major accomplishment and milestone with the publishing of standard definitions for 26 foundational web analytic metrics covering the areas of visits, content and conversion. The result of a collaborative effort between WAA members, vendors, agencies, practitioners and thought leaders, the new definitions provide consistency of the most widely used terms across the analytics industry. Read more .....

Download the WAA Standards Analytics Definitions Volume at http://www.webanalyticsassociation.org/en/cmt/?5

Google Analytics Changes Average Time on Site Calculation

Anybody notice something strange with Google Analytics estimates for average time on site recently. We have seen them increase significantly at the back end of July. At a lost to explain this I was glad to come across Brandt Dainow's post on this very subject. It appears that Google Analytics have recently changed the way it calculates average time on site. According to Google Analytics tech support:

"Previously, the Average Time on Site had been calculated as the total time on site for all visits divided by the total number of visits. Both the total time on site and total number of visits included bounces.

As of July 20, 2007, we began reporting the Average Time on Site as the total time on site for all visits (excluding bounces) divided by the total number of visits (excluding bounces). This change also affected data from earlier dates, not just newer data.

I think this makes a lot of sense particularly if your site has a high bounce rate which would make average session times meaningless - but it would have been nice to have been told.

How to Squeeze More Out of Your Web Analytics

Take a look at this excellent post by Bryan Eisenberg at GrokDotCom

Companies spend serious money gathering and trying to analyze the data they get from the Web — and they want more out of it.

His advice:

Practice Fundamentals — Invest your time and resources in getting the simple things right. Focus on mastering a few key reports to take action on, day after day and score some easy wins. The key to getting value is not in reporting data — not simply in developing insights — but in taking action.

Invest in Training — Any company that's been trying to locate that superstar analyst knows how challenging they can be to recruit and retain in today's market; there isn't a lot of web analytic talent out there. We would say this wouldn't we!

Take a look at the Web Analytics Association. they're doing incredible work especially in terms of education and standards. The Award of Achievement in Web Analytics course the WAA has produced for the University of British Columbia is excellent. Sign up for a course if you can.

Invest an hour a day in the fine analytics books out there. If you prefer hands-on learning, try the WAA Base Camp workshops. and try to attend the Emetrics Marketing Optimization Summit in October.

comScore Announces New Engagement Metrics Based on Visits per Visitor

Today comScore, reported the latest worldwide rankings of top Web properties from its World Metrix service. The rankings are usually based on unique visitors and but this morning were also displayed by “average visits per visitor,” using a new suite of “visits” metrics. Included among the new suite of engagement metrics are total visits, average minutes per visit, average visits per visitor, and average visits per usage day.

A comparison of the rankings by average visits per visitor and by unique visitors shows a marked difference between the two. Only five of the Top 10 sites ranked by unique visitors (Google Sites, Microsoft Sites, Yahoo! Sites, Time Warner Network and Fox Interactive Media) appeared in the Top 10 list of sites ranked by average visits per visitor. The remaining sites on the Top 10 list ranked by average visits per visitor appear lower in the ranking based on unique visitors. Specifically, in addition to the aforementioned Asian sites, Facebook.com was the sixth-most engaging site worldwide (as measured by Average Visits per Visitor), but only the 73rd most-visited site in February, and the Web-hosting company United-Internet Sites was the eighth most-engaging property, but only the 79th most-visited site.

Measure Maps

I just read a post by Avinash Kaushik called Web Analytics Tools: Does User Interface (UI) Matter? take a look at his description of Measure Map which is a analytics solution now owned by Google and currently in alpha. Have you ever seen an interface like this and there is lots of contextual data provided whne you need it. I'll take a more detailed look and get back to.