Reporting Web Metrics From Different Analytics Systems – Part 1

One of the biggest challenge in reporting the project results (promotions, campaigns, media buys, etc.) is reporting the metrics that come from multiple analytics systems.

As a web analytics analyst, we would make sure to track and tag any source that we could identify as a campaign. However, when we have the opportunity to track things from mulitiple system, the challenges in reporting arraises during the time to report the results to the business.

Every analytics system tracks and processes the data differently, and we all know that analytics tools are not accurate. Analysts would rather rely on the precision rather than accuracy. Making sure that we understand these issues accuracy, we have to rely on viewing the data from the system that we know what the data should mean.

One of the example situation when we have to rely on multiple analytics platform is when ads are served via third party ad serving platform (DoubleClick, Atlas, EyeWonder, Google AdWords, etc.). Additionally, most likely the site analytics tools are utilized to track the instances or responses from those ads. The question arrises during the reporting, which data should we use, ad serving platform or site analytics tools?

The answer is both. In terms of the ad impressions, interaction, clicks, and click-throughs, it is better to use those metrics from those ad serving platforms. The click-throughs usually never match with the instances or responses seen in the site analytics tools. What we would like to use from site analytics tools are the traffic behavior and additional insights available from the tools.

Here are some possible breakdowns in the reports when multiple systems are used:

(Let’s say in this scenario, we are using DoubleClick and HitBox)
Ads impressions – DoubleClick
Clics – DoubleClick
Click-through rate – DoubleClick
Interaction rate – DoubleClick
Conversions/Retensions – Possible to use DoubleClck’s spotlight tags or HitBox
Avg. Time on Site/Page – HitBox
Traffic Segmentation – HitBox
Traffic Behavior – HitBox
Visitors to the site via the ads – HitBox