It's Time For Better Web Marketing Analytics: OPA Study Reaffirms Display Ads Drive Search

Following up my recent post on campaign attribution a couple weeks ago, a new study is out showing the lift effects of display on search. The Online Publishers Association study titled, “The Silent Click: Building Brands Online” reported that when visitors are exposed to display ads:

• One in five conduct related searches and one in three visit the brands’ sites
• Users spent over 50% more time than the average visitor to these sites and consumed more pages
• Users spent about 10% more money online overall, and significantly more on product categories related to the advertised brands
• Higher income audiences visited the advertisers sites

This is just one of many studies over the past few years that has stressed the importance of running both display and search campaigns as part of your online marketing strategy. But again, I stress that these studies only go so far in helping you (the advertiser) understand the value of display and search for your own online marketing efforts.

While these studies provide great insight, they don't provide actionable results for your own business. In order to get actionable results, you have to start using the proper campaign measurement tools (such as Yahoo's free Full Analytics solution), so that you can see for yourself that your display campaigns are assisting in driving conversions for your other campaigns (such as search).

I'll keep talking about this until I'm blue in the face. But every time one of these new studies comes out, it just reaffirms my position on the need for analytics tools that provide both measurement of multiple ad channels and the appropriate attribution metrics to go along with it.

I've been talking about the value of cross channel attribution metrics on this blog for about a year and a half now. It's time to get on the bandwagon people. As Jerry Maquire famously said as he was leaving his sports agent firm...

"Who's coming with me?"

Below you'll find links to a few of my previous posts on this topic:

http://www.ysmblog.com/blog/2008/11/03/measuring-search-and-display-for-success/

http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2008/12/yahoo-assistsput-money-back-into-your.html

http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2008/07/yahoo-assists-are-higher-than.html

http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2007/06/yahoo-assists-in-helping-their.html

http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2008/11/measuring-search-and-display-for.html

My Newest Nephew...Ian Lillig

A new blessing has arrived!

New Yahoo! Web Analytics Demo Video

Another great demo unleashed by Dennis Mortensen:

http://visualrevenue.com/blog/video/yahoo-analytics-dennis-30-min-big-pg.html

People say that Yahoo! is washed up...

....those people don't know what Yahoo! is all about.

Here are the traffic results following the death of Michael Jackson....

Last Click Attribution Articles

If anybody is interested in reading up on the topic of "last click attribution", I just put together a very simple article mashup using Yahoo! Pipes (which is a very cool tool that not a lot of people know about!).

You can visit my mashup here:

http://pipes.yahoo.com/mattattributionarticles/IopWOO9Z3hGYXYAZfKAMnA

What is Pipes?

Pipes is a free online service that lets you remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor. You can use Pipes to run your own web projects, or publish and share your own web services without ever having to write a line of code.

If you want to view the source for my simple pipe, you can go here: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.edit?_id=IopWOO9Z3hGYXYAZfKAMnA

Yahoo! Web Analytics 9.5 launches and new Y!WA Facebook Group!

Yahoo! Web Analytics 9.5

The Yahoo! Web Analytics 9.5 upgrade has launched....and it looks nice! For more info and snapshots of some of the new features, check out Dennis Mortensen's blog at:

http://visualrevenue.com/blog/2009/04/yahoo-web-analytics-95-launched.html

New features to the upgrade include:

- New Demographic Dimensions
- New Psychographic Dimensions
- New Charting Capabilities
- New Path Analysis
- New Negative-Segmentation opportunities
- New version 5 tracking code
- .....and 30 other smaller updates like e.g. native PDF export, use up to 50 actions (goals), introduction of 38 custom fields - and purplefication of the tool (for that Yahoo! branding)


New Yahoo! Web Analytics Facebook Group

Jiri Brazda has set up a new Facebook group for Yahoo! Web Analytics. If you'd like to join, please visit:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=92462054858

There's already 26 members and growing!

Yahoo! Web Analytics Resources

I've been receiving an increasing amount of Yahoo! Web Analytics (formerly IndexTools) questions lately due to the recent press on the CMS analytics study. While Yahoo! Web Analytics has not yet launched publicly, I wanted to send along some helpful links that discuss Yahoo! Web Analytics in more detail. I'm guessing that these links will only get people more antsy for the release, but it's helpful none the less.

Yahoo! Web Analytics For Your Web Site

Main Site:
http://web.analytics.yahoo.com/

Video: 9 Minute Overview (by Eric Hamilton)
http://www.detroitwideweb.com/temp/Yahoo-YWA-Reporting-Deck-EHAM.htmlhttp://eham1906.blogspot.com/2009/02/yahoo-web-analytics-reporting-overview.html

Video: Same As Above:
http://eham1906.blogspot.com/2009/02/yahoo-web-analytics-reporting-overview.html

Video: 5 Minute Overview (by Dennis Mortensen)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yelzmWK64z0


Yahoo! Web Analytics For Your Yahoo! Small Business Store

Video: Y!WA Set up for Yahoo! Stores
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJ4rukzY3qM


Yahoo! Web Analytics Articles

Yahoo Web Analytics - What's the Verdict?
http://www.ecommerce-guide.com/solutions/advertising/article.php/3791481

Yahoo! Web Analytics Leaps Ahead of Google Analytics for Enterprise Use
http://www.emediawire.com/releases/2009/2/prweb2090264.htm


Yahoo! Web Analytics Book

Info On New Book by Dennis Mortensen
http://visualrevenue.com/blog/yahoo-analytics-book

Purchase Book On Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Yahoo-Web-Analytics-Dennis-Mortensen/dp/0470424249


Blog

Dennis Mortensen Blog
http://visualrevenue.com/blog/


IndexTools

Video: IndexTools at DME (2007)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5D32AS9sF4


Yahoo! Web Analytics Setup Guide

Setup Guide
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/smallbusiness/store/analytics/resources-02.html

Yahoo Web Analytics Overview Video

For those of you out there looking to find more information about Yahoo! Web Analytics (formerly IndexTools), another overview video has been created. This 9 minute video was put together by Yahoo's very own Eric Hamilton. It covers many of the high level reports that can be found within the Yahoo! Web Analytics interface.

The video can be found at either of these two destinations:

http://www.detroitwideweb.com/temp/Yahoo-YWA-Reporting-Deck-EHAM.html

http://eham1906.blogspot.com/2009/02/yahoo-web-analytics-reporting-overview.html

Green Analytics

This post is a bit off the web analytics topic but I found this type of analytics to be pretty cool none-the-less.

Here's a snapshot report analysis of my home solar usage. I recently bought a new home in December that included some pretty cool (no pun intended) solar technology. This type of data will be very useful in helping me understand peak electricity usage, etc.

For example, the tall grey bar (that is hard to read in the chart below) is my high electricity usage during Super Bowl Sunday on 2/1 (ouch)! The orange bars show how much electricity I'm using up. Based on this information below, I'm not using as much as I'm generating. What this means is that my extra electricity is going back onto the city grid. And let me tell you....it never gets old watching my electric meter outside run backwards!

So far, my home has reduced emissions equivalent to:

- Planting four mature trees

- Not driving 476 miles in a standard car.