Web Ana-lillig

Monetizing Big Data In Yahoo Web Analytics

2012-01-06T15:21:00.000-08:00

There's been a lot of talk/press already around Yahoo's new CEO, Scott Thompson, and his thoughts on big data at Yahoo. Here are a few examples that have already been written since yesterday:

Yahoo's New CEO Has Data Focus
Can Yahoo's New CEO Thompson Harness Big Data Analytics?
The Key To Yahoo's Long Term Health? Data, Says New CEO

Rest assured though, Yahoo has some of the best big data geniuses around. A company like Yahoo has to have some smart data guys when you're bringing in over 700 million monthly unique visitors to your properties each month. Ever heard of Hadoop? "The most well known technology used for Big Data is Hadoop. Hadoop is used by Yahoo, eBay, LinkedIn and Facebook. Google uses a proprietary version of Hadoop" And Hortonworks, a big data company that spun out from Yahoo this past summer expects that "Half the worlds data will be on Hadoop in 5 years"

So if Mr Thompson is looking to monetize "big data", he seems to have come to the right place.

On the web analytics side, Yahoo is in fact already tapping into its big data and leveraging it via it's Yahoo! Web Analytics platform. Clients (advertisers, publishers, agencies, etc) of Yahoo Web Analytics get to take advantage of demographic metrics such as age, gender, and online interests when they add Yahoo Web Analytics script to their web site's pages.

These types of metrics are only available thanks to Yahoo's massive audience reach (where 80% of the US population is touched). The millions of visitors who traverse across Yahoo's #1 trafficked pages or sign up for Yahoo products (fantasy sports, mail, instant messenger, finance portfolios, etc) provide extremely valuable data that Yahoo can aggregate up anonymously and provide insights to their clients.

With these metrics in hand, advertising clients can drive more targeted audience campaigns and publishers can develop more targeted audience content across their pages. The result is more visitor traffic (clicks and impressions) on ads and more engagement on web sites leading to improved conversion numbers.

And a happy client means more spend back to Yahoo.

New Study Proves True In-Store Value of Online Clicks

2011-12-08T11:52:00.000-08:00

Visit the Yahoo! Advertising Blog to read about how effective online search is at driving offline sales revenue.

In a nutshell:

For every $1 of revenue generated through online search, $6 of revenue is generated offline!

For all of you fans of cross-channel attribution, this is a must read!

Click here for the study.

Powerful Keyword Insights In Yahoo! Clues

2011-11-03T10:36:00.000-07:00

Not sure if you've had a chance to check out Yahoo! Clues yet, but if you haven't, I would take a look if you're responsible for managing search advertising at your company. There is some powerful and insightful keyword data available in the Trend Analysis section.

Yahoo! Clues (beta) is a search keyword trending tool. While it gives you a peek inside what's trending for searches on Yahoo! (sports, people, places, etc), it also gives you a peek into how your business stacks up against your competition when it comes to keyword searches.

One of my favorite reports under Trend Analysis tab is called Search Flow. What Search Flow provides is "a list of the most probable previous and following user searches from an analysis of aggregated search patterns across Yahoo! Search. The top item under Previous Queries represents the most probable search term people tried before this search query. Similarly, the top item under Next Queries represents the most probable search term people tried after this search query."

Below is a good example. By typing the term 'Staples' into the Find Trends box and clicking on the Discover button, I am able to see the most probable search keywords that people used BEFORE they searched for the term 'Staples' and then the most probable search keywords that people used AFTER they searched for the term 'Staples'.

This is very insightful data because it allows you, the advertiser, to get into the mind of your consumer/visitor. With just this data alone, we can start to pick up on some interesting trends here.

First, we see that the consumers are interested in finding store locations as we see them searching for "staples locations" and "staples center" in the Previous Queries. In the Next Queries we see the same trend of searches for "staples locations" and "staples center". This obviously lets us know that a lot of visitors who come to Yahoo! and search for "Staples" are looking for store locations. As an online marketer, these are good keywords to bid on because you know that a lot of your consumers are searching for them. Also, by helping your consumer easily find your store, it will help drive foot traffic to your brick and mortar business.

The second trend we see here is discounts! In Previous Queries, consumers searched for "staples easy rebates". In the Next Queries, they searched for "staples coupons". This trending data lets you know that your consumers are looking for deals to entice them to come to your store. As an online advertisers/marketer, you should make it easy for your consumers to find discounts/coupons for your business. Perhaps bid up on keywords such as "Staples Coupons" and make sure you provide your consumers with a landing page that gives them easy access to any coupons you have available (could be printable, mobile, etc).

The other advantage to looking at data under the Trend Analysis tab is gathering competitive intelligence. If I also add in the search term "Office Max" to the Find Trends box, I get all sorts of great insights into how my Staples audience/consumers perform compared to how Office Max's audience/consumers perform.

In this competitive view we get...

Traffic Data Insights

Gender Data Insights

Geographic Data Insights

Search Flow & Related Searches Insight

The fact that this competitive data is freely available and already aggregated up for you (thanks to Yahoo) is amazing! I recommend sharing Yahoo! Clues with your online marketing team so that they can leverage the insightful data to help drive a more profitable online business.

Start Off Every Reporting Day With Nutritional Value!

2011-10-05T11:50:00.000-07:00

"Leveraging Audience Insights to Improve DigitalMarketing ROI"

Win a Yahoo! Web Analytics Account

2011-07-06T12:30:00.000-07:00

Simply go to our new Yahoo Web Analytics page on Facebook and tell us why you'd want a Yahoo! Web Analytics account.

The answer/comment with the most 'Like' votes wins!

So get your entry in and get your friends to vote for you!!!
https://www.facebook.com/yahoowebanalytics/posts/180543512005959

Cheers!

Yahoo! Web Analytics Covered In CRM Magazine

2011-04-28T10:16:00.000-07:00

Yahoo! Web Analytics gets a spotlight in CRM Magazine's online version...

http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/Editorial/Magazine-Features/Web-Analytics-Whats-Worth-Paying-For-74702.aspx

Online Marketers Listen Up. There's Gold In That Data!

2011-04-21T15:12:00.000-07:00

It happens way too often and it's painful to watch. Extra revenue being flushed down the toilet because online marketers aren't taking a close enough look at what their web analytics reports are telling them. They've spent the time to properly implement their tracking solutions but they aren't spending enough time in their solution looking for insights.

For online marketers, there could be a whole slew of reasons as to why they're not paying closer attention to their web analytics data:

- Perhaps a new rep was hired and he/she didn't realize they had the data available
- Perhaps they have a 3rd party agency managing their data for them
- Perhaps they don't know how to analyze the data and need a consultant
- Perhaps they're just lazy and don't care

While there's always reasons why one hasn't looked closely enough, the bottom line is that you have to pay close attention to what your data is telling you so that you can capitalize on it! Web analytics data isn't just a bunch of numbers on a page (though it may look like it to some). Web analytics data provides you with insights such as: who your target audience is, where your roadblocks are, whether or not you're turning a profit, and who you should be spending your online budget with.

With that said, I want to introduce you to a good example of an online marketer who hasn't been paying close enough attention to their search engine referral report data. And because of this, they're missing out BIG TIME on driving additional revenue to their bottom line.

The data provided below for this particular marketer (in the UK) was generated during the past several months...

Larger Image View: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lillig/5641737296/

By looking at the data from this report, we can see that:

- Google is driving 91% of the referral traffic (combo of paid and organic search)
- Google drives a higher Avg. Order Value for each sale
- Yahoo drives a much higher Conversion Rate
- Google drives a lot more Revenue
- Yahoo drives a much higher ROAS (Return On Ad Spend)
- The marketer spends (Cost) a lot more with Google versus the other three engines

Now let's analyze the data for insights. Do you see the glaring question that comes from this report above (minus AOL since their search is enhanced by Google)???

Yes! Why isn't this marketer spending more with Yahoo to drive more referral traffic when more than half of their visitors convert, the ROAS is more than double Google's, and the Avg Order Value is nearly the same as Google's?

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the marketer should pull budget from away Google and use it for Yahoo (because Google's ROAS is also very good) but they should definitely be spending a lot more with Yahoo with the kind of performance data it's showing! Sure spending more on Yahoo is going to drive up their costs/spend but at a 6,800% return-on-ad-spend, this marketer is missing out on a big revenue opportunity!!

Also, look how much more the marketer is spending with Bing (Cost), yet look at the return they get compared to Yahoo. Does that make sense? No. However, that will soon change and become even more important as the Yahoo/Microsoft alliance moves into the UK in the near future. Using the same data above, here's a breakdown and summary of what a Bing/Yahoo alliance currently looks like for this marketer compared to Google....

Referral Traffic

Google: 91%
Yahoo/Bing: 3%

Search Engine Spend/Cost
Google: €164,409 ($235,606)
Yahoo/Bing: €28,037 ($40,198)

Average Order Value

Google: €1,759 ($2,521)
Yahoo/Bing: €1,662 ($2,382)

Conversion

Google: .43%
Yahoo/Bing: .52%

Revenue Generated

Google: €5,468,506 ($7,840,167)
Yahoo/Bing: €458,009 ($656,607)

ROAS (Gain)
Google: 3,326%
Yahoo/Bing: 3,914%

Summary:

While the Yahoo/Bing alliance has not yet taken place in the UK, the client should prepare themselves to take advantage of it when it does. Even though Google refers a lot more traffic and generates more Revenue than both Yahoo and Bing combined (partly due to their 5X higher spend in Google), a combined Yahoo/Bing drives almost the same Average Order Value, drives a higher Conversion Rate, and provides a better Return On Ad Spend. Those three metrics alone should alert the client that they should be spending more in AdCenter to drive higher revenue when the Yahoo/Bing alliance comes along.

Y!WA in 2011

2011-01-20T16:13:00.000-08:00

I'm super excited about what 2011 has in store for Yahoo! Web Analytics. Get ready to see more of Y!WA in 2011! More conferences, more blogs, more webinars, more collateral, more product development, more integration, more of everything!

Stay tuned.....

Check Out The New Yahoo! Clues Search Data Insights Service

2010-11-17T10:46:00.000-08:00

Very cool data insights on search usage! The look and feel of these reports is very user friendly!!

Secret To Winning With Web Analytics? Starting Right!

2010-11-04T13:26:00.000-07:00

Interested in learning the secret to starting a successful web analytics program within your company? Go read Avinash Kaushik's (a leader in the field of web analytics) post on the Yahoo! Web Analytics blog:

http://www.yanalyticsblog.com/blog/2010/11/secret-to-winning-with-web-analytics-starting-right/

New Yahoo! Web Analytics Enhancement: Campaign Assists

2010-10-21T12:16:00.000-07:00

Similar to what Yahoo! search advertisers were able to use within the analytics tools (Full Analytics and Conversion Only) on the Yahoo! Search Marketing platform, the Assist metric is now available within Yahoo! Web Analytics.

The assist* metric reveals which campaigns (of any type) most often indirectly contribute to the conversions you value in order to better evaluate marketing opportunities.

The metric is calculated based on the number of times a campaign drives a visitor to your website prior to the source credited with a conversion.

Assists are a campaign-based metric available in the Custom Report Wizard and are treated as any other campaign-based metric. They can be aggregated at higher level categories or viewed for each individual campaign being tracked.

All assists occurring within 45 days of the conversion event will be recorded. Note that a single marketing activity can assist multiple conversions.

Please also note that individual keywords or other organic traffic sources are not tracked as assists.

As you can probably tell by reading the above description, the Assist metric is very valuable for helping you understand whether or not your camapigns (display, search, email, etc) contributed to the conversion of another campaign.

For example, you'll now be able to see that while your display ad did not convert very well on its own (directly) it may have contributed (assisted) in driving conversions for other campaigns (such as search). Over time, of course, you'd be able to make smarter budgeting decisions for your display campaigns. The same goes for other campaigns as well.

*Note: Currently the assist metric only provides data on clicked campaigns. It does not provide impression assists.

Yahoo! Web Analytics Releases Version 9.6

2010-09-22T12:40:00.000-07:00

Check out the new Yahoo! Web Analytics upgrades....

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ywa/documentation/prod_updates/3615784.html

I'm especially excited about the Assist feature. :)

Speaking at the Sept. 29th Web Analytics Wednesday Event In Santa Monica

2010-09-21T12:39:00.000-07:00

Join us for a Web Analytics Wednesday networking event on September 29th. I'll be speaking about emerging trends in Web Analytics.

You are also invited to a happy hour at the Daily Grill (http://www.dailygrill.com/) after the presentation.

This free event will be held at the Grand Conference room at RPA and will start at 6:30PM. Please note that RPA is located in the east wing of Yahoo Center. Also, RPA will not be able to validate parking.

More information can be found here: http://www.webanalyticsdemystified.com/wednesday/list.asp?event_id=3142

Looking forward to meeting you!

Yahoo! Web Analytics: Tracking Your Embedded YouTube Videos Within Your Website

2010-09-03T14:15:00.000-07:00

Great overview on how to use Yahoo! Web Analytics to track the performance of theYouTube videos that you embed within your web site.

http://www.yanalyticsblog.com/blog/?p=396

Yahoo! Web Analytics: Segmentation Made Easy

2010-08-31T10:53:00.000-07:00

Let me give you a tip. If you want to run a successful web site, then get to know your visitors better. The companies that really understand who their visitors are tend to be the most successful because they're able to get the greatest return out their visitors. They get more engagement from their visitors, their visitors click on more links and pages, and their visitors tend to convert more.

Part of understanding your visiting audience comes down to figuring out which segments of your audience perform the best. Once you figure that out, life gets much easier because now you know who you should be developing and targeting your web site content for.

In Yahoo! Web Analytics, it's easy to figure out who your audience is with its demographic, geographic, and interest group data. For example, by visiting the 'Age and Gender' report you'll quickly see what age range and gender group visits your web site the most. By visiting the 'Interest Group' report you'll understand which category your visitors are interested in the most (entertainment, sports, finance, news, etc). In less than two minutes, you can begin to build a picture of your audience. But Yahoo! Web Analytics also does so much more to help you understand your audience.

Let's say you run an e-commerce site and you've just pinpointed (using the Age and Gender report) that the majority of visitors to your web site are males between the ages of 18-34. That's a great start but you want to learn more about how that segment (by itself) has performed. What can you do to learn more about that segment's performance?

If you log into Yahoo! Web Analytics and select the 'Settings' link at the top of the page, you'll find a section called 'Segmentation' and a link called 'Create Visitor Segments'

Here you can create nearly any kind of segment you want and then have the ability to follow that segment across many of the reports that Yahoo! Web Analytics provides.

Let's create a segment for "males between the ages of 18-34" and I'll show you what you can do with that segment within the Yahoo! Web Analytics reporting structure....

Step 1: Select the 'Create Visitor Segments' link and then select the 'Open the Segmentation Wizard' button at the bottom of the page.

Step 2: Once inside the Segmentation Wizard...
a. Under 'Group Selection' click on the 'Segmentation' link and you'll get a drop down
b. Drag the 'Age' box and drop it into the 'Drag Groups Here' box
- Select the age ranges '18-24', and '25-34' and move them to the left (using the arrows)
c. Drag the 'Gender' box and drop it into the 'Drag Groups Here' box
- Select the 'Male' option
d. Give the Segment a name at the top of the wizard and select the 'Save Segment' box

Step 3: Go back into your reports
- Select the Reports link at the top of the page

Step 4: Select any report such as Search Engines
- Select Marketing --> Search Engines & Referrers --> Search Engines

Step 5: Once inside the Search Engines Referrals report...
a. Click on the 'Segmentation Selector' icon at the top of the page
b. Find the segment you just created under 'Available Segments'
c. Drag the segment to the 'Drag Segments Here' box
d. Select the 'Show Report' button

When the Search Engines report generates, you'll see that data provided is broken out just for your segment of males between the ages of 18-34. Now you can explore all of your other reports and the data will be broken out for just that segment alone.

If you want to go back to your normal reports.....
a. Click the 'Segmentation Selector' icon at the top of the page again
b. Click the trash can icon next to your segment
c. Click the 'Show Report' button

Once you really get a handle on who your audience is, you can start to add content or advertising (such as banner ads) that is targeted around that audience. By doing this, you'll be able to drive deeper engagment for your visitors, drive more click throughs from your visitors, and drive your visitors to more conversions because you're providing them with the content they are seeking.

Now go explore Yahoo! Web Analytics some more!

Analyze Your Organic Traffic with Yahoo! Web Analytics

2010-08-10T12:17:00.001-07:00

From the web site Clickerlink.com

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egbW9oAtAsg&feature=player_embedded

Check Out Your Mobile Traffic In Yahoo! Web Analytics

2010-08-05T16:15:00.000-07:00

Quick little video for those of you Yahoo! Small Business clients who want to check what kind of traffic you get from mobile phones.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=il9bSfy3iGY

Track Your Twitter Branding Effectiveness In Real-Time With Yahoo! Web Analytics

2010-08-05T11:16:00.000-07:00

Check out my latest post to the Yahoo! Web Analytics Blog:

http://www.yanalyticsblog.com/blog/2010/08/ywa-twitter-tracking/

Latest Word Cloud

2010-08-02T10:34:00.000-07:00

New Yahoo! Web Analytics Quick Start Guides Available!

2010-07-26T16:53:00.000-07:00

The Yahoo! Web Analytics team has just released two great Quick Guides to help get you up and running with Yahoo! Web Analytics.

The first guide is the Quick Install Guide:

Our Quick Install Guide contains some basic information for the newer Yahoo! Web Analytics user so that you can get up and running as soon as possible. Questions answered include:
•Where do I actually get my tracking code?
•Where do I put the tracking code?
•How do I check the tracking code?

The second guide is the Custom Fields Guide (a very valuable guide for those who want to get more out of Y!WA):

Our Custom Fields Guide will give you lots of great information on YWA custom fields and how you can use them from set-up to reporting. We cover what they are, provide some use cases and illustrate the scopes and carry-over options.

For more information and links to the guides, head on over to our Yahoo! Web Analytics Blog: http://www.yanalyticsblog.com/blog/2010/07/ywa_quick_guides/

Yahoo! Microsoft Search Alliance Video

2010-07-26T10:44:00.000-07:00

While this post is not analytics related, I thought it was worth posting due to the importance of the Yahoo!/Microsoft Search Alliance.

Here's a very cool animated video explaining the alliance:
http://community.microsoftadvertising.com/blogs/advertiser/archive/2010/07/15/new-video-from-the-yahoo-and-microsoft-search-alliance-what-does-it-mean-for-you.aspx#comments

With regards how the alliance will affect web analytics (especially Yahoo's 'Full Analytics' and 'Conversion Only' products), I'll be following up with a post in the near future!

I've Been Googed!

2010-07-09T16:39:00.000-07:00

For years (yes, prior to me joining Yahoo!) I've been using Google Alerts to send me topic updates into my Yahoo! mail inbox. If anybody hasn't used Alerts, it's a great way to keep you up to speed on topics such as "web analytics" or "online advertising" or "attribution"...or ANY topic for that matter.

Alerts has also been a great way to send referral traffic to this Yahoo! Analytics blog. In years past, each time I've written a new post, it's been picked up by Alerts and it's been shown in their Blogs update section. Lately however, I haven't seen any of my latest blog posts show up in Alerts. Therefore, I'm seeing a direct decrease in referral traffic of late.

Strangely enough, I always see Avinash Kaushik (Google Analytics evangelist) related blog posts show up. Hmmmmmm....must have been a change to their "relevance" algorithm......

Re: v.4 Tracking Code Migration Deadline is Approaching

2010-07-08T14:12:00.000-07:00

For those of you Yahoo! Web Analytics users (formally known as IndexTools) currently running on the v4 tracking code, please read this message from the Y!AnalyticsBlog:

In 2009 we moved all of our legacy IndexTools accounts to a new data center, additionally we introduced our new v.5 tracking code and updated the v.4 tracking code. At that time we announced that v.4 would remain fully supported until July 30th, 2010. Well that migration deadline is fast approaching and we would like to again remind our customers to check their site(s) to ensure that they won’t be impacted.

Please note that when v.4 support ends YWA will continue to track sites utilizing this code but going forward there will be no updates, bug fixes or technical support for that version.

You can still access the original migration guides for Partners/Consultants and end users should you need to switch and our v.5 installation guide is another invaluable resource. Also, one of our YWACN members, Sally Knows, has put together a free tool called No Tags, No Glory which can scan your site and alert you to any pages that contain legacy tracking code. You can also contact us if you have any questions or are having issues with the migration.

Please note that this will not affect any users who became customers after May 2009.

Posted by The YWA Team

Track Your Twitter Campaigns In Real Time With Yahoo! Web Analytics: Part 2

2010-07-06T13:56:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the delay on Part 2 of this post (busy times lately with Yahoo! Web Analytics).

When we left off on Part 1, we talked about why you'd want to track your Twitter campaigns in real time. Here's how you do it using Yahoo! Web Analytics (all images below can be clicked on for a larger view):

Step 1: Log Into Your Y!WA account and choose the Settings tab/link at the top of the page.

Step 2: Select the 'Manage Campaigns' link under the 'Campaigns & PPC Tracking' header:

Step 3: Select the 'Add New Campaign' button at the bottom of the page (and choose 'Other Campaign' from the drop down menu):

Step 4: Add your Campaign Properties:

- Campaign Name

- Description

- Cost Type

- Campaign Start Date

- Campaign End Date

- Show campaign In Reports

- Vendor

- Landing page URL Contains (if you've already set up a campaign in Google Analytics like the Twitter example in this article, then simply use Landing Page URL Contains: utm_source=twitter)

Tracking campaigns in Yahoo! Web Analytics is as easy as telling Y!WA what to look for in either a URL parameter, a Landing Page URL, or a Referring URL. Once Y!WA sees it, it will appropriately bucket it under the Campiagn Name you created. So even if you've already set up your campaigns with Google parameters or Omniture parameters or Double Click parameters, for example, you can simply tell Y!WA to look for those parameters.

By setting up your Twitter campaigns in Y!WA, you'll be able to get real time traffic results from a real time social network!

Track Your Twitter Campaigns In Real Time With Yahoo! Web Analytics: Part 1

2010-05-18T15:06:00.000-07:00

One of the bonuses of using Yahoo! Web Analytics is that it reports back data in real time.

Q: Are all reports in Y!WA real-time?
A: Yes, Yahoo! Web Analytics maintains detailed records of every visit to your website in its database. When you request a report, Yahoo! Web Analytics mines this database to produce real time reports. All you have to do is to select a target period in your calendar.

Some advertisers have told me that they don't see a need for real-time reporting, but I would disagree. To those advertisers I say, have you heard of Twitter?

Yes, Twitter. That HUGE real-time social networking platform that is teaching some of the world's largest companies a thing or two about the value of social branding on the web. It's also teaching the the world's largest companies a thing or two about customer relations. Thanks to real-time social networking these days, brands are either being praised or flushed down the toilet in a very short amount of time (remember the Oprah/Twitter/KFC disaster last year).

The point is, since advertising has started to move viral in real-time, shouldn't you start tracking those advertising efforts in real-time to help you better understand your customers?

I recently came across a nicely written blog titled, "Tracking Online and Offline Marketing Campaigns with Google Analytics" The writer did a great job of walking you through a step by step process of using Google Analytics to track your email, banner/display, Twitter, paid search, and offline campaigns. The writer then followed up the implementation steps by providing a summary of how to view the reports in Google Analytics once the campaign data was captured. A fantastic example of how to measure your advertising efforts under one roof so you can make smarter budgeting decisions.

The only issue I had with the Twitter example is that Google Analytics does not provide real-time data. So for those advertisers that are launching branded campaigns on Twitter, they are going to have to wait from a few hours to 24 hours before they can start to evaluate the effectiveness of their Twitter campaign. Sure, you could wait so that you can make decisions with a larger sample of data, but then what's the point of launching a campaign on a real-time social platform if you can't measure the results in real-time and make real-time decisions? Do you follow me?

As an advertiser, wouldn't you rather know in real-time how many times that "bit" or "tiny" URL (that you created for your campaign) was being clicked on as it was being sent all over Twitter on a massive scale? I would! With the speed at which information travels across Twitter these days, you could take action in real-time if that campaign wasn't performing well. When have you EVER been able to take that kind of immediate action on a campaign?

And remember, just because your campaign is receiving lots of clicks, it doesn't mean your campaign is performing well. You may receive lots of clicks because somebody made a negative tweet about your product or service and everybody wants to see what your product or service is all about. Being able to compare your click data in real-time along with what tweeters are saying about your campaign could save you a big headache in the long run by allowing you to tweak your campaign messaging on the fly.

In Part 2, I'll explain how you can use Yahoo! Web Analytics to track your Twitter campaigns in real-time.....even if you're already using other analytics platforms (such as Google Analytics) to track those campaigns. It's easier than you think.

Yahoo! Web Analytics Demo and Top Questions Answered

2010-04-29T13:21:00.000-07:00

I've been receiving lots of questions lately surrounding Yahoo! Web Analytics so I decided to answer them here on my blog. Below you'll find the answers to the top questions....

How Do I Get A Yahoo! Web Analytics Account?

A lot of people over the past several months have asked me how they can get a Yahoo! Web Analytics account. Here is your answer:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ywa/introduction/intro-2.html;_ylt=ApmUYEFUUL8CWAKmAYsVh13KInlG

Is There A Yahoo! Web Analytics Demo?

You bet. A pretty good one in fact that highlights some of the best features of what Yahoo! Web Analytics has to offer:

http://l.yimg.com/a/i/us/ayc/flash/ywa-dennis-5-min-75p.swf

Are There Training Videos Available?

Yes, we now have multiple sessions of free Yahoo! Web Analytics training videos available:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ywa/documentation/training/;_ylt=ArBJcSfzlFVLaR2NyMPpktVteHdG

Why Would I Want Yahoo! Web Analytics When I Already Use Google Analytics or Site Catalyst or Coremetrics or WebTrends?

Here are my favorites.....

1. Un-aggregated Data

You can dig deep into the data to help you get the answers that lead to making smarter web site optimization and online budgeting decisions.

With the raw data you can customize your reporting and filter out segments to help you get the type of actionable info that you simply cannot get from a default/non-customizable report.

For example, with Yahoo! Web Analytics you can customize a basic Visits report and make it into an actionable report (such as the one below). A basic default Search Engines report might show you that most Visits come from Google. But does that mean you should spend more on Google advertising? No, you need more actionable information to help you make smarter budgeting decisions.

With Yahoo! Web Analytics you can open up the 'Customize Report' function and pull in some of that additional raw data you have access to such as Conversion Rates, Revenue, Average Order Value, etc. In the image below, we see that while Google drove the most Visits and Revenue it didn't drive the highest Conversion Rate or provide the best Average Order Value.

Looking at how AOL compared in this example, it actually drove a higher Avg. Order Value than Google did. Looking more closely, we notice that AOL drove about half the amount of Revenue that Google did on only 1/10th of Google's traffic. So you can imagine that if you worked to drive more traffic to your e-commerce site from AOL (with the Avg. Order Value it's running at) you could see some positive results!! Now THAT is actionable information!

(click on image for larger snapshot)

2. Interest Group Data

Anybody with a web site wants to better understand what their visitors are interested in so that they can better target them. Yahoo! Web Analytics offers a newer report call Interest Groups.

With Yahoo's HUGE audience scale (600 million monthly unique visitors) and massive amount of users that have signed up for Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! Fantasy Sports, Yahoo! Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Finance, etc., Yahoo! can provide a pretty awesome sample set of data and can help you understand the types of visitors that are coming to your site and what they are interested in.

(click on image for larger snapshot)

Combine Yahoo's massive audience with the science of housing raw un-aggregated data and the ability to filter on that data (such as breaking down the Interest Group data by gender or city as shown in the image above) and you have some amazing targeting data that no other company currently provides.

3. FREE

Where else are you going to find an enterprise analytics solution combined with Yahoo! audience data for free? Nowhere. Even when Yahoo! adds new functionality in future upgrades....still free.

I had a client ask me if they could test our Yahoo! Web Analytics for 30 days. I laughed and said, "You can test it for as long as you want because it's free!" Here at Yahoo!, we like to call it FREE99.

No more paying for page views!! If Yahoo! Web Analytics helps you grow your web site traffic (which it is designed to do with its web site optimization and campaign tracking reports) are you going to have to pay more for that additional traffic? NO! NO! NO!

You shouldn't have to pay more for analytics because your web site is improving...that's what the web analytics tool is supposed to help you do in the first place! Your costs should not have to run side by side with your improved performance!

Remember folks......Yahoo! Web Analytics is not a reporting tool, it's an analysis tool. What do you have to lose? It's free.

Why is the Yahoo! brand so big???

2010-04-03T15:54:00.000-07:00

Early age focus groups....

(press play to watch)

Yahoo! Launches Yahoo! Web Analytics Blog

2010-03-07T14:39:00.001-08:00

Come check out Yahoo's new Yahoo! Web Analytics blog.

http://www.yanalyticsblog.com/

The first post is about "Measuring the effectiveness of on-site promotions" by Dennis Mortensen.

Latest Yahoo! Web Analytics Training Video Launched: Reporting & Interface Features

2010-02-02T12:09:00.000-08:00

The latest Yahoo! Web Analytics training session called, "Reporting And Interface Features" can be found here:

http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ywa/training/training_session5.html;_ylt=AnOMQm1xE45RrI8EC2foDqJYDHlG

For all other trainings, please visit the Yahoo! Web Analytics Resources site: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ywa/training/

Yahoo! Web Analytics Training Webinars Launched

2010-01-19T09:09:00.000-08:00

Via Dennis Mortensen's Visual Revenue blog:

The following is a post by Charlie Holbech

We have spent the last 18 months integrating Y!WA (IndexTools) into the Yahoo! Network and whilst our Account Management team has worked tirelessly to ensure that our client base (both Y!WACN members and Direct Customers) are well supported, we have also managed to find time to run some projects in the background!

Our onus has been on serving our customer base more effectively, tackling this in a variety of ways: Dedicated Account Management for Y!WACN members, an expansive list of FAQs available to all on help.yahoo.com as well as the recently announced Y!WA Status Blog keeping our customers informed in real-time (RSS, Email, Phone and Messenger Alerts).

I’m pleased to announce that today we add a considerable resource to our existing support and self-serve channels!

Yahoo! Web Analytics Product Training on-Demand

We have spent the last few months converting our original on-site product training that we use to deliver to clients and partners at IndexTools, into short, easily digestible, on-demand webinars. These webinars are accessible by all and aim to give new and existing users a complete overview of the product allowing them to concentrate on what’s important: analysis. The webinars are collated using a combination of PowerPoint Slides and in Product Demo’s.

Further to this we have also added an Interactive Q&A section (Adobe Captivate) for each of the training sections. This will enable users to check their knowledge at each stage of the training, or go back and check it further down the line. N.B. We don’t capture any personal data or results :)

So where do YOU go to get access to these?

We have created a section within help.yahoo.com and you can access the individual sessions here. We’ve created a page for each session and you’ll currently have access to the following sessions and sections:

Session 1: Deploying and Customizing the Tracking Code
Session 2: Sales and Merchandising – Deployment and Reporting
Session 3: Basic Reporting: Traffic, Demographics, Techno-graphics, Content, Navigation, and Path Analysis
Session 4: Conversion Analysis, Scenario Analysis

Still to come over the next month or so are the remaining sessions these include:

Session 5: Reporting Interface Features
Session 6: Manual Campaign Setup
Session 7: Automated Campaign Setup
Session 8: Campaign Reporting
Session 9: Dashboards
Session 10: Settings

We hope you find these informative and useful! Stay tuned for the remaining 6 Sessions. If you’ve not had a chance to view the product yet checkout Dennis’ 30 min Yahoo! Web Analytics Demo.

My thanks to Miha Popa who worked so hard to get these recorded and to the rest of my team for drawing up all the questions and answers!

Cheers,

Charlie

Yahoo! Analytics Word Cloud

2010-01-12T10:35:00.000-08:00

Here's a word cloud for all of the search keywords people used to find my blog in 2009.

Looking to create your own word cloud? Go to: http://www.wordle.net/

Matt Lillig Blog: Year In Review

2010-01-04T13:13:00.000-08:00

Don't ask me how, but I let four months slip by without receiving any data (with regards to Google Analytics). Something happened where the Google tracking tag was mistakenly removed (probably as I was toying around with adding Blogger gadgets to my layout).

Yes, even I use Google Analytics (mainly because that's what I was using before I joined Yahoo!). I'll be adding a Yahoo Web Analytics account in the next couple days. :)

With regards to my blog, 2009 was a great year. Unfortunately, due to my 4 month tracking error, I came out with a fewer number of visits compared to 2008 (of course). Oh well, I still came out with some interesting user trends!

My top 10 keyword searches were as follows:

1. yahoo assists
2. matt lillig
3. green analytics
4. yahoo full analytics
5. matt lillig blog
6. yahoo web analytics
7. matt lillig yahoo
8. tracking display ads
9. where are assists in yahoo?
10. last click attribution

Anybody see a trend here? It appears that the topic of attribution was very high on the mind of my visitors in 2009 (as Yahoo's search attribution metric called 'Assists' came in at #1 and #9 and 'last click attribution' came in at #10). This is a good thing because I spent a lot of time covering the topic discussing how Assists can help advertisers save online ad budget dollars and lower their CPA for keywords.

With regards to my Top 10 blog posts of 2009, here is the breakout:

1. Home Page (of course): http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/

2. Web Analytics Resources: http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2009/02/yahoo-web-analytics-resources.html

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

4. Yahoo! Assists (Saving Money): http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2008/12/yahoo-assistsput-money-back-into-your.html

5. Yahoo! Web Analytics (Geo Targeting): http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2009/12/use-yahoo-web-analytics-to-geotargeted.html

6. Tracking Search and Display: http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2008/08/hi-im-search-hi-im-display.html

7. Comscore: http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2008/06/why-comscore-paid-click-reports-arent.html

8. Tracking Display Ads: http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2008/10/tracking-display-ads-is-easy-with.html

9. Green Analytics (this one was off topic with regards to Yahoo! but interesting that it received this much traffic): http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2009/02/green-analytics.html

10. Yahoo! Search Marketing Analytics Description: http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2009/02/green-analytics.html

Note the Assist posts came in at #2 and #3. Attribution love!

For 2010, expect more posts from me on the Yahoo! Web Analytics platform (note that my Y!WA post on geo-targeting made the #5 most visited post in 2009 even though I just posted it in early December) . It's clear that consumers out there are interested in learning more about Yahoo! Web Analytics and its capabilities. And why shouldn't they? It's free, it's fast, and it's powerful!

Thanks to all of the people who visited my blog 2009. Happy new year!

Adios to 2009 (thank goodness!) and here's to a great year for analytics in 2010!

Matt Lillig

Case Study: How Assisted Attribution Helped Lower A Marketer's CPA by 25.6%!

2009-12-24T10:04:00.000-08:00

Back in August I wrote a post about using Yahoo's Assist attribution metric to help advertisers lower their CPA. This morning I came across a case study that showed how one marketer used assisted attribution to reduce their cost-per-acquisition 25.6% while also increasing sales for non-branded key terms by 15.2%!! AWESOME!

Here's the link to the case study:
http://www.marketingsherpa.com/article.php?ident=31487

Here's the link to my August blog post:
http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2009/08/want-to-lower-your-online-cpa-then.html

Re: Use Yahoo! Web Analytics to view campaign traffic by zip code

2009-12-10T11:32:00.000-08:00

Just an update to this post:
http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2009/12/use-yahoo-web-analytics-to-geotargeted.html

I made the images clickable so you can view are larger and more readable. I also changed the 2nd image so you can see the steps I used to create the Custom Report.

Use Yahoo! Web Analytics to view campaign traffic by zip code

2009-12-03T17:23:00.000-08:00

I just finished reading an article titled: Forecast: Geotargeted display ads to reach $1.9 billion

http://www.bizreport.com/2009/12/forecast_geotargeted_display_ads_to_reach_19_billion.html

In the article it stated:

"By geographically targeting ads to consumers marketers can substantially increase their ability to reach in-market consumers. For example, an auto dealer can now target consumers in specific zip codes or regions rather than blanketing an entire state or block of content sites."

As I read this, I thought why not just get this geographic data out of your Yahoo! Web Analytics reports? After you've set up Yahoo! Web Analytics to track your campaigns, you can set up a simple Customized Report to see the traffic to those campaigns via zip code (click on image below).

In the image example above, I simply selected the 'Demographics' report (from the left hand nav menu) and then selected the 'Zip Code' report in the dropdown menu.

After that, I selected the 'Customize Report' icon at the top of the page and followed the steps below.

1) From the 'Groups" tab, I clicked the 'Marketing' button.

2) Within the 'Marketing' button dropdown, I dragged the 'Campaigns' button over to the "Drag Groups Here' box (above the 'Zip Code' button).

3) Then I selected the 'Show Report' button (click on image below).

Now I can view the the traffic from different zip codes for all of my campaigns and I can target my users appropriately!

Yahoo! Analytics vs. Google Analytics

2009-11-21T23:08:00.000-08:00

I seemed to have drawn some interest in my last post titled "Why you should choose Yahoo! Web Analytics Over Google Analytics". I checked my ClickTale traffic and noticed that post was definitely the most popular of late. It's simply a post that redirects visitors to a couple nicely developed presentations on the topic.

But to be fair, I must say that Yahoo! and Google each have their own uniqe business strategies for their own solutions, so they probably shouldn't really be compared at all. But for those out there who enjoy comparing the two solutions, I say go for it because it never really hurts to get a little extra press, right?!?!?! :) And the more we hear about the topic of web analytics in general, the better for everybody!

Why You Should Choose Yahoo! Web Analytics Over Google Analytics

2009-11-10T16:17:00.001-08:00

Two new presentations are available that discuss why Yahoo! Web Analytics should be your free web analytics solution of choice.

1. Published by Insightr (Oct. 30th, 2009): The most comprehensive comparison
http://www.slideshare.net/insightr/insightr-insite-comparing-free-analytics-visual

2. Published by SallyKnows
http://www.slideshare.net/SallyKnows/why-choose-yahoo-web-analytics-over-google-analytics?src=related_normal&rel=2381841

Yahoo! Web Analytics Expands Consulting Network

2009-11-06T13:20:00.000-08:00

According to Dennis Mortensen's blog...

http://visualrevenue.com/blog/2009/11/expanding-yahoo-web-analytics-consultant-network.html

Want To Lower Your Online CPA? Then Factor In Yahoo's Assist Conversion Data

2009-08-27T09:48:00.000-07:00

For most search and display advertisers, reaching a low CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) goal is the holy grail of a successfull online campaign effort. But as most advertisers know from experience, it's easier said then done.

Getting more visitors to convert for less money is not an easy task by any means. There are a lot of factors that have to take place in order for CPA to drop. For example, search and display ads can't be too expensive, the ads need to drive quality traffic and be relevant, the landing pages have to be relevant, there can't be any roadblocks on the site's path to conversion, visitors must be engaged with your product, sign up forms need to be easy to navigate, shopping carts need to flow, etc., etc., etc.

As you can see, driving a lower CPA takes some effort. Too bad there isn't an easier way to lower that CPA dollar figure. Ahhhhh.....but wait. There actually is a way and it all boils down to how advertisers measure a conversion.

If we take a step back and look at the way that most advertisers measure a conversion, it usually goes something like this...

A conversion takes place when a visitor clicks on a banner ad or search ad, reaches the web site, and then signs up, makes a purchase, downloads something, etc. If the campaign receives a high number of clicks and a high number of conversions, then the advertiser considers the campaign a success. If the campaign receives a high number of clicks and a low number of conversions, the advertiser considers the campaign a dud and a waste of money.

So what is wrong with this description of a conversion? It's true isn't it? Yes, it is true, but the problem with this description is that the conversions mentioned above are single channel, direct response, conversions. Not all visitors who click on ads operate in a direct response manner. For example, many studies over the past few years have shown that on multiple occasions visitors will click on a display/banner ad, reach the web site and not convert, but later (down the road) run a search, click on the search ad, and then convert. This is what's called a multi-channel conversion (visitors who traverse across multiple campaigns before converting).

But when advertisers measure a conversion in a single channel, direct response frame of mind, the display ad in the example above would not have received any credit for driving the search conversion. If this type of scenario continued over time, advertisers would have considered the display ad a dud....it drove lots of clicks but didn't drive enough conversions on its own. This of course leads to a higher CPA. Due to a higher CPA, the advertiser would naturally kill the budget for that particular display ad.

In reality, what the advertiser has just done is kill off a very effective branding campaign for driving search conversions!

Because the advertiser was unable to give proper attribution conversion credit to the display ad that drove search conversions, they're stuck in the same boat of figuring out ways to lower the CPA for their display campaign. But it doesn't have to be this way. There are analytics solutions out there that provide multi-channel credit to ads that have been clicked on before the last clicked ad (direct response ads).

Yahoo's 'Full Analytics' (found in a Yahoo search advertiser's account) offers a multi-channel attribution metric called Assists. An Assist will attribute credit to an ad/campaign/keyword that contributed to the conversion of another ad/campaign/keyword. If a visitor clicks on a display ad and does not convert, but later converts off a search ad, the display ad will receive an Assist (conversion credit) and the search ad will receive the conversion.

What an advertiser can do with Assist conversion data is factor it into their regular CPA calculations to give them a better view of the performance of their ads. Here's an example...

Example 1: Single Channel - Direct Response CPA Calculation

An advertiser spends $100 on a display ad and it receives 5 conversions diectly (visitor(s) clicked on the ad and converted).

$100/5 Conversions = $20 CPA

Example 2: Multi Channel + Assist Response CPA Calculation

An advertiser spends $100 on a display ad and it receives 5 conversions on its own...but it also receives 7 Assist conversions that it drove to search.

$100/5 direct response conversions + 7 Assist conversions = $8.33 CPA

Results

Between Example 1 and Example 2, we see a CPA difference of $11.67. Depending on what an advertiser's CPA goals are, the Assist calculation should make a difference in how they manage their ad budget.

With Example 2, the advertiser realizes that the display ad brought in more than just 5 conversions on its own. So this contributing conversion data should also be factored into their CPA calculation.

With the data in hand, the advertiser would most likely want to spend more money on the display ad and expand its exposure (as it drives conversions across multiple channels) as opposed to pulling the budget or lowering the budget (because a $20 CPA was too high).

Using Example 2, advertisers realize that they are receiving more conversions for each dollar spent.

Conclusion

Without having to focus on issues such as web site optimization, ad quality, and shopping cart performance, we just showed how to drive a lower CPA by re-evaluating how conversions can and should be measured.

If CPA is going to be used as goal of success or failure, advertisers have to make sure that they are looking at a broader view of campaign conversion perfomance. Simply measuring CPA using a direct response caluculation will not cut it if you are running multiple types of ads (search display, email, etc). Direct response measurement does not provide enough insight into the true value of the ad. Advertisers need to make sure that they measure beyond last clicked (direct response) conversions and start giving credit to those ads that are responsible for driving conversions down the conversion funnel line.

More Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network Info

2009-07-31T09:12:00.001-07:00

For more information on the recent launch of the Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network, you can visit the official Yahoo! Search Marketing blog....

Click Here

Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network Has Officially Launched!

2009-07-30T13:42:00.001-07:00

YAAAAAAAHHHHHHHOOOOOO!

Click Image

Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network Launch

2009-07-29T10:39:00.000-07:00

More exciting news from the Yahoo! Web Analytics team. Dennis Mortensen notes on his blog that Yahoo! will be launching a monster consulting network for Yahoo! Web Analytics.

Mr. Mortensen says, "This is a network of third party companies with expertise in deriving insight from Web Analytics AND deploying Yahoo! Web Analytics in particular."

Once the consulting network site launches, you'll find a list of over 48 Yahoo! Web Analytics partner consultants to choose from!

I've actually worked with a couple of of these partners in the past (such as EngineReady and Semphonic) and they are solid when it comes to helping you drive a higher ROI from your analytics solutions.

And if you are interested in becoming a Yahoo! Web Analytics Partner yourself, here are some of the benefits you'll receive:

Yahoo! Web Analytics FREE account creation rights (This is sexy eh?)
Listing on Yahoo!’s Consultant Network web page
Potential client referrals from the Yahoo! Sales team
Exclusive “Yahoo! Web Analytics Consultant Network” icon for display on your website
Premium levels of technical support and access to a partner portal
Access to an exclusive YWACN forum to share ideas and technical tips with other top analysts worldwide
Unique opportunities to work with Yahoo! to provide trainings, books and speaking engagements

Yahoo Analytics Group On Yahoo.com

2009-07-21T14:02:00.001-07:00

Just added the Yahoo! Analytics Groups page to my new Yahoo.com homepage. It was really easy to add it as the Yahoo! homepage now lets you add any URL to your 'My Favorites' bar on the left hand side.

Here is a snapshot:

Open Enrollment for FREE Classes at the Web Academy

2009-07-15T17:58:00.001-07:00

My good friend Eric Hamilton, from Yahoo!, has just opened up his FREE Web Acadamy.

Beginner courses will cover HTML/CSS/Graphics Design/Web Administration.

Intermediate courses will cover Flash/PHP/MySQL/Analytics.

Advanced courses will cover Yahoo! API topics such as Search Monkey, Yahoo! Maps and Yahoo! Fire Eagle.

All courses are distance learning lead by a live instructor and the courses are FREE.

I invite you to sign up for these free course by going here:

http://www.thewebacademy.org

Well done Eric!

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

2009-07-01T14:15:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-01T11:23:00.000-07:00

A new blessing has arrived!

New Yahoo! Web Analytics Demo Video

2009-06-30T15:20:00.001-07:00

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...

2009-06-30T14:27:00.000-07:00

....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

2009-06-15T14:41:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-04-30T09:32:00.000-07:00

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

2009-02-26T14:04:00.000-08:00

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.html http://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

2009-02-23T11:34:00.000-08:00

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

2009-02-05T12:27:00.000-08:00

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.

New Blog Name

2009-01-28T22:16:00.000-08:00

As a way to build some branding and self promotion for my blog, I decided it was time for a fresh new blog title. Introducing "Web Anali'llig". Definitely a play on names and MUCH better than the boring "Web Analytics: Information For the Average User" title!!!!

Yahoo! Assists....Put Money Back Into Your Pockets Now!

2008-12-11T14:58:00.000-08:00

ADVERTISERS:

How would you like to save yourself a bundle of advertising dollars and heart ache all at the same time? Well, you can. And it can be done IMMEDIATELY by using the 'Assist' metric from your Yahoo! Sponsored Search account.

This is a "no brainer" people! I've even broken it down into a simple basketball analogy so that it's easier to understand. Every online advertiser should be interested in understanding this.

The Yahoo! Assists Sports Analogy:

Basketball coaches have to make decisions every day on which players will play based on metrics such as Conversions and Assists. Here’s a scenario….

Coach's Decision Without Factoring In Assists

Player A scores 2 conversions (for 4 points) and Player B scores 12 conversions (for 24 points). If the coach only measures performance based on conversions, then which player will he bench in the next game? Player A, of course, due to poor performance.

Coach's Decision Factoring In Assists

We find that while Player A only scored 2 conversions (for 4 points) he did have 14 assists which attributed to 28 extra team points. With the Assist data now in hand, will the coach put in Player A for the next game? Of course! Even though he didn't convert well himself, Player A was still very valuable to the success of the team!

Imagine the outcome of the game had Player A been pulled from the game strictly based on Conversion performance?

What The Hell Does Basketball Have To Do With Saving Money In Online Advertising???

The same basketball analogy can be used for managing budgets for your search and display campaigns. Many advertisers really only look at Conversions as a measurement of campaign performance/success. Because of this, valuable keywords and display ads are being tossed out. Right now, bids on keywords are being lowered or paused because advertisers don't know that their non-branded keywords, for example, are driving conversions for other keywords. Budgets on display ads are being lowered because advertisers don't realize that their display ads really ARE successful at driving conversions for their other campaigns, like search (PPC).

Imagine the outcome of a campaign had the budget been lowered without factoring in Assists.

Remember though, just because a keyword or display ad does not convert well on it’s own, it does not always mean that it’s a poor performer. An advertiser must look at other critical metrics before making crucial online campaign budgeting decisions. But the only way to measure this, is to use what we analysts like to call a campaign attribution metric.

The Assist metric in your Yahoo Search Marketing account is a campaign/keyword attribution metric. In addition, using 'Full Analytics' (now available for free in all Yahoo Search Marketing accounts) you can get cross channel tracking to see if your display ads drive conversions to your other ads, such as search for example.

STOP MAKING ONLINE BUDGETING MISTAKES NOW!!!

Try using the 'Conversion Only' or 'Full Analytics' solutions from Yahoo! (in your Sponsored Search account), that provide the campaign attribution 'Assist' metric. Along with metrics such as Conversions and ROI, Assists will help you avoid from making those critical budgeting mistakes and will immediately put money back into your pocket!

Measuring Search And Display For Success...During Tough Economic Times

2008-11-17T09:51:00.000-08:00

If there is one group that has pulled back on their budgets of late, it's the group that spends their money on online advertising. Over the past few months there has certainly been a decline in online spend by many advertisers. Most would agree that the reason for the pull back in online spend is because of the current state of the economy. But to me, it's much more than that. While I agree the economy has played a major role in reduced online spend budgets, I can't put all of the blame on it. In my opinion, a lot of the blame needs to go to the lack of helpful online advertising measuring tools.

Can you really blame an online advertiser for pulling back their spend budget when they can't really measure the true value or success of their campaigns??

But what about all of those web analytics solutions that are available in the market? Shouldn't online advertisers be using those to help them understand the success of their campaigns? Sure, and many advertisers do try and use web analytics solutions as a way to to help them out. But those solutions, in my opinion, only go so far in helping an advertiser out with making crucial online campaign budgeting decisions. The problem with current web analytics solutions is that there's been too much focus put on web page measurement and not enough focus put on online advertising measurement (and online advertising is where a bulk of the money is being spent). Also, many of the web analytics solutions don't provide the much needed campaign attribution metrics that online advertisers desperately need in order to make actionable decisions about their campaigns.

With that said, I thought I'd include my post that I wrote for the official Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog. Here I discuss the value in using an online advertising measurement solution ('Full Analytics' from Yahoo!) that will help out any online advertiser in making smarter and more actionable online budgeting solutions during these tough economic times........

Have you ever stayed away from display advertising in favor of search ads because you believed that your display ads don’t perform well? You’re not alone.

Some advertisers have shifted display marketing dollars toward search with the belief that search advertising is “more measurable” and that it provides a higher return-on-investment.
While we think there are lots of great reasons to invest in search advertising, we also believe that display ads can be powerful and effective in driving traffic to your site. So let’s take a closer look at two common beliefs about display ads.

Belief 1: Search ads are more measurable than display ads

When it comes to measuring the performance of your search and display ads, the question shouldn’t be about whether one is more measurable than the other. The real problem is advertisers often don’t use the right metrics to measure the success and value of their display ads and search campaigns.

Specifically, many advertisers primarily use conversion percentage to measure the success of their display ads and search keywords. For example, if a display ad converts poorly (it has a low conversion percentage) then the advertiser typically lowers the budget for the ad, shifts the budget to another channel like search, or pulls the budget entirely.

The problem with only using the conversion metric method is that it is a “last click” metric. “Last click” means that the ad only gets credit for the last click the visitor made before they converted. For display ad and search keyword purposes, a last-click model doesn’t reveal the true value of the ad. For example, a display or search ad wouldn’t get the credit for driving conversions to other campaigns. This can be a major issue, as advertisers might end up cutting the budget on an effective display campaign that is driving additional conversions, brand awareness and increased visitor traffic to your web site.

Measuring Assists

If conversions aren’t enough, then what additional metrics should online advertisers be using to properly measure the success and value of search and display ads?

Enter the Assist metric available in Yahoo! Full Analytics, which is available to many of our advertisers meeting certain criteria (contact our Customer Solutions team to determine if it is available in your account). Assists measure the total number of times that display ads or search keywords contribute to the conversion of another ad or keyword. Combined with conversion data, the assist reporting provides a full picture as to the performance of online campaigns. And you might find out that the display ad you were planning to drop was actually helping you the whole time.

Accessing the Assist Report from Yahoo! Full Analytics is easy. Just follow these steps:

1. Check to see if you have Full Analytics available in your account.
2. Add the Full Analytics tracking scripts to your landing page(s) and confirmation/thank-you page.
3. Add three special Yahoo! tracking parameters to the end of your display ad destination URL.

Belief 2: Search ads provide the highest return-on-investment

Which provides the highest return-on-investment, search or display ads?
It’s a trick question, actually—a combination of search and display ads returns the highest return-on-investment. We’ve reported in the past that, “when combined, search and display advertising deliver profoundly better results than when used independently.” The study that we sponsored with ComScore showed “a significant lift in on-site engagement and an increase in online and offline purchasing by consumers who are exposed to integrated campaigns that employ both types of online advertising.”

Don’t believe us? Third-party studies have shown that “users exposed to both search and display ads convert at a higher rate: an average of 22 percent better than search alone, and 400 percent better than display only.”

If data from these studies is accurate, you might be asking yourself, “OK, why aren’t more marketers doing both?” Once again, advertisers haven’t been using the right metrics. Advertisers must have access to metrics that tie together their search and display efforts to see how one affects the other. By using the assist data from Yahoo! Analytics, an advertiser can accurately measure this information.

Here’s how: Let’s say a visitor comes across one of your display ads one day and decides to click on it. He visits your site but decides not to make a purchase. A month later, that same visitor searches on Yahoo! using one of your search keywords, clicks on your ad, visits your site again, and this time makes a purchase. The result? Your display ad receives credit for an assist, while your search ad receives credit for the conversion.

To summarize: If you want to ensure that you are making the right search and display budgeting decisions, you need to make sure that you are using the right metrics. With Yahoo’s Full Analytics Assist Report, you can discover the true value of your online advertising.

— Matt Lillig, Yahoo! Analytics Team

Yahoo! Web Analytics vs. Yahoo! Search/Campaign Analytics

2008-10-29T16:58:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to think that there might be some confusion out there about the new Yahoo! Web Analytics (formerly IndexTools) and Yahoo's Search/Campaign Analytics. So let's clear things up!

Yahoo! Web Analytics (http://www.web.analytics.yahoo.com/)

Y!WA is the re-branded version of IndexTools that was announced about two weeks ago. While Y!WA is not available to everybody just yet (expect a full launch in 2009), it is currently being made available to:

- Yahoo! Small Business owners, also known as Yahoo! Stores http://smallbusiness.yahoo.com/ecommerce/

- Y!OS - Yahoo! Open Strategy
http://developer.yahoo.com/yos/intro/

- Yahoo! Micro-sites (partners sites that Yahoo! builds).
Example: http://promotions.yahoo.com/honda

Y!WA is an enterprise level solution that provides both web site measurement and campaign/keyword measurement capabilities.

Yahoo! Search/Campaign Analytics

Yahoo! Search/Campaign Analytics is available to all advertisers with a Yahoo Search Marketing account and provides campaign tracking metrics only (does not provide web site metrics). It is accessible in the advertiser's search marketing account.

There are two free analytics tools available:

Conversion Only (accessible to all Yahoo! Search Marketing clients) - Provides ability to track your Yahoo! paid search campaigns, ad groups, and keywords down to the conversion. It also provides Yahoo's campaign Assist report. It also provides campaign Cost data, Revenue data (if passed through the tracking tag), and ROI data (if revenue data is received).

Full Analytics - Provides ability to track any range of campaigns including: Yahoo! paid search, display (banner ads), email campaigns, other search campaigns (such as Google, MSN, etc), Yahoo! Shopping ads, Yahoo! Search Submit Pro (paid inclusion) ads, etc. It provides more detailed reporting about the visitors who have clicked on your online campaigns. Some of the reports include:

Leads
Browsers
Prospects
Conversions
Assists
Referrers
Cost
Revenue
ROI
....etc.

If you're looking for a full enterprise analytics solution, please visit: http://www.web.analytics.yahoo.com/

But if you're just looking for campaign tracking analytics, please visit either the 'Conversion Only' or 'Full Analytics' product within your Yahoo! Search Marketing account.

Tracking Display Ads Is Easy With Yahoo's Full Analytics

2008-10-07T13:25:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been seeing a lot of stories being written about the growing gap between search and display spend. During these hard economic times, it appears that more advertisers are starting to move their online advertising budgets towards search instead of display because:

1. Advertisers prefer search advertising over display advertising because of the simplicity of tracking search.

2. Advertisers feel that search advertising performs better than display advertising.

I'm here to say that nothing could be farther from the truth! Tracking display ads is actually pretty easy. And if you feel that search ads perform better, then you may be risking a 22% lift in conversions by not running display advertising with your search advertising.

Let's tackle these myths one by one.

Question 1

Sure, tracking search is pretty easy when using Yahoo Analytics or Google Analytics. All you have to do is add the vendor's tracking scripts to your web site's pages. But tracking display ads is pretty easy too! It only takes two steps using Yahoo's Full Analytics:

1. Add Yahoo's Full Analytics tags to your landing page and your confirmation/thank-you page (which you may have done already to track your Yahoo Sponsored search!)

2. Add 3 special tracking parameters to the end of the display ad's destination URL

Let's say I've already added the Full Analytics tags to my landing page and my confirmation/thank-you page. All I have to do now is add the tracking parameters to my display destination URL which is: http://www.mattlillig.blogspot.com/

The 3 Yahoo! parameters that I need to add to the end of my destination URL are:

- Campaign Name: ysmcpn=Unique+Campaign+Name+Here
- Channel Name: ysmchn=YAH (for Yahoo)
- Tactic Name: ysmtac=AD (for advertisement)

My final appended display destination URL will look like this:
http://www.mattlillig.blogspot.com/?ysmcpn=Matts+Banner+Ad&ysmchn=YAH&ysmtac=AD
(click on this link and you'll see that these parameters are appended in the landing page URL)

Now how hard was that????

Question 2

Display advertising may not perform as well as search advertising on its own, but run it along with your search advertising and....BAM...INSTANT CONVERSION LIFT!!!!! Did you know that visitors who were exposed to a combination of search and display ads converted 22% more than visitors who were exposed to only search ads?

As an advertiser, are you really willing to risk a 22% dip in sales or leads because you thought that display advertising didn't perform as well as search? Well it does...if you run it along side search!

If I was running only search advertising during these tough economic times and was looking for a great way to drive up conversions, traffic, and brand awareness....I would definitely look into running and measuring some display campaigns. If I was already running BOTH search and display advertising right now during these tough economic times....I would NOT be pulling my display ad budget knowing the information above.

Of course, I would also be using Yahoo's Full Analytics to track this info too! :)

Check out the various studies on the benefits of search + display advertising here:
http://mattlillig.blogspot.com/2008/08/hi-im-search-hi-im-display.html

New Yahoo! Pingbox Chat Feature

2008-09-25T12:29:00.001-07:00

I've just added Yahoo's new Pingbox widget to my blog. If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about Yahoo's web analytics while reading my blog site, feel free to use Pingbox to send me a question. As long as I'm online and not in a meeting, on the phone, working on a project, or supporting a client in need, I'll send you a quick message back.

It works just like any other instant messaging service that you have used. The only difference is that Pingbox will keep you anonymous.

Thanks again for your blog support!

Matt Lillig

'Conversion Only': Simple Campaign Web Analytics

2008-09-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

As a Yahoo! Sponsored Search advertiser, have you ever just wanted a campaign tracking tool that provides you with simple, easy-to-read, conversion performance reports? If the answer is YES, then you should be making use of the 'Conversion Only' tracking that is available in your Yahoo! Sponsored Search account.

With 'Conversion Only' you'll be able to report on Conversions, Cost Per Conversion (your cost to get a sale), Cost (cost of your clicked ads), Revenue (your earnings from sales), Revenue Per Conversion, ROAS (return on your ad spend), and even Yahoo's famous Assist report (keywords that have contributed to the conversion on your other keywords).

Implementation

Implementation of 'Conversion Only' is easy. All you need to do is:

1. Log into your Yahoo! Sponsored Search Account (select the Administration tab --> select the Analytics link)

2. Activate 'Conversion Only'

3. Copy the 'Conversion Only' tracking script and paste it either bewteeen the "HEAD" or "BODY" tags on your confirmation/thank-you page.

Passing Revenue To Yahoo!

If you want to understand what your Return On Ad Spend is, then you'll need to have your web developer write some script to dynamically pass the total sale amount into the 'Conversion Only' script as shown below (see 25.99 being passed through the "amount=" parameter in the 'Conversion Only' script below):

Yahoo! "Web Analytics" On The Rise

2008-09-04T13:19:00.000-07:00

Maybe all of this blogging about Yahoo's web analytics is finally paying off! According to the recent report I ran on Google's Insights report for the terms "web analytics" and "online advertising", the #1 Rising Search phrase for analytics from January '06 to August '08 is................"yahoo web analytics"

http://www.google.com/insights/search/#cat=&q=%22web%20analytics%22%2C%22online%20advertising%22&geo=&date=1%2F2006%2032m&clp=&cmpt=q

If you think that phrase is rising now, just wait until we finish integrating IndexTools! :)

Interesting Web Analytics Stat....

2008-09-03T17:38:00.000-07:00

Cost of searching on Google: $0

Cost of searching on Yahoo: $0

The rising trend of Googlers searching for the term "yahoo" on Google.....PRICELESS!

(A shout out to Stephane Hamel for correcting me on this)

Web Analytics Has Finally Made It!

2008-08-26T13:43:00.000-07:00

If MC Hammer says it...it MUST be true.

Whoa....whoa...whoa....whoa...whoa...STOP...analytics time!

http://www.juiceanalytics.com/writing/analyticstime/

"Hi, I'm Search." "Hi, I'm Display."

2008-08-13T15:19:00.000-07:00

Like peanut butter and chocolate, Michael Phelps and gold medals, and Britney and K-Fed....some things were just meant to be together. OK, maybe not Britney and K-Fed, but the others on the list stand true. What about online advertising's biggest money makers Search and Display though? Were they meant to be together? Well, based on the fact that most companies still track their search and display efforts with separate teams, the likely answer is..."I don't know".

If it was up to Atlas Solutions however, their latest report findings would have you believe that search and display should be together more than Harry and Lloyd (from "Dumb & Dumber"). Their findings showed that, "When marketers supplement search with display impressions, they get a significant lift in conversions. Unfortunately, most advertisers that run both search and display are unaware of this...” The study demonstrated that "users exposed to both search and display ads convert at a higher rate: an average of 22 percent better than search alone and 400 percent better than display only."

http://www.atlassolutions.com/uploadedFiles/Atlas/Atlas_Institute/Engagement_Mapping/eMapping-TP.pdf

When running a case study for Alltel wireless, they found that, "users who clicked on search ads who were also exposed to display were 56% more likely to purchase from Alltel than those only exposed to search, illustrating a significant synergy between the two."

http://www.atlassolutions.com/uploadedFiles/Atlas/Atlas_Institute/Digital_Marketing_Insights/Published_Assets/MSA_Alltel_DMI.pdf

But as Atlas states above, "Unfortunately, most advertisers that run both search and display are unaware of this...” Why? As I mentioned above, many companies have separate teams that run and track search and display campaigns. Therefore, due to the lack of alignment between the two teams, neither realizes the benfits that a combination of search + display has on improving conversions, brand awareness, and increased traffic. Neither team has the combined data to show that display ads are assisting in converting search ads.

This is a major problem because companies are making separate online advertising budget decisions based one one single data point....conversions. For example, let's say an advertiser is tracking a new display ad. After running the ad for a month and gathering up the conversion data, they see that it's converting at a very small percentage. They come to conclusion that the display ad isn't performing well and it's not profitable so they pull their budget for the ad. Little do they realize, that while the display ad did not convert well on its own, it was very successful at building brand awareness and driving visitors and conversions to their Yahoo! or Google search campaigns where visitors later converted.

The problem? They've just cut the budget on a channel (their display ad) that was successful at driving brand awareness, visitor traffic, and additional conversions for their search ads.

Whoops. You don't know what you don't measure, right?

On the flip side, if the advertiser had been using an online advertising tracking solution like Yahoo's 'Full Analytics', they would have been able to measure that the display ad was driving additional conversions for other ads (using Yahoo's Assist report). In response, the advertiser would have continued to run the display ad knowing full well that it was driving awareness, traffic, and conversions to their other advertising channels (such as search).

As web analysts, we're supposed to make decisions based on our data findings and report on those findings. Now I don't know about you, but in terms of conversion, a 22% lift vs. doing search alone and a whopping 400% lift vs. doing display alone sounds like a pretty amazing deal to me.

Need more proof that search and display work better together......

"Grant MacFarlane, head of search at Havas agency Media Contacts and previously head of client services at Google, agrees. "Search often takes the glory for the purchase, as a lot of agencies can't track back to see where someone saw a banner ad that got them searching in the first place," he says. "We've seen a 15% or 20% uplift when you run display and search in tandem.""

http://www.brandrepublic.com/InDepth/Analysis/778222/display-close-gap-search/

How about some MORE proof that search and display work better together (do you see what I'm getting at here?).......

"The study, entitled “Close the Loop: Understanding Search and Display Synergy,” found that when combined, search and display advertising deliver profoundly better results than when used independently. The study showed a significant lift in onsite engagement and an increase in online and offline purchasing by consumers who are exposed to integrated campaigns that employ both types of online advertising."

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20061204005424&newsLang=en

and

http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1547

So what are you doing then? As and analyst I report that you stop watching Dumb & Dumber and get tracking (and check out Yahoo's Full Analytics if you want to track this stuff)!!

Yahoo! Assists Are Higher Than Conversions! Say What?!?!

2008-07-11T09:54:00.000-07:00

I had a comment on one of my posts about the Assists report that I wanted to share because I think it's a good one to discuss. It read:

"I have a question, normally the assist counts are bigger than conversion, why is this happening?cause I bet assist would be counted in a case conversion happens, so the counts of conversion and assist would be same or conversion could be bigger."

For those asking the same thing when looking at your Yahoo! Analytics reports, here was my response:

Good question. Sometimes you might see 2 Assists and 0 Conversions for a campaign and wonder, "How can this be?"

This happens because the Assists are being attributed to other campaigns and not necessarily the campaign you are looking at.

For example, let's say I'm looking at the data for Campaign A. Over the past two days I see that it has received 0 Conversions (meaning visitors clicked on the ad for Campaign A, visited your site, and never converted). Campaign A does however show 2 Assists. This means that Campaign A was used in "assisting" one or more of your other campaigns in a conversion (it could have helped campaign B convert twice or maybe it helped covert campaign B once and also campaign C once).

In the next version of the Assist report we'll be adding a deeper layer of Assist detail so you be able to see exactly what campaigns the Assists attributed to. For example, let's say you see Campaign A had a total of 4 Assists. We plan to show you that of those 4 Assists, 3 conversions went Campaign B and 1 conversion went to Campaign C.

For e-commerce sites, we're looking to add value information for Assists also. For example, let's say that we find that Campaign A again had 4 Assists. Of the 4 Assists, we learn that 2 of those Assists went to helping convert Campaign B and the other 2 Assists went to helping convert Campaign C. While this deeper level of information is good, how do we know how valuable those Assists really are when both Camapigns B and C each received two Assists from Campaign A?

By passing us revenue information in the Yahoo Analytics conversion tag, we'll be able to show you the revenue output of Assists. For example, we'll be able to show you that while Campaign B and C both received two assisted conversions from Campaign A, Campaign B had a revenue output total of $100 while the two Assists that went to Campaign C only generated $50. Therefore, Campaign A assisted in driving more revenue for Campaign B than it did for Campaign C.

Just imagine not having the Assist report and dropping the bid for a keyword that had low conversions only to realize later that the keyword generated 25 Assists and it ended up driving $2500 in assisted revenue.

You'd probably bang your head against the wall a few times!

Why ComScore Paid Click Reports Aren't Valuable For Advertisers

2008-06-04T13:51:00.000-07:00

Every month there is a comparison report released by ComScore that discusses the paid click search engine battle between Google and Yahoo!. For example, you may have recently read a headline titled, "Google moves further ahead of Yahoo in paid ad clicks".

The press simply eats these reports up because they enjoy writing about the big battle between Yahoo! and Google. But if they ever took the time to break the data down and really analyze it, they may be surprised to see that while more clicks mean more money for Google, it also may mean a higher CPA (Cost Per Acquisition) for their advertisers.

So are these reports really valuable to advertisers? Should advertisers think that just because Google drives more paid clicks that they should only use Google (because a lot of advertisers do think this way)?

Since those writers don't have the time to sit down and actually analyze the real data, I decided I'd do it for them and help answer these questions.

So here it goes (Note: Data is just an example).....

Let's say we have an advertiser that sells used cars and wants to advertise on Yahoo! and Google. The advertiser also has analytics tracking available so that they can see what they've learned after a week of tracking their new campaigns.

Here are the totals after a week of tracking...

Bidded Keyword: "used car"

Total number of Yahoo! clicks: 5
Total number of Google clicks: 10 (as ComScore data shows....Google drives more paid clicks)

Cost Per Click (CPC) on Yahoo!: $1
Cost Per Click on Google: $2 (Google tends to be more expensive vs. Yahoo! due to heavier keyword competition)

Total number of Conversions on Yahoo!: 3
Total number of Conversions on Google: 3

Total Spend on the Yahoo! ad: $5 (5 clicks x $1)
Total Spend on the Google ad: $20 (10 clicks x $2)

Total Cost Per Acquistion/Conversion (CPA) on Yahoo!: $1.66 ($5 / 3 conv)
Total Cost Per Acquistion/Conversion (CPA) on Google: $6.66 ($20 / 3 conv)

With data in hand, what has our new advertiser learned?

1. Google did drive more clicks because Google is more popular: 20 clicks (Google) vs. 5 clicks (Yahoo!)
2. Each campaign received the same number of conversions: 3

But what did our advertiser really learn?

1. It only cost him $1.66 to get 3 conversions from Yahoo! It cost him nearly four times the amount ($6.66) to get the same 3 conversions using Google.

But wait, the ComScore report says, "Google moves further ahead of Yahoo in paid ad clicks". As an advertiser, shouldn't that be a good thing? No, not if you enjoy blowing your ad budget to get the same number of conversions that you could have received from using Yahoo! Simply put, as an advertiser would you rather pay $1.66 for 3 conversions or $6.66 for 3 conversions?

In the end, with these ComScore reports, click data only means so much. As an advertiser, clicks only mean so much and can only go so far when making important campaign budgeting decisions. It's CRUCIAL that as an advertiser, you measure your conversions so that that you can calculate your keyword CPA's. Otherwise you could be paying too much. And as Turko says on KUSI news in San Diego ...."It ain't right!"

The Value In Tracking Online Visitor Engagement

2008-06-02T12:22:00.000-07:00

Seems as though there's been a lot of talk in the web analytics industry these days about 'visitor engagement'. What is it? What isn't it? How you define it for branding purposes? How do you define it for other purposes? How do you measure it? I'm seeing it being discussed in many blogs and the topic came up many times while I was attending the eMetrics Summit in San Francisco last month.

It's a good topic and it got me thinking about how visitors engage using online advertising efforts (search, display, email, etc). And in thinking about online advertising engagement, I started thinking about the value of the Yahoo! Analytics' Assist report. Here's a simple explanation what what Assists are:

"Assists are campaigns that helped contribute to the conversion of another campaign".

For example, let's say I'm in the mood to buy a laptop. I click on a Sony display (banner) ad and reach the SonyStyle.com site but do not buy. I come back 30 days later and click on a Sony search ad on Yahoo, reach the SonyStle.com site again and this time make a purchase.

If both ads are being tracked using Yahoo!'s 'Full Analytics':

The Sony display ad will get an Assist while the search ad get a Conversion.

Not having the Assist information before, I would have never known how helpful the display ad was in driving conversions, not only for itself, but driving conversions to other forms of online advertising.

By showing Assists, Yahoo is able show a certain level of engagement about the vistor. In the example above, the visitor was engaged with the Sony display ad before engaging with the Sony search ad.

How valuable is this Assist information? EXTREMELY VALUABLE!!

Here's why....

- Let's say that all Sony laptops sell for $1,000.
- Let's say that the advertiser finds that the Sony display ad had 10 Assists associated with it (meaning it contributed to 10 additional purchases on the advertiser's search ads that are also being tracked) over a 30 day test period.
- Let's add in that the display ad only converted twice on itself (meaning a visitor clicked on the display ad and made an immediate purchase on the site) during that same 30 day stretch.
- Finally let's say that the display ad cost the advertiser $5,000 to run and $2000 to run the search ads.

The display ad cost: $5,000
The search ad cost: $2,000
The revenue from 1 conversion: $1,000
The display ad converted twice on itself: 2 x $1000 = $2,000
The display ad also had 10 Assists: 10 x $1,000 = $10,000

Without having Assist information on hand, normally an advertiser would see that the display ad only conveted twice itself and only contributed a total of $2,000. With spend costs of $5,000, the advertiser just lost $3,000. Upset about the poor performance of the display ad the advertiser most likely pulls the ad.

Now imagine that the advertiser has the Assist data in hand. The advertiser knows that all laptop sales are worth $1,000. The advertiser see's that while the display ad didn't perform well by itself, it was very valuable at helping drive sales down the road. In this case, $10,000 worth of sales (10 Asssist conversions). Now the advertiser realizes that rather than making $2,000 in sales, he/she has actually made $12,000 in sales (the 2 display conversions + the 10 Assist conversions). Subtract out the $5K in display ad costs and $2K in search spend costs and the advertiser had made $5,000 in profit ($12K sales - $7K costs) .

Imagine how an advertiser would have felt if they had pulled the display ad only to learn later that it had been valuable in driving an additional $10,000 in sales.

I call this the Steve Nash factor. Steve Nash won two NBA Most Valuable Player awards. He won those awards, not because he was a great scorer (converter) himself, but because he was a great assist man. His job essentially was to get his teamates the ball in the most efficient manner so that THEY could score more points. A coach would never bench (dump) Nash as long as he keeps his assists up and he helps his team score (convert).

The message here is, just because a campaign or keyword doesn't convert well itself, it doesn't mean that it's poor performing. Save yourself the mishap of lowering the bid or getting rid of a valuable campaign or a keyword because it may actually be playing a HUGE role in driving conversions for your other ads. Use a report like Yahoo's Assist report and measure how well your visitors are engaged with other ads before you make your budget decisions.

The last clicked ad, before a conversion, should not get all of the credit!

eMetrics San Francisco

2008-05-03T16:18:00.000-07:00

I'll be at the eMetrics Summit in San Francisco from May 5th -7th. Hope to see some of you readers there.

For more information about this large web analytics event, please visit: www.emetrics.org

Matt

Use Yahoo!'s Full Analytics To Track Yahoo!'s Seach Submit Pro Program

2008-04-21T10:49:00.000-07:00

While many of you know that I support Yahoo!'s current web analytics products called 'Conversion Only' and 'Full Analytics', many of you don't know that I also support two other products here at Yahoo!. One product is our Sponsored Search API while the other is what we call SSP...or Search Submit Pro.

What is SSP? Well for those that have worked hard to manage their SEO (free or organic or algorithmic) listings to meet Yahoo!'s web crawler needs, SSP is a paid inclusion program that allows you to easily manage those organic listings without having to tweak your backend system (meta tags, etc).

Many of you may not know that you can use Yahoo!'s 'Full Analytics' product to track the performance of your SSP listings.....from click to conversion. You can even get ROAS (return on ad spend or ROI) data for e-commerce sites that pass us revenue information.

But before discussing tracking of SSP using Full Analytics, let's discuss what value SSP brings to those of you who do normal Yahoo! SEO optimizations.

A few Yahoo! facts:

1) Here at Yahoo!, our search mission is to: Deliver the right message to the right people at the right time.

2) Did you know that on that on average, 7 out of 10 clicks on a Yahoo! search results page go towards a natural search ad vs. a paid search ad?

3) Time Spent: Consumers spend their time almost evenly across the algorithmic and sponsored search results (40.5% on Sponsored and 53.4% on Algorithmic). With consumers spending more than half their time on algorithmic results, the importance of managing your presence in organic results is clear.

4) Yahoo! Department Store Study: When the advertiser participated in both Sponsored Search (paid) and SSP we found:

- 27% increase in CTR (Click Thru Rate)
- 11% increase in Conversions
- 39% increase in Revenue

As you can see via the information above, there’s definite value to managing the whole Yahoo results page (paid and organic listings). But managing your paid (SEM) listings is a bit easier then managing your listngs for SEO.

We all know that SEO is complex....

- SEO involves heavy backend work (meta tags, titles, descriptions, etc) to make sure that your site is picked up by our crawlers.

- Not all sites are “crawler friendly”. For example, flash heavy sites. Some of your content may not get picked up via the organic crawler.

- It may take up to 6 weeks before the Yahoo! crawler picks up your new site changes. A new sale could be over by that time!

Let SSP take the complexity out of managing your Yahoo! SEO (organic) listings and get your message to the right people at the right time...

- SSP allows you to index all of your URLs, titles, descriptions, and keywords so that the crawler does not miss them.

- Once you send us your site information (destination URLs, titles, descriptions, keywords, etc), we’ll crawl that info every 24-48 hours vs. every 6 weeks!

With SSP you have control of your messaging....

- Like Sponsored Search (paid), the SSP program allows you to manage your messaging (destination URLs, titles, descriptions, keywords). The ability to control your algorithmic messaging allows you to keep messaging consistent with your Sponsored Search listings.

- Why run through the process of doing the backend SEO work (for the crawler to pick up in 6 weeks) when you can simply send over new titles, descriptions, and keywords and have the new messaging ready in 24-48 hours?

Quick Links: Add additional messaging in your SSP ad.

- You can tack on up to 3 additional links, below your ad, to help push additional products or promotions. Quick links are great for leveraging holiday promotions, sales, discounts, new products, etc. A recent Yahoo! study showed that the presence of Quick Links led to a 15% increase on clicks to the search results. Below is an example of an ad with Quick Links enabled...

Use Full Analytics to Track Your SSP Ads

Once you've joined the SSP program, you can use Yahoo!'s Full Analytics to track the performance of those ads. Because you're supplying Yahoo! with your URLs for those organic landing pages you only need to do two things:

1) Add Yahoo!'s Full Analytics tags to your landing page and confirmation/thank-you page

2) Add special Yahoo! tracking parameters to the end of your landing page destination URLs

The parameters that you'll want to add to the end of the URLs are:

1) ysmcpn=Your+Campaign+Name+Here

2) ysmchn=YAH

3) ysmtac=PI

YAH stands for Yahoo! while PI stands for Paid Inclusion.

An example of a landing page URL with the parameters appended to it would look something like this:

http://www.mattlillig.blogspot.com/?ysmcpn=matts+blog&ysmchn=YAH&ysmtac=PI

If a visitor now searches for my blog on Yahoo!, clicks on my SSP (organic) ad, and converts on my site by filling out a sign up form (if I had one)...

....in my Yahoo! reports I would see:

Campaign Name: Matts Blog

1 Lead (a click on the ad)

1 Conversion

For more information on how to get started in the SSP program, please visit:

Eric Hamilton's blog video on SSP at: http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-zIArjoQ0c6ecq_93W8LgCA--?cq=1

and

SSP program details and pricing at: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srchsb/ssp.php?cmp=CAP&ctv=SSPov&s=Y&s2=CAP&s3=SSPov&o=INVALID&b=0

Yahoo! Acquires IndexTools Web Analytics

2008-04-11T15:59:00.000-07:00

As many of you have already heard, the next big web analytics consolidation purchase took place on Tuesday with the announcement that Yahoo! has picked up the industry respected IndexTools.

This is very exciting news for me because I have first hand knowledge of the IndexTools product and I support Yahoo's current web analytics products.

A few years ago I worked for an SEM agency in San Diego called EngineReady (http://www.engineready.com/). By the time I got there, EngineReady had already made the smart move of partnering with IndexTools so they could take advantage of IndexTools' web analytics product and include it as part of their SEM consulting services. I say "smart move" because EngineReady was one of the early SEM agencies to understand the value that web analytics had on helping online (pay-per-click) advertisers' improve their CPA and ROAS goals.

As part of the EngineReady/IndexTools partnership, my role was to help IndexTools improve their US presence (and increase revenue of course) by selling and supporting the IndexTools product. At times it was an easy product to sell because it had many of the similar features that you would find in WebSideStory's HBX product and Omniture's SiteCatalyst product...at a huge fraction of the cost! Other times it was a difficult product to sell because it didn't have the big brand name and more "well known" clients using it like HBX or SiteCatalyst did.

But I'm hear to say now that nearly EVERYBODY knows who IndexTools is! So congratulations to the IndexTools team for continuing to not only build great products but to continue to build that brand name. They've come a long way in 3-4 years since I worked there!

With that said, Yahoo has big plans for the IndexTools products. There are many different properties across the Yahoo network where the IndexTools products will help to play a large role in supporting the millions of Yahoo users around the world.

I already have some great ideas and I can't wait to start working with the IndexTools team to build those ideas out!

More Full Analytics Training

2008-02-25T11:15:00.000-08:00

For those who couldn't get enough of the last Full Analytics video, Eric has created another training video based on one of our external training decks. Sit back and listen in as Eric walks you through Full Analytics for Yahoo! Search Marketing.

http://eham1906.blogspot.com/2008/02/yahoo-full-analytics-overview-by-eric.html

Implementing Yahoo! 'Full Analytics'

2008-02-05T17:05:00.000-08:00

For those of you Yahoo! advertisers who are thinking about using and implementing Yahoo's Full Analytics, life just got a whole lot easier! One of my coworkers (Eric, your friendly technical account manager host in the video) and I put together a quick implementation video for advertisers.

As always, this video was created with our customers in mind. Not that 'Full Analytics' was a difficult implementation before, but I figure, why read setup guides when you can watch a video (web 2.0 at its best)!

"Can life get any easier?? I submit that it cannot!" - Brian Regan, Comedian

To view a larger screening of the video, please click HERE.

Yahoo Analytics: Assists...Conversions...Revenue...You Name It

2007-10-03T01:10:00.000-07:00

To My Blog Readers:

Based on my traffic reports for this blog, I've noticed that a lot of you visitors have been using search queries that include phrases such as "yahoo assists", "yahoo analytics", "tracking revenue with yahoo full analytics", "javascript code needed for conversion tracking yahoo", "what is an assist yahoo conversion", etc.

I'm here to say that if you have any questions or comments regarding Yahoo Analytics and its reports (such as Assists), I'd be more than happy to answer your questions directly. Simply send me an email at lilligm@yahoo-inc.com with your question(s) and I'll get back to you ASAP.

Why waste your time trying to get answers to your questions by reading documentation (like you have to do with "other" web analytics vendors). Yuck. Just because analytics is free, it doesn't mean you have to miss out on quality customer support.

I'll see you in my inbox....

Kind Regards,
Matt Lillig

Have You Played With ClickTale Yet?

2007-09-14T15:15:00.000-07:00

For those who haven't seen the new ClickTale tracking service yet, here you go. It's a new visual tool that monitors the movements of a visitor on your pages. It also provides some interesting mouse navigation heat maps.

I find this tool interesting to visually see how people are navigating my own blog. I find it to be a nice change of pace compared to other analytics tools where you are looking strictly at numbers and charts all day. It can definitely be a useful tool for web developers.

Based on the stats ClickTale provides me, I was able to tell that this visitor in the video below was:

- From the US
- Using IE
- Actively looking at my blog for 5 minutes and 17 seconds
- Referred from Google after searching for the term "web analyst position"
- Landed on my post called "How Many Stats Would A Stats Analyst Track If A Stats Analyst Could Tack Stats"

Follow the little square (actual mouse movement) on the video.....

Here is a snapshot of their heat map report. From this image, you can tell (if you look closely) that this one visitor's mouse icon spent 17 seconds in the red area:

For the free service, ClickTale will provide you with 100 free videos a week. If you want more, that have a subscription service available.

For more information, visit: http://www.clicktale.com/

Web Analytics Interview w/ Rich Earle from Tokens

2007-06-27T16:51:00.000-07:00

A few months ago I did a web analytics interview with my good friend Rich Earle who is the blogger for the business blog "Tokens".

Tokens is a blog that provides "impactful tools, tips, and thought provoking messages that provide value in the way you ultimately view, conduct, or renovate your sales, client service and marketing processes."

http://www.businesstokens.com/ (select the 'Web Analytics' link under 'Categories')

"Analytics, Appetizers, & Ales"

2007-06-25T12:02:00.000-07:00

I invite you to join myself and the Yahoo Analytics team on July 11th at BJ's Brewhouse in Burbank, CA for a Web Analytics Wednesday event.

The event starts at 6pm.

Address:
107 S 1st St
Burbank, CA

Telephone:
818.557.0881

Yahoo! 'Assists' Their Advertisers On PPC Bidding

2007-06-21T19:45:00.000-07:00

For those who have explored Yahoo's latest web analytics options, you have most likely come across the 'Assists' report and wondered what the heck it is. Even more so, you may have asked yourself, "How am I supposed to use it?"

First let me break down what Assists are. Assists are simply keywords that played a part in assisting other keywords in getting a conversion.

Huh?

Ok, here's an example:

Let's say I'm a visitor looking to purchase a computer. I go to Yahoo.com and run a search using the term "computer" . I decide on clicking the Sony sponsored search ad for computers. I dig around on the SonyStyle.com web site but end up not purchasing anything. I then come back 14 days later and use the search term "Laptop" on Yahoo.com. But this time I decide to click on a different Sony sponsored search ad....for laptops. I reach the same SonyStyle.com site and I finally decide to make a puchase (conversion).

The results in Yahoo....

The term "computer" will be counted towards an Assist
The term "Laptop" will be counted towards a Conversion

Notes:
1. Assists are tied to conversions for up to 45 days. If my first search was "computer", that term will be counted as an Assist as I long as I convert within 45 days following that first search.
2. The visitor must click through one or more of the same advertiser's ads before the Assist will be tied to the Conversion. For the above example, the visitor clicked on the Sony ad for 'computers' and then came back and clicked on the Sony ad for 'laptops'.
3. The advertiser must be using Yahoo's 'Conversion Only' analytics tag or Yahoo's 'Full Analytics' tags on their confirmation/thank-you page.

Great description Matt, but how do I make use of Assists for bidding on my keywords??

Let's first take a look at what the Assists report looks like in Yahoo...

When looking at the keyword level in your Yahoo reports (in this case it's called 'Marketing Activity') you see that the keywords are broken down into Leads (# of times visitors reached your landing page), Assists, and Conversions (# of visitors who reached your confirmation/thank-you page).

With traditional analytics reporting, advertisers will typically look at the keyword to see how many conversions it received to determine how they want to bid on that keyword. In this case, they would see that "Raiders Tickets" had received zero conversions (I am a Raiders fan, so this was a tough example for me to cough up!). With no conversions, typically the advertiser would either lower the bid on the keyword or completely dump the keyword as a "non-performer".

However, having an Assists column adds a whole new dimension to the way we traditionally think about bidding on terms. You'll notice that while the term "Raiders Tickets" didn't convert, it did drive 33% of the Assists. This means the term "Raiders Tickets" played a part in assisting other keywords in getting a conversion.

Think about it in basketball terms. A point guard might get 20 assists but no points (conversions) in one night. That's still a pretty productive night for the point guard! Are you going to bench your point guard after he dished out 20 assists and helped the other players score 40+ points?!?! No way! That point guard is valuable to the team.

Same theory goes into thinking about your keywords. Before you lower the bid on a particular keyword you should ask yourself, "Just because this keyword didn't convert well for me, did it help other kewords convert? If so, do I really want to lower the bid on a keyword that drives a high percentage of my total Assists?" Probably not. More likely, you'll want to continue to bid on this keyword as it's helping drive conversions and brand awareness.

So really, Assists help out on two fronts:

1. They Assist other keywords in converting and

2. They Assist YOU, the advertiser, in making smarter bidding decisions.

You can also find a great post on Yahoo's Assists at: http://komarketing.typepad.com/blog/2007/01/yahoos_conversi.html

Yahoo Web Analytics

2007-01-07T20:59:00.000-08:00

Updated Note (11/20/2008): The post below dicusses the analytics found in the Yahoo! Sponsored Search interface (known as 'Conversion Only' analytics and 'Full Analytics'). It does not discuss Yahoo' s new web analytics platform called Yaho! Web Analytics. Information about Y!WA can be found by visiting: www.web.analytics.yahoo.com

Yeah, you read it right. Yahoo has web analytics. And I'm not talking about just good old conversion tracking either. With the introduction of Yahoo's new search marketing platform (a.k.a. "Panama"), high end Yahoo advertisers now have the choice of choosing from two analytics options.

The first option is the more traditional conversion tracking analytics. Or what Yahoo refers to as 'Conversion Only Analytics". Just like in the past, pay-per-click advertisers can place a java script tag (Conversion Tag) onto their confirmation page to help track form completions or shopping cart purchases. This conversion information can then be used to help avertsiers optimize the performance of their ads.

The second option is a newly released anaytics functionality called 'Full Analytics'. Full Analytics allows advertisers to take a deeper look into their online sales funnel by showing them the full path of their visitors from start to finish. Rather than simply relying on just a conversion tag to provide visitor data, advertisers can now place up to three different tags on their pages to help aid in visitor analysis.

The three new tags consists of a 'Universal Tag' and two Event tags. Event tags are broken down into a 'Prospect Tag' and a 'Conversion Tag'.

The 'Universal Tag' is used to track your visitors from page to page (visitor path). It is used on each page that the advertiser wants tracked.

The Event tags are used to record events that happen on your web site (ex. form completions or purchases). With event tags, the advertiser has the option to track up to 5 different events.

The 'Prospect Tag' is used to indicate a visitor's intent to transact. For example on a checkout or signup form page, a Prospect Tag would be used.

The 'Conversion Tag' is used to monitor that a visitor has completed a transaction. This tag of course is similar to the Conversion Only option that is mentioned above. The Conversion tag is placed on a purchase or form completion (confirmation/thank-you) page.

Once an advertiser tags their pages with these three pieces of code, they are now armed with the ability to view a full conversion funnel. The full funnel includes data on Leads, Browsers, Prospects, and Conversions.

Lead: A visitor who arrives at the advertier's landing page after clicking on their ad (tracked with Universal Tag).
Browser: A visitor who views more than one page (also tracked with a Universal Tag)
Prospect: A visitor who reaches an "intent to buy" page (tracked with a Prospect Tag)
Conversion: A visitor who reaches a call to action page (tracked with a Conversion Tag)

Together with the data that is already tracked through the advertiser's campaign, the advertiser can now view Impressions --> Clicks --> Leads --> Browsers --> Prospects --> Conversions

On a side note, the advertiser can also pass revenue and transaction IDs into their Conversion Tag. This information allows the advertiser to track data such as overall revenue, 'return on ad spend', and individual transactions within the same visitor session.

In conclusion, 'Full Analytics' is going to give an advertiser much more insight about their visitors beyond just plain old conversion tracking. With more insight about their visitors, advertisers can make better decisions about how they go about optimizing their ads.
The better advertisers optimize their ads, the more relevant those ads will be. The more relevant those ads are, the better the chance that those ads will be ranked in a higher position (based on Yahoo's new ad ranking formulas). The higher those ads are ranked, the more traffic they will receive. And we all know that an increase in relevant traffic means more conversions!!!!!!

Can you see the valuable pattern yet? It's a win win for both Yahoo and advertisers.

More posts about Yahoo! Web Analytics:

Yahoo! 'Assists' Their Advertisers On PPC Bidding

Yahoo Analytics: Assists...Conversions...Revenue...You Name It

Implementing Yahoo! 'Full Analytics'

More Full Analytics Training

Yahoo! Acquires IndexTools Web Analytics

Use Yahoo!'s Full Analytics To Track Yahoo!'s Seach Submit Pro Program

The Value In Tracking Online Visitor Engagement

Yahoo! Assists Are Higher Than Conversions! Say What?!?!

Yahoo! "Web Analytics" On The Rise

Yahoo!

2006-12-17T20:20:00.000-08:00

My apologies for not posting lately but I am here to say that I have a good reason for that. I recently signed on to do some contract work with Yahoo in their Carlsbad, CA office and have been focusing all of my attention to my new work.

As some of you may know already, Yahoo is in the early stages of releasing their new search platform to the world. From what I have seen so far, it is a fantastic upgrade to the current search product.

In an effort to give their advertisers more information about their visitors, Yahoo has also ramped up their web analytics functionality. In my new position, I'll be be supporting Yahoo's high end advertisers and will be working towards bringing additional value to these advertisers through web analytics.

These are very exciting times for both online advertising and web analytics and I'm very excited to be working with the Yahoo team. I look forward to helping them make this new platform transition a successful event.

Case Study: A/B Testing

2006-11-14T14:47:00.000-08:00

During my consulting stint for an online electronics retailer, we came accross a "situation" where we needed to run an A/B test. Below is a description of the test and the results.

Background

The online retailer had 3 web sites that related to this case.

1. Site A - A main portal site (the branded site with the most visitor traffic) with direct links to their other sites

2. Site B - The retail site where visitors could shop for and purchase the electronics

3. Site C - The educational site where visitors could learn about the products before they made a decision to purchase

In this case, the marketing team decided that they wanted to push the awareness a particular new camera product. To do this, the team created an internal banner and placed it on Site A (the high trafficked portal site). Upon clicking on this banner, visitors were sent to Site C so that they could educate themselves about the camera product in more detail.

Once on Site C, if the visitor was interested in purchasing the product, they could click on a "Buy Now" link that took them to the camera's product detail page on Site B.

The "Situation"

After the banner was running for a short time, a major question arose.

1. Were we losing revenue by sending the visitor directly to Site C (the educational page) first instead of sending them directly to Site B (the purchase page)?

The asumption was, that by sending the visitor first to Site C, the visitor had to take an extra step in their browsing path in order to reach the purchase site. Why not just send the visitor directly Site B from Site A and save the extra step?

The reason was because Site B and Site C were run by two different groups within the company. The business goal for Site C was to get as much visitor traffic to their educational pages while the business goal for Site B was to generate as much revenue as possible from their pages.

This of course led to some internal corporate headbutting. The group that ran Site C wanted a direct link from Site A because it helped them meet their traffic goals. But the group that ran Site B felt that revenue and conversions were being shorted if the visitors went to Site C first.

Resolution

To resolve this problem we decided to run a test and let the data speak for itself. The two groups agreed on running a two week test. The first week the camera banner on Site A linked directly to Site C (the educational site) and second week the banner linked directly to Site B (the purchase site).

Assumption: With this test, we wanted to see whether or not total revenue was significantly affected if visitors went through Site C first (A --> C --> B) instead of going directly to Site B (A --> B).

I first measured the revenue generated from the Site C "Buy Now" link to Site B (we tagged the "Buy Now" link with tracking code). This was a little tricky to do because I had to measure the percentage of traffic that only came from the camera banner (there were other ways in which visitors could reach that camera learning page). I factored in that percentage when gathering the revenue total from the "Buy Now" link.

Site C --> Site B

The second week, I measured the revenue generated from the banner on Site A to Site B (we tagged the camera banner with a different tracking code). Again, I had to measure the percentage of traffic that just came from the camera banner (there were other ways in which visitors could reach that camera purchase page).

Site A --> Site B

Findings

With my results in hand, I found that by sending visitors through Site C first (A --> C --> B), there was a drop in overall revenue compared with sending visitors directly to Site B (A --> B). However, this drop was not the significant drop off that the managers of Site B were expecting. The assumption that, sending visitors through site C was killing conversions and sales, was false.

Not only was there not a significant drop off in revenue, but I found that the AOV (Average Order Value) was actually higher (compared A-->B test) when visitors were sent through Site C (A--> C --> B) first. Visitors bought more or bought higher priced ticket items when sent through the educational site first.

Conclusion

In optimizing a web site, you're going to run into certain situations where assumptions may arise from fellow employees about what currently works and what doesn't. The great thing about web analytics is that allows you to test out those assumptions and find actionable solutions to help answer these assumptions. Make sure that you constantly test and make changes based on the data results....not assumptions.

In this case, upon reviewing my findings, the company decided that sending visitors through the educational site did not have a significant negative impact on sales and conversions. We also found that by sending visitors through the educational site that it actually helped to increase average order value.

Web Analytics & Privacy Concerns

2006-11-03T09:49:00.000-08:00

I made this post on the Yahoo Web Analytics message board, but I wanted to post it here because I feel that it's important for anybody involved with web analytics to get an understanding of what's going on out there.

There are petitions being put out by consumer advocacy groups requesting that the FTC investigate the regulation of data collection. Depending on the decision that the FTC makes, there could be a large impact on the way web analytics is used today.

With that being said, I think the FTC is smart enough to see the value in web analytics and that it's not designed to infringe on a web site visitor's personal information. We all know that web analytics is designed for helping online businesses improve their site performance and marketing efforts.

Anyway, here is my post. Feel free to read the article and leave me any comments.

FTC Asked to Stop Microsoft's AdCenter
http://www.betanews.com/article/FTC_Asked_to_Stop_Microsofts_AdCenter/1162502806

I'll bet $1,000 that these consumer advocacy groups, who petitioned the FTC, have members that go to their local grocery stores on a daily basis and use their Vons, Ralphs, Albertsons, Safeway, etc. club cards to save money on groceries. Yet, I don't see them petitioning against grocery chains.

I bet they've swiped those discount cards dozens of times without realizing that while those club cards are great for getting discounts on an overpriced box of cereal, they are really designed for tracking every item you buy.

Whoops....did I say that out loud (sorry grocery stores)?? I guess I'm all for grocery chains making my shopping experience better. I know....I know....I'm crazy! Do I really care if they know that I bought a gallon of milk and a six pack of Guinness beer??? No. In fact, I think it's great when I get two coupons in the mail a month later for discounts on what else....milk and Guinness beer.

Brilliant!

I say...keep swiping those discount cards and let's keep getting our beer discounts!

Traffic or Conversions?

2006-10-27T13:46:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago, when I worked for a search engine marketing and analytics company, I was speaking to a potential client about his paid search engine marketing efforts. He was explaining to me how excited he was that he had just increased the traffic to his e-commerce web site by about 10,000 visitors.

After listening to how he used Google AdWords and Yahoo to improve his ad rankings, I dropped a bomb on him. I explained how great it was that he was getting more traffic, but I finally asked him....

"So what's your conversion percentage for those keywords you bought?"

He said, "My what?"

I said, " Do you know which keywords work well and which ones don't ?"

There was a pause.....he didn't know the answer.

I then asked, "How do you know if the money you're spending with Google and Yahoo isn't being wasted?"

He said, "Because I'm getting a lot more traffic."

I then told him, "Do you realize that you can be spending $0.50, $1.00, or even $2.00 per click on keywords that don't lead to a sale for you? By focusing on the successful keywords (the ones that drive sales) and weeding out the non-successful keywords (the ones that don't drive sales), we can optimize your PPC advertising so that you're left with nothing but keywords that drive sales for your business. We can save you money and drive more sales at the same time."

He said, "We'll, how do I track them?"

Sold!

The reason why I bring this story up is because many companies are still too focused on driving traffic to their sites and they're not putting enough energy towards improving their conversion percentages (ppc keyword conversion, internal search keyword conversion, site conversion, etc).

Rule #1: Don't assume just because you get more traffic that your leads or sales are going to increase.

The large online electronics company I consulted for had millions of visits per week but their sales conversion % was only around 0.7%. Based on the amount of traffic that this site received, I soon realized that if I could just improve their sales conversion by even 0.1%, then that increase could lead to thousands of dollars in additional earnings for the company. At that point, I began optimizing the web site to improve sales conversion.

This electronics site also had traffic that was increasing month-to-month on their home page. I soon found out that the #1 most trafficked area on the home page was their internal search box. And after digging deeper, I learned that 33% of the internal searches led to a "No Results" page. This of course meant that one third of the internal search keywords being used (by visitors) weren't very effective at converting browsers into buyers. With this information in hand, I began optimizing internal search conversion.

In the examples above, there were two totally different situations where 'conversion' needed to be optimized (sales conversion and internal search conversion). When web analysts talk about 'actionable data', this is what we mean. We're gathering data from the web analytics tool and then taking action to improve low order totals or conversion percentages for example.

Don't get me wrong, we all want more traffic because it means our site is getting visibility on the web. But remember to always keep a very close eye on how well your site is converting on all aspects (online advertising, internal search, etc.). Monitoring conversion and taking action to improve it is the key to a successful online business.

As Eric Peterson once said, "..how do you know you’re successful if you’re not measuring your success?" You can't put it any simpler than that.

Century Mark!

2006-10-24T10:29:00.000-07:00

Today my blog surpassed the 100 visits mark. Thank you to everybody who has visited the blog, read my posts, and sent me positive emails about the blog.

I tagged it with Google analytics and have been tracking its progress. According to the Geo Location report, I've got readers from all over the world! It's great to see how quickly web analytics is growing.

Next stop....500 visits!

Comments Update

2006-10-20T11:45:00.000-07:00

I changed my settings so that you no longer need to have a registered Blogger account to leave me a comment. Feel free to add your comments to any of my posts below.

Thanks,
Matt Lillig

Click Fraud: It's More Than Just Cheating Competitors

2006-10-19T12:46:00.000-07:00

What if I told you that I could be making $25 to several thousand dollars a month just by clicking on a bunch of online advertisements which I had no interest in?

Would you care?

What if I told you that some of these links I was clicking on were your links on which you're spending between $0.40 to $8.00 per click for?

Let me put it this way.....I could be stealing away your hard earned money and burning a hole in your ad spend budget.

I should have your complete attention by now.

Well, according to the cover story in the October 2nd 2006 issue of Business Week, an investigation has revealed "a thriving click-fraud underground that is populated by swarms of small-time players, making detection difficult."

And how easy is it these days to start making money off of click fraud? Too easy. A couple from Minnesota said they dabbled in click fraud last year and made more than $5,000. They employed a simple scheme in which they "set up dummy web sites filled with nothing but recycled Google and Yahoo advertisements. Then they paid others small amounts to visit the sites, where it was understood they would click away on the ads." They then split the resulting revenue generated from their dummy web site with the search engines.

With spending on internet ads growing faster than any other sector of the advertising industry and experts estimating that 10% to 15% of ad clicks are fake these days, you can start to see how click fraud is becoming a major issue.

But what makes up Click Fraud? Try these new terms on for size....

Parked Web Site: A site typically with little or no content except for lists of Internet ads, often supplied by Google or Yahoo; many of them are the source of false clicks.

Paid-To-Read: A PTR site pays members to look at other web sites and offers from marketers (ads); often used to generate false clicks on parked web sites.

Clickbot: Software that can be used to produce automatic clicks on ads; some versions employed in click fraud can mask the origin and timing of clicks.

Botnet: A collection of computers infected with software that allows them to be operated remotely; networks of thousands of mechanism's be used in click fraud.

Even though it sounds like some kind of sci-fi movie with all of these new high tech terms, how bad has click fraud actually become? The Business Week article talks about one Atlanta based businessman who estimates that click fraud has cost his company $100,000. On the other hand, a Russian software developer is making $10,000 a year from a clickbot he sells. And click fraud is so simple these these days that clickbots can be downloaded from the internet. The article states that "clickbots are popular among online cheats because they disguise a PC's unique numerical identification, or IP address, and can space clicks minutes apart to make them less conspicuous." It also states that "more skilled Chinese programmers modify the clickbots to outwit the American search engines (like Google and Yahoo)."

So what are the big search engines doing about click fraud? "Google and Yahoo say they can identify automated click fraud and discount advertisers bills accordingly." But advertisers have to prove that they are being cheated.

My question is, if clickbots are masking IP addresses, how is an advertiser supposed to prove they are being cheated?

I find it funny that as I'm writing this post, Google just released its earnings release. Once again, it was better than expected. Why? Because as I mentioned before, spending on internet ads are growing faster than any other sector of the advertising industry. And that means....more ads can be clicked. The more ads that are clicked, the more money search engines like Google and Yahoo make. And yet, click fraud is thriving more than ever.

But, I guess if more people are spending money to adverise with search engines, then apparently click fraud isn't a high priority issue for most advertisers.....

.....just don't tell the guy from Atlanta this!

Wanted: "Dedicated" Web Analyst

2006-10-18T16:16:00.000-07:00

I recently read a post on the Yahoo! Web Analytics message board that opened my eyes again to the pain of companies trying to forge ahead with finding a web analyst and getting involved with web analytics. In this case, the poster talked about how he had suddenly found himself as "the guy responsible for driving the web analytics strategy".

Reading that quote immediately brought back memories from when I used to be an account manager at one of the web analytics vendors. I can't tell you how many times I heard war stories from employees who had received the news from their managers that they were now in charge of web analytics for the company. These clients would tell me that they were now expected to run the web analytics strategy on top of their current job descriptions. As an account manager, the first thing that came to my mind was "sympathy". Knowing what I knew about the time and dedication it takes to run a successful analytics strategy, I just couldn't fathom how these employees were going to manage web analytics on top of their current work loads.

Now I can understand how somebody could implement Google Analytics and only check the reports once a month. Why? Because it's free and by not looking at the reports, you're not burning a hole in your wallet. But somebody please tell me why any company would ever spend over $10,000 (or more) on an analytics package and not have a dedicated person in place to read and interpret the data? It just doesn't make sense.

I'm here to say that being a "Web Analyst" is definitely a full time job. A successful web analytics strategy goes hand in hand with a dedicated web analyst. I've heard the experts out there say this time and time again, yet companies still try and take the shortcut route. Rather than moving in a dedicated web analyst, they end up dumping the analytics into the lap of one of their employees who already have too much to do. And note the word "dedicated". I'm not saying that a company has to go out and spend the money to hire an experienced web analyst (though it helps to ensure faster results), but at a minimum they should move a current employee into a dedicated web analyst role when jumping into web analytics. This way the employee can put their full attention into improving the online business and not be distracted by other job requirements.

So if you're a manager reading this post and you're trying to figure out why you're not getting a good ROI from your web analytics package, then you may want to take a step back and ask yourself this one simple question, "Are we taking full advantage of our web analytics investment by having a dedicated web analyst on staff?"

How many stats would a stats analyst track if a stats analyst could track stats?

2006-10-02T15:28:00.000-07:00

Does this scenario sound familiar???

You've got 3-5 traffic dashboards to update each week....
One major traffic presentation due each month....
2-4 random employees asking you to pull data for their group and build a dasboard for them each week (by the way..."Make sure those reports are sent automatically")....
and finally train different managers on the value of using web analytics.

Sounds like a pretty busy job in itself, right? Wrong. I forgot one small part......you still need to OPTIMIZE THE WEB SITE!

But how in the world is a web analyst supposed to find the time to optimize the web site when they're spending most of their time pulling data, building dashboards and reports, and training different groups of people within the company? Well, based on my experience as a web analyst, I believe one needs to work closely with their manager, prioritize their work, and be stern. No, not Jim Sterne (although, I'm sure that would be helpful in a web analyst position) but stern as in putting their foot down.

A web analyst should work closely with their manager and keep them informed of their workload. Many times, managers (as busy as they are) don't realize the many different types of reports and dashboards that the analyst has going on at one time. Nor do they realize that the analyst is constantly being bombarded by other managers and employees in seek of a personalized dashboard or report. Prioritization should be a big part of the conversation between the manager and the analyst. If the analyst has a clear picture about high priority goals that need to be met, he/she can effectively use their time to build out the proper reports and dashboards.

While it's very important to build out reports and dashboards, that's only one aspect of being a successful web analyst. The other part comes in being able to optimize the web site. A web analyst needs time to, well, analyze! But he/she can't do that if they are spending all of their time building reports and dashboards for people. This is where the stern part comes in. There comes a time in every web analyst's life where they have to put their foot down and say, "I'm sorry (place a coworker's or manager's name here), I simply cannot build that custom report for you right now because I have some high priority issues to take care of."

A web analyst needs to put their foot down at times, otherwise they'll be up to their ears in building reports. In my case, I wanted to make everybody happy by pulling data and customizing reports for them. However, I soon realized that I needed to be spending more of my time analyzing and optimizing the web site. And we all know that this is where the real fun is at. Running A/B tests or multivariate testing, tracking the success of internal search, tracking the success of promotions, using data to help the development team with page layout and navigation, etc., are all things that make make the job exciting. Why? Because you finally get a chance to see if your analytical assumptions are correct!

Making sure you have time to analyze the site and come up with actionable ideas is extremely important to being a web analyst. Setting aside time to come up with new ideas is what made 3M Corporation so successful. They give their employees the option to spend 15% of their work week pursuing individual projects of their choice. Most of the time, these individual projects result in brand new products for 3M. In 2000, 3M made more than 60,000 products. Nearly 35 percent of its total sales, or about $5.6 billion, came from products that had been introduced during the prior four years, and another $1.5 billion came from products introduced during 2000.

Knowing that little bit of information, think about the success that a web analyst can make if he/she has the time to optimize the web site and come up with actionable ideas. Who knows, maybe you can help your company become the online version of 3M!

Internal Search: The Value In Monitoring Your "No Results" Keywords

2006-09-24T21:15:00.000-07:00

We all know that search engines (like Google, Yahoo! and MSN Search) are very helpful in bringing visitors to your site. But what about internal search engines? How valuable are they when it comes to the success of your online business? Well, they can be just as valuable (if not more) because they actually help bring visitors to your shopping cart.

Whenever a visitor types in a keyword search into your homepage's internal search box, that visitor is essentially telling you, "I am interested in finding this product, I want to learn more about it, and I may even want to buy it!" But if your internal search tool can't provide the visitor with what they are looking for, then you may have just lost a sale. Beyond losing a sale, you may have also lost a potential loyal customer who (with a good first time experience to your site) might have purchased from you again in the future.

So how does all of this internal search stuff relate to web analytics?

Well, in order to build a successful internal search program for your visitors, you need to understand whether or not your visitors are able to find what they were searching for.

I recently did some contract work for a large online electronics business and discovered some disturbing information regarding their internal search results. When using the company's overlay tool from their web analytics vendor, I found that the "go" button on their internal search box was the #1 most clicked link when visitors reached their home page. That's the great news. The bad news was that nobody really paid attention as to what happened after the visitor typed in a search keyword and clicked "go".

After digging into their reports a bit deeper, I found that of all the visitors who attempted to run an internal search, 33% of them reached a "No Results" page. I probably don't have to tell you this, but 1 out of every 3 searches resulting in a "No Results" page just doesn't cut it when trying to build a positive visitor web experience. This percentage is simply too high to ignore.....especially when one of the company's key KPIs (key performance indicators) is to increase their sales conversion percentage.

So how could this be???

After looking at the top search keywords that led to a "No Results" page (one of the reports in their analytics tool), I noticed some surprises. High up in the list of "No Results" were keywords for very popular products that the company definitely had in stock. But for some reason when the visitor searched for those particular products, they were directed to a "No Results" page. What we discovered was that the visitor would only reach a "No Results" page when they typed in the keyword and hit the "Enter" or the "Return" button on their keyboard. However, if they typed in the keyword and hit the "go" button, they were directed to the proper product page. Luckily for us, were able to trace this occurrence to a problem within the way the search tool was directing visitors and we were able to knock those popular keywords off of the "No Results" list.

A second problem we encountered when looking at the top keywords that led to a "No Results" page, was that visitors were searching for products that we no longer carried or sold. To resolve this issue, we had our web developers set up special pages (called splash pages) that provided a simple explanation to the visitor. We also provided additional links so that the client could find similar products or even reach our support team if they had additional questions. By sending the visitor to a splash page instead of a "No Results" page, we were able to dramatically cut down our chances of losing the visitor entirely. At the same time, we increased our chances of a visitor viewing other products and possibly buying.

A third problem we found from looking at the "No Results" keywords report, was that visitors were searching for products that they read about in recent articles (press releases, etc). This was great for our marketing department but bad for the visitor because we realized that some of those product pages hadn't been launched yet on our web site. The solution, obviously, was to get those product pages launched as quickly as possible so that visitors could gather the information they needed. This problem turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it helped to bring a closer relationship between the marketing PR department and the web development group.

The final problem I noticed was that we had an enterprise online company using a non enterprise internal search product. Many of the great features that one could find in a more expensive product were difficult to get at using the company's current solution. It took more time to get issues resolved from this smaller internal search vendor. And as we all know, time is money. With the amount of unique visitor traffic that this online business received each month, it would of made sense to spend the extra money with an internal search vendor that mainly deals with enterprise sized web sites.

In the end, if it wasn't for web analytics, these problems would have never been discovered. With this valuable information in hand, I was able to work with a team and turn this data into actionable information that led to positive results. We successfully "knocked out" the top 5 internal search keywords that led to a "No results" page. These 5 search keywords alone made up 80% of all the unsuccessful searched terms. With a web site that generates between 4 and 6 million unique visits a month, you can see how valuable it was to optimize our internal search results. Not only did we create a more enjoyable web experience for the visitor by "cleaning up" our internal search, but we were able to turn more browsers into buyers and save the company thousands of dollars in potential lost revenue!

If you have internal search on your web site, make sure that somebody is constantly monitoring the percentage of your internal searches that lead to a "No Results" page. Monitoring and tweaking your internal search results can earn you immediate rewards!