'Net Features : tracking

Do Not Track in Piwik Analytics

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 19:00:00 GMT

Piwik has announced a new release of its analytics solution (version 1.8), and anyone using tracking cookies -- particularly most recently in the U.K. -- should pay close attention.

In addition to several new reports (desktop vs. mobile, entry page titles and exit page titles) and features (historical analytics, ability to compare multiple rows, see the full list of what is new within version 1.8 here), noteworthy in the 1.8 release is that Piwik has enabled DotNotTrack (DNT) support by default.

When users indicate they do not want to be tracked, Piwik automatically lets them opt out of tracking by websites they do not visit, including analytics services, advertising networks and social platforms.

While DNT won’t by itself solve privacy concerns of many, Piwik’s focus shows its support of merchants and information publishers concerned by and forced to face the initiative head-on.

With v1.8, Piwik has provided a new Javascript function -- disableCookie(s) -- which disables all first-party cookies from being read/set, and deletes existing cookies. When cookies are disabled, take note that some data may be less accurate, including unique visitors and goal-tracking.

Asynchronous Tracking in Google Analytics

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 16:00:00 GMT

The February edition of Website Magazine (distributed just after the new year) will feature a cover story on performance analysis. As you can imagine, we're totally focused on anything related to analytics and Google's announcement last night of Asynchronous tracking for Google Analytics users certainly fits the bill.

The new Google Analytics Asynchronous tracking code provides an alternative way to track websites and offers faster load times, enhanced data collection (and accuracy) and the elimination of errors, because it's not dependent on JavaScript loading fully.

The new tracking code is now in Beta and available as an option to all Google Analytics users, but all existing Google Analytics code will continue to work as-is, should you decide not to adopt the new tracking method.

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Tracking Email Recipient Action With Video

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 18:47:00 GMT

Analytics provider ClickTale this week launched Email Tracking this week. The solution enables those responsible for monitoring analytics the ability to watch videos of email recipients actual browsing sessions.

This is an excellent feature and not one that other email service providers can boast of offering. Analytics teams can review which pages individual recipients recevied, what they paused to pay attention to and which completed a transation or other converstion activity.

Video playback of individual browsing sessions could be helpful for email marketers in identifying issues that can be easily corrected. "Watching video recordings of campaign-generated visitor sessions is a must for understanding which campaigns deliver the most valuable leads, and gaining visual insight into exactly where customers fail and succeed on your site," says Tal Schwartz, CEO and co-founder of ClickTale.

If you're interested in viewing what users are doing on your site, you might also want to look into userfly.com. Place one line of javascript on your site, and you're up and running, conducting ad hoc usability studies of browser sessions.

Google Opens Content Network to Third Parties

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 19 May 2008 15:30:00 GMT

Google announced it will begin accepting third-party advertising tags on the Google content network (Adsense) in North America. This will enable advertisers to work with approved third parties (see below) to server and track display ads, including rich media ads.

Third-party tags were not accepted in the past as Google dis not have a process for reviewing ads to make sure they complied with their format standards and policies. Now that that's in place, Ad servers, rich media ad agencies and resarhc firms can go through a certification process that ensures the highest level of advertiser service and user experience. Advertisers and agencies now have the ability to serve ads and measure performance through these certified third parties (more will be certified in the future):

Advertiser ad servers: DoubleClick (DFA), Mediaplex
Rich media agencies: DoubleClick Rich Media, Eyeblaster, EyeWonder, Interpolls, PointRoll, Unicast
Research firms: Dynamic Logic, IAG Research, InsightExpress, Factor TG

PPC Affiliate Tracking - T202

Administrator — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:50:00 GMT

Tracking202 (T202) is a pay-per-click affiliate marketing analytics solutions offers some interesting features such as keyword cloaking, keyword tracking and a 'spy view'. The problem with many reporting solutions is that it is not a simple endeavor. Tracking, monitoring, and determining the ROI on PPC accounts and individual campaigns is time consuming - especially when you have multiple accounts running. T202 has a lot of features that will be of interest to affiliate marketers. The main issues is that most trackers only work with bigger networks (Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN Adcenter). With T202, any network big or small can be tracked and they do it in real time.

Let's take a look at some of those features:

EPC Calculator: Tracking EPC (earnings per click) enables affiliate marketers to know exactly what they need to bid for a keyword. When you can adjust bids quickly, you'll get closer to turning a profit on each keyword. T202 provides information on EPC per keyword, text ad, referrer, and even per account.

Spy View: Real-time reports are often a misnomer in that they are not really shown in 'real-time', but rather after a short delay because of the networks proprietary tracking limitations. T202's Spy View let's clients subscribe to an RSS feed to see actual real-time actions visitors make with ads. Pretty cool.

Keyword Cloaking: T202 gives clients the ability to claok keywords from advertisers and affiliate networks and in essence protect their intellectual property.