[caption id="attachment_37768" align="alignright" width="300"] Image via Shutterstock[/caption] Often, you want to look at your metrics over a longer time period than usual in order to identify long-term trends. This is especially true if your metrics are "jagged" and move around a lot. You have two choices: You could use a larger time period. If you usually watch daily metrics, switch to weekly. Or monthly. Or quarterly. This will smooth out your data and will also smooth out directional trends emerging from your data right at the time when you want to catch such changes. You could u [...]

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In the paid search world, ad rank and average cost per click (CPC) are determined by three factors: your own bid (max CPC), your competitors’ bids, and a numeric representation of ad relevance known as quality score. This quality score acts as a modifier, making it possible for an ad with higher “quality” to outrank a competitor’s ad at a lower bid. While the relationship between bids is straightforward to understand, quality score is much more opaque, being affected by many factors such as click-through rate (CTR), keyword and ad copy relevance, quality of landing page, etc. Man [...]

Related Topics: Analytics & Marketing Column | Channel: Analytics | Google | Google: Search | Search Marketing

The path from clicking a search ad to a conversion -- buying a product, downloading a brochure, locating a store -- is well understood and widely accepted today. Because a search ad relates to an intent expressed by the person doing the search, click-through rate serves as a good proxy for conversion, and cost-per-click (CPC) is a reliable guide for buying search ads. In search, optimizing for clicks is essentially optimizing for conversions because they’re so closely aligned. Online display advertising, however, is a different story. People go to websites for information, entertainment a [...]

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As social media becomes an increasingly vital component of marketing strategies, agencies are getting more comfortable with associated social data. For example, analyzing brand mentions and sentiment data is becoming fairly common practice, even among smaller shops. But, as I’ve pointed out earlier, social listening data is just the tip of the iceberg. The variety and volume of data available to marketers keep getting bigger -- and more interesting -- each day. Agencies that know how to harness and use social data creatively will profit and grow; those that do not will be left behind.� [...]

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"Negative" metrics -- you might prefer the term "De-optimization Metrics" -- can be just as important to your continuous optimization efforts as your positive ones. The purpose of a negative metric is to isolate for you the deleterious effects you may inadvertently be having on your positive metrics. A negative metric is not necessarily something you want to get less of. For example, one might mistake "reduce bounce rate" as a negative metric -- but really, it's just a more convenient way to refer to the positive metric of "increasing the un-bounce rate." Rather, a negative metric is someth [...]

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Every holiday comes with its own traditions and methods of celebration. Whether it be Fourth of July cookouts, Halloween trick-or-treating, Christmas gifts or Valentine's Day flowers, each has its own set of festivities and a culture around it that strongly influences how people elect to spend it. Given the commercialization surrounding the winter holiday season, this is generally a very tempting time for advertisers. With so much consumer interest in procuring the perfect holiday gift, it is little wonder that the season drums up a lot of advertising interest. But, what of other holiday [...]

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I’ve spent over two years developing a social media measurement platform. One of the most important things I’ve learned during that time is that what counts as good and valuable measurement is unique to almost every client. While there are some commonalities between companies in similar industry verticals, my experience suggests strongly that there simply is no “cookbook” for social media measurement that applies universally. [caption id="attachment_37296" align="alignright" width="302"] Image via Shutterstock[/caption] What this means is that you can’t simply watch what the [...]

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"I Before E, Except After C" -- do you remember that from 4th grade spelling? Well, it works just as well when you're concentrating on your metrics and optimization program. What do the letters mean for metrics optimization? I is for Insight -- learnings you derive from your continuous optimization efforts E is for Earnings -- which is presumably why you're going through the optimization process C is for Conversion -- which is how you're measuring the efficacy of your past I on your current E Metrics Optimization Think about it this way: every time you perform a test -- he [...]

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Apple's iOS 6.1.2 -- to correct a bug that reduced battery life and increased network activity for some users -- made its way into the hands of consumers on February 19th, 2013. Adoption of iOS 6.1.2 took off, and within a week, it was the most used version of iOS. According to a recent report by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, Apple's iOS claimed the majority of smartphone OS sales in the U.S. in Q4 2012, standing at 51.2%. Given the popularity of the iPhone and iOS in North America, Chitika Insights conducted a research study analyzing iOS version click through rate (CTR) to help quantify the [...]

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Mo Analytics, Mo Problems -- other than a terrible use of the great Notorious B.I.G. song, this phrase accurately reflects how marketers feel about their analytics. If marketers aren’t versed in the finer details of the different metrics, they can easily draw the wrong conclusions with their on-page optimization and reporting. 1. Thinking Greater Time On Page Equates To A More Engaged Customer Average time on a page is a core metric to assess your page performance in many analytics platforms. However, marketers often incorrectly assume that it’s a good measure for customer engagement [...]

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[caption id="attachment_34163" align="alignright" width="175"] Image courtesy of DepositPhotos[/caption] Remember that time long, long ago (in a land far away) when the term “web analytics” hadn’t even been coined? Fast-forward to 2013: web analytics data is the tip of the iceberg, “big data” is readily available, and many new tools on the market do the work of collecting data, storing it, manipulating it and reporting on it. No doubt about it, Data-Land is a much sweeter place than No-Data-Land, and as marketers, we’re lucky to have arrived here. Data provides insights that [...]

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If 2012 was considered the year of mobile, we may as well go ahead and declare 2013 the year of the tablet. A new study from research firm Canalys shows that one in every three PCs shipped globally was a tablet, with 114.6 million units moving during 2012. Sales were split almost evenly between Apple’s iPad (49%) and Android tablets (46%). The current state of the tablet market is starkly different from a year ago. In 2011, the iPad was still the undisputed king of the tablet market, claiming 67% of worldwide tablet sales, according to Gartner. iPad Market Share The year-over-year decl [...]

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As more budget flows toward content marketing (12% of budgets on average according to a 2012 study by Ad Age), inevitable questions have arisen about its value and how to measure impact. The good news is that plenty of data and metrics exist. The bad news is that marketers are already awash in data and often suffer from too much noise, not enough signal. Careful planning can help ensure that measurement is meaningful and provides insights for decision making. Here are three things to consider as you create a measurement plan for your content marketing initiatives: 1. Where Are You Meas [...]

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Many organizations get fixated on metrics data, without thinking of where it comes from. But, what if your metrics indicate a problem which originates somewhere else? Huh? What I'm asking is, "why should we believe that the place at which we measure our metrics is also the place where the problem occurs?" Perhaps the metric is simply reporting a symptom, but not the malady itself. Take, for example, a rather common fixation on Exit Pages. These are often bumped up the organizational ladder as "oh, these pages have to be fixed! they have high Exit rates, therefore people are leaving! Let' [...]

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As we enter 2013, the growth of online advertising continues at a healthy pace. In October 2012, the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released a report showing record-breaking, $17 billion online advertising revenues in the first half of 2012 – a 14% increase over the same period in 2011. With this growth also comes a greater need for strategy. As TV advertisers are well aware, an advertisement’s time slot can have a dramatic impact in terms of how a consumer reacts to that ad. For marketers or advertisers running campaigns online, it can also be extremely useful to know the optimal [...]

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As we prepare for a new year in the online marketing world, it's interesting to reflect on where 2012 has brought us. The Web experienced another year of fantastic growth. In the US alone, over 240 million consumers now access the Web – a market penetration of 78%. This overall growth is driven by an equally impressive increase in mobile usage. In many parts of the world, mobile phones have long been the primary means for people to access the Internet. Now, that's becoming true in the US, as well. By Q4 2012, the US saw over 170 million smartphone subscribers, meaning smartphone owners [...]

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Programmatic buying is becoming an influential factor in online display advertising. Real-Time Bidding (RTB) has turned into a $2 billion global business in just three years, according to ExchangeWire. However, this uptick isn’t accompanied by equal education and support of the players involved. Publishers are struggling with the fear of falling CPMs, while advertisers are seeking ways to reach the right audience, efficiently optimize their spend and drive performance. RTB is juxtaposed in an interesting position; but, how do you bridge the gap between these concerned parties to draw t [...]

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For many senior executives, the jury is still out on social media.  They want proof in the form of hard numbers that show business value.  Budgets aren’t likely to grow until they get it. Unfortunately, the data needed to make the case are dispersed, and analysis takes time (something social media marketers don’t often have). So, what’s a marketer to do?  Here are five tips to help you work with the data you have, get the data you need, and make your case effectively. 1. Translate While it is certainly true that marketers don’t usually have all the information senior execs are [...]

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Now that the 2012 U.S. Presidential election is over, there's a bit of buzz around why some folks thought the election would be close and others who, using some solid statistical techniques, predicted a definitive (and it turns out, accurate) outcome. I want to try to explain the latter, especially for marketers. Why? Because political elections are in many ways like optimization testing: you've got two (or more) candidates and the "market" is choosing between them. So we can gain insight from understanding political polling that can assist us in our testing efforts and the metrics we use t [...]

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Windows 8 has been fresh on the market for just under a month, and earlier this year, Apple released its latest desktop OS, Mac OS X Mountain Lion. Windows 8 has been touted as a leading platform for both desktop and mobile devices, and a key pillar in Microsoft’s strategy to revive its ailing OS business, far removed from the glory days of Window XP. Mac OS X Mountain Lion was launched with a similar fanfare, but under far less pressure, as Apple has regularly released upgrades to Mac OS X since its official launch in 2011. Surely, the release of these two marquee operating systems in [...]

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