Avinash keynote speech at SES London 2010

Main points of discussion (Divided into 4 Acts):

Act 1 – Break down data

Analytics has many rows/columns of data and it’s crucial to weed out the the most important data. Top ten rows of branded keyword data is not the majority of traffic, need to focus on the bulk of data (which includes the largest volume) and analyze it.  Most volume lies in long tail. Using tag clouds can help understand keyword relations, and determining if your website is generating a good balance of organice trafic (long tail vs. short tail; branded vs. non-branded).

Act 2 – Outcomes!

Creating goals with economic values can help lead your clients in the right direction, focusing them on what’s important and what’s not.  Actions such as downloads, e-mail signups, clicking on ads, viewing more than one page, should all be turned into goals with a monetary value (even if it’s a relative value).

Act 3 – Think Long Tail (“Impression Virgins”)

The great thing about long tail non branded search queries is that they are made by people who have yet to decide on what website they want to visit. They are still exploring, looking for the most relevant result on the SERPS. It is our job, as analysts and as SEOs,  to have our results displayed and pages optimized. These are visitors that have yet to make branded short tail visits, they are in a much more preliminary phase of the buying cycle.  Avinash gave an example of HMV, and search based keyword tool, which I will write a separate post about in the near future. Stay tuned, priceless info.

Act 4 – Attribution of Clicks

One of the million dollar questions asked by companies and analysts  is:
Which medium should get credit for a conversion? For example, a visitor may view an ad multiple times, visit the website a few times, click on an organic result, later click on a ppc result, then finally click on a newsletter received by e-mail , at last making a conversion. In this process (or buying cycle),  all of the above mediums had a helping hand in the conversion. So who should get the credit? How do we know where to allocate our ad spend dollars? These questions are all very valid… Stay tuned for a separate post on this issue, the answer may save you a lot of time and money.

Overall, I really enjoyed the info and the way that it was presented. And who knew that later that day Efrat and I would get a more up close and personal session with Avinash.

PPC or SEO? The Ultimate Search Marketing Battle

Another session worth mentioning was called “PPC or SEO? The Ultimate Search Marketing Battle.” This panel was manned by some of the most well know personas in the online marketing arena.
On the SEO side: Ralph Tegtmeier, David Naylor, Rand Fishkin.
On the PPC side: Andrew Goodman, Paul Mead

Ralph Tegtmeier, David Naylor, Rand Fishkin, Paul Mead, Andrew Goodman (sitting from left to right)

The discussion was pretty lively, with Rand heating things up and stressing the growth potential and creativity within the SEO world. Naylor and Tegtimeier shared their fare share of wisdom, with Goodman and Mead firing back with substantial PPC efficiency evidence.

Questions Anyone?

When time was up, the audience had a chance to ask questions. I asked if  SEO will still be a part of first page results in the years to come, as Google has been increasingly pushing PPC results, video/image results, real time search results, product search results, and business local results. Naylor replied that he believes that pretty soon all of Google’s first page results will be paid. Rand said that Google is constantly testing, and it seems to me that he believes SEO has a bright future ahead.

Ohad Marom (me) with Rand Fishkin, CEO, SEOmoz.org

Cherry on Top – Up Close and Personal
with Avinash

At the end of the day, Efrat and I were invited by Alan Wrafter from Google to the Google UK office in order to join the GAAC agencies in a more informal session with Avinash. Avinash disclosed some info about the future of Google Analytics and tools that are being developed to help analysts get a better overview of important data.

Efrat Ner-Gaon, Avinash Kaushik, and Ohad Marom

Local Pub with GAAC Forum and Alan Wrafter

The evening was capped off with beers at a local pub with all the GAAC’s and Alan.

Efrat Ner-Gaon, Alan Wrafter (Google), Ohad Marom

A long and fruitful first day… What’s in store for us tomorrow?

According to their announcement:

“The comScore norms data provide compelling empirical support for the belief that there is a quantifiable view-thru impact of online ad exposures on brand value and sales.”

View Through metrics – what does it mean and how does it work?

View-throughs, or post-impressions as they are also known, generally refer to online conversions that result from a user seeing an ad online but not clicking on it at that moment.

View-throughs work by leaving a cookie on a visitor’s computer when they are exposed to a banner. Then, when that visitor goes to the site that was advertised on the banner, the system looks up the cookie and can identify the site on which the banner was seen. This way the conversion (if there is one) could be accredited to the relevant banner.

Why are view-throughs important?

According to the ComScore tests there was a difference between the behaviour of visitors that were exposed to an online ad campaign and those that weren’t:

“For the studies in which both retailers’ online and offline sales were analyzed, for periods ranging from two weeks to three months after the initial exposure to an online display ad, the incremental online sales lift was 27 percent and offline sales lift was 17 percent.

Online ad exposures also yield a lift in various important online behaviors, such as brand site visitation and trademark searches…including an increase in search queries that involve the advertiser’s trademark brand name.”

What that means is that even though the click through rates on the campaigns were relatively low, the ad campaigns were still effective because they raised brand awareness and conversions over time.

Are view throughs trustable?

Although I don’t know the tests setup, I tend to believe that the ads were shown on sites that were relevant to the ones advertised. This means that the visitors seeing the ads were already in a mind set that included that specific area and thus might have reached the advertised site on their own.

According to DoubleClick:

“View-through metrics may not be entirely accurate, as they also capture activity that occurs as the result of offline ad recall or other stimulus”

I agree that viewing an ad has an impact on the viewer; however I am not certain that it’s as big as ComScore claims it to be. What is important is that the  view through metrics are becoming more acknowledged as important key performance indicators. And as more and more tests will be done to measure the true effect of post-impressions on online campaigns performance, the metrics will become more accurate and reliable.

All we can do until that happens is continue to optimize our online campaigns for clicks and consider the view-through visits as a very valuable added bonus.

Google has recently opened its GAAC program in order to create standardization of web analytics online. Only companies or people who pass a special analytics test can present in their website the GAAC logo and authorized to call themselves GAAC. Therefore, clients will be able to get professional service and know exactly what to look for when giving the access to their precious database to others.

Compucall is presently one of only two companies that received the GAAC authorization in Israel and one of 62 worldwide.

Read more details regarding our web analytics services.

Compucall is GAAC!

The upcoming change will include, among others:

*Advanced Segmentation
*Custom Reports
*Motion Charts
*Advanced Account Dashboard
*Data Export API
*Integration with AdSense

Below is a detailed review of some of these new upcoming features:

Advanced Segmentation – Visitor Segmentation Magic

In the past, real audience segmentation was only available in a handful of web analytics tools. My personal favorite has always been ClickTracks, a tool I’m actively using since 2004 (I wrote a post on its segmentation engine on my blog).

Ever since Google Analytics launched, its major weakness vs. ClickTracks has been its inability to custom segment, on the fly as well as to run analysis on historical data.
Well, something happened today folks. Google’s new segmentation engine is an amazing segmentation wizard, fast, easy to use, deep and able to go back into data from the past – simply beautiful!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Custom Reports – Google Analytics A La Cart

OMG. Simply select you’re desired KPI’s, drag them on to the page whiteboard and save – you’ve got yourself a report! I cannot imagine how much time this is going to save!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Motion Charts – Web Analytics Diamond Mining

In first look, this feature seems out of some crazy geeky labs, but come to look deeper into the philosophy – What web analytics is really about – it’s about getting the dirt off the raw data and finding the uncut diamond at its origin – how can I compare multidimensional KPI’s, get rid of irrelevant data and find my gold? simply click “visualize” and you’re on the way!

Click here to view the embedded video.

AdSense Integration – BI for the rest of us!

I saved this one for last, as opposed to the previous features, this one is not pure web analytics, but IS very much business intelligence, a tool which for many web properties may very well help open their eyes and improve both their top lines, bottom lines and user experience.

Wouldn’t you like to know which country generates users with highest eCPM for your web site? Wouldn’t you like to visualize how users click ads on your popular pages? Wouldn’t you like to see all the data in one place so you can see the holistic view of your online business? Well, you’re going to be able to do it real soon!

As mentioned, there a few other changes to the system, some visual, some practical – all will help us get more of our analytics experience -

P.S For more info on web analtics and google analytics professional services..

Following their successful passing of the accreditation and the results we see every day from the PPC campaigns they manage, I have asked them some key questions about the way they use web analytics to improve the campaigns’ ROI.

During our conversation we started to compare the various ways people advertise their products today. Whether it be by “traditional” methods like TV, radio and print or by online campaigns like Adwords, advertisers are constantly looking for ways to increase their conversion rates and ROI. This is when the discussion took a turn towards behavioral targeting and the possibility to retarget visitors. So I decided to write about retargeting and PPC instead.

PPC – How Does the Google Adwords Content Network work?

Google Adwords metrics are centered around keywords and websites that relate to those keywords and allow Google to place your PPC ads on them.

According to Google:
“Using your keywords, Google’s contextual targeting technology can automatically match your ads to web pages in our content network that are most relevant to your business.”

Google Adwords - contextual targeting technology

Google Adwords placement performance reports also allow you to refine the placement of your ads in order to improve your ROI:

“With the Placement Performance Report , you have visibility into where all your ads appear. Review your ad’s performance on a site-by-site basis to see impression, click, cost, and conversion data, and use this data to identify well-performing sites to target more aggressively and low-value placements that require content optimization or exclusion.”

Google Adwords - placement performance report

Retargeting and PPC

The basic idea behind Retargeting is that by visiting a website, the visitors are showing that they are interested in what that website has to offer. Retargeting uses a website visit — or a search ad that led a web user to a website — as a behavior that can be targeted. This behavior can then be used to serve relevant ads to the visitors after they leave the website.
 
For example, if I search for digital camera reviews and click on a PPC ad for a site that is relevant, then by using retargeting methods I could be served PPC ads for digital cameras sold on that site after I already left it. If I click the PPC ad and go back then I am more likely to purchase a camera because I have previously shown an interest in the products. Moreover, I placed interest in a brand, and the retargeting re-enforces the marketing message of the brand I already met (“oh, I already saw that nice site… let’s come back and buy the camera…”)

PPC data – Relevancy or Recency?

As the interview with my colleagues progressed we discussed such web analytics metrics as search queries, top referrers and time on site. But then the conversation turned to retargeting.

One metric that is available in Google analytics but is currently underused by PPC managers is “Visits to purchase”.

Google Analytics - visits to purchase

Right now it is less useful to them because the Adwords PPC ads are arranged by ad groups and not by visitors. This means that you can track a certain Ad’s performance right down to the keyword level and see which keywords perform better than others. But you can’t track visitors that clicked the PPC ads after they leave your site. Google however, can and does.

The Future of PPC?

This is where the conversation got interesting. We all read about the fact that Google has started to serve PPC ads that are targeted to the searchers based on their previous search queries. Google also knows how long it takes for a visitor that came from PPC to convert. Basically, this is the way Google calculates the “Visits to Purchase” metric. This means that using cookies, and Google search history (if you are logged in) Google knows if and when you visited my site before.

Wouldn’t it be great if Google was to add a new feature which allows you to create special ad groups to be shown specifically to user that visited your site before?

Now this is COOL!!! We have keywords campaigns, content campaigns, placement, radio, print, TV, local, mobile – why not “retargeting ads”!

Think about it, you could serve highly targeted and personalized ads for your would be returning visitors. Imagine being able to have an ad on the lines of:

“Remember your last visit to our site www. oursite.com?
You won’t believe the things we have to show you now!”

Hey, I don’t create PPC ads I just analyze them . The above example may be a little simple but you get my point.

 Targeted PPC traffic – would you use it?

After going over the idea several times I finally asked both PPC managers the following question:

If you could create ads targeted specifically for visitors that saw your site before, would you?

One answer was a quick “yes. For sure” while the other one was “probably not. I’m not sure it’s worth the time or even if it will be productive. But it might be interesting to test.”

We all agree that it’s better to make this distinction on the site itself and have special welcome messages and pages for returning visitors, but most sites today can not do that.

I am interested to know what you think on the subject:

If you could retarget visitors that saw your site before, would you?