Independent Digital Analytics Expertise

Let’s talk about Feelings
‍
Who came up with the nonsense that we should decide based on data, not emotions?! Not me! I am fully emotional in all my decisions, and the same holds true for this tool comparison: The only criterion is my emotional state while using GA4, Adobe Analytics, and Piwik Pro — three solutions that couldn’t be more distinct when it comes to feelings…‍

We are not really in an “Age of User-Centric Analytics” yet — rather the Opposite
‍
Especially since the advent of Google Analytics 4, I have been hearing the argument ever more frequently: Sessions have become irrelevant. We are in an age of “user-centric” Analytics. Not really. But what would be the ideal measurement time frame?‍

Account usage and Workspace stats, editing eVars, props, Succcess Events are now free
‍
Cleaning up Adobe Analytics components and workspaces in a data-driven manner, keeping an eye on login & workspace viewing trends over time, managing multiple Virtual Report Suites’ Curated Components in an efficient manner, harmonizing duplicate segments & calculated metrics, replacing a dimension, segment or metric by another one everywhere — many Admins save hundreds of hours with the Adobe Analytics Component Manager for Google Sheets already.

Automated Client- and Server-Side QA of Data Collection
‍
The futile (?) dream of many Digital Analytics/Tag Management/Data Collection specialists: a tracking implementation where every measurement point in any technical constellation is automatically validated against non-trivial, up-to-date rules and serves you errors on an actionable silver plate: Perfect, automated QA of data collection (aka “tracking”). There are good solutions, but they are limited, and they focus on the less relevant (part 1).
We show a solution that does (almost) all the things I want a data collection QA solution to do, and it does so without requiring licensing fees (apart from a couple of dollars monthly on Google Cloud Platform). We use Mocha & Chai for visual client-side ad-hoc data validation (part 2) and then take the whole thing server-side in a scalable way so every user becomes a data layer tester (part 3).

From Real-Time Multi-ID User Stitching to Triggering Flexible Actions
‍
The number of vendors claiming to offer a Customer Data Platform (CDP) has skyrocketed. From e-mail specialists to tag management providers — as long as a product used to offer something with customer data and had some APIs for data input and output, it now is likely called a “CDP”. The CDP Institute’s “Vendor Comparison” lists 53 solutions alone! Let’s try to define a CDP and look at its most important components.

Heavenly and Devilish Examples of Server-Side Tracking
‍
Server-side tracking, especially in the form of server-side Tag Management, is one of the hottest trends in Digital Analytics and Marketing. This article gives an introduction and highlights the potential for good and bad. And when did “first-party data” mutate into an irony of itself?

From Filtering out Bots to Filtering in Humans
This is the never-ending story in 2 acts on how to deal with Bots in your Google or Adobe Analytics data.
‍
In part 1, I review common, yet usually insufficient or even completely failing approaches. Why did I give up on AI-driven solutions like ReCaptcha, Akamai Bot Manager or Ad Fraud Detection tools? How good are the built-in Bot Filters? Should you at least maintain Bot Filters/Segments on top of GA views/AA Virtual Report Suites? Why does Server-Side Tracking exacerbate the Bot issues?

In part 2, I look at a client who saw Bot Traffic surging to over 40%, a case which made me reconsider entirely how to approach Bot Filtering. We show a 2-layered system which turns traditional approaches upside dow - instead of filtering out Bots, the focus is on filtering in humans.

Also: Check out the video of our presentation (together with David Hermann) at Superweek 2023 on the topic.