Tag Archives: Analytics 360

Firebase Analytics Gets New Features and a Familiar New Name

Can it be just a year since we announced the expansion of Firebase to become Google's integrated app developer platform at I/O 2016? That Firebase launch came complete with brand new app analytics reporting and features, developed in conjunction with the Google Analytics team.

Now, at I/O 2017, we're delighted to announce some exciting new features and integrations that will help take our app analytics to the next level. But first, we’d like to highlight a bit of housekeeping. As of today, we are retiring the name Firebase Analytics. Going forward, all app analytics reports will fall under the Google Analytics brand.

This latest generation of app analytics has always, and will continue to be, available in both the Firebase console and in Google Analytics. We think that unifying app analytics under the Google Analytics banner will better communicate that our users are getting the same great app data in both places. In Firebase and related documentation, you'll see app analytics referred to as Google Analytics for Firebase. Read on to the end of this post for more details about this change.

One other note: The launches highlighted below apply to our latest generation of app analytics – you need to be using the Firebase SDK to get these new features.

Now let’s take a look at what’s new.

Integration with AdMob
App analytics is now fully integrated with AdMob. Revenue, impression and click data from AdMob can now be connected with the rest of your event data collected by the Firebase SDK, all of it available in the latest Google Analytics app reports and / or in the Firebase console.

For app companies, this means that ad revenue can be factored into analytics data, so Analytics reports can capture each app’s performance. The integration combines AdMob data with Analytics data at the event level to produce brand new metrics, and to facilitate deep dives into existing metrics. You can answer questions like:
  • What is the true lifetime value for a given segment, factoring in both ad revenue and purchase revenue?
  • How do rewarded ads impact user engagement and LTV?
  • On which screens are users being exposed to advertising the most or the least?
With this change, you can now have a complete picture of the most important metrics for your business ― all in one place.

Custom parameter reporting
"What's the average amount of time users spend in my game before they make their first purchase?" Many of you have asked us for the ability to report on specific data points like these that are important to your business.

Custom parameter reporting is here to make that possible. You can now register up to 50 custom event parameters and see their details in your Analytics reports.
  • If you supply numeric parameters you’ll see a graph of the average and the sum of that parameter.
  • If you supply textual parameters you’ll see a breakdown of the most popular values.
As with the rest of your Analytics reports, you can also apply Audience and User Property filters to your custom parameter reports to identify trends among different segments of your userbase.

To start using custom parameter reporting for one of your events, look for it in the detail report for that event. You'll see instructions for setting things up there.

Integration with DoubleClick and third-parties – Now in Beta
We're also pleased to announce a new integration with both DoubleClick Campaign Manager and DoubleClick Bid Manager. Firebase-tracked install (first open) and post-install events can now easily be imported back into DoubleClick as conversions.

This is a boost for app marketers who want a clearer view of the effect their display and video marketing has on customer app behavior. Advertisers can make better decisions (for all kinds of ads, programmatic included) as they integrate app analytics seamlessly with their buying, targeting and optimization choices in DoubleClick.

We also know that some of you use advertising platforms beyond AdWords and DoubleClick, so we continue to invest in integrating more third-party networks into our system. (We're now at 50 networks and growing). The goal: to allow app data from all your networks to come together in Google Analytics, so you can make even better advertising choices using all the data you collect. Learn more.

Real-time analytics for everyone
Google Analytics pioneered real-time reporting, so we know how important it is for our customers to have access to data as it happens. That’s why we’re so excited by the real-time capabilities we’ve introduced into our latest app reports. To refresh an announcement we made in March: StreamView and DebugView are now available to the general public. These features allow you to see how real-world users are interacting and performing with your app right now.

StreamView visualizes events as they flow into our app reporting to give you a sense of how people around the world are using your app, right down to the city level. Then Snapshot lets you zoom-into a randomly selected individual user’s stream of events. And DebugView uses real-time reporting to help you improve your implementation – making it easy for you to make sure you’re measuring what you want how you want. DebugView is a terrific tool for app builders that shows you events, parameters and user properties for any individual development device. It can also highlight any events that contain invalid parameters.

Same product, familiar new name
As mentioned above, we're rebranding Firebase Analytics to make it plain that it's our recommended app analytics solution, and is fully a part of the Google Analytics family.

Our latest reports represent a new approach to app analytics, which we believe better reflects the way that users interact with apps. This means that these reports have different concepts and functionality when compared to the original app analytics reports in Google Analytics.

If you're used to using the original app analytics reports in Google Analytics, don’t worry: they're not going anywhere. But we recommend considering implementing the Firebase SDK with your next app update so you can start getting the latest features for app analytics.

Good data is one thing everyone can agree on: developers and marketers, global firms and fresh new start-ups. We've always been committed to app-centric reports, because analytics and data are the essential beginning to any long-term app strategy. We hope that these new features will give you more of what you need to build a successful future for your own apps.

Posted by the Google Analytics team

Google Analytics is Enhancing Support for AMP

Over the past year, developers have adopted the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) technology to build faster-loading pages for all types of sites, ranging from news to recipes to e-commerce. Billions of AMP pages have been published to date and Google Analytics continues its commitment to supporting our customers who have adopted AMP.

However, we have heard feedback from Google Analytics customers around challenges in understanding the full customer journey due to site visitors being identified inconsistently across AMP and non-AMP pages. So we're announcing today that we are rolling out an enhancement that will give you an even more accurate understanding of how people are engaging with your business across AMP and non-AMP pages of your website.

How will this work?
This change brings consistency to users across AMP and non-AMP pages served from your domain. It will have the effect of improving user analysis going forward by unifying your users across the two page formats. It does not affect AMP pages served from the Google AMP Cache or any other AMP cache.

When will this happen?
We expect these improvements to be complete, across all Google Analytics accounts, over the next few weeks.

Are there any other implications of this change?
As we unify your AMP and non-AMP users when they visit your site in the future, you may see changes in your user and session counts, including changes to related metrics. User and session counts will go down over time as we recognize that two formerly distinct IDs are in fact the same user; however, at the time this change commences, the metric New Users may rise temporarily as IDs are reset.

In addition, metrics like time on site, page views per session, and bounce rate will rise consistent with sessions with AMP and non-AMP pageviews no longer being treated as multiple sessions. This is a one-time effect that will continue until all your users who have viewed AMP pages in the past are unified (this can take a short or long period of time depending on how quickly your users return to your site/app).

Is there anything I need to do to get this update?
There is no action required on your part, these changes will be automatically rolled out.

Will there be changes to unify users who view my pages both on my domain and in other contexts?
Some AMP pages are not visited directly on the domain where the content is originally hosted but instead via AMP caches or in platform experiences. However we decided to focus on fixing the publisher domain case first as this was the fastest way we could add value for our clients.

We are committed to ensuring the best quality data for user journey analysis across AMP and non-AMP pages alike and this change makes that easy for AMP pages served on your domain. We hope you enjoy these improvements - and as always, happy analyzing!

Posted by the Google Analytics team

Real-time just got real: Google Analytics 360 offers fresher insight

You’ve just launched a website or feature. Your toe is already tapping. Wait, wait, wait — you can hardly wait one hour to see exactly how it’s performing. Sound familiar? If you’ve been there, we have exciting news for you.

Google Analytics 360 can now provide updated insights as quickly as every 10 minutes. We’re proud to give our customers the fastest access to the freshest first party data Google Analytics has ever offered.

What did you just say?!
If you need to know how your sites, microsites, or digital engagements are doing right now, we’ve got you covered. Most first-party data in Analytics 360 can now be collected, processed, and available — via our UI, API, and BigQuery integration (coming soon) — in as fast as 10 minutes. This means you can move faster to:
  • Fix things when they’re broken
  • Detect trends and react when things are popular
  • Understand and take action on the impact of cultural events or social memes
To see how fresh the data is in your report at any time, just look for this icon in the upper right:
When you see this icon, it means you’re looking at today’s data and the report is supported and super fresh. Hover over the icon to see how fresh the data is!

This new level of freshness is only available to Analytics 360 users. To learn more about which reports, views, and properties support fresher data, and the factors affecting data freshness, check out our help center.

Some site owners just can’t wait
Brands and sites in the business of capitalizing on momentary consumer attention are excited about fresher insights. Take the case of publishers and retailers as an example.

Publishers strive to put the richest, most interesting content in front of users at any given point in time. The trick is understanding what’s rich and interesting right now — and that’s a constantly moving target.

Publishers have long referenced our real-time Google Analytics reports to make decisions, but sometimes they’re looking for deeper insight than what is provided in those reports. Fresher insights across additional Google Analytics reports help our publishers make even more informed content decisions, paving the way to better user acquisition, user engagement, and a stronger relationship between content consumer and publisher brand.

Online retailers are in the same boat. When celebrities wear a product or mention a brand on social media, product interest may spike. Retailers may have just minutes to capitalize on purchase intent before it wanes.

When a product’s popularity is on the rise, retailers can react by upping its prominence to capture interest, running focused promotions or recommending related products to expand consideration. With fresh insights available as soon as every 10 minutes, retailers move faster and turn trending interest into sales.

Speed is good, but safety comes first
As you know, Google Analytics has the ability to pull in data from other sources like AdWords and DoubleClick. We refer to these as “integration sources” and these sources operate with additional requirements, like fraud detection, that mean that the data in these reports are exempt from our enhanced freshness capabilities.

For example, any report with Ads data, including a dimension widened by an Ads integration, will continue to be made available within hours. For further details on which reports are supported or not supported, please read the help center article here.

Posted by Breen Baker, on behalf of the Google Analytics team

Making Google Analytics Account Recovery Easier

A frequent feature request we receive is to make it easier to recover lost or orphaned accounts. Loss of administrative access can occur, for example, when an account administrator leaves the company without first assigning another administrator. The account continues to collect data, and users with non-administrative access are still able to log in and use the account per their assigned permissions, but the account remains in administrative limbo.

Of course, we hope brands have the right onboarding and offboarding processes in place to ensure this doesn’t occur, but we understand this isn’t always possible. If you lose administrative access to an Analytics account that is linked to an organization, you can have the organization Owner restore that access. Administrative access to Analytics consists of having Manage Users and Edit permission.

If you need to regain administrative access to your Analytics account, contact your organization Owner.

If you are an organization Owner who needs to restore access to an Analytics account:

1. Visit http://360suite.google.com 
2. Open Products > Analytics.
3. Select the account to which you want to restore access.
4. In the right pane, under User Management, click ACCESS PRODUCT. 

 The User Management page for that Analytics account opens. 
5. Under Add permissions for, enter the email address for the Google account you want to give administrative access.
6. Select the Manage Users and Edit permissions.
7. Optionally, remove any stale administrators from the account.

Please view our Help Center document on this feature for more information.

This is one of many user and account management improvements we’ve launched; we’re working on more, so stay tuned for future updates.

Posted by Matt Matyas, Google Analytics team

Using the Customer Voice to Speed Up Decision Making

Making important business decisions is often a slow process, regardless of industry or company size. In a world where innovation is increasingly important, speed is a necessity. But how does an organization streamline its decision-making process? For many companies, the answer is data. In fact, highly data-driven organizations are three times more likely than others to report significant improvement in decision-making, according to PwC research.1

When looking for meaningful insights to drive innovation and growth, market research is often a go-to data source. The problem many companies face is that market research can feel like a roadblock because it can take months to get the data.

At Lenovo, the leading PC manufacturer worldwide, constantly evolving and improving products is required to remain competitive. “We have to make decisions today for products two years from now,” says Sarah Kennedy, User Experience Researcher at Lenovo. To keep the decision-making process moving, Sarah’s team uses Google Surveys 360 for fast and accurate data. Bringing consumer insights to the table in the early stages of product development helps her team get buy-in from senior stakeholders at a faster pace. “Within seven days, we can get results that would normally take us a month,” says Sarah. 


"We put an emphasis on innovation. Collecting competitive data and industry benchmarks is critical to do this. Surveys 360 helps us get data on the current state of the market. The results are reliable and delivered at the speed we need so our teams can continue developing the best products without delay." 

– Corinna Proctor, ‎Director of User & Design Research, Lenovo 


Google Surveys 360 provides businesses with the data they need quickly, accurately, and affordably. Choose your target audience, write your survey, and get answers in as little as three days. Get started today.

Happy surveying!

1PwC's Global Data and Analytics Survey, Big Decisions™, Base: 1,135 senior executives, Global, May 2016

Posted by Kevin Fields, Product Marketing Manager, Google Surveys team

Data Studio: DoubleClick Campaign Manager Connector

Google Data Studio (beta) allows users to connect, transform, visualize, and share data no matter where it lives. Today we are happy to announce that DoubleClick Campaign Manager (DCM) customers can pull their data into Data Studio dashboards instantly!


With this new connector, DCM customers no longer need to import data into spreadsheets. Users can now quickly create dashboards with over 50 DCM metrics and dimensions. These dashboards are an effective way to track and optimize campaign performance and share reports with client and agency stakeholders.

Creating a new report with DCM data
Ready to get started? The first step is to connect to your DCM network or advertiser through the Data Sources page.



Next you can create a new report from scratch or use our DCM template. With just a few clicks, the dashboard is populated with your data.

Want to learn more? Looking for a new connector in Data Studio?

To learn more about the new DCM connector, please visit our Help Center or post your questions in the Data Studio community forums.

Is there a specific data service you wish to be able to access and visualize through Data Studio? We welcome your feedback via the connector feedback form — we read all responses and use them to prioritize new connectors.

Happy reporting!

The Data Studio team

Posted by Alon Gotesman, Google Data Studio team

Spotlight on Data Studio: Beautiful Reports and Collaboration Just Got Easier

We launched Google Data Studio (beta) in the U.S. earlier this year, and last week, we expanded availability to 21 additional countries.* We’re excited to offer Data Studio to companies across the globe so they can easily create and share reports and dashboards, and ultimately use insights and collaboration to make better business decisions.

Organizations today collect an increasingly large amount of data. In a world of web analytics, CRM systems, and third-party sources, data-driven decisions should be easier than ever before. However, all of this data has presented a significant challenge: making it easily accessible and useful.

Having multiple data sources that live in silos within your organization compromises your ability to spot critical business opportunities and issues when they matter most. This is a widespread challenge, with 84% of marketers saying they don’t believe their data sources are well-integrated, according to a 2016 Forrester study.

Data Studio solves this problem by allowing you to easily connect your data and create beautiful, informative reports that are easy to read, easy to share, and fully customizable. Create up to five custom reports with unlimited editing and sharing. All for free.

Get started today so you can:

  • Put all your data to work. Easily access the data sources you need to understand your business and make better decisions.
  • Transform your data. Quickly transform raw data into easy-to-follow reports and dashboards — no code or queries required.
  • Build engaging reports and dashboards. Data Studio gives you the ability to create meaningful, shareable charts and graphs that bring your data to life.
  • Leverage teamwork that works. Work together quickly, from anywhere, by sharing reports via Google Drive.

Not sure where to start? Good news: We’re releasing our first batch of templates today to remove that hurdle. Businesses can use a library of templates to get up and running in a matter of minutes.



Get started for free.

Happy reporting!
The Data Studio team

*Canada, Brazil, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Indonesia, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, Vietnam

Posted by Kevin Fields, Product Marketing Manager, Data Studio

Explore important insights from your data — automatically

For marketers, business owners, and product designers, it’s important to be connected to data at all times. However, data by itself rarely provides the insight needed to truly drive a business forward. It can take hours of analysis to come up with just one or two key insights and even longer to share and act on that new understanding. In a constantly-connected world, where customers can make purchases anywhere, anytime from their mobile devices, this lag in time-to-insight is costly.

That’s why we’re pleased to announce that we’re providing a new stream of automated insights in the Google Analytics mobile app. Available on the Assistant screen, this addition to Google Analytics lets you see in 5 minutes what might have taken hours to discover previously. Even better: it gets smarter over time as it learns about your business and your needs. It’s available now in our mobile app on Android and iOS, so you can easily grab insights on the go.
To enable this functionality, we use Google machine intelligence to find critical insights among the thousands of metric and dimension combinations that can be reported in Google Analytics. It helps make analytics data universally accessible and useful as it:
  • Combs through your data to give you meaningful insights and recommendations.
  • Offers quick tips on how to improve your Google Analytics data.
  • Gets smarter over time by reacting to your feedback and how you use it.
  • Helps you share insights so your whole team can take action.

Go beyond simple reporting to view findings and insights automatically, in language you can read: our insight stream enables faster, more informed decision-making that can have real impact on your business.

For example, the holiday season drives a huge portion of annual sales for many retailers. During this busy time of the year, retailers face questions that can be the difference between making their numbers for the year or falling short: Which products are going to be popular this season? Where should we advertise? How are our customers hearing about us and purchasing from us? Answering just one of these questions and acting on that information can take analysts and marketers hours or even days.

Data insights in Google Analytics automate the first steps of answering these questions by instantaneously surfacing opportunities and anomalies hiding in the data. For example, they can tell you which products are experiencing higher than normal sales growth, which advertising channels are driving the most conversions and the best returns, and on which devices customers engage with your brand. This moment-to-moment information gives retailers the power to make nimble, smart decisions that directly impact performance.
You can view your automated insights in the Assistant tab in the official Google Analytics mobile app on Android and iOS for all English-speaking users. We're working to bring this exciting functionality to the web version of Google Analytics and to expand availability to other languages.

We plan on improving with your feedback, so please try the app and then let us know what insights you’d like to see automated.
Posted by Ajay Nainani, Product Manager, Google Analytics

Enterprise Class Administration in the Google Analytics 360 Suite

If you're in marketing or analytics, you know consumer behavior has shifted dramatically — mobile has created new opportunities for businesses to reach customers at the right moment with the right message at every step in the buyer journey. That’s why earlier this year, we launched the Google Analytics 360 Suite, a set of integrated data and marketing analytics products, designed specifically for the needs of enterprise-class marketers and data analysts.

Since this launch, we’re now excited to announce a series of improvements available to Suite customers. The Google Analytics 360 Suite houses vital data for marketers to understand how their marketing programs, websites, and apps are performing; carefully controlling access to this data and monitoring what happens with it is a top priority, and we’ve made solid improvements.

User management for your Organization

Managing users’ access to your data and Suite assets is critical, and must be done in the context of your organization. The first step towards controlling your data access is to let us know which accounts your organization manages. Organization administrators can do this in the new Suite Home product: http://360suite.google.com/. Administrators will see an “Admin” tab, and underneath it lies the ability to link and verify all of your accounts with the Suite’s products to your organization:


Linked accounts must be verified before user management features will apply to them.

Centralized  User Auditing

Once you have linked and verified all of your accounts within Suite products, we compile a powerful user-auditing report for you. This report lists all users that have access to any of the accounts you linked across all Suite products. This is the only place where you can find a cross-product and cross-account list of users.


For each user in this report, we list rich data to help you make informed decisions about who has access to your corporate accounts. We show the user’s name and picture (when available), their Suite roles, and which products within your organization the user has access to. For all linked Google Analytics accounts, we show the last time the user accessed data from any of them.

Even more details can be loaded per user to show a summary of all the data that user has access to, such as how many properties or containers the user can access, whether the user is licensed for Data Studio, etc.


Filtering

You can use advanced filters to restrict data shown on screen; for example, you can show only users who haven’t accessed Analytics data over the last 6 months:


Remove Stale Users

Combining all of the actions above, you can complete an important task: identifying and removing stale users from your Analytics accounts (other Suite products to come in the future.) After you filter for only users who haven’t logged in recently, you can visit the details pane for those users and remove them from Analytics:


Change History

Suite Change History lets you keep track of when a change was made, who made the change, and what was changed. For example, you can easily see when someone linked a new account to your organization, added or removed users, changed the service level for an object, or changed the end date on an order. Having a record of these changes eliminates confusion over something like an increase in billing. Instead of wondering, you can search your change history to see that one of your administrators changed the service level for a property from Standard to 360, or made changes to the billing parameters. Access to change history is restricted to Owners.


Get Started: Complete your Suite Setup to Use these Features

Organization administrators can login to 360suite.google.com to complete their Suite setup and start using these features right now; contact your account manager if you’re not sure who your organization administrators are. Verify all accounts linked to your organization, then visit your Organization page in Suite Admin to enable the Suite experience today.

Put all these powerful administration features to use right now for your organization to tightly monitor & control access to your valuable data. We have many more improvements planned for the future; so stay tuned as we launch more, and truly bring an enterprise-grade experience to life in the Google Analytics 360 Suite.

Posted by Matt Matyas, Product Manager, Google Analytics

AccuWeather delivers enhanced value to advertisers with DoubleClick for Publishers and Google Analytics 360

The Challenge
Publishers use DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP) to manage and serve ads across their sites and apps, and use Google Analytics 360 to understand user behavior on their sites. DFP reports on the ads and ad units on the site, while Analytics 360 reports on the pages on the site.

Each platform on its own doesn’t provide insight into the intersection of data with the other. And with two platforms speaking two different languages, it hasn't always been easy for publishers to understand how user behavior influences revenue and how ads influence user behavior.

That’s why last year we launched an integration between DFP and Analytics 360.

The Solution 
Through the integration, publishers using Analytics 360 can see DFP metrics like impressions, clicks, and revenue within the Analytics 360 interface. This enables publishers to combine revenue data with user behavior insights—for example, the number of ad impressions or revenue each page of their site generates. AccuWeather is one such publisher.

AccuWeather Case Study 
AccuWeather brings real-time weather news and information to more than a billion people worldwide through its website and popular suite of apps. The company knew that if it could better understand the needs of those visitors and match them with more relevant messages from advertisers, it could provide more value to advertisers and boost its own ad revenues. By linking its DFP and Analytics 360 accounts, AccuWeather could see how the behavior of its website visitors affected revenue.

With DFP metrics now in Analytics 360, AccuWeather could see that average revenue per 1,000 sessions rose by 45% on a country-level basis when two new companies began advertising on accuweather.com. This revenue increase was driven by users who were actively in-market to travel and were looking at weather in “exotic” locations such as Turks & Caicos and Barbados. With insights like these, the team has been able to create highly tailored advertising packages with high-value, unique audience segments that sales teams can sell directly or through programmatic marketplaces like the DoubleClick Ad Exchange.


“The integration of DoubleClick for Publishers and Analytics 360 gives AccuWeather real-time visibility to the next level of campaign performance insights and is helping us make better advertising decisions. We’re now creating new behavior-based ad products that are being very well received by our advertisers,” says Steve Mummey, Director of Ad Strategy & Audience Development, AccuWeather.

For more, read the full case study with AccuWeather.

Even More Capabilities Available for Publishers 
In addition to seeing DFP metrics in Analytics 360, publishers will be able to use a consolidated reporting section, see DFP ad unit data together with Analytics 360 data, and do deeper analysis on their DFP data in Google BigQuery.

Reporting 
DFP metrics are consolidated into a reporting section in Analytics 360, making it easy for publishers to understand how their online content impacts revenue.

The figures in the above image are for illustration only and do not represent actual data in AccuWeather’s DFP or Analytics 360 accounts.


Ad Units
Publishers sell their online ad inventory based on the thousands or millions of ad units they have available on their properties. Individual ad slots can be grouped together into ad units so that publishers can create a hierarchy of ad units that represents the structure of their website. Then, publishers can match each advertiser’s message with the right ad slot.

Through this integration, publishers can now see their Analytics 360 data through the lens of their ad units. DFP ad unit hierarchy is mapped to Analytics 360 along with related metrics such as impressions, clicks, and dollars.

And now that analyst and ad operations teams can speak the same language, publishers are able to analyze DFP data through the lens of demographic and interest data in Analytics 360—and they can identify things like which affinity category or user lifestyle is driving the most revenue per 1,000 sessions by ad unit.

The figures in the above image are for illustration only and do not represent actual data in AccuWeather’s DFP or Analytics 360 accounts.


Google BigQuery 
Now that DFP metrics are available in Analytics 360, they can be exported to BigQuery. This means more metrics, more exports, and more data sources. Publishers can run their own revenue models and explore in more detail the intersection of revenue and user behavior.

Stay tuned for more updates from Analytics 360 as we continue to invest in new and exciting capabilities!

Posted by Abhishek Aggarwal, Dan Cary, and Tiffany Siu on behalf of the Google Analytics team