Why is Tracking Eficiens’ priority ?

In this new article, Eficiens gives you key reasons why it is necessary to set up a robust tracking for your online campaigns : what advantages it offers, which tools are currently available, what kind of debate it triggers.

An Internet special !

Tracking, or traffic monitoring, is the paramount strength of the Internet. No other media (TV, radio, display or the press) can offer - to date - such an opportunity to measure advertising campaigns performance. Advertisers, who would until now resort to post-campaign surveys (« Do you remember this ad shown last month ? »), are enthused by the cornucopia of data offered by Internet tracking tools and are becoming increasingly hungry and demanding re : expected materials and results. Nonetheless, they are still to be reminded periodically during multi-media campaigns set up that such data will be available to them provided the collection process has been anticipated.

A few facts on web campaigns tracking

Whether via sponsored links, advertising banners or e-newsletters, tags and cookies (lines of code) enables to know which path the online visitor has followed from clicking on one ad to its final destination (most likely the advertiser’s website) : this « destination » or « landing » page is often a webpage summarising key business aims of the campaign (product purchase, info download, data collection).

All data collected during the visitor’s web journey is stored and agregated on traffic analytics – also called web analytics – software such as – for instance, Google Analytics, Webtrends, Nedstats, Xiti, Weborama. The latter allow to submit requests or filtered reports by date, campaign type, location, to name but a few possibilities, and therefore ease the discovery of a fair amount of key data about the visitors reached by the advertising.

Here are a few examples of available data on those web analytics tools. They will help you understand web tracking advantages and importance :

- Clicks comparison between several ads – key learning : which creative concept is most attractive

- Sales volume comparison between several ads – key learning : which advertising message is most effective and compelling

- Landing page exit rate – key learning : attractivity of landing pages

- Number of visitors according to site provenance – key learning : which advertising site is best performing in order to optimise media plan for future campaigns

- Geographic origin of visitors

- Measure of visitors’ loyalty (recurrence on site)

- Most popular pages on landing site

- Number of transactions and products purchased….

Such web analytics data must be accurate and easily downloadable in order to be quickly and efficiently used. Tools therefore allow to cross-link criteria according to different angles of analysis.

Nevertheless, it is important to remember that these technical features must be set up well in advance of campaign launch and are directly steming from in-depth thinking between the advertiser and its agency.

Tracking Tools

Tracking tools have 3 different origins :

- tools combining adserving and tracking : not only do they generate tags, which will enable tracking set-up (data collection and access) but also host advertising materials and manage technical implementation of the campaigns, whatever media in the media plan. E.g : Mediaplex Mojo, Falk

- « pure » or proprietary tracking tools :  those are leading search actors’ tools (Google Analytics, Yahoo! Search Marketing’s Panama or the future Gatineau by Microsoft). Those originally published their own campaign’s data only and are slowly opening to other media sites via their partners’ network.

- Website performance tools such as Xiti with primary vocation to measure traffic and behaviour of visitors on one chosen website, not necessarily taking into account marketing actions and their results

The market for these tools is constantly evolving as is technology underlying them. With an increasingly fast access to information and improved ergonomics, one still has to be careful about the consistency of data provided. Equally, each tool has its own methodology regarding counting and measuring, which makes it difficult to compare given data from one tool to another.

Cookies and private data

Tracking issues often trigger emotional reactions within public opinion.

Debate on access to tracking data is as hot a topic as a volcano, so often on the verge of awakening. Cookies and their parry (cookie blockers) are fought by some and valued by others. But without them, no tracking data can be collected and many other highly useful web functionalities would have to be dismissed. This goes way beyond marketing and advertising : authentifiers for online tax declaration, secured accesses for banking… Nowdays, privacy policies and other disclaimers enable regulated and controled data mining and the recent threatening debate regarding the up&coming release of star web browser IE 8 remains faint and soon to be forgotten.

Marketing investments’ profitability is tracking’ raison d’être and one should always keep in mind that those ever stronger and more efficient tracking tools are key enablers to marketing departments – to fine tune their strategic positioning like never before.

 

Comments

[Rédigé par: berlin]

Gut!

[Rédigé par: daria]

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