Battle of the Giants: Google Analytics vs. Omniture

Do a quick job search and listings will pop up with a variety of requirements. Adobe Creative Suite, Radian6, Social listening tools, and Google Analytics. As with most Google-related things, the analytics service is at the top of the pack. But in a select few of those postings, you’ll also come across services like Clicky, Kissmetrics or Adobe’s Analytics (formerly Omniture). They’re not as popular in the job listings – but they’re definitely out there. According to Burning Glass’ Labor Insight, Google Analytics is least likely to be required for entry-level marketing positions, but saw a growth of 88% for directors in marketing positions from 2012 to 2013 (Braaten, 2014).

Below are two of the first jobs that came up when I searched for “Google Analytics” in Ashburn, Va. Notice how there is more than one analytics software listed.

Carnival Cruise Lines names a few options like Google Analytics and Omniture.

The Washington NFL team is looking for Google Analytics and Omniture.

The role of a marketer, as with most other professions, has grown to encompass so many different skills and knowing multiple analytics software systems is no different. It’s time to put on those multiple hats, buckle down and look at Omniture.

What exactly is Omniture?

Technically, Omniture is no longer a product despite being listed as a popular job requirement. In 2009, Omniture was acquired by Adobe and was folded in to the Adobe Marketing Cloud (Adobe, 2009). According to Adobe, the Analytics service “helps you uncover business opportunities and successes by turning customer interaction into actionable insights. With the market-leading solution, you can better understand the entire journey” (Adobe, 2013).  

Features include:

Predictive marketing based on customer behavior

Real-time web analytics

Market attribution

Advanced segmentation with unique attributes, behavior, and preferences

Mobile app analytics

Advanced visualization (Adobe, n.d).

Who uses Adobe Analytics?

If you’ve ever taken a design class, you know that the word “Adobe” is synonymous with costly.  Superior, yet costly. Which explains why the main customers for the program are enterprises, organizations with large amounts of data to sift through, digital marketing groups, and marketers looking to combine online and offline data (Adobe, 2014).

Current customers include Conde Nast, Comcast, and NBC Universal (Adobe Customer Showcase, n.d.). Mashable transitioned over to Adobe Marketing Cloud in 2012 to better analyze how users we accessing their site (Mashable Video, 2012). Mashable cited the ability to hone in on mobile and tablet users, which is Adobe’s specialty (Hong, 2014).

But what’s the big difference?

One of the most glaring differences between Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics is cost. Google is free for websites with up to 5 million visitors per month and Adobe’s software will run a business at over $100,000 per year (Chianis, 2013). It makes much more sense for large enterprises to invest in the Adobe software than a small business looking to get started with analytics.

Since Adobe Analytics is part of the Adobe Marketing Cloud, users are given the ability to use other features like social listening, publishing, advertising, moderation, social apps, and governance (Yeung, 2013). The high barrier price does allow for additional features, which provide extra value and services not offered by Google Analytics.

Real-time data also varies between the two services, with Google showing how many users are on a site, where they were referred from, and where they are geographically (Chianis, 2013). Adobe Analytics, instead, offers reports that evaluate current data as well as conversion data, which is important for marketing funnel mix (Chianis, 2013).

There are other smaller differences such as Google Analytics only holding on to data for up to 25 months, versus Adobe’s life of the product guarantee. Many users have criticized Adobe Analytics for being too difficult to set up, requiring a lot of work upfront versus Google Analytics which is very easy to set up and use (McClendon, 2013). For a first time data user, Google Analytics may be the better bet considering how simple it is to establish (Rose, 2012).

Since Adobe works more with reports, information like Key Business Requirements, Key Performance Indicators will need to be identified to create a Solution Design Document, which allows users to put the code on their website (Rose, 2012). Additionally, using Adobe’s product requires planning versus Google Analytics, which requires a few short lines of HTML that are provided by Google.  

Boiling it down

It’s clear that both companies offer superior products, but with such a high price tag attached to Adobe Marketing Suite it’s unlikely that it will catch on with as much fervor as Google Analytics. Small companies cannot afford such a high price tag and I would venture to say that unless you are working for a very profitable company, Adobe Analytics is not going to show up on your desktop. Adobe offers a solid product, but unless you’re very familiar with analytics, it’s a huge time commitment (Rose, 2012). Still, it’s important to know that if you’re going to shoot for the companies with the big budgets, you may have to have an understanding of Adobe Analytics.

References:

Adobe. (2009, Ocotber 23). Adobe.com. “Adobe acquires Omniture Software.” Retrieved from, http://www.adobe.com/investor-relations/omniture-acquisition.html.

Adobe. (2014, October). Adobe.com. “Adobe Analytics Premium.” Retrieved from, http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/solutions/digital-marketing/digital-analytics/pdfs/solution-overview-analytics-premium-ue.pdf.

Adobe Customer Showcase. (n.d.). Adobe.com. “”Adobe Customer Showcase.” Retrieved from, http://www.adobe.com/solutions/digital-marketing/customer-showcase._sl_id-contentfilter_sl_featuredisplaytypes_sl_all.html.

Braaten, J. (2014, January 14). Searchenginewatch.com “Will 2014 Finally Be the Year of the Web Analyst?” Retrieved from, http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2322655/Will-2014-Finally-Be-the-Year-of-the-Web-Analyst.

Chianis, A. (2013, Ocotber 11). BusinessBee.com. “Google Analytics vs. Adobe SiteCatalyst – Which Data Analytics Platform is Better for Business?” Retrieved from, http://www.businessbee.com/resources/news/operations-buzz/google-analytics-vs-adobe-sitecatalyst-data-analysis-platform-better-business/.

Hong, K. (2014, March 25). Thenextweb.com. “Adobe boosts its mobile marketing services with iBeacon support and easier management of apps.” Retrieved from, http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/03/25/adobe-boosts-its-mobile-marketing-services-with-ibeacon-support-and-easier-management-of-apps/.

Mashable Video. (2012, December 6). Mashable.com. “New Mashable Site Analytics Powered by Adobe.” Retrieved from, http://mashable.com/2012/12/06/mashable-analytics-adobe/.

McClendon, E. (2013, February 13). Nebo.com. “Google Analytics vs. Adobt Site Catalyst Round 2.” Retrieved from, http://www.neboagency.com/blog/google-analytics-vs-site-catalyst-2/.

Rose, S. (2012, August 29). Cardinalpath.com. “Getting Started with Adobe Omniture SiteCatalyst and Google Analytics.” Retrieved from, http://www.cardinalpath.com/getting-started-with-adobe-omniture-sitecatalyst-and-google-analytics/.

Yeung, K. (2013, July 18). Thenextweb.com. “Adobe Social update brings predictive publishing and integration with Foursquare, Instagram and LinkedIn.” Retrieved from, http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/07/18/adobe-social-update-brings-predictive-publishing-and-integration-with-foursquare-instagram-and-linkedin/.

FOMO for Businesses

“You should be on social media.”

“You have a Facebook page, right?”

“What about Twitter, you have to have Twitter!”

“Pinterest is so great.”

“Have you thought about Google+?”

“Everyone always forgets about YouTube, do you have anyone that can do video?”

“LinkedIn is great for B2B. You have a LinkedIn page, right?”

(Photo credit, Stelzner, 2014)

Facebook. Twitter. LinkedIn. Pinterest. Google+. Tumblr. These are just a few of the social media platforms available to marketers. It seems like there’s a new “it” platform every week. The latest platforms to join the mix are Ello and Snapchat. Users flock to these networks, sharing personal information, photos, and data. A company can build a loyal fan base and gain marketplace intelligence with relative ease (Stelzner, 2014).

“Marketers saw an increase of 74% in website traffic after devoting just 6 hours per week in social media (Costill, 2014). No wonder marketers are worried about missing out. But with so many networks, it takes too much time, manpower, and effort to maintain a quality presence on every site. Unless you’re a super conglomerate like Coca-Cola or Nike with thousands of employees and public relations/ad agencies on retainer, it’s nearly impossible to adopt multiple platforms (Glauberman, 2012).

That leaves marketers with some big decisions to make, mainly which platform is going to be the best value to a marketer’s company. Will there be a main platform and one or two offshoots? Or should the focus be on as many platforms as possible for fear of ignoring customers, thus missing out?

Marketers can’t always have the fear of missing out. There are so many platforms with so many updates that it’s better to have a select group of quality sites, than to spread a company’s presence thinner than paper (Costill, 2014). Quality over quantity.

Who is your target audience and where are they?

When evaluating each platform it’s important for marketers to keep in mind who their target audience is and where they currently are online. Are you B2B or B2C?

The Next Web as an easy to understand explanation of each major platform: (Chitwood 2014)

1. Twitter

Who should use it: Everyone – from individuals to the largest multinational corporations

What to share: Start, join, and lead conversations; interact directly with brands and customers

Post frequency: Multiple times per day

Twitter is the dominant democracy of the social-sharing economy. Relevancy, personality and brevity are the keys to making your voice heard.

2. Instagram

Who should use it: Lifestyle, food, fashion, personalities and luxury brands

What to share: Share visual content, including short videos (less than 15 seconds)

Post frequency: Once a day

Instagram invites brands with visual content into their customers’ zone-out time. Create and post content accordingly.

You’ll want to experiment with your own userbase and followers, but it’s likely that the best time to target your posts will be to get to your audience’s eyes during their commutes, nights, and weekends.

3. LinkedIn

Who should use it: Businesses (especially B2B service providers), Recruiters and Job-Seekers

What to share: Job-postings, company descriptions, employer/employee research

Post frequency: Two to four times a week

LinkedIn is the online analog to old fashioned networking. People – and connections to people – are everything

Keep a company description and profile page mindful of keyword SEO, but your network of employees and contacts is your most valuable (and potentially damaging) content on LinkedIn. Make sure people in your organization are appropriate, professional and on-brand. There’s nowhere online where employers and employees are more intimately linked.

Company seeking clients and individuals seeking employment should grow their LinkedIn networks by adding as many real connections as possible. Use your second and third-degree connections to request personal introductions (when reasonable), and weed out the Internet’s infinity of companies and applications, focusing on opportunities where you have some real connection.

4. Facebook

Who should use it: Everyone and their grandmas

What to share: All types of online content, events, ads

Post frequency: Once or twice a day

Consider advertising or paying to promote your page on Facebook, but don’t make your brand’s Facebook page itself look like an advertisement. Inspire conversations and shares – and be sure to ask questions.

Of all social networks, Facebook is best equipped to linearly share responses to a post asking a question or sparking conversation. Answers then appear in friends of your respondents, spreading the conversation.

Facebook offers personal connection and an enjoyable distraction amidst the work day, but use typically peaks outside of work hours. There’s no shortage of options for analyzing Facebook data. Track the success of your content by date and time to hone in on the best times for engaging your audience.

5. Google+

Who should use it: Brands already on the other major social networks, B2B networking, bloggers

What to share: More formal and professional than Facebook; Hashtags have major search value

Post frequency: Once or twice a day

As Google’s proposed alternative to Facebook, keywords and search engine optimization are central to the appeal of Google+. Link often to content on your own website to direct this search boost where you want it most.

6. YouTube

Who should use it: Brands with video content and ads, anyone giving explanations or sharing expertise

What to share: Short (less than 1.5 minutes) video content

Post frequency: Once or twice a week

Google treats its own well, and YouTube is the prime example of this fact. YouTube videos feature prominently in Google search results.

7. Pinterest

Who should use it: Fashion, food, design, travel and anything DIY; audience skews female by 4:1

What to share: Creative, visual content

Post frequency: Multiple times per day

Users pin and re-pin posts to Pinterest Boards, which naturally push the content on Pinterest into categories. This makes easily-categorized content most apt for sharing, and wisely-chosen keywords essential to successful post captions.

Pinterest differs from other popular search engines in heavily favoring recent content. Pinning and re-pinning frequently is necessary to appear within current results for a given search term, regardless of how popular your content is.

8. Yelp and/or Foursquare

Who should use it: B2C companies, brick-and-mortar outlets (especially stores, restaurants, and travel/tourism related), reviewers and bloggers

What to share: Location-based business search and reviews

Post frequency: Before your physical business opens and whenever information changes. Otherwise, at least weekly.

Share details about your business on an official company profile page. Monitor customer feedback related to your business, and respond to concerns raised in reviews. Consider it free promotion and advertisement (although paid promotions are also available).

Keep your information updated, and pay attention to keywords and SEO in crafting descriptions – Yelp listings in particular feature prominently in Google searches for local businesses.

On the consumer side of these B2C networks, reviewers and bloggers can use Yelp and Foursquare to grow their following. You can’t post a link in a review (Yelp with flag those and potentially suspend your profile), but you can develop a reputation for reliable reviews.

What is your goal and which platform will help you reach it?

When determining which platforms are going to be the most valuable to your company, it is important to identify goals and metrics that are measurable. Knowing these KPIs will help marketers to unearth trends and spot opportunities or uses (Lake, 2009).

Each platform has benefits that may outweigh another as pictured below (Nilsson, 2011). It’s about weighing the strengths and benefits of each platform and comparing them to the goals of your organization and the target audience.

Photo Credit: (Costill, 2014)

Time Management

It would be inefficient for marketers to be constantly on and posting to social media channels.  The time spent by marketers on social media is growing exponentially, with 64% of marketers claiming that they spend 6 or more hours per week using the platforms (Stelzner, 2014).

Photo Credit: (Stelzner, 2014)

This is where services like Buffer, Tweetdeck, Hootsuite and Facebook Scheduled Posts are very helpful in managing content and time. Using these tools, marketers are able to schedule posts to be distributed at a determined time. But marketers should be careful when using these tools. Auto-posting to Facebook decreases likes and comments by 70% (Constine, 2011).

Content vs. Conversation

There’s a long-standing debate over whether marketers should focus on content or conversation. Knowing that auto-posting hurts engagement, marketers should be aware of the need for quality content that is genuine. With social media placing a focus on engagement, should marketers place more focus on the content on our pages or on the conversation, or lack thereof, on each platform?

Personally, I am in the content is king camp. Content is going to draw different responses, leading to conversation. But if a company is simply posting the same content over and over on multiple platforms, the conversation will not follow (GoLocalProv Business Team, 2014).

Advertising Options

Marketers must also consider advertising abilities on the social platforms they select. In addition to updating content and links back to a company website, marketers have the option to invest resources into social advertising.  

While most social platforms are still testing their advertising, Facebook has an established program in place that helps to track engagement. Social advertising will continue to develop over time, but presently there are few systems that offer insights as detailed and cost effectively as Facebook.

In Conclusion

There is no golden answer for marketers when it comes to selecting platforms and creating content that drives traffic and engagement. However, it is important to select the proper social media channels based on resources and the target audience. Don’t let the fear of missing out put a damper on your plans. Let it inspire you to take full ownership of the few channels you select.

References:

Chitwood, L. (2014, March). The Next Web. “Which social media platform is best for your business?” Retrieved from, http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2014/03/05/social-media-platform-best-business/.

Constine, J. (2011, September 6). InsideFacebook. “Study: Auto-Posting to Facebook Decreases Likes and Comments by 70%.” Retrieved from, http://www.insidefacebook.com/2011/09/06/hootsuite-tweetdeckdecreases-feedback/.

Costill, A. (2014, June 4). SEJ. “SM101: Which Social Media Platform Should I Use?” Retrieved from, http://www.searchenginejournal.com/social-media-platform-use/108057/.

Glauberman, S. (2012, May 17). Content Marketing Institute. “Many Platforms, One Voice: How to Maintain a Consistent Social Media Platform.” Retrieved from, http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2012/05/how-to-maintain-a-consistent-social-persona/.

GoLocalProv Business Team. (2014, November 10). Go Local Prov. “Small Business in a Digital Age: Social Media.” Retrieved from, http://www.golocalprov.com/business/small-business-in-a-digital-age-social-media.

Lake, C. (2009, October 30). Econsultancy. “media KPIs help to measure engagement.” Retrieved from,  http://econsultancy.com/us/blog/4887-35-social-media-kpis-to-help-measure-engagement.

Nilsson, J. (2011, April 29). SCRM Cloud. “The 16 best Social Media Management tools reviewed.” Retrieved from, http://www.joakimnilsson.com/reports-white-papers/15-social-media-management-tools-report/.

Stelzner, M. (2014, May). Social Media Examiner. “2014 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.” Retrieved from, http://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/SocialMediaMarketingIndustryReport2014.pdf.

Key Word: Engagement, Engagement, Engagement

Engagement, engagement, engagement. As marketers, we hear it everywhere. From social media to email marketing to web analytics. It’s everywhere and it’s everyone’s favorite word – and it’s important! It’s probably such a “buzzy” term because it’s such a vague term. It’s easy to ask about Bounces, Page Views per visit, and Page Exit Ratios, but it’s not all about the cold, hard numbers. For the purposes of this blog post, the focus will be on how engagement relates to web analytics.

It’s different for each and every company, all websites are different, visitors will all interact differently with each site, and different actions represent different things for Visitors on different sites (Darby, 2010). This leaves us with decision of what we, as marketers, have deemed important to measure. What’s going to be important to us and how are we going to understand the numbers we’re looking at?

But before we decide what will be important to us, marketers need to understand that engagement is difficult to define because it’s both qualitative and quantitative. The Time on Site could be through the roof – which could be good or bad. Maybe there is interesting data on a website, or maybe visitors are simply unable to understand that data they’re seeing.  It’s impossible to tell if a user is having a positive or negative experience unless they decide to pick up the phone and call us (or take one of those online surveys), which is why engagement is more focused on the degree of it (Kaushik, 2010).

It’s important for us to know that numbers don’t tell the entire story. They help to lay the foundation, but they don’t have all of the answers.

For example, in 2010, Philly.com used the following formula to analyze their web traffic with an “engagement index” that attempted to differentiate return readers from fly-bys (Beckett, 2010). Here’s what their senior data analyst uses:

Photo credit: Neiman Lab

Very complicated, but nonetheless interesting. They have taken the approach of not relying on the number of visitors to the site, but the number of visitors that are “engaged” with the content. Their analyst also revealed that users referred from social sites were much more engaged with the website than users coming from search engines (Kiesow, 2010).

The Tampa Bay Times has decided that such a complicated formula would not work in their favor and simply measures, “…registration numbers and their brand index, or how many people come to the site through a bookmark or by searching for terms like “St. Pete Times” or “tampabay.com.” (Beckett, 2010). Sometimes it comes down to manpower and resources available to marketers. Also, it hinges on what type of engagement an organization is looking for – and it can’t just be clicks.

It brings us back to the point that marketers are the ones that need to understand that engagement can be measured in a multitude of ways, because there is no correct answer as long as the numbers being returned are so qualitative. What do you think, should there be a hard formula for determining engagement, or is it something that should be taken on a case-by-case basis?

References:

Beckett, L. (2010, October 26). Nieman Lab. “Getting beyond just pageviews: Philly.com’s seven-part equation for measuring online engagement.” Retrieved from, http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/10/getting-beyond-just-pageviews-philly-coms-seven-part-equation-for-measuring-online-engagement/.

Darby, P. (2010). Convince&Convert. “The Hitchiker’s Guide to Tracking Website Engagement.” Retrieved from, http://www.convinceandconvert.com/digital-marketing/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-to-tracking-website-engagement/.

Kaushik, A. (2010). Web Analytics 2.0 [THE ART OF ONLINE ACCOUNTABILITY & SCIENCE OF CUSTOMER CENTRICITY]. Indianapolis: Wiley Publishing, Inc.

Kiesow, D. (2010, November 22). Poynter. “Philly.com creates “reader engagement index” to track site performance.” Retrieved from, http://www.poynter.org/media-innovation/media-lab/social-media/106892/philly-com-creates-reader-engagement-index-to-track-site-performance/.