Who is the leading Mobile Analytics firm?

via: MobileVentureBeat

Flurry and Pinch Media to create mobile analytics powerhouse

Two analytics startups, Flurry and Pinch Media, are announcing a merger today as they try to create a mobile data analytics leader. While Flurry has been focused on e-commerce, Pinch Media was focused on ad optimization. Together the companies intend to go beyond just providing data and become a media company that offers services to developers, such as ways to mine data from users and target them with recommendations for mobile apps.

The merger will create a company with 20 employees in San Francisco and New York. When the deal closes, the combined company will be known as Flurry, and its leaders hope it will be better able to keep up with the fast-changing smartphone industry. On the analytics side, the company’s competitors will be Medialets and Mobclix.

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How to measure mobile application usage

via: MobileVentureBeat

Flurry unveils deal with comScore for measuring mobile audiences

Mobile analytics firm Flurry is teaming up with web market researcher comScore to help measure the audiences for mobile apps.

The two will combine comScore’s mobile panel data with Flurry’s data on how much mobile apps are used. The companies will thus be able to offer better data to app publishers, ad agencies, marketers, advertisers, ad networks and others. The service will cover the iPhone, Android and BlackBerry mobile phones and will be available through comScore in the first quarter.

Web Analytics: An Hour a Day

Clients will be able to get more accurate data about how consumers use mobile apps. With access to usage on more than 50 million phones, Flurry can measure real-time consumption data for apps that use its analytics system. It can show how frequently and for how long an app is used, where the user is, new versus repeat usage and other data. That lets app publishers and others better target consumers. Meanwhile, comScore offers audience measurement reports.

read full article here.

Don’t tell, secrets on how to pass the Google Quality Score Checklist

via: ROI Reveolution Blog

You don’t get a second chance to make a good first impression. The moment you upload your new campaigns & ad groups, even if paused, Google gives you an initial quality score. If it’s below average you’ll be paying more per click until Google has enough data for your actual performance to determine your quality score.

If you don’t come out of the gate with your best foot forward, you’ll pay a premium on your first 100+ clicks. Worse, you may be tempted to give up on a keyword prematurely based on astronomical bid prices. Pay attention to the checklist below when launching new campaigns, ad groups or keywords into your AdWords account.

The good news is that all these suggestions won’t just help your initial quality score, but should actually increase the long-term quality of your AdWords campaigns.

Here’s how to get the best possible initial quality scores in Google:

Keeping up with the changes on your site can be nearly impossible. Equally challenging is keeping up with those changes in your Google Analytics reports. Yesterday Google announced a new feature called Annotations to help you remember what happened on your site, who did it, and when it happened.

Any user with Google Analytics access can write comments on the over-time graph to indicate any notes they have for that particular event. This will save a lot of time for companies where the tasks are distributed between numerous people, which means you the analyst will no longer have to spend hours figuring out why all your data has changed. Just view the annotations to see if any major updates or changes were made! In addition to this new feature, Google also released the ability to use the Custom Variables in Advanced Segments and Custom Reports, and the new Tracking Code Setup Wizard. To view more information about these you can visit the Google Analytics blog.

read full article here.

The Complete Directory of Real-time Search Engines

FoneGigs has launched a complete directory of real-time search engines. The directory will be updated frequently. Please let me know if you wish to recommend a search engine that is not covered here or update certain information that is listed. Email Eric at Eric@smartdigitalspending.com.

How to pull Youtube stats

via: Mediapost

Google Shares Stats From YouTube Campaigns

YouTube has been unprofitable since Google bought it for $1.76 billion three years ago — but Chad Hurley, the company’s co-founder, recently speaking at a launch ceremony for the launch of Israeli President Shimon Peres’ personal YouTube channel revealed that the company had “two spectacular quarters.” He also confirmed the site gets more than a billion views daily, according to reports.

Googlerers supporting the advertising technology aimed at driving revenue through YouTube say the integration of DoubleClick and Google has begun to pay off. The company has begun to share statistics from ads running on YouTube in hopes that advertisers and agencies will take notice of the possibilities to generate revenue from ads running on YouTube and in videos.

Sharing stats from Harley-Davidson and Volvo ads that recently ran on YouTube, Ari Paparo, group product manager for DoubleClick Rich Media, says ads have begun to perform well. He attributes the integration of DoubleClick and Google technologies to the uptick. “It’s not about new features, but more about quality,” he says. “Today, consumers gain interest with the ad and then interact with it.”

read full article here.

How to calculate a Target Rate Point for Digital

Ready to apply some traditional media planning techniques to digital?

Although panel companies like Nielsen and ComScore have developed demographic and population estimates for digital publishers, traditional ratings and circulation metrics (e.g., Gross Rating Points, Target Rating Points, and Cost per Point) are generally not included in digital plans. Digital media plans are not including the denominators required to calculate brand metrics. Thus, it is impossible to know if a media plan achieves the advertiser’s campaign goals.

With that said, we can apply a shorthand technique to estimate audience metrics for digital media plans. Target audience metrics can be estimated for a digital media plan when the publisher’s site audience composition is known. Starting with a calculation of the expected impressions to the target audience and the size of the target audience on the internet, a planner can estimate a media plan’s Target Rating Point (TRPs) – the standard offline metric for a media plan’s target audience reach and frequency. Download the free tutorial to learn how to apply this technique and calculate target rate points for digital media.

Online Media Planning Dimensions

via: ClickZ

Four Dimensions of Online Media

By Harry Gold, ClickZ, Nov 24, 2009

Unlike print, television, outdoor, and any other form of media, online is hopeless, complicated, and ever growing in its complexity. Every day it brings a new list of ad units, serving options, compensation models, targeting options, and, of course, KPIs (define). To try and enter the industry now, without the benefit of gradually building up a knowledge base to get you up to speed, is difficult for many people. For clients who aren’t seasoned online marketers but find their advertising increasingly channeled into the digital space, the task can be daunting.

To help agencies help their clients make sense of all the dimensions and options that can go into an online media plan, I have outlined the four dimensions of online media in this column. They include targeting, compensation, ad units, and metrics.

Even with all the options and opportunities we have to maximize value and customer impact, I still see agencies planning buys based on pre-determined ad units or creative concepts. The best plans take elements from all over the spectrum to create all-encompassing campaigns that deliver branding (impressions, reach, and frequency) as well as good old fashioned measurable return on investment (conversion, leads, sales, etc.). Also, any seasoned media planner should be able to give examples of each one of the items listed under the four dimensions.

So here’s the list, with some of the elements that make up each dimension. I’m sure some things are missing, so please feel free to add them to the comments section. If you’re a client and are presented a two-dimensional campaign plan (i.e., just CPM based banners), the first thing you should do is look at this list and ask if this thinking was applied to the planning approach.

Targeting

  • Registered users
  • Keyword targeting
  • Profile/behavioral targeting
  • Geo-targeting
  • Reverse IP lookup
  • Content targeting
  • Network channels
  • Networks

Compensation

  • Sponsorships
  • Home page blocks
  • CPM (cost per thousand)
  • PPC (pay per click)
  • PPL (pay per lead)
  • PPA (pay per action)
  • Affiliate (commission)

Ad Units

  • Banners
  • Text ads
  • Search listings
  • Advertorials
  • Content integration
  • Video
  • Rich media
  • Branded games/entertainment
  • E-mail rental
  • E-mail newsletter sponsorships
  • White paper syndications
  • Product listing syndication

Metrics

  • Click rate
  • Cost per click
  • Page views
  • Cost per page view
  • Engagement
  • Value of engagement
  • Video views
  • Video view time
  • Engagement time
  • Conversions/actions
  • Cost per conversion/action
  • Leads
  • Download
  • Cost per download
  • Cost per lead
  • Revenue
  • ROI (define)
  • Awareness
  • Brand impact points

Online marketers that don’t take the time to test the right combinations of these dimensions are much less likely to discover viable online marketing channels for their clients. This especially holds true if there is any element of direct marketing in your goals.