Google Analytics Tracking for Adobe Flash

Google Analytics Tracking for Adobe Flash

The Google Analytics Tracking for Adobe Flash component makes it easy for you to implement Google Analytics in your Flash-driven content. This component, developed by Adobe Systems, Inc., contains all of the functionality of the Google Analytics Javascript code. The Flash Tracking component is a compiled tracking object native to ActionScript 3, making Analytics implementation intuitive in Flash, and Flex development environments.

Why Use Flash Tracking?

Without the Google Analytics Tracking for Adobe Flash component, tracking Adobe Flash content with Google Analytics involves a number of technical hurdles. First, you must develop a custom interface to ga.js so that your Flash application can execute the appropriate Analytics method, such as trackPageview() or trackEvent(). In addition, you must also anticipate whether your Flash content will have access to the browser Document Object Model (DOM), since tracking fails for those objects where access to the DOM is denied (typically when your content resides on 3rd party sites). This involves understanding how to use the ExternalInterface call in ActionScript 3 to access the browser DOM and to degrade when access is denied.

The Google Analytics for Adobe Flash component simplifies tracking your Flash content and handles DOM access gracefully. It is useful for a number of common tracking purposes in Flash, such as: :

• An embedded Flash widget on an HTML page


• A standalone Flex application or Flash-only site hosted on an HTML page


• A distributed Flex/Flash game or program where the developer has no control over where the widget will be placed

Keep in mind that tracking applications in Flash has some structural variations from tracking website pages. Familiarity with Analytics Tracking is essential to understanding how this plug-in works. You can also view the Design Documentation for this project for detailed information on how the Analytics Tracking model has been ported over for this component.

Note: Currently, Flash tracking is available for any Flash content embedded in a web page. Tracking of data sent from Adobe Air, Shockwave, or via the Flash IDE (e.g. using Test Movie) is not supported at this time.

Supported Development Environments

You can develop Analytics Tracking for Flash in either Adobe Flash or Adobe Flex environments. Each environment requires a different component, which you can download from http://code.google.com/p/gaforflash/. These components are based on ActionScript 3 and can be set up in one of two ways for each environment:

In Adobe Flash

• Add and configure a simple component in the component inspector and drag it to the stage.


• Import the Flash Tracking libraries directly into your library and start coding.

In Adobe Flex

• Include an MXML component that you configure from am MXML file.


• Import the Flash Tracking libraries into your script tags/AS3 files.

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How Does the Component Work?

In order to use the Flash tracking component in your environment, you either use the visual tools inside Flash, or you set up the tracking object directly in your code. Regardless of whether you are setting up the component visually or via code, you provide the following elements:

• The web property ID--This is also known as the UA number of your tracking code and looks like UA-xxxxx-yy, where the x's and y's are replaced with the numbers that correspond to your account and profile information for the object you are tracking. See Web Property for more information.


• The tracking mode--Choose either bridge mode or AS3 mode. This mode determines how your tracking communicates with the Analytics servers and is described in detail below.


• The debugging mode--No matter which environment or tracking mode you use, you can turn debugging on to validate and test your tracking.

Tracking Modes

Depending upon on how you distribute your Flash content, the Analytics for Flash component communicates to the Analytics servers either by bridging the communication between the Flash content on an existing Analytics tracking installation, or by communicating directly to the Analytics servers. These two modes are called bridge mode and AS3 mode, respectively. Both modes use the same Analytics tracking functionality, and it's easy to switch your Flash application from one mode to the other. In addition to choosing a communication mode for Analytics tracking, you can also use a debug mode to troubleshoot or validate your tracking.

In either mode, allowscriptaccess must equal always in order for campaign tracking to work. This parameter turns on read access to the page's URL and referrer information required by the Flash tracking code. Without allowscriptaccess, the Analytics tracking code degrades gracefully. It still provides most user activity data, but will not confirm to the Google Analytics campaign attribution model.

Bridge Mode

Use this mode if you control both the HTML page and the Flash content. This mode is best if you have already implemented Google Analytics (ga.js) tracking on your website and you want to add tracking to embedded Flash content. The bridge mode simplifies Flash-to-JavaScript communication by providing a unified ActionScript 3 interface to the ga.js code. It provides the connection from the ActionScript 3 calls to the Analytics JavaScript in order to make the tracking work.

The connection to the Google Analytics Tracking Code can be configured through the web property ID parameter in one of two ways:

• Most common method. The Google Analytics Tracking Code object already exists on your page with its own name, such as pageTracker. In this case, you provide the full DOM reference to the tracking object. For example, if your object is called pageTracker, you would reference that object in your code as window.pageTracker. For example, the following code snippet illustrates how this would be configured using the Adobe Flex environment with ActionScript 3:
  
  
  
  

  tracker = new GATracker( this, "window.pageTracker", "Bridge", false );

  
  


• Alternate method. If you have not created a page tracking object on your page, you can simply pass in your web property ID, and a JavaScript tracking code object will be created for you. With this method, reference to the base ga.js javascript source file is still required on your HTML page. The following code snippet illustrates how this would be configured using the Adobe Flex environment with ActionScript 3:
  
  
  
  

  tracker = new GATracker( this, "UA-12345-22", "Bridge", false );

  
  

In order for bridge mode to function correctly, ExternalInterface.available must be set to true in your ActionScript 3 code. This also means that allowScriptAccess should be set to always in the HTML page that embeds the Flash content. The following example illustrates HTML code configured for bridge mode:

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AS3 Mode

Use this mode if you control the Adobe Flash ActionScript 3 code, but you do not control the hosting environment of your Adobe Flash application. For example, if you are developing Flash content for distribution across many sites, then you would use AS3 mode. AS3 mode is completely independent from the ga.js tracking code and contains all the Analytics tracking functionality. There is no need for a separate ga.js tracking installation with this mode. In addition, AS3 mode uses the Flash storage mechanism to track session information for the visitor.

For certain DOM parameters such as language, the AS3 component tries to retrieve the values from the browser. If the values are not present, the component either uses the Flash equivalent value or defaults to no.

Troubleshooting and Validation

The Google Analytics Tracking for Adobe Flash component provides a debug mode to simplify validation and troubleshooting. When enabled, all tracking data is intercepted and directed to a screen in a text box instead of the Analytics servers. In this mode, you can see real-time the data that otherwise would be collected by the server. This feature also helps keep test data outside of your production data. You can enable the troubleshooting feature can by setting the visualDebug option to true in the component inspector.

Source: Google Analytics Tracking for Adobe Flash

Web Analytics: Google vs. Yahoo

Google Analytics & Yahoo Web Analytics Comparison

The last 12 months have seen the Google Analytics (GA) product evolve into a serious contender for a do-it-all product for most businesses, a period that has also seen Yahoo! get serious with analytics through the purchase of the not-so-well-know European product called Indextools - the decision by Yahoo! to make the Indextools product free with a rebrand into Yahoo Web Analytics (YWA) has turned the free market into a rich, dynamic, competitive space that’s seeing incredible product innovation.

Insightr Consulting are certified in Google Analytics through the Individual Certification programme as well as being a pioneer member of the Yahoo Web Analytics Consultant Network (YWACN). Our clients use a mixture of Google Analytics, Omniture Site Catalyst and Yahoo Web Analytics, with the majority of new businesses adopting either GA or YWA. In Singapore where we are based (and indeed across Asia) budgets for analytics are not as formalised as they are in markets like the US and Europe, so free tools are very popular here.

This article is the outcome of over 5 weeks work carrying out a feature by feature comparison of the Google Analytics and Yahoo Web Analytics products - a project that required a large overhaul after Google announced new features on the 20th October (more examples of the product innovation we’re seeing). Yahoo Web Analytics is still a largely unknown product to business and analysts alike as the product is only available through the YWACN or via Yahoo! advertising sales teams - this comparison should give you a pretty good feel for what you’re missing.

As our friends at Yahoo would say, this is perhaps an unfair comparison - as Indextools always liked to think of the old product as 80% of Omniture at 10% of the price. They weren’t wrong. In fact as an Omniture Site Catalyst user for over 7 years (how many of you can recall SC7?) the Yahoo offering is in many ways more powerful than Site Catalyst; especially when it comes to ‘advanced’ features such as segmentation which for Site Catalyst are only available with an additional “Discover on Demand” license.

Some of you will disagree with our analysis, and particularly with our scoring system - we’re hoping that the comparison is a thought starter and something that will lead to your consideration of the YWA product as a tool worth considering. We feel the scores are fair based on our usage of products and the way our clients will use them.

So, here’s the presentation - it’s best if you view it in full screen otherwise the screenshots will be too small. We apologise for the low quality of some of the screenshots - this was required to keep the file size down. It’s also a long document, over 50 pages - but that’s because both of these tools are powerful and are feature packed! We hope you enjoy it and get value from our work:

If you like the look of Yahoo Web Analytics, and in light of the fact that you’ll need to go through a Yahoo! consultant to get access we’re offering a Google Analytics to Yahoo Web Analytics migration package for a fixed US$2,500 project cost. Here’s what we’re offering:

Insightr: The ultimate comparison between Google Analytics and Yahoo Web Analytics; http://j.mp/2wenKg

Google Ad Planner: right audience for your campaigns

In our ongoing effort to give you in-depth data for your media plan, we've released a number of Google Ad Planner enhancements that provide a more granular view of where your audience can be found.

Subdomain data
We've added subdomain data to Google Ad Planner to give you a more detailed view of sites. This information can help you refine your media plan by providing more information about specific pages.

With subdomain data, you can search for subdomains; view the top subdomains based on total domain traffic for a site; view traffic, demographics and other data for the subdomain itself; and add subdomains to your media plan. Learn how to search for subdomains.

Ad placements
Ad placements are specific sections on a website where advertising can be purchased, such as the middle right section of a page.

Google Ad Planner now offers ad placement data so that you can make better informed decisions about where to target your ads. You can review placement data for sites in the Google Content Network, and beta test publishers using Google Ad Manager. Additional placement data is coming soon. Learn how to search for ad placements in Google Ad Planner.

Reach and relevance at a glance
With our new interactive graph, you can easily see which sites in your plan provide the best reach and relevance. In its default setting, the graph will compare sites in your search results by audience reach and composition index. Sites with the most reach will appear in the top-left quadrant. Sites with the most relevance will appear in the bottom-right quadrant. Sites near the top-right quadrant will have the best combination of both reach and relevance. You can customize the graph to visualize and compare sites in a variety of ways.

(Click to see full size image)

In the example above, a graph of sites reaching seniors age 65 or older shows that newsmax.com has the best relevance, facebook.com has the best reach, and nytimes.com has a mix of both.

More detailed publisher data
Publishers and site owners can now use Google Ad Planner to share additional Google Analytics data points such as page views, unique visitors, total visits, average visits per visitor, and average time on site. As a result, you can feel even more confident in the accuracy of Ad Planner data, and make better informed decisions about the sites you include in your media plan.

Google Ad Planner

If you're a media planner at an ad agency, you know that planning an online display buy can be challenging, particularly in scaling your campaign's reach while keeping it relevant for your target audience. Plus, how do you keep track of the millions of sites out there that might be just right for your campaign?

To make your life easier, we're introducing Google Ad Planner, a research and media planning tool that connects advertisers and publishers. When using Google Ad Planner, simply enter demographics and sites associated with your target audience, and the tool will return information about sites (both on and off the Google content network) that your audience is likely to visit. You can drill down further to get more detail like demographics and related searches for a particular site, or you can get aggregate statistics for the sites you've added to your media plan.

While Google Trends for Websites, announced last week, is designed for all users, Google Ad Planner is designed with media planners in mind. Using Google Ad Planner, you can quickly create media plans and export to a .csv file, which can be opened in most spreadsheet applications. Or, you can export to DoubleClick's MediaVisor, which helps you manage all your other media planning, buying and campaign management activities.

We hope you'll find this tool useful and discover many relevant sites--small and large--that would otherwise be hard to find. As Ad Planner is a new product, it's currently available by invitation only. If you're interested in trying it out, you can apply here.

Advanced Filtering in Google Analytics

Advanced Filtering in Google Analytics simplifies narrowing down data in the reports table by allowing threshold filters to be created. Instead of creating standard profile filters or weeding through rows and rows of data, Advanced Filters can be created on the fly for any report.

Here is another in-depth look at one of our recently announced new features: Advanced Filters (or Advanced Table Filters), written by the excellent team at LunaMetrics, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant.

For the daily user, Advanced Filters may be the most useful new feature of the bundle of new features, in terms of streamlining your actual process once you access a report and are actively doing analysis. They are found at the bottom of the table in any report. As a habitual poweruser, I've been clamoring for it for years, and it has made my process so much simpler. It's the equivalent of replacing a screwdriver with a powerdrill.

You no longer need to export your data to slice and dice it to see your desired subsets. Now, you can set a filter while looking at a certain report to get the information you want, without having to exit and create a filter or advanced segment. Within seconds, you can whittle down a massive data table to look at a subset that is important to you.

One example already given in this tutorial video is to show just the keywords that have a low bounce rate (less than 30%) and that referred at least 25 visits. Right away, you've found high value and high traffic keywords. We're using this feature almost every time we look at a data table in a report. It makes you feel much more command over your data.

Here are three more interesting uses of the new Advanced Table Filtering:

Looking for specific non-branded keywords

Sometimes, it helps to see keywords that contain a certain word or phrase, but exclude the brand name. Taking a company called DeLallo Italian Foods, for example. If I wanted to see all the keywords that contain the word Italian food but exclude the brand name DeLallo, I could easily use the advanced filters for this. Previously, I would have done this using regular expressions in the filter:

Filter Keyword: containing ^(?=.*italian food)(?!.*(delallo)).*

No more! Now, we don't need to do this! Now, it is so easy with the advanced filters. Just filter for Keyword containing Italian food and excluding DeLallo.

And presto! Your report is updated. And, at any time, you can edit this filter to further refine it, or delete it altogether.

Landing Pages, Sorted by Bounce Rate

Has this ever happened to you - you're looking at your Top Landing Pages report, and you sort by bounce rate, only to have a bunch of pages with 1 entrance clogging the top of the report? With advanced filters, you can filter out those pages with a low number of entrances to get a better look at which landing pages with significant traffic have a high bounce rate. All you have to do is filter by Entrances greater than 50 (or whatever threshhold floats your bounce-rate-boat).

Top Content, Sorted by $ Index

Another similar use for sites with e-commerce or a goal value enabled is when you're looking at the Top Content report, sorted by $ Index. What you're trying to find are the pages that have the highest value - those that are viewed during a visit that results in a conversion. Again, it's common to get a lot of pages at the top that have a low number of pageviews.

First, it helps to filter out those pages that have a low number of pageviews. But once you do that, you'll likely see the pages with the highest $ Index are pages of your shopping cart or checkout process. We can filter out these pages with the advanced filters too - just add a new condition below your first filter that excludes pages that contain the word cart (or checkout, etc.) in the URL.

These three examples give you a taste of Advanced Table Filtering for your analytics, but they just scratch the surface. Once you explore your own analytics, I’m sure you’ll find many more uses of this flexible and powerful new feature. You'll really notice it's use when you find you're happily lingering for 5 extra minutes, using this new interface feature to easily gain insights and ask questions that would've taken you an hour before and possibly a data export. Pure wizardry. :)

Courtesy: Google Analytics

Free Google Analytics API Dashboard Application

Free Google Analytics API Dashboard Application

If you manage many Google Analytics profiles, it can be difficult to stay on top of all your top line metrics across accounts -until now. Trakkboard is a free, easy to use desktop application that allows analysts to create dashboards that pull data across different Google Analytics logins and different Google Analytics profiles to display top level metrics all within the same view.

This application was built using the Google Analytics API by our friends in Germany, Trakken GmbH and is available in English, German and Spanish. Once downloaded, you can add multiple Google Accounts, select Google Analytics Accounts and profiles, then choose from any of the pre-canned report widgets. The report widget will then appear on the dashboard. This process can be repeated with other Google Analytics Accounts, Profiles, and Widgets - and your customized dashboard is ready to use.



What's really nice is each report widget can be configured to automatically fetch new data from the API at a regular interval, for example, every hour. This dramatically reduces the time it takes to see top level metrics across all your accounts.

Some of the other available features include:

• 15 different report widgets available
• Top/flop keywords widget (movers & shakers)
• Drag-drop and resize report widgets
  
• Update all widgets at the same time
• Update individual widgets at set intervals
  
• Use tabs for more dashboards
• Resize report widgets
• Notes widgets for comments
• Add up to two Google Account Email addresses
• FAQ Center available in English, Spanish, German

We continue to be impressed by the new solutions developers are bringing to market by leveraging the Google Analytics Platform. If you have developed a useful new tool or integration on top of Google Analytics, drop us an email at analytics-api@google.com. If it's innovative and useful we'll highlight it to our readers on this blog.