Blog #4

Google Analytics.

           One of the topics covered in this week was google analytics and how it works. Google Analytics provides powerful digital analytics for anyone with a web presence, large or small. It's one of the most powerful digital analytics solutions available - and it's free for anyone to use. It uses cookies to track uses on websites. Cookies are either created by first party websites or third party websites that users visit.

First party websites create cookies on the web page a user visits whereas third party cookies originate from other websites. A user can turn off third party cookies. Google analytics uses cookies from first party websites. There are 4 types of  first party cookies; Unique visitor identifier which has a 2 year expiration unless it is turned off by the user, session identifier with a 30 minute expiration, traffic source & navigation with a 6 month expiration and the custom variable cookies with a 2 year expiration. These different types of cookies assist google analytics to access different statistics and information about the user for how many times they visit a site, the source and what activity they do, etc.

Google analytics plays a key role in identifying and providing information about visitors to websites and this in turn can be used by website owners to personalize content to these users. I understand the benefits of google analytics and the use of cookies but does anyone else feel this can be an invasion of privacy if not controlled?

Google Display Network

           This is another google advertising platform that uses text, images, interactive and video ads. These displays can be placed anywhere from websites, video channels like YouTube, to blogs. The advertiser will only pay for the advert if users click on the displayed advert. In this week’s material, we have an example of how Display network has been used to enhance the Jordan brand. Since Jordan himself has retired from the game, new fans are being reached by using google display network. W + K, NY, the agency partner for Jordan, placed ads on Jordan’s fan base sites like YouTube and sports sites. This helped to ignite conversations and spread the word about upcoming Jordan products.

Google display is useful as it offers an alternative to the short attention span customer; it is interactive and is not invasive as it comes on websites that the user is already interested in. The display content normally follow the content of the website being on, so is there any other way of knowing whether the displays are relevant to the user?

        The biggest skillset I have learned this week was the use of cookies. I now the different types and what role they play in a user’s experience while searching and how search engines can then use them to their advantage to provide relevant search results to the user. In the GOMC, it will be ideal if each group is able to explore the use of google analytics to provide feedback to our campaigns. It will be difficult to judge actual success of the campaigns if we don’t know they are being reflected on the websites.

       Personally, am learning more on ideas that I might have had about the operations of search engines. I am getting a deeper knowledge of the technical side of things. I am keen to employ this knowledge to improve our GOMC.

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