Tracking Mobile Device & Carrier

Version 10.3.18 of Yahoo! Web Analytics has added the ability to track, customize reports, and filter/segment based on device type. These options are available as dimensions for visitor, session, or tracking scope metrics, which should enable users to better understand and optimize the traffic received across the following four device types:

• Mobile
• Tablet
• TV
• Desktop

Additionally, as a Yahoo! Web Analytics user, you can now track, customize reports, and filter/segment based on specific carriers, makes, and models of devices.

Sample carriers and makes might include:

• Carrier: Verizon, Vodafone, China Mobile Hong Kong
• Make: Apple, HTC, Motorola
• Model: iPhone 3G, Droid, iPad 2

Tracking Mobile Operating System and Version

Yahoo! Web Analytics now supports tracking versions of the Android or iOS operating system.
These values have been added to the existing Operating Systems field (which already reflects desktop operating systems for Windows or Macintosh platforms.

Sample operating system and version combinations might include such examples as iOS 4.0.1, iOS 5.0, Android 3.1, and so forth.

New Mobile Reports

You no longer have to use custom fields and custom reports and try to approximate your mobile traffic. We’ve introduced some great new reports:

• Device Type > System > Device > Device Type
• Device Type > System > Device > Device Carrier
• Campaign by Device > Marketing > Campaigns > Campaign by Device

Note: The Campaign by Device report appears just below the Campaign by Type report, already on the menu.

Users can see Visits, Visitors, Page Views, & Actions by:

Device Type
—-Device Type
——–Device Make
————Device Model

Device Carrier
—-Device Carrier
——–Device Make
————Device Model

Campaign by Device
—-Campaign Vendor
——–Campaign Type
————Campaign
—————-Device Make
——————–Device Model

Yahoo! Web Analytics users can customize these new reports, adding or removing dimensions and metrics.  See below for a couple of examples.

—Device Type report—

—Device Type report—

Getting a facelift

We’ve taken on board feedback from users on our User Interface and we’ve made a couple of small changes. We want to make a cleaner workspace for our users and, while this is a work in progress, we’ve made a couple of changes in this release. We hope you like them!

Before

After

General example (click on image to see full size):



However, we have not been able to support all the currencies our customers have requested and have not regularly updated the conversion rates.  We’re changing that!

This Thursday (November 10th), we’ll begin supporting all currencies tracked by Yahoo! Finance and we’ll update our rates on the first business day of each month.  We wanted to let you know in advance of the release so that you’re aware of how the change will work if you operate in more than one currency.

Note: These changes will apply to data collected from November 10th onwards and will not apply to historical data.  The Sales Details report will be unaffected.

Above your reports, you will see a new tab, called “Currency Rate”.  With the upcoming release, this will be displayed to all customers, but in future, we’ll display this only when the base currency differs from the reporting currency.

On this tab, you will see a link to the “Currency Rates used in this report”.  Clicking on this will expand the tab to display the relevant currency rates applying to the reporting period chosen.

We’re confident that this is a great step in improving our currency support at the request of customers and this move is part of our continuing progress in accuracy.

On November 17th, we’ll remove the “Look and Feel” customisation section from the YWA Consultant account settings and replace it with a “Customise Client Interface” feature which we feel is a simpler and better way of co-branding with us.

If you look in your Consultant account (in the Settings section), you will see that this feature is already available – so you can make your changes now and have them take effect following the release.

To customise your clients’ interface is simple.  You can:

• Link to your company’s logo (please note that this must be securely located – i.e. https://, not http://)
• Add some header text.
• Add links and information in the footer, such as company or support information.

We feel that this will allow us to maintain consistency across our Consultants’ accounts and make co-branding much easier.  We hope you like the change!

Note:  Following the release on November 17th – any change made through the old feature will be replaced by the standard YWA branding, so it is important to use this new function if you currently co-brand.

Customers using Yahoo! Web Analytics and importing their AdWords cost and impression data into the campaign reporting  via the AdWords API will have noticed that this data has been missing for several weeks.  Initially, we believed our developer token was expired and we re-applied for the token – this placed us in a 3-week queue.   Due to a communication break-down with Google, we have only just discovered that we missed a change in the terms of usage with the AdWords API and this has been the actual source of the delay in rectifying the problem.

We are working on rectifying this as a priority and and we are very sorry for the inconvenience we know this has cause to several customers.   We will update this post as soon as we have further information.

Update [Nov 16]: We have made a submission to Google and are awaiting their approval and re-activation of our token.  This may take a couple of days.

Please see this Product Bulletin for a listing of all the UI changes to YWA made in this 10.2.1 release.

Publish Segments Specific to Network or Advertiser Entities

Previously, all segments published from Yahoo! Web Analytics to the Right Media Exchange were network-entity segments (even if the ad channel was associated with a specific advertiser entity). With version 10.2, ad channels can now be defined as specific to an advertiser level entity.

In the Right Media Exchange, segments are either associated with a network entity or an advertiser entity.

• Network entity segments can be used to target campaigns for any advertising entity and can be shared between networks using the Right Media Exchange’s audience sharing capabilities.
• Advertiser entity segments can only be targeted by campaigns for that entity (unless they are later promoted to a network entity segment).

To specify the entity of exported segments, choose Settings > Ad Channel > Ad Channel Configuration, then either add a new Right Media Exchange ad channel (if you have not yet created one) or edit an existing channel (to change it from a network to an advertiser level segment).

Redesigned Custom Report Wizard

The Custom Report Wizard has been redesigned for greater flexibility, with both aesthetic and usability enhancements. Enhancements include:

• A visible sample data grid, populated as you add dimensions or metrics.
• Metric incompatibility (notifying you if you try to create a report with incompatible metrics).
• Color coded target boxes, showing valid targets when adding dimensions or metrics to custom reports.

Progress Indicator on Reports

When generating or updating reports, a progress indicator may be displayed when appropriate.

Bulk Deletion of Downloads in Volume Export Download Center

For users who had accumulated a large number of downloads in the Volume Export Download Center, deleting each download individually was time consuming.

Users can now go to Settings > Volume Export Download Center > Download volume export reports and choose multiple downloads to delete. For each table (My Downloads, Shared Downloads, and Scheduled Mail Reports), users can now:

• Use the checkbox on the report header row to select all downloads in that table
• Select individual downloads for deletion using the checkbox at the beginning of each row

After selecting some or all downloads, click on the Delete button to remove the selected downloads.

New Report: Campaign Assists

Version 10.2 introduces the Assist Rate metric, available in both the Custom Report Wizard and the new Campaign Assists report. Each Action (whether default or user-defined) will have a corresponding Assist Rate metric. So, the Product View Action (for example) will have a corresponding Product View Assist Rate metric.

The Assist Rate metric is calculated as Assists divided by Aggregated Clicks displayed as a percentage, where Aggregated Clicks is the sum of click data imported from contributing ad systems. When Aggregated Clicks isn’t available, Clicks CCL (clicks landed) will be used instead.

The Campaign Assists report helps you understand the full “mix of campaigns” that visitors viewed or interacted with up to 45 days before performing a conversion action on your website. While other types of campaign reports credit exactly one campaign with each conversion, the Campaign Assists report reveals the series of campaign events experienced by visitors before they convert. Understanding these dependencies can help you determine the relative effectiveness of different campaigns and inform your buying decisions for future brand campaigns.

Expand Segment Targeting to Include Yahoo! Premium Display

Segments can now be published to two targets:

• Right Media Exchange – select this option to export to the Right Media Exchange.
• Yahoo! Premium Display – all segments are exported to this target by default. This option can only be modified by Yahoo! Account Management.

Read more in the Audience Definition Guide.

New Dimensions: Exit Link & Exit Link Domain

Version 10.2 introduces two new dimensions for creating segments:

• Exit Link
• Exit Link Domain

These dimensions can be used to build a custom report or to modify an existing standard report.

Please see this Product Bulletin for the complete list of changes and enhancements to the Yahoo! Web Analytics from this release.  Should you have any questions or encounter any issues please do not hesitate to leave a comment here or contact us through our Help Center.

We have made some changes to YWA’s reporting interface in this release, including a new way to apply Filters and Segments:

The Segmentation Wizard UI has been improved and we’ve added new segment types along with a wider variety of audience dimensions and metric parameters:

We’ve also included a audience definition segment feature that enables you to export user defined segments from YWA to the Right Media Exchange (RMX) where they can be used to target those user-defined groups.  So now you’ll find an option to link your RMX account to YWA via the Ad Channel Configuration tool:

These are just a few of the changes we have made in this release, please see our 10.1 product bulletin to review the full list.

We hope you enjoy the enhancements and new functionality that YWA 10.1 brings to the table.  Please give us you feedback in the comments or contact our support team if you encounter any issues with this release.

So, what’s new?

We’ve made significant architectural changes to the system in order to improve overall performance and scalability.  As a result, we’ve introduced some data collection limitations which can be mitigated using URL Rewrite – for further information, follow this link.

We’ve also introduced new Campaign by Type reports.  In addition to the standard Campaign Summary report Yahoo! Web Analytics will introduce five Type reports:

• Paid Search

• Display

• Email

• Affiliate

• Other

What’s improved?

• More consistent terminology across reports and wizards

• Simplified invitation process

• New metrics:

Assists: Assists are a score, not the actual number of times the campaign assisted; they represent a weighted sum of the number of times a keyword or ad contributed to a conversion that was credited to another keyword or marketing activity, where the weights fall off with time.

Days to Conversion: the total number of days from the date of the first visit until a given type of action occurs

Average Days to Conversion: the average number of days from the date of the first visit until a given type of action occurs

For further information on these changes and more, please see this Product Bulletin.

What do I have to do?

We’ve introduced some hard-coded campaign categorization for overall reporting clarity going forward.  This means that if you are currently using campaign categorization, you will need to migrate your current categories to the required position.  This can be done under Settings/Manage Campaign Categories in your Yahoo! Web Analytics account.

Please see here or see section 4.7.3 (Managing Campaign Categories) of our revised User Guide for further information and examples of migration.

Our Quick Install Guide contains some basic information for the newer Yahoo! Web Analytics user so that you can get up and running as soon as possible. Questions answered include:

• Where do I actually get my tracking code?
• Where do I put the tracking code?
• How do I check the tracking code?

You’ll also find some interesting information on how the tracking code works and what are the best steps for quickly checking how well your code is working.

Our Custom Fields Guide will give you lots of great information on YWA custom fields and how you can use them from set-up to reporting. We cover what they are, provide some use cases and illustrate the scopes and carry-over options.

If you’re using custom fields or you’ve been in a quandary about how to use them – you need to read this guide!

If you have suggestions for other Quick Reference Guides like these, please do let us know.