If you are using any solutions from the Adobe Experience Cloud family of tools, chances are you are also using Adobe’s Tag Management System, Adobe Launch. Launch works like many other Tag Management Systems (TMS), in that it can bring tools and code to a website without the need to change the source code of the website it is running on. This allows the users of the TMS, typically digital analytics or digital marketing teams, to be somewhat independent from IT and development teams when they want to bring technology, like onsite analytics or marketing pixels, to a page. In Adobe Launch, Extensions are used to bring the actual functionality to the websites that it is running on. A good example for this is the Core Extension: This Extension allows us to run JavaScript code on the website (using the Custom Code Data Element or Action), listen for events like […]
Tag: Data Strategy
Monitor Adobe Analytics usage for free with Power BI and Python
Adobe Analytics is, without a doubt, the most complete and feature-rich product for Web Analytics and Reporting on the market. I won’t even try to list all its features, since I would definitely forget some or would have to update the list in a few months as new functionality is released. And while I, as an analyst and power user, love to have all those great tools available, they create a challenge for me in my other role as an analytics admin. All of those features bring complexity to the every-day work of our business users. For example, when Analysis Workspace was released in 2016, it meant that users had to learn a new interface to get the most value out of Adobe Analytics. But as an admin who knows their users, I have a strong feeling that some people still use the old Reports & Analytics interface in 2021. […]
Visualizing Adobe Analytics Report Suites for free with Python and Power BI
Adobe Analytics is super flexible in the way it can be set up to exactly match all requirements of business users, analysts, and developers. A crucial part of any implementation is the creation and configuration of the Report Suites, which can be seen as the backend database of Adobe Analytics, that will hold the events sent to Adobe Analytics. In theory (and practice in some setups), each and every Report Suite can have a completely individual set of variables and metrics. However, having the option to create an individual configuration of dimensions and events for each Report Suite comes with a hefty long-term cost. For example, each and every setup needs to be implemented in Adobe Launch, where the on-page data layer needs to be matched to the dimensions and metrics of the Report Suite. If every Report Suite is configured differently, a lot of work needs to be put […]
Please, stop comparing Adobe Analytics to Google Analytics
This post is going to be a deviation from the “normal” content on this blog. Its purpose is to address one of the questions I received most often from a lot of people reading my posts. The title might already give away what that question is: “Frederik, in your opinion, should companies buy Adobe Analytics or Google Analytics?” And I think there is something fundamentally wrong with this question. I think the above question can only be answered through some absurd level of generalization that does not do justice to both tools. There are some agencies or consultants who end up doing this comparison to either appear neutral and independent, or drive SEO traffic to their own sites. This annoyed me to a point where I started writing this post to have my personal answer ready at hand in the future. Bear with me on this one. To be able […]
Adobe Customer Journey Analytics – The big Game Changer
It’s hard to follow any Adobe Experience Cloud outlet today without hearing about Adobe’s Experience Platform. At the same time, it’s very hard to grasp what it actually is and what we can use it for. If you are in the Adobe Analytics space you might also have heard about Customer Journey Analytics, which is is often mentioned in the same breath with Platform, with just as much uncertainty around it. I am fortunate enough to work in one of the first companies in Europe to actually have Customer Journey Analytics available. My dear Twitter followers will already know that I’ve spent a few days working with it and trying out some use cases. This post is about my actual first impressions with the product and why I think it might be the biggest game changer for Adobe Analytics customers in quite some time. Everything I love about Analytics and […]
How I build my Adobe Analytics Implementations
Getting the most out of enterprise analytics systems is not easy. A lot can go wrong on the way from gathering business requirements to getting actionable insights. While most of my posts are focused on the analysis or reporting capabilities of Adobe Analytics, this post is focused on how I plan and build my implementations. With an analytics system like Adobe Analytics, even small implementation choices can have large consequences later down the value chain. Errors and misjudgments can lead to skewed data that is affected in a non-obvious way. The implications range from more effort during analysis or higher maintenance to wrong conclusions and business decisions. This post will walk you trough the number of steps I take when planing a new Adobe Analytics implementation. While I’ve been successful in delivering value by following those, there might be situations where a different approach is better suited to the task […]
Creating more Business Value with Product Driven Analytics
When working in Analytics, it’s easy to view all the requests you receive as disconnected, one-off events. This is the traditional approach for Analytics departments, where Requests would be collected, prioritized and answered accordingly. But there are some issues with this way of handling things: It’s hard to see the bigger picture behind those business questions, especially between departments. Different people may have the same questions but ask them in a different way, leading to different answers. When requests are handled individually, it becomes hard to maintain a standard for the way they should be answered, especially if you are working as part of a team. Since not all stakeholders are equally Data-savy, they may ask for the wrong thing without letting you know what the questions is they are trying to answer. This leads to some awkward situations. People will ask for the wrong or suboptimal reports. You as […]