Analytics Blog: Training and Events

Digital Analytics Association Symposium in San Francisco presents ‘Stranger Things: What’s Lurking in Your Data’

October 18, 2016

You can avoid the Demogorgon of Digital Analytics by attending the DAA SF Symposium on November 9th where you’ll get tips and tricks on personalization and how to survive Black Friday from your friendly neighborhood Digital Analytics practitioners. Join us for a full day of great topics covering the latest from the struggles to the new developments in our world and come out prepared to face the stranger things lurking in your data. You’ll meet an awful lot of awesome people (like you) who can help you avoid the Upside Down of Analytics. We won’t let you end up like Barb.

Our lineup of wonderful speakers is focused on presenting awesome tips and real-world solutions to the challenges we all face everyday. Our lineup includes:

June Dershowitz, Head of Data Governance, Twitch
John Wallace, Analytics Entrepreneur
Kevin Dalias, Director of Predictive Data, RadiumOne
Josephine Foucher, Product Manager, Hotwire
Zann Aeck, Director of Digital Marketing, Net App
Martijn Scheijbeler, Director of Marketing, TheNextWeb
John Mesh, Google Product Manager, Optimize 360
Caitlin Anderson, Web Optimization Analyst, American Eagle
Anita Fong, Analytics Manager, Clorox
Krista Seiden, Analytics Advocate, Google

For the first time, the DAA San Francisco Symposium will also be hosting a “Women in Analytics” lunch, sponsored by Google. This lunch is open to all symposium attendees and will feature a panel of esteemed women in the analytics industry who will share their thoughts on the industry, career, and the future. Questions and participation encouraged! Can’t make the whole day? Join us just for lunch!

Theme: Stranger Things: What’s Lurking in Your Data

When: November 9th, registration starts at 9:30am, program 10:00am to to 4:30pm, followed by a networking reception

Where: Galvanize San Francisco-SoMa, 44 Tehama Street, San Francisco, CA 94105

Cost: Members of the DAA: Early Bird $75 | Standard $99 | Onsite $124 Non-Members: Early Bird $99 | Standard $124 | Onsite $149 Lunch-only: $20 (includes catered box lunch and panel speakers/discussion)

Event website and registration: register here.

Space is limited so register early!

This Symposium is organized by local DAA members and volunteers. We encourage you to become a member of the DAA and join our local efforts. Become a member and reach out to one of the local chapter leaders, Krista, Charles or Prolet.

Posted by Krista Seiden, Google Analytics Advocate

Behind the Scenes with Google Data Studio

August 2, 2016

This Spring, as part of our Google Analytics 360 suite, we introduced Google Data Studio 360, to help you simply and beautifully present data from multiple data sources, including Google Analytics, Google Sheets and much more.

In May, we introduced Google Data Studio, a free version of our tool, to put it in the hands of many more of you - which has led to the design and sharing of creative reports that bring your information to life. We’ve been excited to see the rapid adoption, and initiated a series of livestreams to answer questions around our design of the product, deliver demos and highlight features.

The first recording in this series, hosted by Product Manager Nick Mihailovski and Louis Gray, is now available, and shares:

An introduction to Google Data Studio
The perspective of our product manager on Data Visualization
Walkthroughs and sample reports

Watch the first video in this series via the embed below or on YouTube here.

Posted by Louis Gray, Google Analytics Team

Digital Analytics Association San Francisco Symposium: ‘Tis the Season for Data

November 30, 2015

The fourth annual Digital Analytics Association (DAA) San Francisco Symposium is coming up! Join us on Tuesday, December 8th as we host the symposium at Google’s San Francisco office. This year’s event is focused on how all businesses use data to optimize, personalize, and succeed through the holidays.

Our lineup of great speakers includes:

Jim Sterne, Target Marketing and the DAA
Kristina Bergman, Ignition Partners
Adam Singer, Analytics Advocate, Google
Prolet Miteva, Senior Manager Web Analytics Infrastructure, Autodesk
Joshua Anderson, Senior Manager Analytics, BlueShield
Michele Kiss, Senior Partner, Analytics Demystified
David Meyers, Co-Founder/CEO, AdoptAPet
and other great speakers

Theme: Optimization, personalization, and how to succeed through the holidays

When: Tuesday, December 8th, 2015. Registration starts at 12:30. Program runs from 1:00 to 5:30, followed by a networking reception.

Where: Google San Francisco, 345 Spear Street, 7th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105

Cost: $25 for DAA members/$75 for non-members

Event website and registration: register here

Space is limited so register early!

San Francisco locals, this Symposium is organized by local DAA members and volunteers. We encourage you to become a member of the DAA and join our local efforts. Become a member and reach out to one of the local chapter leaders, Krista, Charles or Feras.

Happy Holidays!

Posted by Krista Seiden, Google Analytics Advocate

Google Analytics Conference Nordic in Stockholm, Sweden

August 17, 2015

Join the Google Analytics Certified Partners for Google Analytics Conference Nordic in Sweden.

The event takes place August 26 in Stockholm, Sweden, and is followed by a workshop on August 27.

Started based on an initiative by Outfox, who gathered the other Google Analytics Certified Partners, the conference is now returning for the fifth consecutive year.

Our Stockholm conference includes:

• Case studies from businesses and other organizations, such as The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation, Viaplay, and Storebrand. In other words, Google Analytics for sales, entertainment, non-profits, insurance, and more!

• Expert presentations by Google Analytics Certified Partners.

• Opportunities to interact with peers and experts

• ...much more!

The conference is being visited by two top speakers from Google, Sagnik Nandy and Daniel Waisberg.

Sagnik Nandy is technical leader and manager of several Analytics and Reporting efforts in Google. He has hands on experience in building, scaling, deploying and managing large scale systems used by millions of web sites around the world.

Daniel Waisberg is Analytics Advocate at Google, where he is responsible for fostering Google Analytics by educating and inspiring Online Marketing professionals. Both at Google and his previous positions, Daniel has worked with some of the biggest Internet brands to measure and optimize online behavior.

Besides meeting Google, you’ll meet several Nordic Google Analytics Certified Partners. You will also meet and learn from several end users who use Google Analytics on a daily basis.

To join us in Stockholm in August, visit the conference site and secure your ticket.

Posted by Lars Johansson, Google Analytics Certified Partner and Google Analytics Premium Authorized Reseller

Google Analytics Hackathon in London - Retrospective

May 13, 2015

On March 25th, the Google Analytics Premium team hosted the first Google Analytics Hackathon in London. 18 developers from several agencies worked on the Google offices for a full day session of ‘hacking’. They connected devices like motion sensors, cameras, Raspberry Pi mini computers and even helicopters to send data to Universal Analytics using the Measurement Protocol - using “simple” technology to simulate real world applications.

The goal of the event was to help agencies innovate and think out of the box about how to use the Google Analytics Measurement Protocol with to collect valuable data from other sources than just websites and apps. Each group received a ‘hackathon kit’, consisting of Raspberry Pis, motion detectors, cameras, Google Glass, smart watches, barcode scanners, credit card readers, Smart Things home automation sets, beacons, some basic python scripts, documentation and one Android controlled helicopter.

The teams were free to build what they wanted and came up with great solutions. Here are the most innovative ideas:

A helicopter enthusiast racetrack: Hobby pilots swipe their member cards to log to the system and fly a remote controlled helicopter along a racetrack - Google Analytics successfully measures lap times and stores them with the pilot customer ID.
The burglar alarm: Detects a burglary using real time events in Google Analytics with a motion detector and a camera.
Healthy cat: Decides how much you feed your cat at night based on how many times the cat entered and left the house as measured by Google Analytics.

Here are some of the feedback we received from developers.

“It was an inspirational session and we already started experimenting with measurement protocol more and come up with some innovative ideas tailored to our clients” - BadriNarayanan Srinivasan, iProspect UK.

“Something to highlight about the event was the chance to work with new and interesting technologies (bar code and card scanners, Android watches, Google Glass) and to integrate these with Google Analytics. Learning about new applications to help integrate GA/the use of the Measurement Protocol with Android and iOS apps was also awesome” - Jeff Lukey, Periscopix

“The day was brilliant and organised very well. It was great to be given such a wide range of technologies to try and use” - David Nwosu, DBi

Posted by Daniel Waisberg and Romina Rodriguez

DAA San Francisco presents ‘Optimizing Your Analytics Career’

April 14, 2015

The Digital Analytics Association (DAA) San Francisco Chapter is hosting an evening of networking and conversation on the topic of ‘Optimizing Your Analytics Career’.

We’d like to invite you to join us for an evening of networking and to hear from a great panel of seasoned experts and analytics newbies on their career paths, goals, and what the future holds. Come with your questions in mind and ask our experts everything you’ve wanted to know and discuss about excelling in the analytics industry.

Moderator: Krista Seiden, Analytics Advocate, Google

Panelists:

Rahul Todkar, Intuit
Vidya Subramanian, TIBCO
Jennifer Cooper, Adobe
James Oliver, Technorati

By attending you will:

Network with industry leaders and enjoy great casual conversations with your fellow analytics peers
Hear from our seasoned experts about their career paths, interests, educational opportunities, and skillsets needed in the analytics industry

Theme: Optimizing Your Analytics Career

When: Thursday April 23rd, 6:00pm - 8:00pm (career panel starting around 6:40pm)

Where: Roe Restaurant, 651 Howard St, San Francisco, CA 94105

Cost: The cost to attend the event is free for DAA members, $15 for non-members and $5 for students (students use this promo code: SFstudent). Students can join the DAA for $39 and also get admission to our annual symposium for free.

This will be an excellent opportunity to connect with your fellow analytics professionals and learn more about advancing in your profession. Join us!

Event website and registration: register here.

This event is organized by local DAA members and volunteers. We encourage you to become a member of the DAA and join our local efforts. Become a member and reach out to one of the local chapter leaders, Krista, Charles or Feras.

Posted by Krista Seiden, Analytics Advocate

Evolving Beyond The Conversion With Neil Hoyne

March 25, 2015

Measurement is constantly evolving, and while metrics by themselves each tell us something interesting, they do not necessarily tell the whole story or equally important, what to do next. In essence, our tools provide the what, but not always the why. As marketers and analysts, we need to put in the work and be able to take the next steps with our data: tell the whole story to our teams and stakeholders and be consultative in decision making and direction.

This is really important to get right, because use of data for companies is still new territory for many (frequently, decisions are still just based on how marketers feel). And while this may have been fine in a pre-digital age, the future of your company may very well depend on embracing analytics. With fragmentation of users and channels, there’s just too much for anyone to do. So it comes down to knowing what really works and why - these are the modern modern keys to success.

In this recent talk, Googler Neil Hoyne, Global Program Manager Customer Analytics shares how to embrace the above as well as take the next steps with your measurement.

A few key takeaways:

You need to evolve your measurement plan to better fit the state of the web & complex customer journey (see our recent measurement guide to help).
Question if you have the right goals or you need to adjust, and don’t be afraid to change goals if need be. Really make sure you have the right macro & micro conversions.
Build an attribution model (also see our guide) that works for your brand, considering the unique factors that make up your business and what messages make sense in each different context (for example, mobile, social, email, etc).
Measure your customers in a user-centric way, move beyond the old session-based world.

Watch the whole talk embedded below:

And be sure and connect with Neil on Twitter and Google+.

Posted by the Google Analytics Team

Boost Conversions by Infusing Google Remarketing with Marketo Real-Time Personalization

January 7, 2015

Personalization is a hot topic for today’s marketers, a group that spends nearly half of their budget attracting new prospects. But customer expectations have risen; content must be relevant to acquire new customers and move them to convert.

Some pioneering marketers are seeing better performance by using real-time personalization and remarketing simultaneously. Knowing who a customer is and what they do is a big step toward providing the hyper-relevant content that customers crave.

Join Marketo’s Mike Telem and Mike Tomita on January 15th at 10am PT/ 1pm ET as they discuss the importance of real-time personalization for marketing results. Google’s own Dan Stone will give an overview of the ways Google Analytics technology can be used to power advanced remarketing, while the Marketo team will share the ways their company uses real-time personalization and Google Analytics to generate more leads at a lower cost.

Looking for tips on how to get your organization started? Reserve your spot today!

Posted by Kelley Sternhagen, Google Analytics Marketing

DAA SF Presents ‘Getting Data Right: Optimizing Performance Using Quantitative & Qualitative Practices’

October 27, 2014

This year the annual Digital Analytics Association (DAA) San Francisco Symposium is taking place on Thursday November 13^th and will be hosted at University of San Francisco. The theme is "optimizing performance using quantitative and qualitative practices". The DAA SF chapter has lined up industry leaders who will be sharing their thoughts and experiences. We are expecting a great afternoon of discussion followed by a networking reception. Following are the event details:

Our lineup of wonderful speakers is focused on presenting real-world solutions to the optimization challenges we all face everyday. They will be discussing the principles of qualitative data collection, optimization and the relation to quantitative data they've put into practice. This year we are piloting a new, more interactive format: 15 minutes of content from speakers followed by 10 min of Q&A from the audience, so come ready to participate in a day of analytics sharing and learning, and leave with ideas to put into practice. Our lineup includes:

Sarah Cho, Survey Monkey
Jason Conrad, Foresee
Joe Megibow, Chief Digital Officer, American Eagle
Krista Seiden, Analytics Advocate, Google
Jim Sterne, Founder, eMetrics
Rahul Todkar, Intuit
Jimmy Wong, LinkedIn
Ryan Zander, Sport Vision

By attending you will:

Learn how industry leaders use quantitative AND qualitative data to improve their businesses
Discover how your analytics can drive savvy optimization across multiple channels
Uncover how marketing attribution's data output leads to more informed marketing decisions
Learn the latest on optimization best practices from practitioners and vendors

Theme: Optimizing performance using Quantitative AND Qualitative practices

When: November 13th, registration starts at 12:30, program 1:00pm to to 5:30pm, followed by a networking reception

Where: University of San Francisco, 2130 Fulton Street, San Francisco, CA 94117

Cost: $25 for DAA members/$75 for non-members

Event website and registration: register here.

Space is limited so register early!

Moving from Data to Decisions in the next Analytics Academy course

June 17, 2014

Today we’re excited to announce our next Analytics Academy course, Ecommerce Analytics: From Data to Decisions. As the name suggests, we’ve designed this course specifically to help marketers and analysts who work in ecommerce understand how Analytics data can be used to make decisions and take actions that improve their ecommerce performance.

In the course, you’ll join instructor Justin Cutroni to explore topics through the lens of a fictional online retailer, The Great Outdoors. This practical example will help bring common ecommerce questions to life with relevant planning, reporting and analysis examples.

By participating in the course, you’ll learn how to:

select and customize meaningful reports that align with your ecommerce measurement plan
use segmentation to compare interesting subsets of your online audience
and conduct actionable in-depth analyses in Google Analytics.

In addition to teaching you how to make the most of reporting features like segmentation, the course has a special focus on the new Enhanced Ecommerce for Google Analytics. This set of new features, which was announced in May, helps ecommerce companies understand the customer journey and merchandising tactics at a much deeper level. The course will introduce you to powerful analysis tools, like the Product List Performance report, the Shopping Behavior report and the Checkout Behavior report.

Sign up for the Ecommerce Analytics course now and join us when it opens on July 8, 2014.

Happy Learning!

Post By: Christina Macholan & The Google Analytics Education Team

Google Analytics Summit 2014: What’s Next And On The Horizon For Analytics

May 28, 2014

As they have for years, Google Analytics Certified Partners, Premium customers and developers will once again join us in the Bay Area for our annual summit this week. We are constantly working to improve our products based on feedback from our most dedicated users and this event lets us hear directly from our community. We wanted to share an overview of some of the tools and features we’ll discuss at the 2014 summit so that even if you aren’t able to attend, you can about hear what’s next.

Enhanced Ecommerce

Google Analytics Ecommerce data traditionally focused on details about the purchase - transaction details, product details, and others. But, marketers today want to understand the entire customer journey. They want more details about customer behavior when looking at products, interacting with merchandising units and on-site marketing. Today we’re announcing the beta for Enhanced Ecommerce - a complete revamp of how Google Analytics measures the Ecommerce experience.

Businesses can now gain clear insight into new important metrics about shopper behavior and conversion including: product detail views, ‘add to cart’ actions, internal campaign clicks, the success of internal merchandising tools, the checkout process, and purchase. Merchants will be able to understand how far along users get in the buying process and where they are dropping off. For a complete overview of new features, have a look at our Help Center.

For marketers and Ecommerce managers looking to hone their analytic skills, we are also announcing a new Analytics Academy course titled Ecommerce Analytics: From Data to Decisions. Students will be guided through interactive examples of analyses for a fictional retail company to practice techniques they can apply to their own business. You can sign-up to be notified when this course opens on the Analytics Academy site.

Flexible and Scalable Reporting

Today’s marketers and analysts are looking to multiple data sets to gain deeper insights. We’re working on a number of new features to make it simple for businesses to work with different types of data in Google Analytics.

We unveiled Unified Channel Groupings to ensure all traffic that comes to the your site are classified in-line with your unique channel definitions. This is especially valuable for attribution, so marketers can interpret and report on the consumer journey based on their unique view of acquisition channels.

We’ve expanded the functionality of Google Analytics Dimension Widening, now called ‘Data Import’, to enable customers to import more of their own data into Google Analytics. This could include specific product details, information about returned products, insights about your customers’ preferences, and more. Imported data can be used with almost all of the standard Google Analytics features. For a complete list of the types of data you can import please see our article in the help center (linked above).

For Google Analytics Premium users, we’re introducing Custom Tables. This powerful feature enables users to retrieve unsampled data using customized tables that best fit their business’ needs. Once configured, fresh data will be available daily for unsampled analysis and segmentation.

Enterprise-Class Features

Today, smart marketers are increasingly tying measurement to media execution. We’re excited to announce a seamless integration between Google Analytics Premium, DoubleClick Campaign Manager and DoubleClick Bid Manager. Google Analytics Premium is uniquely positioned to help today’s advertiser understand how customers, and potential customers, interact with advertising media trafficked on the DoubleClick platform. In addition to understanding impression level data, advertisers can now send remarketing lists from Google Analytics to DoubleClick Bid Manager.

We added Google Analytics Premium and DoubleClick Bid Manager integration this year in order to further optimize our strongest lead generating campaigns. 70% of our display leads come from our retargeting campaigns, and the Google Analytics Premium and DoubleClick Bid Manager integration allows us to move beyond optimizing by site and creative, to quickly personalizing creatives - optimizing using our knowledge of distinct visitor segments not just generic visits.

-Melissa Shusterman, Strategic Engagement Director, MaassMedia

Additionally, for enterprise customers, service providers, or developers that manage many accounts we are offering 4 new APIs to help you save you time and increase productivity: the new Provisioning API to create new GA accounts (invite only), the AdWords and Filters API to manage configurations, and the Embed API to surface key reports and dashboards. We’ve also re-launched the App Gallery as the Partner Gallery, the new destination to find services by Google Analytics Certified Partners and apps by Google Analytics Technology Partners. The new gallery will rollout to all users over the coming week.

Stay tuned in the next several days for deep-dives about our various new tools and features. You can also sign-up for the whitelist of several of the features listed above here. Thank you to our partners, developers, and customers for all the great feedback over the year. We hope to continue developing and launches capabilities that matters to you most.

Posted by the Google Analytics team

Google Analytics Conference Nordic in Stockholm, Sweden

May 19, 2014

Join the Google Analytics Certified Partners for Google Analytics Conference Nordic in Sweden.

The event takes place August 28-29 in Stockholm, Sweden. You can expect to hear expert tips on how to get maximum value out of Google Analytics, and learn from other organizations using the tool.

Started based on an initiative by Outfox, who gathered the other Google Analytics Certified Partners, the conference is now returning for the fourth consecutive year.

Our Stockholm conference includes:

• Clinics led by Google Analytics Certified Partners

• Case studies from businesses and other organizations

• Opportunities to interact with peers and experts

• ...much more!

The conference is being visited by two top speakers from Google, Daniel Waisberg and Kerri Jacobs.

Daniel Waisberg is the Analytics Advocate at Google, where he is responsible for fostering Google Analytics by educating and inspiring Online Marketing professionals. Both at Google and his previous positions, Daniel has worked with some of the biggest Internet brands to measure and optimize online behavior.

Before kickstarting the Google Analytics Premium sales team, Kerri Jacobs was a Sales Manager for the DoubleClick publisher, agency and marketer product portfolio. Kerri has been a leader in the online sales world since the early days.

Besides meeting Google, you’ll meet Google Analytics Certified Partners Outfox, iProspect, Knowit, MediaAnalys, Netbooster, Klikki and Web Guide Partner. You will also meet and learn from several end users who use Google Analytics on a daily basis.

To join us in Stockholm August 28-29, visit the conference site and secure your ticket before it's sold out again.

Posted by Lars Johansson, Google Analytics Certified Partner

Join us for a conversation on the future of digital advertising

May 13, 2014

Digital is no longer just another marketing channel. It’s a medium that’s changing the art of storytelling and reinventing the way companies connect with consumers.
How will digital advertising evolve next? You’re invited to tune in live as industry leaders tackle the question at DoubleClick’s annual event on digital trends.
Speakers include:

Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation

Nikesh Arora, Chief Business Officer at Google

Neal Mohan, VP of Display Advertising at Google

Register now for the live stream Wednesday, June 4 9:30 am PDT - 10:45 am PDT / 12:30 pm EDT - 1:45 pm EDT
Time not convenient? When you register you’ll receive a link to watch the recording on demand.
We hope you can join!
Here’s footage from last year’s event to give you a taste of the 2014 live stream:

Posted by Aditi Rajaram, Google Analytics team

Invest In Yourself: Learning Digital Analytics In 2014

March 4, 2014

We’re excited to help digital marketers become more data savvy through the Analytics Academy. Initially launched in October of last year, our first course attracted more than 145,000 students - and more than 30,000 finished the course and earned a certificate of completion.

That’s why today we’re excited to announce the launch of our next course in the Analytics Academy titled “Google Analytics Platform Principles.”

In this course we’ll dive deeper into the details of how the platform collects, transforms and organizes the data you see in Analytics. Understanding how these processes work is the first step to refining your implementation and uncovering more valuable insights about your business.

In this self-paced online course, you’ll learn about:

the four components of the Analytics platform: collection, processing, configuration and reporting
how Analytics collects the data you need across different devices
how your data is transformed before you see it in your reports
key concepts for customizing your Analytics data in useful ways

Registration is now open and the course begins March 11, 2014. You can sign up here.

The importance of education

It’s never been a more exciting time for businesses as technology is driving innovation at an astounding rate. With the introduction of mobile devices (and tablets) and the ability to understand user behavior - the fundamental way that we do business is changing. And the key driver is data.

All of these new technologies create information - data that we can use to better understand the needs of customers. If we understand the customer better, we can help them achieve their goals, while we achieve ours.

Nowhere is this more evident than in digital marketing and digital advertising. 78% of marketers feel the need to become more data driven and almost 40% of major brands see a talent gap in analytics. Marketers need to know how their campaigns drive direct conversions, and more importantly, how they improve the overall performance of other campaigns. This can be an imposing task for someone that doesn’t know the difference between a conversion and bounce rate.

No matter what your role in business, from marketing to product to PR, you will need to work with data. Luckily there many opportunities for all of us to learn. Make 2014 the year that you invest in yourself and develop your analytical skills.

To paint the picture of the opportunity, we also created an infographic to get you excited about embarking on your own personal analytics education (see a preview below, but view the whole graphic here). We hope to see you at our MOOC in class!

Posted by Justin Cutroni, Analytics Evangelist, Google

2014 Digital Analytics Association Awards For Excellence

January 27, 2014

It’s award season once again - Digital Analytics awards!

The Digital Analytics Association exists to help organizations illuminate and overcome the challenges of data acquisition, exploration, deduction and application. The DAA is a not-for-profit, volunteer-powered association, and strives to help individuals become more valuable through education, community, research and advocacy. If you are involved in the analytics industry, we encourage you to check out what the DAA has to offer.

This week, the DAA announced its list of nominees for the DAA Awards of Excellence. These awards are a great way to celebrate the outstanding contribution to our profession of individuals, agencies, vendors and practitioners.

This year’s list of nominees is chock-full of highly talented individuals, new technologies, agencies & vendors. We’re excited to see so many inspirational leaders nominated for recognition and are looking forward to the digital analytics industry growing for many years to come via their leadership.

We are also honored to see a few Googlers nominated for awards.

Krista Seiden has been nominated for Digital Analytics Rising Star and Practitioner of the Year. Our Analytics Evangelist, Justin Cutroni, our Analytics Advocate, Daniel Waisberg, and our former GACP Program Manager, Jesse Nichols, who travel the world sharing Analytics love have each been nominated as Most Influential Industry Contributor (individual). Jesse has also been nominated for Practitioner of the Year.

We’d also like to recognize the many members of our GACP network who also received nominations. We wish you all the best of luck!

If you’re a DAA member make sure you vote by January 31. Winners will be announced at the 2014 DAA Gala in San Francisco on March 18. Tickets are available now.

Posted by the Google Analytics Team

Learn About Analytics From Googlers At These Upcoming Events

January 22, 2014

We’re excited to be well into 2014, another year marketers and businesses will make continued investments in Analytics education for their teams. With that, conference season continues to ramp up.Things are likely moving fast for you as well, so we wanted to make sure you were updated on some of the key industry events our team members would be presenting at for the next few months. Following is a brief list. We hope to see you in-person at some of these (or on the digital discussions for our Webinars).

Googler Daniel Waisberg presenting on The Full Customer Journey in Dublin.

1/26: Search Marketing Expo Israel

Analytics Advocate Daniel Waisberg will be presenting a session on segmentation. Learn more.

1/29: Infopresse: Digital Performance in Montreal, Canada

Google’s Analytics Evangelist Justin Cutroni will be speaking on Universal Analytics. Learn more.

2/6: IAB UK: Award Winning Attribution in London

Daniel Waisberg will be presenting on Attribution Modeling. Learn more.

2/11: SES London
Daniel Waisberg will be presenting on Segmenting your data to make better decisions. Learn more.

2/14: Congresso E-Commerce Brasil De Search & Vendas 2014

Googler Eduardo Cereto will be presenting on using Analytics for E-commerce marketers and agencies. Learn more.

2/28: International Christian Media Convention in Nashville, TN

Analytics Advocate Adam Singer will share key metrics to measure for the mobile / apps ecosystem. Learn more.

3/18: Travel Technology Initiative in London

Daniel Waisberg will be speaking on the importance of attribution for travel professionals. Learn more.

3/18: Game Developer Conference in San Francisco

Googlers Russel Ketchum and Rahul Oak will be presenting a session for app developers on using data to improve their app. Learn more.

3/21: Be-Wizard in Remiti, Italy

Justin Cutroni will be presenting on making data actionable with Remarketing. Learn more.

3/25: SMX Munich
Justin Cutroni will be speaking on people, process & platform: how to conceptualize your digital analytics practice. Learn more.

3/27: PRSA Big Data Webinar (Online)

Adam Singer will be presenting on how PR pros can use Google Tools to put data to work for their programs. Learn more.

4/2: Social Media for PR and Corporate Communications Conference in Orlando

Adam Singer will be presenting on how to best measure and improve your social campaigns using data. Learn more.

4/7: SearchLove in Boston
Justin Cutroni will be presenting a session on best practices for cohorts and user measurement. Learn more.

4/7: Google Analytics Workshop in Washington DC

Adam Singer will be sharing a half-day workshop on using Analytics for communicators along with other trainers from PRNews. Learn more.

4/16: Analytics & Optimization Summit (Online)

Googler Krista Seiden will be presenting on testing and optimization at this online digital advertising event. Learn more.

4/17: Building a Testing Culture panel at OptiCon

Krista Seiden will be presenting on a panel at Optimizely’s OptiCon conference on best practices and tips for building a testing culture. Learn more.

And remember, even if you can’t make it to an event in person, you can follow Google Analytics on Twitter and Google+ where we share highlights from events.

Posted by the Google Analytics Team

SUPERWEEK 2014: January 21-23, Hungary

November 26, 2013

The following is a guest post contributed by Zoltán Bánóczy, founder of AALL Ltd. and the SUPERWEEK Conference series.

In the fourth week of the New Year, many of us will enjoy the gorgeous view pictured below as the actual backdrop for one the year’s most exciting analytics conferences. Speakers hailing from Jerusalem to Copenhagen to San Francisco to Ahmedabad promise to deliver insightful talks about a wide range of topics surrounding the modern digital industry.

The 3 day SUPERWEEK 2014 begins on January 21st, located on the beautiful mountaintop of Galyatető, at the highest-lying 4 star hotel in Hungary. Fly to Budapest easily from across Europe and rely on our shuttlebuses called SUPERBUS as an option for your package. Conference goers can expect advanced talks at the sessions, data based opinions shared during the panels, and Google Tag Manager deep dives - some say even deeper than the Mariana Trench.

In his keynote, Avinash Kaushik will share a collection of strategies to help you ensure that the focus of your analytics effort is on taking action and not data regurgitation in a session titled: “Driving an Obsession with Actionable Analytics.“ Caleb Whitmore (Analytics Pros) will be providing a “hands-on” training and conference goers can complete the GAIQ exam right afterwards. Excitingly, we get the opportunity to ask Avinash about Life! - in his Q&A session entitled: “Search, Social, Analytics, Life: AMA (“ask me anything”)”.

Speakers include industry thought leaders, Top Contributors to the AdWords forums and many Google Analytics Certified Partner companies - all from about 10 countries.

We’ll try to cover the latest of the industry: predictive analytics (Ravi Pathak, India), Universal Analytics & Google Tag Manager implementations (Yehoshua Coren - Israel, Doug Hall - UK, and Julien Coquet - France), PPC / display advertising (Jacob Kildebogaard - Denmark and Oliver Schiffers - Germany), A/B testing, privacy (Aurélie Pols - Spain) and even analytics expert “The Professor”, Phil Pearce from the UK.

Join us for the emblematic, traditional evening with campfire made from large 2+ meter logs where a wide range of (mulled) wine and mellow mood will be served.

Keep up to date on the agenda and other programmes by following us at @superweek2014 (or #spwk during the event) on Twitter.

Posted by Zoltán Bánóczy, Google Analytics Certified Partner

Digital Analytics Association Symposium in San Francisco: End-to-End Data Measurement & Visualization

November 4, 2013

The annual Digital Analytics Association (DAA) San Francisco Symposium is happening on November 12^th and this year we are happy to host the event at Google’s San Francisco office. The theme this year is end-to-end data measurement and visualization and the DAA SF chapter has lined up industry leaders who will be sharing their experiences. We are expecting a great afternoon of discussion followed by a networking reception. Below are the event details, please join us!

Our lineup of great speakers is focused on presenting real-world solutions to the challenges you face everyday. The lineup includes:

Jim Sterne, Target Marketing and the DAA
Jon Miller, Co-founder and VP of Marketing at Marketo
Michelle Kiss, Partner at Web Analytics Demystified
Joe Megibow, SVP/GM of Omni-Channel eCommerce at American Eagle Outfitters
Senior Manager, eCommerce Optimization at Symantec
Laura MacTaggert, Director, Web Analysis & Optimization at Salesforce.com
and other great speakers

By attending you will:

Learn how today's consumer interacts with your brand and how to leverage this interaction data for success
Discover how your analytics can drive savvy optimization across multiple channels
Uncover how marketing attribution's data output leads to more informed marketing decisions
Learn the latest on data visualization from practitioners and vendors

Theme: End-to-end data measurement and visualization

When: November 12th, registration starts at 12:30, the program goes from 1:00 to to 5:30, followed by a networking reception

Where: Google San Francisco, 345 Spear Street, 6th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105

Cost: $25 for DAA members/$75 for non-members

Event website and registration: register here.

Space is limited so register early!

Last but not least, this Symposium is organized by local DAA members and volunteers. We encourage you to become a member of the DAA and join our local efforts. Become a member and reach out to one of the local chapter leaders, Krista, Charles or Feras.

Posted by the Google Analytics team

Improve your Digital Analytics Skills with Google’s Analytics Academy

October 2, 2013

While the rapid pace of innovation in the field of digital measurement certainly keeps our work interesting, it can also make it tough to keep up with the core skills and concepts you need to be successful as a digital marketer or analyst. And, staying up-to-date on the most recent news in Google Analytics can be a big challenge for our customers and partners.

That’s why today we’re excited to announce Analytics Academy -- a new hub for you and your colleagues to participate in free, online, community-based video courses about digital analytics and Google Analytics. With Analytics Academy, we aim to provide you with a guided learning experience to become an analytics expert in no time.

Our first course, Digital Analytics Fundamentals, is open for registration now and the first lessons will be released starting on Tuesday, October 8, 2013.

The course, hosted by Google’s Analytics Evangelist Justin Cutroni, is designed for marketers and analysts looking to understand the core principles of digital analytics and to improve their use of Google Analytics. Whether you’re looking to brush up on a few basic best practices, or are brand new to digital measurement, we think you’ll find the learning experience engaging and useful.

Each of the lessons includes an instructional video and a corresponding activity to practice the new skills you learn. You can complete the course on your own schedule during a three-week window, alongside a worldwide community of students. You’ll have the opportunity to connect with other learners and Googlers to get your questions answered by joining the course forum, the Google+ community, and Hangout on Air sessions with analytics experts.

By the end of the course, you will have the tools and skills to create a meaningful measurement plan for your business, collect and understand your Google Analytics data, and begin doing basic analyses within the Google Analytics reports.

Sign up today and improve your digital analytics skills. Visit the course homepage to learn more and register now to become a part of this new and exciting Google Analytics learning community!

- Posted by Christina Macholan on behalf of the Google Analytics Education Team

The rundown: New products and features announced today at the #GASummit 2013

October 1, 2013

Every year, Google Analytics Certified Partners and Premium customers descend upon Mountain View for our annual summit. Google Analytics team members and Google thought leaders share a glimpse into the future of Analytics and our users and partners have the opportunity to network and share ideas. The 2013 theme of the Summit is Access, Empower, Act. So how does that translate to practical terms? As shared at the Summit, we want to help you do 3 things:

You heard details on how Analytics helps you accomplish each this morning in the livestream sessions from our VP Engineering Paul Muret and Product Management Director Babak Pahlavan. We also wanted to share an update of what new features were announced in case you missed anything. Following is round up of some of the cool things we're working on shared at the Summit:

Paul Muret, Google VP of Engineering, delivering opening keynote

Access

Google Tag Manager: Auto-event tracking - no more custom-code needed

Tracking events on the page has been a major pain point, both for those that use Google Tag Manager and those that don’t. Until now, if you wanted to tell Google Analytics that a user has clicked a button or submitted a form, you’d need to add custom JavaScript to the page. Launched October 1st, Auto-Event Tracking lets Google Tag Manager users listen for events on the page without adding any custom code, and then fire data to Google Analytics or other tags. This lets you deploy and iterate your measurement campaigns faster.

APIs For Enterprise

Large companies have unique needs; they have many websites and many users. In the past, it could take many hours to setup Google Analytics. With our new Google Analytics Enterprise APIs, IT teams can programmatically setup and configure Google Analytics accounts, saving time, and giving them more time to analyze data.

GA Premium SLA Expansion for Google Tag Manager

All data collection on your site requires tagging, so being able to rely on Google Tag Manager is absolutely critical to Google Analytics customers. We’re very pleased to announce that we’ll be rolling out a Service Level Agreement for Google Tag Manager to Google Analytics Premium customers in Q4 of this year. This will give Premium customers the assurance they need on the reliability of their tag management, backed by Google’s rock-solid infrastructure, as well as implementation support to get them up and running.

Empower

Unified Segments - segmentation that’s better, faster, smarter

We’ve recently re-imagined segmentation to make it even easier for new Analytics users, yet also more powerful for seasoned analysts and marketers. Updates include user segmentation, cohort analysis, sequence segments, segment templates and a fully refreshed UI. Originally announced in July, at the Summit we announced this is now available to a majority of users, and 100% by end of 2013.

ABCs (Acquisition, Behaviors & Conversions) - revamping traffic sources to be more intuitive

Acquisition in Google Analytics contains some of the most popular reports in our product and are accessed daily by active users. That’s why we’ve been thinking about how to evolve these reports to better present your key metrics in intuitive groups while improving channel flexibility. We know how important these reports are to you, and so we’re pleased to share a sneak preview of the new Acquisition reports in Google Analytics to provide a window on your users’ Acquisition-Behavior-Conversion (ABC) cycle: how you acquire users, their behavior on your site after acquisition, and their conversion patterns. They will replace the ‘Traffic’ Sources’ section on the left hand navigation.

Audience Reporting - get a deeper understanding of your users

One of the biggest challenges for online marketers is the lack of information about the people visiting their properties and buying their products. Unlike in physical stores where a manager can tell a lot about the sorts of people coming and going -- What age are they? What’s their gender? What are they interested in? -- online merchandisers and marketers are often flying blind. Audience Reporting solves this problem by providing age, gender, and interest categories as dimensions in Google Analytics. Find out who your site visitors are and gain a better understanding of who your most valuable (highest converting) audiences are so you can effectively reach your best prospects on the Google Display Network. Taking into account demographics and interests, you can efficiently target, bid, and optimize your creative to improve your campaign’s performance.

GA Premium BigQuery Integration - more granular and complex querying of unsampled data

The BigQuery integration is a feature for Google Analytics Premium that allows clients to access their session and hit level data from Google Analytics within Google BigQuery for more granular and complex querying of unsampled data. For those unfamiliar with Google BigQuery, it’s a web service that lets you perform interactive analysis of massive data sets—up to trillions of rows. Scalable and easy to use, BigQuery lets developers and businesses tap into powerful data analytics on demand. Plus, your data is easily exportable. This feature is now available for Premium users.

Analytics Academy and In-Product Help - sharpen your measurement skills

The world of digital analytics is changing fast, and we want to help analysts and marketers stay current. We’re excited to announce two new educational initiatives, Analytics Academy, is our new online learning platform (also known as a massive, open, online course or MOOC for short). We’ll be offering instructor led courses in analytics related topics multiple times a year. You can sign up for our first course, Digital Analytics Fundamentals, here. We’re also adding more help resources directly in Google Analytics. Simply access the new education window using the education button in the menu bar.

Act

Google Play integration with Mobile App Analytics: see the full picture of your app users

We recently re-imagined in-app analytics from the ground up, speaking the language that matters to app developers and marketers. Since launch, the insights provided by Google Analytics for Mobile Apps are already helping hundreds of thousands of app developers and marketers create more successful Android and iOS apps and experiences by measuring metrics at all stages: acquisition, behavior and conversions. Today we’re excited to announce that the integration between Google Analytics and Google Play, previewed at I/O 2013, is now available to all users! This is especially exciting for app developers and marketers because it’s the first time - and only way - to get a holistic view of the Play acquisition funnel in one easy to understand report.

As we move into 2014 and digital analytics becomes more central to how organizations of all sizes make decisions, we look forward to making our products even better. We’ll be sharing more in-depth news about each of these features over the next few months along with more details on launch dates. Stay tuned to the Google Analytics blog and follow us on Google+ and Twitter so you don’t miss a thing.