AVB Marketing extracts data from various advertising and analytics platforms using their APIs and houses that data in a database. This allows us to process the data so that we can “translate” the data from Universal Analytics (Old Analytics) and Google Analytics (New Analytics) so that they can be visualized and compared in the same manner. Without doing this, businesses would have to manually extract the data into something like Excel and then manually compare the two. BUT that wouldn’t be accurate because the way metrics are measured changes between the two platforms. We can take the raw data on each side, process it and then visualize it in a way that makes the numbers more consistent and accurate.

One of the biggest upsides to working in the AVB dashboard vs. the platform is the ability to see changes in metrics over various dates and periods. By adding the comparisons into our dashboards, we can alleviate the headaches members would get trying to learn the new interface in GA4 and try to understand the new reporting paradigm that Google is using. By adding this functionality, we will essentially make it unnecessary for members to go into the Google Analytics platform to get the insights they need to make smart marketing decisions.

The primary reason the numbers you see in the new dashboard are different than in the previous dashboard is the new reporting structure that Google implemented. Google expects up to a 20% difference plus or minus would be considered normal. That’s a 40-point swing that is considered normal due to the changes they made to the metrics. We’ve done our part to normalize this as much as we can, but the reality is that there will be some numbers that just don’t match up between the two platforms because of the changes Google made.

Additionally, we’ve taken this opportunity to fine tune our reporting on website events. That will increase the accuracy of our reports, but could cause numbers to shift positively or negatively depending on the reported event and improvements we were able to make.

If you have missing metrics, it could mean a variety of things.

1. A) You’re not qualified for those metrics based on Google’s implementation of them.
2. B) You’re not using a technology that we can track.
3. C) Your site is not on our platform, which means we’re limited in what we can track.
4. D) There’s a tracking issue. If you see something that doesn’t look correct after reading the section below, please reach out to your AVB representative.

“Store visits” is something that Google controls and we are unable to flip on or off. If you notice a zero there, it most likely means that you don’t qualify for this metric.

“Chats” is a great example of not having a technology we can track. Depending on your chat service and how they approach web analytics, we may or may not be able to report a chat conversation from your website. If you see a zero here, it means you aren’t using a chat service that pushes web events for us to track. In these instances, we highly encourage member to find performance-based metrics inside those specific chat platforms to identify whether they are leading to increased business.

We’ve improved the reporting related to search impression share. A few of these new metrics we are reporting are important to understand, including:

• Search Lost Impressions Share (budget)

This is the percentage of time your ad didn’t appear because your budget was too low. So, if you have a high percentage in this field, your ad didn’t show up for a bulk of the searches entered into Google using the keywords you set for the campaign because you didn’t spend enough daily.

• Search Lost Top Impression Share (budget)

This is the percentage of time your ad didn’t show anywhere above the organic search results due to a low budget (top ~3 ad spots on Google Search Results pages).

• Search Lost Absolute Top Impressions Share (budget)

This  estimates how often your ad wasn’t the very first ad above the organic search results due to a low budget.

Each of these metrics help members know if they are truly being competitive in their local markets or not with the advertising campaigns they are running.