The landscape in data analysis has changed rapidly in the past few years. Organizations and developers are analyzing larger data sets, from more data sources, to drive their decision-making. They are examining huge volumes of unsampled data to make informed business decisions--often mining information in business intelligence tools for strategic insights. For the data scientists that perform these analyses, having direct granular access to Google Analytics data is becoming increasingly important.

Today at I/O, we announced that we are giving Google Analytics Premium users the ability to glean new business insights by accessing session and hit level data and combining it with separate data sets. Organizations and developers can analyze in seconds without massive cost by leveraging Google BigQuery, a web service that lets developers and businesses conduct interactive analysis of big data sets and tap into powerful data analytics. 

Interactive data analysis and data ownership

The upcoming BigQuery integration, happening later this year, is a planned 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; you own it.

Benefits of BigQuery

1. Leverage Google’s massive computing power to get business insights from big data in seconds rather than hours.
2. Analyze massive amounts of data in the cloud with no up-front investments (hardware provisioning or software licensing investments).
3. Share and collaborate quickly and securely using Access Control Lists. 
4. Store as much as you want, paying only for what you use.
5. Protect your data with multiple layers of security from Google.

Potential Uses of the Google Analytics Premium and BigQuery Integration

Having Google Analytics session and hit level data available in BigQuery opens several possibilities for developers and data scientists. Usage includes, but is not limited to, the following 

• Analyzing visitor behavior across very large date ranges. Answer the question: "From 2010 to 2013, which sections of my site had the most volatility in daily traffic volumes?"
• Joining against data from other sources. Make detailed, custom analyses, such as: "I have a database that contains all the metadata about each article posted on my site and would like to see the bounce rate, conversion rate and new visitors generated by author and topic."
• Understanding complex queries. Answer the question: "Of the visitors to my site that used a voucher code, how many originally discovered my brand from a voucher code site and how many left the checkout process and returned within 10 minutes with a voucher code? Which codes were used in each case?"
• Integrating with Data Warehouses. Make detailed, custom analyses, such as: "On a weekly basis, for each of my logged in customers, I want to see the top 5 products that they viewed but did not buy and add that information into their record in our CRM."

We are looking forward to getting this granular data access into the hands of developers and data scientists. To receive more information about this integration as it comes available, developers may register their interest here: http://goo.gl/QJR9Y.

Posted by: Clancy Childs, Product Manager, Google Analytics Premium 

Last year at I/O we launched Mobile App Analytics, a re-imagining of app analytics from the ground up, speaking the language that matters to app developers and marketers. Since launch, the insights provided 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, engagement and outcomes like in-app purchases. 

This year at I/O, our team continues to improve mobile analysis with two announcements: Mobile App Analytics Play Integration and Google Tag Manager for Mobile Apps. These updates, to be available for all users shortly (with links below to help you get on early whitelists) will let you better measure a mobile world and use your data in more ways to improve the customer experience. 

Better understand the total picture of your app users with Google Play Integration

We’re excited to announce a long-anticipated integration of Mobile App Analytics more deeply with Google Play. It’s especially exciting for app developers and marketers because it’s the first time we’re presenting a complete view of the Play acquisition funnel in one clear, easy to understand report.

The data sources you’ll be able to see include:

Google Play traffic sources: understand which traffic sources and Google search keywords account for most new users. Campaign sources will help you refine your app marketing mix in order to focus on those campaigns and programs that bring the highest quality traffic. 

Google Play views: at the very top of the app funnel, you’ll want to understand clearly how many views your app is receiving in Google Play from each campaign or source. 

Installs: installs simply shows the number of users who actually installed your application from Google Play. It’s useful here to determine which sources are successful at driving installation. 

New users: beyond installs, new users shows you how many users actually launch your application. This is a key metric to see even beyond installations and tracing the path up the funnel.

As this report is using flow visualization, you can also select any path you wish to analyze further which will highlight that path and present useful data points along the funnel such as drop off rate.

Google Tag Manager for Mobile Apps

Ever want to make a small tweak to your mobile application but your users have already downloaded your app? Ever forget to add analytics to a key event until it’s too late? Shipping your app usually means you have one chance to get it right, and that’s not the best way to build a business.

With Google Tag Manager for Mobile Apps launching in beta, you can dynamically configure your mobile applications on Android and iOS server-side. You can hone your app for various audiences, and you’ll never get caught by old versions or forgetfulness again.

Google Tag Manager for Mobile Apps uses Google Tag Manager’s sophisticated rule-based serving engine  and easy-to-use management interface to make it a snap for developers to make changes to their applications, even after an app has been downloaded by users. Now changing the configuration of your application or rolling out a new feature is as easy as going to the Google Tag Manager web interface, changing a couple of values, and then pressing a Publish button. Changes go live in seconds.

You can configure virtually anything in your application: from ad values such as frequency and duration and UI settings like colors and layout, to time-based events such as in-app promotions and special events. Sign up for the whitelist to be among the first to try out GTM for Mobile (you’ll need to first visit the Google Tag Manager site and create an account if you haven’t already).

We’re excited to continue to push the envelope with what analytics can do across devices and platforms and cater to developers with tools they want.

Posted by the Google Analytics Team  

We’ve been working hard getting ready for Google I/O! We're livestreaming our presentation on how to optimize web and mobile apps across devices using Google Analytics on Thursday, May 16 at 1:40pm PT and we’d like to invite everyone to join us.

We recently launched Universal Analytics, a new way to measure user interactions across any device / platform / environment. By measuring this data, developers can better optimize their applications. In this session we'll discuss how to measure user-interaction from any device as well as demo new reports and best practices to optimize both web and mobile apps.

For those of you who are going to be at I/O, please stop by the Ads sandbox and say hi to the Analytics team! We’ll be around to answer questions, and we may even have some pretty cool Analytics gear to give out. Be sure to check out all of our Analytics sessions. You can find the full schedule here.

Posted by Aditi Rajaram, Google Analytics team

One powerful feature of Google Analytics is the ability to create filters to limit and modify the traffic data that is included in a profile. Custom filters can be made on specific fields of data; our users have long been asking for more data to filter, especially for mobile and social. We have listened, and are glad to announce an expanded fields list. Full descriptions of the new fields and values are documented here, and following is a summary:

Mobile

• Is a mobile device
• Is a tablet
• Mobile brand name
• Mobile model name
• Mobile marketing name
• Mobile pointing method
• Mobile has QWERTY keyboard?
• Mobile is NFC supported?
• Mobile has cellular radio?
• Mobile has wifi?

Social 

• Social network
• Social action
• Social action target

Content & Traffic

• Hit type: (page, social, transaction, etc.)
• Internal search term
• Internal search type

Audience / Users

• Browser size
• IP version

E-commerce

• Local currency code

Use these new filter fields for improved data analysis and for more refined and targeted reporting views.

Posted by Matt Matyas, Google Analytics Team

Ariat is the leading equestrian footwear and apparel brand in the United States. Their website - Ariat.com - is an ecommerce sales channel, a branding tool, and a medium to feature their channel partners. Its goal is to facilitate the entire buying cycle from awareness to loyalty. 

In 2010, Ariat invested heavily in digital by creating a powerful new website. In order to justify the cost and report a return on investment, the new website would require a comprehensive web analytics and reporting program. Beyond just evaluating key performance indicators (KPIs) for e-commerce, such as revenue and conversion rate, Ariat needed to measure the effectiveness of their new merchandising and promotional features, and also the effectiveness of various digital marketing channels. 

Ariat reached out to SwellPath to assist in the evaluation of analytics tools and general consultation on the measurement strategies for their new site. SwellPath determined that Google Analytics was the right tool for the job, based on its flexible measurement capabilities and advanced analysis tools. They then created a custom measurement strategy and analytics framework to align the data with Ariat’s business goals. This framework ensured that they could measure the effectiveness of their internal promotional campaigns, shopping tools and product page features, and all digital marketing channels. 

SwellPath also introduced Ariat to “micro-conversion” metrics. These are actions that may not be a straightforward goal completion, but rather support the conversion process or have  their own inherent value. For Ariat, this included email signups, sharing content with social media buttons, and outbound clicks to channel partners.

Ariat’s new website launch has been a huge success thanks to data-driven improvements  made from the very beginning. Being able to measure and optimize the many features of the shopping experience allowed them to identify improvements that decreased cart abandonment by 18% and increased conversion rate by 14%. Acting on these opportunities so soon after launch allowed them to save large amounts of potentially lost revenue, and avoid customer irritation through a simpler checkout experience. 

Merchandising promotions on the homepage were also optimized based on insights from custom analytics data. The ecommerce conversion rate for visitors interacting with these promotions rose over 80% from 2011 to 2012. Consistent digital campaign tracking and attribution analysis identified key success factors in email campaigns, social media marketing, and display campaigns. This allowed for optimal budget planning and campaign optimization resulting in a 14% year-over-year increase in the ecommerce conversion rate for those campaigns, and a 17% increase in per-visit value.

Using advanced analytics and measurement tactics with Google Analytics allowed Ariat to quantify the improvements to their website, revealing a fantastic ROI and providing many opportunities for future growth.

Check out the full case study here [PDF]

Posted by the Google Analytics team

Over the past year, we’ve been making continued improvements to the Real-Time reports in Google Analytics. Significant updates include real-time now supporting profiles, 4 key analysis improvements as well real-time widgets available for dashboards.

But have you ever looked at your real time report and thought, “wow check out how many visitors I have today, I wonder if any of them are converting?” We had that same question and so we are happy to announce the beta launch of our new real-time goals report! Now you can monitor in real-time how many of your website visitors are converting and against what goals. 

Use this feature to track the live results of how your new email newsletter, ad campaign or TV commercial is performing. An important note, with this first launch we’re introducing URL based goals only. So computed goals such as Time on Site or Pages / Visit are not included yet. For ease of use, you will see all goals that are being tracked in the UI regardless of whether there have been any completions in the past 30 minutes.

As with the rest of the real time reports, clicking a specific goal will automatically segment that report. Basic filters also apply to goals so you can analyze goal completions from a specific location or other dimensions you care about.

So now, the next time content on your site goes viral, you get a hot mention in the media, or large social traffic spike be sure to check out your real-time goals report to see in real-time the bottom line impact.

Happy Analyzing,

Posted by Linus Chou, Product Manager, Google Analytics

A version of this post originally appeared on the DoubleClick search blog.

Back in October, we announced the beta release of display remarketing from search ads, which allows advertisers to use insights from paid search clicks to remarket to audiences across ad exchanges via DoubleClick Bid Manager, or the Google Display Network (GDN) -- all with a seamless, tagless workflow. 

We’re excited to announce that display remarketing from search ads is now out of beta, and is available to all DoubleClick Search customers globally. This brief video provides a visual explanation:

Already, customers have shown some impressive results. Anton Kanis, Head of Business Solutions, Netherlands for OmnicomMediaGroup, has been using the feature to remarket via DoubleClick Bid Manager. Kanis notes “Display remarketing from search ads is proving itself to be a very valuable feature, often outperforming regular funnel remarketing and sometimes even search in terms of CPA.”

If you’re interested in trying display remarketing from search ads to take advantage of more cross-channel opportunities, reach out to your DoubleClick representative, visit the DoubleClick site, or contact the DoubleClick Search support team at ds-support@google.com.

Posted by the DoubleClick Team