Archive for the ‘Analytics’ Category
You’re Just a Number to Me: What Advertisers Actually See About You
February 7th, 2010
There’s a whole lot of hoopla when it comes to what Web advertisers see about the people that respond to their ads. Just to dispel a myth the fact is most Web advertisers don’t care much about you as a person. They care very much about you as a demographic. There’s no profit in knowing what one person will do, but there are millions on the line to understand what masses of people will do.
Below is a snippet of what I receive from Facebook about the people that respond to my ads. Please note that this is very useful information, but it’s not exactly something that says much about any one person.
| Demographic | Bucket 1 | Bucket 2 | % of Impressions | % of Clickers | CTR |
| country | US | 100.00% | 100.00% | 0.05% | |
| gender_age | F | 18-24 | 16.61% | 7.91% | 0.03% |
| gender_age | F | 25-34 | 9.35% | 10.79% | 0.06% |
| gender_age | F | 35-44 | 8.72% | 11.22% | 0.07% |
| gender_age | F | 45-54 | 4.18% | 6.52% | 0.08% |
| gender_age | M | 18-24 | 26.36% | 17.20% | 0.03% |
| gender_age | M | 25-34 | 17.15% | 16.56% | 0.05% |
| gender_age | M | 35-44 | 12.90% | 20.09% | 0.08% |
| gender_age | M | 45-54 | 4.73% | 9.72% | 0.11% |
| region | Unknown | 6.80% | 7.32% | 0.05% | |
| region | us | Alabama | 1.02% | 1.31% | 0.07% |
| region | us | Alaska | 0.18% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| region | us | Arizona | 1.31% | 1.86% | 0.07% |
| region | us | Arkansas | 0.71% | 0.77% | 0.05% |
| region | us | California | 8.70% | 7.76% | 0.05% |
| region | us | Colorado | 1.27% | 1.31% | 0.05% |
| region | us | Connecticut | 1.31% | 0.87% | 0.03% |
| region | us | Delaware | 0.19% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| region | us | District of Columbia | 1.06% | 0.66% | 0.03% |
| region | us | Florida | 5.15% | 5.90% | 0.06% |
| region | us | Georgia | 3.41% | 2.84% | 0.04% |
| region | us | Hawaii | 0.31% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| region | us | Idaho | 0.31% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| region | us | Illinois | 4.89% | 4.37% | 0.05% |
| region | us | Indiana | 2.07% | 2.08% | 0.05% |
| region | us | Iowa | 0.78% | 0.55% | 0.04% |
| region | us | Kansas | 1.15% | 1.31% | 0.06% |
| region | us | Kentucky | 1.29% | 1.86% | 0.07% |
| region | us | Louisiana | 0.94% | 0.87% | 0.05% |
| region | us | Maine | 0.53% | 0.66% | 0.06% |
| region | us | Maryland | 1.84% | 0.66% | 0.02% |
| region | us | Massachusetts | 2.68% | 1.86% | 0.04% |
| region | us | Michigan | 4.02% | 4.15% | 0.05% |
| region | us | Minnesota | 2.03% | 1.42% | 0.04% |
| region | us | Mississippi | 0.51% | 0.77% | 0.08% |
| region | us | Missouri | 2.22% | 2.30% | 0.05% |
| region | us | Montana | 0.18% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| region | us | Nebraska | 0.60% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| region | us | Nevada | 0.47% | 0.66% | 0.07% |
| region | us | New Hampshire | 0.51% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| region | us | New Jersey | 2.91% | 3.17% | 0.06% |
| region | us | New Mexico | 0.27% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| region | us | New York | 6.86% | 6.89% | 0.05% |
| region | us | North Carolina | 2.66% | 3.83% | 0.07% |
| region | us | North Dakota | 0.23% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| region | us | Ohio | 3.76% | 4.15% | 0.06% |
| region | us | Oklahoma | 0.88% | 1.09% | 0.06% |
| region | us | Oregon | 1.15% | 0.87% | 0.04% |
| region | us | Pennsylvania | 4.63% | 5.90% | 0.06% |
| region | us | Rhode Island | 0.49% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| region | us | South Carolina | 1.19% | 2.19% | 0.09% |
| region | us | South Dakota | 0.30% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
| region | us | Tennessee | 1.98% | 3.06% | 0.08% |
| region | us | Texas | 5.70% | 6.01% | 0.05% |
| region | us | Utah | 0.80% | 0.98% | 0.06% |
| region | us | Vermont | 0.25% | 0.66% | 0.13% |
| region | us | Virginia | 2.63% | 2.51% | 0.05% |
| region | us | Washington | 2.12% | 1.75% | 0.04% |
| region | us | West Virginia | 0.44% | 0.55% | 0.06% |
| region | us | Wisconsin | 2.17% | 2.30% | 0.05% |
| region | us | Wyoming | 0.15% | 0.00% | 0.00% |
I Don’t See Me: Use Incognito Mode When Viewing Your Own Web Site
January 4th, 2010
One of the problems a web administrator runs into when they try to track visitors using web analytics is that they end up skewing the numbers due to their own visits to their site. You would like to think that you could somehow never visit your site, but that is simply not feasible.
One method I use to try to avoid this corruption to my stats is to use Google Chrome browser in Incognito mode. By doing this I dramatically reduce the traces of my own visits, and if their is some contamination I can simply remove any records that track back to the Chrome browser. So few people use Chrome that removing them from my overall reports doesn’t alter the results by much.
