Anyone using "Measurement Protocol"?

[Rick Buffkin]

Just curious if anyone here is using Measurement Protocol. I'm going to be implementing this very shortly on a couple of my shared servers. Those who don't know what this is, it's Server Side Google Analytics. There's no Jscript. It's all done via HTTP post to the GA API. With this set up, basically any electronic device that can access the internet can push data into GA with a HTTP post. Here's a quick video explaining.

 

[Mark A Hoffman]

I've looked at it..it looks interesting for sure. What is your use case for it?

 

[v8apps]

Ooh ho ho ho ho ho
While this seems really cool, I'm not sure what the value is for a dealer website
Most dealer websites already have a google analytics implementation

Plus I would really only want to track actual browser displays vs emulators and robots

This would be perfect for APIs, and software solutions, but still dont get why would dealers care about it?

 

[Mark A Hoffman]

Well, I don't think dealers would care about it unless they are software developers. From my quick look at it, it would be useful if you wanted to store a lot of first-party data. Out of the box, GA doesn't let you identify specific users. With this, you could store a first-party cookie and track individual user's activities. So rather than storing all of that data yourself, you could just shove it into GA and use their API to query it. Which has some value I suppose if you don't (or can't) build that stuff yourself. But it's usefulness by itself seems pretty limited to dealers.

 

[Rick Buffkin]

I've been playing around with this for a few days now off and on. I was thinking... what could I use this for??? How about being able to track if someone hijacks some of your custom graphics like this one? Hey... Don't judge... I spent alot of time on that pic

Or... being able to track PDF downloads from direct links like this...
http://www.beaman-auto.com/windowsticker/JTMCY7AJ0G4038952.pdf

Soooo... I put measurement protocol in place and wallahh. It works very nicely I must say.

Does the dealership still use spreadsheets? Our Group does. They're emailed daily. Are the recipients actually looking at them? Well, you can now push that view into GA and know for sure using excel and a HTTP post when the xls is opened.

Here is a article from Mudd Advertising using Protocol with call tracking
http://mudd.com/blog/google-analytics-measurement-protocol-for-php-campaign-tracking/

With protocol, you can identify specific users. You can't pass any personal identifying info into it GA (name, email address, etc..). You can pass 2 forms of User parameters. A Client ID and the User ID unique to that user (maybe a DMS id. Maybe?? To early to tell).
https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/parameters#user

Here's a page for tracking Offline transactions.
http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2014/03/04/tracking-offline-transactions-universal-analytics/

 

[Rick Buffkin]

You know... Researching this product got me thinking. The CRM companies could use this and tie offline to online. When a lead gets submitted from the dealers website, the Users Client ID gets extracted from the _ga cookie on the device. That unique ID is then passed into the CRM via the ADF lead form from the dealers website. Now you have the users Unique ID from the website visit in the CRM. If an appt gets set for that lead, the CRM can post an event to the Dealers GA account via Measurement Protocol with that Client ID attached to it. Now you would know that specific website visit generated an Appt in your CRM via your GA account. You would be able to see the all Appt's session info, pageviews and all the website tracking data for that appt. If that appt sells, the CRM does a post to GA and it would get even stronger. Now you could see all your website data on your sold leads via GA. You could even pass Gross data if you want to. It would be the same as Transaction data from a eCommerce website. You could do the exact same thing with phone calls and dynamic call tracking.

The Client Id info is extracted from the _ga cookie when the page renders along with the unique call tracking number and if the number is called, that Client ID and Caller ID tracking info is passed into the CRM. Now you would know all the site session info for the calls generated from the website. When the customer shows up in the showroom and logged into the CRM, a post from the CRM to GA with the Client ID would show an event that the customer is now in the showroom.

The Key is passing the Client Id from the _ga cookie.

 

[Rick Buffkin]

BTW - My analytics results from the Pic above. I can see what site requested the image from my server in my GA account and not have to go into the server side metrics. Using this you can track what sites are using your images and the ones that aren't suppose to be using them, you can call em' up and lay the smack down on em'.