Extending Omniture Analytics with Flash based Super Cookies
Adobe now owns Omniture, so like everyone else, we're expecting some merging of their respective technologies in the coming few years. Flash based super cookies are an ideal compliment to Site Catalyst and Test & Target, but despite the ease of implementation and widespread usage of both technologies, there is minimal current overlap.
Given we are always trying to squeeze more value from analytics, we started playing with flash based super cookies and once we got it working, we were amazed at the possibilities. This post is aimed to touch on several of these areas where we think flash can add major value to existing Omniture solutions. We've already covered the super cookie technology in a previous post, so we won't dwell on the basics, if you need some more background please read the previous post:
Examples of Super Cookie additions to Omniture deployments
- Flash based persistent cookies work across multiple domains and multiple browsers - Standard cookie attrition reduces Test and Target profiling effectiveness and consequently reduces the potential uplift the technology can provide.
- Cookie deletion measurements - How often do your existing users delete their standard cookies?
- Browser switching measurements - Do your users switch between multiple browsers? How does this affect your analytics?
1. Super persistant cookies
For those people already using Omniture Site Catalyst's s.getAndPersistValue plugin, this is can be thought of as a substantially improved version, it doesn't matter if the user switches browser, the cookie exists in all browsers. It doesn't matter if the user clears their cache, deletes their cookies, it still persists. For analytics heavily dependent on a client side value persisting, this is invaluable, it directly translates to significantly more accurate analytics.
For those using Test and Target the value of the super cookie is even more pronounced. Targeting parameters like product and category affinity often take many page views and multiple sessions before profiling parameters can be accurately determined. When standard cookies are deleted, all that rich information is lost. While people think they've done the right thing deleting their cookies to protect their privacy, they may also be perplexed at why your site suddenly starts showing them products and services they have absolutely no interest in. There is very little awareness that the cookie deletion has actually devalued the service provided to them.
Persisting the profile - In order to keep the rich information on your users no matter whether they delete cookies or switch browsers, you have two main options:
a) Respawn their visitor ID - All their profile information is associated with their visitor ID. By reseting this to it's original value (stored either prior to cookie deletion, or from a previous browser), their profile remains intact. This method can also help you to keep more realistic figures on unique visitors as long as you can replace the visitor ID prior to sending any requests to Omniture. Although this gives the smoothest operation, the privacy issues are obvious and must be addressed.
b) Keep a copy of targeting parameters in a super cookie - If you detect a cookie deletion, resend the the parameters to Omniture so they can be re-bind them to the new visitor ID. This is a little more privacy friendly, as you're allowing the user to remove association to a specific ID, but their profile remains. You no longer know who they are, but you still know a little about them to help serve them better.
The image above is an example of respawning an identifier which would have long since expired when using traditional cookies. The flow shows how the customer is already known and because a lead situation has been identified, he will be called by a sales rep.
2. Cookie Deletion Measurements
If you grapple with privacy concerns but are still desperate to know how many of your users delete their cookies, then you can use this method to find out without fear of privacy invasion. This technique is useful for adjusting data inaccuracies caused by cookie deletion.
Super cookies remain after users delete their standard cookies. Because flash cookies are not currently dealt with by browser settings (Chrome has some functionality), or understood by consumers, they are rarely deleted (assume this will increase in the future). By comparing the super cookie value to the standard cookie value, you can quickly tell if a previous value existed and has since been deleted. The high level logic is found below, this would be done in JavaScript:
IF standardCookie(a) is not equal to superCookie(a) AND superCookie(a) is not null THEN
{s.propXX = "cookie deletion"s.eVarXX = "cookie deletion"s.events = "eventXX"SEND OMNITURE REQUEST}
The above logic would enable you to see several things including:
a) The total number of cookie deletions (using the prop or event)
b) Conversion rates of users who have deleted their cookies vs those that haven't (using the eVar). Note: This is particularly useful for Test and Target, where profiling enhances conversion.
You can directly measure the uplift of normal users compared to users post cookie deletion.
3. Browser Switching Measurements
Many people now use multiple internet browsers for a variety of reasons, evaluation, different features, old bookmarks and probably most importantly, technical issues. The problem for analysts is that traditional cookies are browser specific, so each browser appears as a different user. Super cookies can quantify this issue.
Sadly compatibility issues affect all browsers, although i shudder to think of the man hours wasted catering for IE6 issues. For example, a while back I emailed Citibank to let them know their site was completely crippled in Firefox, which was my browser of choice at the time (incidentally they never responded, i assume they were too busy issuing CDO's or something...). I didn't have Internet Explorer or any other browser, so i had to go and install it just to access Citibank. I continued to check back in Firefox from time to time waiting for the issue to be fixed and eventually it worked, but now i use Chrome... My experience with Citibank is fairly common, i've used 3 browsers in past 12 months as my primary browser, one switch was by choice and one was forced by technical issues, if Citibank didn't require me to identify myself by logging in, they would think i was 3 different users.
So what does all this mean for super cookies? In the above case, Citibank may have assumed there was no need to support Firefox because none of their customers used it, but in reality, they couldn't use it because it didn't work. What if they had a way to see that i had visited several pages in Firefox and on a particular page i switched browsers. This would provide them with the critical point where a technical issue was occurring.
Looking beyond the Citibank example, super cookies provide the capability to keep a cross browser profile that remains even if a user uninstalls a specific browser and switches to a completely new one, but for the purposes of the exercise we are only looking to quantify the issue.
To create this capability the following pseudo code logic can be used. Again this would be written in JavaScript.
IF current browser is not equal to superCookie(browser) THEN
{s.propXX = "old browser > new browser"s.eVarXX = "old browser > new browser"s.events = "eventXX"SEND OMNITURE REQUESTset superCookie(browser) = current browser}
The above logic would enable you to see:
a) Which browsers people are switching from/to (s.propXX). This can help you plan future testing resource allocations, etc.
b) Which pages browser switches are commonly associated with (above logic does not show a direct correlation to a specific page, but you can store the final session page in the super cookie and use that to see if the user has made a browser switch on the same page, which may indicate a browser issue).
c) How many browser switches have occurred (s.eventXX)
d) How many users use multiple browsers (if you keep a common visitor ID across multiple browsers)
Hopefully this article has helped to show you how super cookies can be used to improve your Omniture Analytics deployment accuracy. For actual code examples, please see our original super cookie post or download the zip file below. For any questions or enquiries, please contact us at insights@datalicious.com
