What is Ads Web Analytics?

Updated 

This article will cover the overview of web analytics and why should you use it in advertising, along with a brief on the different web analytics tools.

Overview

Web Analytics refers to the collection, measurement, and analysis of website data and user behavior to understand and improve website performance. It involves the use of tools and techniques to track website traffic, visitor behavior, and other website-related data.

Web Analytics tools can provide insight into key website metrics such as the number of visitors, the sources of traffic, user demographics, popular pages, bounce rates, conversion rates, and other metrics. This data can be used to optimize the website's design, content, and user experience to improve engagement, drive more traffic, and increase conversions.

It can be used by website owners, marketers, and developers to gain insight into how their website is performing, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to optimize their websites for better performance.

Why should you use Web Analytics in Advertising

Web Analytics is essential for advertising because it helps you understand how users interact with your website, which can inform your advertising strategy and help you make data-driven decisions. Here are some reasons why web analytics is important for advertising:

Web Analytics can give you insights into who is visiting your website, including their demographics, interests, and behavior. This information can help you tailor your advertising messaging and targeting to better reach your target audience.

Web Analytics can help you measure the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns. By tracking metrics such as clicks, impressions, and conversions, you can evaluate the success of your campaigns and make adjustments to improve performance.

By using web analytics to track the performance of your campaigns, you can identify which campaigns are delivering the best return on investment (ROI) and adjust your ad spend accordingly. This can help you make the most of your advertising budget and ensure that your campaigns are delivering value.

Web Analytics can help you identify areas of your website that may be causing users to drop off or not convert. By identifying these areas and making improvements, you can improve the overall user experience and increase conversion rates.

Web Analytics Tools

Web Analytics tools provide information about the origin of website traffic, how users navigate and interact throughout a website, what content and webpages they’re most engaged with, and if they take valuable actions on the site, known as conversions, these include purchases or contact requests. Using this data, marketers can optimize channel and website performance with data-led decisions.

A number of analytics tools are available on the market today. Some of them are free, and some of them require a paid subscription. Paid analytics products and free analytics products will differ in terms of support, features, and functionality.

Some examples of major analytics tools include:

Analytics Tool
Description

Google Analytics

Easily helps you identify which social media platforms drive the maximum, targeted traction to your site, while also finding out how these social media users interact with your website.

Adobe Analytics
(Omniture/SiteCatalyst)

SiteCatalyst is great for tracking eCommerce users or normal website users once they visit your site and provide insights as per the user behavior. It also helps in understanding which products and pages are most viewed and have the highest transaction rate.

IBM Digital Analytics (Core Metrics)

A holistic solution that includes both cross-channel journey analytics and customer behavior analytics. With actionable insights on your digital customers across multiple channels, you can deliver more targeted and personalized offers. 

​There are a few minor web analytics tools also used by small companies like

  • Woopra

  • Simple Analytics

  • Semrush

  • Piwik

The market leader and most commonly used analytics program is the free version of Google Analytics or GA as it is sometimes known. The paid version of GA, called Google Analytics 360, offers some additional functionality in terms of report validity and sample sizes. But it's mainly for websites that receive more than 10 million page views per month. For the vast majority of websites, the free version of Google Analytics is perfectly fine.

Because of its functionality and widespread adoption in the market, Google Analytics is seen by many marketers as the single 'source of truth' for website traffic, engagement, and conversion data.