In almost every large industry, there’s a leader and a nearby competitor. Third place usually lags behind and is not often mentioned. Apple and Android, Walgreens and CVS, Burger King and McDonalds…you get the picture. It’s no different with paid web analytics - Google Analytics vs. Adobe Analytics.
Adobe is a giant in its own right. Often a pioneer of industry, Adobe offers dozens of top tier software applications. You’d be hard pressed to find a marketing professional who isn’t fluent in at least four Adobe applications. It only makes sense that they would expand their brand to include a web analytics platform.
One of the most distinct advantages of Adobe Analytics has over any competitor, including Google Analytics 360, is its integration with its own apps and third party apps. The Adobe Experience Cloud includes Adobe Marketing, Adobe Experience Manager, Adobe Target, Adobe Campaign, and Adobe Analytics. In particular, Adobe Target and Adobe Campaign allow for a business to truly expand and thrive from the analytics. Adobe Target allows you to run A/B split tests on your website and advertisements, optimizer your site, app, or email, and even target users based on their behaviors. Adobe Campaign allows for customer profiles to be used for email and retargeting efforts. The drag and drop features makes it easy to build campaigns, and the integration across platforms means that audiences you’ve identified in Adobe Analytics, you can then use in Adobe Campaign. Adobe Campaign can even translate emails to different languages! Google Analytics does not offer anything quite like the Adobe Experience when it comes to app integration.
Adobe Analytics offers powerful metrics and dimensions to translate your raw data into meaningful and actionable information. With Adobe Analytics, the sky is the limit. Whereas you can be limited with Google Analytics with scope level (hit, user, session, product), Adobe Analytics allows for full customization when it comes to sifting through your data (Christopher, 2017). For larger corporations that know exactly what they want to get from their website and app data, having maximum control over how the data is process and new ways to view it is a huge benefit. If you really want to delve deep into the belly of the beast, Adobe Analytics can allow you to track every stage of a customer’s journey or progress through intensive but informative segmentation. By aligning KPIs with certain stages of a journey, such as interest or engagement, you’re able to see all of the visitors in those particular segments. This can help identify if one aspect of the customer journey is faltering and narrow down why (Millett, 2017). While this is similar to a goal funnel in Google Analytics, it’s a much more detailed and sophisticated process. Google Analytics is obviously limited in this respect.
With more freedom in reporting, metrics, and dimensions, Adobe Analytics can also provide a more thorough overview for attribution. The two most common types of attribution are last touch - which is the ‘click’ that brought the customer to conversion, and first touch - which initiated the customer’s journey with your brand. Adobe Analytics can actually allow you to pair these two side by side with channels defined so you can see exactly how high the conversions are for organic search, social media, and more. While last touch can seem like the most important, the first touch also allows for the initial brand awareness to take hold (Millett, 2016). The platform also allows for user tracking up to and through a macro-conversion, which can be helpful in seeing how many visits it took a particular user to finally purchase or sign up.
Many of the base features of Adobe Analytics compare well across the board with Google Analytics. Both utilize multiple sources, like mobile apps and websites, and bring aggregate data into the platform. Both services use their own version of a Tag Manager to allow for website and conversion tracking to feed back into the analytics. On the surface, they both can provide a business with the basics they need to refine their website and marketing efforts.
One of the biggest advantages Google Analytics & Google Analytics 360 have over Adobe Analytics is their free starter version. If you rack up more than 10 million hits per month, you would need to pay for the Google Analytics 360 version. The cost of the upgrade? A cool $150,000 (Eapen, 2017). The good news is all your data is still kept from the free version. Most small and medium sized businesses would be fine with the free version of Google Analytics. For a global brand, like Patagonia or Nissan, you need more than the essentials to elevate your brand. Adobe Analytics does not provide online estimates, since they generally build the exact platform you need, so pricing could be lower than Google Analytics 360 or soar well above double (Eapen, 2017).
Another distinct advantage of Google Analytics is that you can generally set it up and navigate it yourself. Google offers hours of online training courses to help you get better acquainted and there are hundreds of other blogs and videos with tips and trips. Adobe Analytics requires a trained professional to implement the program and correctly set up your analytics to reflect the data you wish to see (Eapen, 2017). It may seem overwhelming to need to learn a sophisticated system, but the benefits for your company may very well out weigh the learning curve.
So what’s right for your business? Many of the bloggers and experts I’ve read in my research suggest sticking to what you’re comfortable with. Unless there are major pitfalls to your current platform, they suggest if you’re acquainted with Google Analytics, you stay the course. While I can agree that it’s better to be well versed in something than stumbling through a user guide, pushing boundaries and getting the most from your marketing should be your main goal. Many of the IMC classes have stressed creating objectives for our campaigns- which should be measurable. Your web analytics tool should be able to give you the measurable proof you need to properly evaluate your marketing efforts.
References
Christopher, J. (2017, April 26). Enterprise Analytics Tool Comparison: Google Analytics 360 vs. Adobe Analytics. Blastam. Retrieved from: https://www.blastam.com/blog/analytics-tool-comparison-google-vs-adobe
Eapen, D. (2018, February 12). A Quick Comparative Review of Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics 360. Rawsoft. Retrieved from: http://www.rawsoft.com/blog/a-quick-comparative-review-of-adobe-analytics-cloud-vs-google-analytics-360/
Millett, B. (2017, September 6). Mining Customer Journey Insights from Adobe Analytics. Blastam. Retrieved from: https://www.blastam.com/blog/customer-journey-insights-adobe-analytics
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