In the digital marketing world, the demand for accountable and accurate measurement is increasing.
The goal of any marketers, is to make sales. On the web, they have relied on a number of measurements, including the 'last-click attribution' which shows a part of a customer's buying journey. But those measurements aren't always accurate and effective.
This is especially true in the modern, mobile-driven era, where people are more active on the web using multiple devices before finally making a purchase.
"A customer finds your site by clicking one of your AdWords ads. She returns a week later by clicking over from a social network. That same day, she comes back a third time via one of your email campaigns, and a few hours later, she returns again directly and makes a purchase. In the Last Interaction attribution model, the final touchpoint - in this case, the Direct channel - would receive 100% of the credit for the sale," explained Google.
This is why Google is introducing Cross Device capabilities in Google Analytics.
"Instead of seeing metrics in Analytics that show two separate sessions (e.g., one on desktop and the other on mobile), you’ll be able to see when users visited your website from two different devices. By understanding these device interactions as part of a broader customer experience, you can make more informed product and marketing decisions."
What this means, Google Analytics is allowing marketers to better understand their audience's behavior, in which in turn will give them insight about their ad spending and marketing focus.
"Say you’re a marketer for a travel company," continued Google. "With the new Acquisition Device report, you may find that a lot of your customers first come to your website on mobile to do their initial research before booking a trip later on desktop. Based on that insight, you might choose to prioritize mobile ad campaigns to reach people as they start to plan their trip."
With the update, Analytics can help web marketers to create a more accurate audience list to reach the right customers, and smarter audiences based on the action the audience take on various devices.
To help them with this, Cross Device capabilities in Google Analytics also include 'Device Overlap', 'Device Paths' and 'Channels', more specific streams which shows how people are coming to across to your website, adding more transparency to the process.
As previously said, digital marketing in the growing web involves a lot of data. To understand the bigger picture, marketers should dig into the smaller information first. And in modern business, brands are looking for more accurate data tools to measure their performance, and target their ad spend.
Cross Device data that is initially launched as beta in Analytics, is designed specifically for this.