This morning I awoke to a new campaign that was launched by the guys at Visual Website Optimizer and I was impressed.

Let’s break down the campaign:

The campaign landing page, in this instance a blog post, clearly provides incentive for visitors to engage in the campaign.  Take a look at the blog title, who doesn’t want to win $3000 worth of optimization services?

The parameters of the campaign (the challenge, prize, steps for how to enter, how the winner is chosen, and additional background information about the challenge) are clearly presented, front and center, and above the fold.

The call-to-action, pick which design you think is the winning version, is cleanly  presented on the page but what makes this work is how easy they made it to “enter the contest”.  A Tweet button is located beneath each option, you click the Tweet button for the version you think is the winner and that’s it, you’ve entered the contest.  Not only is this super easy for the visitor to do but it creates a great viral component to the campaign — now all my followers know I’ve chosen my winner is some contest, I’m sure they will click the link to find out more.

It was no surprise to me that after I tweeted my pick, conversations began to popup on Twitter about the contest.

Several of my followers entered the contest themselves.

A few side conversations started about why one version would perform better than the other.

Also, many of my followers retweeted my original Tweet that was generated when I entered the contest.

I would be amiss if I didn’t comment on targeting content to your audience.  This campaign is perfectly targeted to those of us who work in the measure and optimization community.  We all like to think that we know best when it comes to how to design a site for increased conversions, a test, a very public test, is a great way for us to prove our skills.  Campaigns that play on ego are typically very successful.

I’d be very interested to hear from the team at Visual Website Optimizer on how well this campaign performed.  From the outside looking in, this is a model for how to run a successful viral campaign.

If you’ve spent any amount of time using SiteCatalyst, you’ve probably run across the Netscape Plug-ins report. This is a nice report to see what browser plug-ins your visitors have installed, however (as you can probably tell from the name of the report), this report does not include visitors running IE, which probably makes up a good bulk of your traffic.

Knowing all the plug-ins a visitor has installed may or may not be all that important to you, however there may be a select few plug-ins that are critical to providing your users with a quality experience.

If you Google ‘javascript browser plugin detection’ you will find a large number of scripts you can download to identify browser plug-ins.

Why do we need a script anyway?

Firefox exposes an object, navigator.plugins, which provides an array of browser plug-ins, which I’m assuming Omniture makes use of when populating the Netscape Plug-ins Report, however IE does not. In order to detect plug-ins within IE, you are forced to instantiate the ActiveX Control for the plug-in you want to detect.

Items to consider before tracking plug-ins in IE:
1. Instantiating ActiveX Controls on every page of your site, may have a negative impact on user experience, so only detect the plug-ins that are most important to measure.

2. When you instantiate an ActiveX Control for the first time, the browser will give a popup warning message asking you to approve or disapprove the control, you know, the yellow bar at the top of the browser. Not the greatest thing from a measurement perspective.

There are a set of “approved” ActiveX Controls that will not trigger the popup warning. If anyone knows where this list of approved controls is published, please let me know.

OK, I understand why I need to track IE plug-ins differently and the potential drawbacks, so how do I deploy the tracking?

As I mentioned, there are a wealth of pre-built scripts available on the Internet that you can make use of. I made use of a free script available from JavaScriptKit.com. I took this script and modified it to my needs — track if my visitors had Flash installed or not.

I added the following code snippet to my doPlugins function within my s_code.js file.

var agt=navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase();
var ie  = (agt.indexOf("msie") != -1);
var ns  = (navigator.appName.indexOf("Netscape") != -1);
var win = ((agt.indexOf("win")!=-1) || (agt.indexOf("32bit")!=-1));
var mac = (agt.indexOf("mac")!=-1);

if (ie && win) {	pluginlist = detectIE("ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash.1","Shockwave Flash"); }
if (ns || !win) {
		nse = ""; for (var i=0;i < navigator.mimeTypes.length;i++) nse += navigator.mimeTypes[i].type.toLowerCase();
		pluginlist = detectNS("application/x-shockwave-flash","Shockwave Flash");
}

function detectIE(ClassID,name) { result = false; document.write('\n'); if (result) return name+','; else return ''; }
function detectNS(ClassID,name) { n = ""; if (nse.indexOf(ClassID) != -1) if (navigator.mimeTypes[ClassID].enabledPlugin != null) n = name+","; return n; }

pluginlist += navigator.javaEnabled() ? "Java," : "";
if (pluginlist.length > 0) pluginlist = pluginlist.substring(0,pluginlist.length-1);

if (pluginlist.indexOf("Flash")!=-1){
	s.prop8="Flash Installed";
}
else{
	s.prop8="Flash Not Installed";
}

Notice that I altered the code to only look for “Flash” but you can in theory look for any browser plug-in using this approach, you just need to know the name of the Class/Object.

In this example, I have captured if Flash is installed or not into a custom traffic variable (prop) and correlated it with Browser.

Recently I had a client request to capture the link text associated with PDF downloads from their site. I scratched my head for awhile and finally decided the best option was to ask the Twitter community for help.

My good buddy Andreas came to the rescue.

The Goal
Capture ‘The Dude – A Complete Biography’, from the link below, into a custom conversion variable.

The Dude - A Complete Biography

The Code

var url=s.linkHandler(".pdf","d");
if(url){
            var currentobj=s.eo?s.eo:s.lnk;
            if (currentobj && currentobj.innerHTML) {
                        s.eVar1 = currentobj.innerHTML;
                        s.linkTrackVars="eVar1";
            }
}

The Result

s.eVar1="The Dude - A Complete Biography";

Thanks Andreas, the code is clean, concise, and accomplished exactly what I needed!

NOTE: The above requires the addition of the linkHandler plugin to your s_code.js file.

How can I see referrers to a specific page?
The first thing you will need to do is create a correlation between Page Name and Referring Domain.

1. Log into SiteCatalyst
2. Access the Report Suite Manager found under the Admin link.
3. Select the report suite(s) you want to create the correlation for.
4. Click on Edit Settings–>Traffic–>Data Correlations
5. Add a 2-Item correlation as shown:

By creating the Correlation, a reporting option will be added to both the Pages and Referring Domains reports. To view referring domains by a specific page name, run the pages report (Site Content–>Pages).

By clicking on the breakdown icon you can now access the new data correlation you created.

Select the breakdown icon next to the page for which you want to see referring domains and select Traffic Sources–>Referring Domains. This report will show you referring domains to the specific page.

*Data Correlations are not retroactive, so you will only be able to report on data going forward from the time you established the correlation.

**Data Correlations work both ways, so this correlation will allow you to break down referring domains by page name i.e. what are the most popular pages that are viewed from referring domain Google.com?

How can I see average page views per source?
Page Views per Visit is a great way to normalize site consumption for any medium. The first thing we will need is the metric ‘Page Views per Visit’. To create this new metric, we will use SiteCatalyst’s Calculated Metrics feature.

1. Log into SiteCatalyst
2. Access the Report Suite Manager found under the Admin link.
3. Select the report suite(s) you want to create the new metric for.
4. Click Edit Settings–>General–>Calculated Metrics
5. Create the new metric as shown

You will now be able to use this metric in any report where Page Views and Visits are available.

* This calculated metric is a bit tricky in that it dependent upon the metrics being available in the report. If you are using this for a traffic based report, ensure you have visits enabled for the report you wish to use this metric. If you wish to use this metric for a conversion report, ensure that you have conversion visits enabled and that you capture page views in a custom event.

** I’m sure there is a much more straightforward way to get this metric, if anyone has ideas, please post a comment on how your solution.

Back in February I decided to do a series of ‘10 Questions with…’ posts. My first post was with Ben Gaines who helped make @OmnitureCare what it is today. Many of you know that Ben has moved on to a role in Product Management and so I thought who better to ask my next 10 questions to than Jorgen Sorensen, the new face of @OmnitureCare.

1. Were you a big Twitter user before you took this job?

JS: Not really – certainly not as much as you. Twitter and I had just become acquainted when I stepped into this role. Before I was asked to fill in for Ben Gaines during his vacation, I was newly scheduled on the overnight shift, helping our international users. Soon after starting the overnight shift, I was asked to begin monitoring Twitter during the wee hours of the morning. I hadn’t used Twitter at all before, so the first thing I did was buy a pile of books on the subject. (You can’t buy experience, but you can always learn from experts. If anything, I try to be well-read on the subject at hand.) Shortly thereafter, someone was needed to hold down the fort during Ben’s absence. Aside from a few weeks practice on a couple of private accounts, pretty much from the time I first said “Hello, world!” as OmnitureCare, I was a Twitter newbie. Mind you, I was not an Omniture newbie. I had a lot of experience supporting most Omniture technologies. But for me, during the first few weeks as the OmnitureCare stand-in, I was definitely learning Twitter on my feet.

2. What has been the biggest challenge in taking over OmnitureCare from Ben?

JS: The biggest challenge of all is the one that I hadn’t had practice in – the weight of officially representing the company. I’ve always had a passion for excellent customer service, and I was confident in my technical knowledge. Basically, every other part of the job had me very excited, but I was genuinely afraid of making public mistakes more than anything. (Though I’m not afraid to admit I’m wrong from time to time.) First of all I had to get past that hesitation, and learn to commit to send a response regardless. Nobody likes to take a chance on being wrong in a public forum. What made it less scary is, Twitter users in general are courteous, and everyone in the Omniture Twitter community is particularly helpful and kind. So the few mistakes I did make were completely forgiven.

3. I really enjoy how companies like Omniture, Comcast, and others have a specific personality to each of their Twitter accounts, was it talked about that OmnitureCare would always be a specific person or did it just happen?

JS: For a while, I was thinking about what I should pick for my own username – some kind of mash-up of my name and the company’s name like “OmnitureJorgen” or if that was taken, “RealOMTRJorgen.” (Okay, I’m just kidding about the latter.) Actually, from my perspective, the plan to have me take over for Ben by inheriting the OmnitureCare account happened spontaneously. In retrospect, I know that our management was probably weighing the costs and benefits of changing faces, I just wasn’t a key contributor to the debate surrounding the process of changeover. The benefits are pretty easy to enumerate. 2000. That’s how many followers (I think) OmnitureCare already had. Also, 10,000 (give or take). That’s how many Tweets Ben Gaines had already exchanged with users in the Omniture Twitter community over the course of two years. It amounts to a name that is as good as a brand for us. I really don’t know if it worked out this way by brilliant design or by fortuitous circumstance, but I know that choosing to have the account be a specific person was a really good idea.

4. The transition from Ben to you, from an outside perspective, was extremely smooth, why did it go so well?

JS: To me, the whole success should be attributed to Ben, and I know he did it because he cares a lot about the community of users we help to answer questions. On the one hand, Ben Gaines’ shoes are impossible to fill. He’s a trailblazer. Ben carved out the niche for this role, making tough decisions out of necessity that would shape Omniture’s unique Twitter support model. So there are many aspects of OmnitureCare I didn’t write the book on. For instance, in the Twitterverse, personality is incredibly important, and Ben had established his own personality as OmnitureCare, which no one can duplicate. Thankfully, I don’t need to, and it wouldn’t ring true if I tried. Ben made easy my stepping into this role; he’s a good mentor and friend. Actually, he’s more like a big brother who watched out for me until I hit my stride. I really appreciate his help because I know he’s also carrying the responsibilities of Product Management now.

5. What has been the biggest surprise since you became OmnitureCare?

JS: I can answer that without hesitation, it’s the sheer volume of issues needed to be responded to on a daily basis. But in the same breath I owe some people a sincere apology and acknowledgement that I dropped the ball more than once while learning to keep up. I’ve come face to face with the unpalatable truth, I’m not good at multitasking. When I first started tweeting, my goal was to remain on the phones or responding to incidents at least 50% of the time. That expectation was completely unrealistic – at least for the level of attention I expect to give to the users I’m supporting. I really don’t know if it was this way for Ben – possibly so – but for me, on those particularly busy days, I never stop working. If the job weren’t so incredibly satisfying I wouldn’t be able to keep it up. It’s an enormous task, but I don’t regret a minute. I only wish I could do more.

6. The role of Twitter support at Omniture is expanding, is it mainly based around geography?

JS: Let me point out that our Omniture users everywhere around the world are very important to us. We don’t want to have a closed mindset that Twitter coverage during the hours of 8-5 in U.S. Mountain Standard Time is good enough. In the past, our Twitter support wasn’t based around Geography, it was based on Ben Gaines’s commitment to make himself available at any time as best he could. That takes incredible dedication for a single support agent. Now, we’re two agents, (@OmnitureCare and @OmnitureFC) and our mandate is to actively assist the Omniture Twitter community from coast to coast, and then some. Currently, you can contact us via Twitter and get timely responses at least 12 hours a day. Eventually, one thing I hope we’ll be able to do is offer round-the-clock Twitter support.

As you may know, recently ClientCare opened support on weekends, becoming fully 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. It used to be more difficult to get immediate attention if you’re one of those “late night project” kind of analysts who just wants to get a head start on a report for Monday. And we know that sometimes there’s a Weekend Only online sale, where unfortunately a last second implementation problem arises. I believe that what we need to do next is match our Twitter support to those ClientCare levels. It probably won’t come right away, because we’ll need to recruit more team members to make this possible. But I see it coming true someday a little further down the road.

7. How do you reach beyond your core followers on Twitter to let new Omniture customers know that you are there to offer assistance?

JS: The first step is a lot of listening. I try to make sure I tune in to the most common industry keywords, especially Omniture product names. Also every so often a keyword I hadn’t been searching for recurs in a lot of tweets, so I’ll sometimes organize a search for just that phrase. I’m looking for ways I can meaningfully contribute to existing conversations. I don’t think people want to be bombarded with unsolicited sales pitches, and I personally see it as a slippery slope from “Hi, I saw your tweet and I think I can help you,” to “I see you’re talking about something related to my company, may I interrupt you for a shameless promotion?” So, it requires a judgment call, deciding whether what I am thinking about saying would be welcomed by the other party, or not. I think for the most part the people I reach out to appreciate the contact.

The group of more experienced users are terrific at helping to answer questions, too. In fact, they can provide a perspective that I haven’t had; I do mostly troubleshooting, where something isn’t working properly, but I’ve never been in the analyst’s chair. (At least not exclusively.) And I haven’t done any full-scale web development. So it’s really valuable to cultivate a peer to peer help environment that is a unique alternative to calls, chats and emails. OmnitureCare Twitter support helps supplement those other support channels because it’s an open room. You can shout out your question or your problem, and engage the help of every expert who overhears and has information to add. Or if you need to bring me a problem with sensitive proprietary information, I can work with you via Direct Message.

This is something that really matters to me. If you’re new to Omniture, the learning curve can be steep. I was there myself not too long ago. Adobe is integrating Omniture technology into almost everything we offer. This means a lot of people who didn’t know Omniture before – web developers and programmers, maybe even marketers and graphic designers – are starting to ask themselves, what is this, and what can it do for me? I’m equally responsible for helping answer their questions as I am helping the ‘core’ of users who bring me the deep technical questions. I’m really excited to assist customers who are just getting started. What I want to encourage is, whether you’re new or experienced, if you have something to say, please join the discussion.

8. What skill best prepared you for this job?

JS: There are a lot of us in ClientCare and even from other departments in the company who are qualified for the technical aspect of Twitter support. I may be less technically qualified than many others who were under consideration, but what I think I bring to the role is my passion and enthusiasm for helping our clients. I think I set myself apart for this job because I genuinely do it just for love of doing it. I almost feel like I was made for Twitter support. It calls for personality, technical aptitude, and clear communication with extreme brevity. These are skills that I feel I have in abundance. In return I get the immense satisfaction of interacting with Omniture users on so many levels, and I get to facilitate or ‘catalyze’, if you’ll excuse the choice of words, their use of SiteCatalyst and other Omniture products. Some nights I go home exhausted (because some days it takes an extra couple of hours to get back with an accurate answer on every issue on my plate) but I honestly do go home each night fulfilled and happy to help our users.

9. You’ve mentioned Frank from ComcastCares in the past, what other companies are using Twitter the right way?

JS: It isn’t my policy to single out the best of a virtually limitless pool. And I can’t say that I’ve personally had enough instances of needing to take advantage of other companies’ support via Twitter (though I often think “I wish they had a Twitter team” when I get frustrated with a product.) I acknowledge, there certainly are some leaders of the pack, but I wouldn’t want to imply by exclusion that any company is not necessarily using Twitter effectively.

I’d prefer to list what matters to me and works in the best interests of Adobe’s Omniture business unit, which I represent. If your company is seeking to fulfill the same needs for your customers that we are, you may want to take these into consideration. If not, you shouldn’t imitate us; you have to write your own rules.

1. Above all, be personable. “People don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care.”

2. Seek to constructively contribute to whatever conversation you take part in. “If I’m not helping somebody, then I’m not helping anybody.”

3. Be complete, truthful, and accurate as much as 140 characters will allow. It’s all right not to know the answer to a question, as long as you know where you can find out.

4. Be timely. Users shouldn’t have to wait longer than necessary for an answer to a straightforward question.

5. When you choose to tweet without directly @ replying, make it content that will be worthwhile to all of your followers.

6. Retweet judiciously. Good stuff is worthy of repeating, but not to the point that it dilutes your timeline. (Personally I don’t feel comfortable ‘tweeting my own horn.’)

7. Know when it’s better not to say anything. Furthermore, know when it’s necessary to say something.

8. Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative. (This is good advice no matter what you apply it to.)

9. Read your followers’ (and competitors’) blogs, and give meaningful feedback. Retweet if you like it. Give. Give far more than you ask.

A lot of companies are currently experimenting with expanding their Twitter presence, alongside Facebook and other social media channels. I think you have to treat it like an experiment, and try a few new things, measure what feedback you get. This is what led to the quote of the day, which turned out to be really popular. Other ideas were less successful. But by trying new things and gathering feedback we learned things we didn’t know before about followers of OmnitureCare. I try to have lots of ideas. They say that’s the best way to have at least one good one.

10. What is the one thing that every company that uses Twitter for support should know?

JS: It’s a piece of advice Ben Gaines gave me when I stepped into his place: Remember, you don’t own the discussion, the community does. The rest of my advice just follows that idea. Answer the questions they direct at you and the ones that people shout out that you can give the best answer to. Pay attention, and ask insightful questions of your own to the people who talk about your topic. Don’t butt in unnecessarily, don’t contradict others. Be polite and helpful. Do a lot of reading before you speak up. If you’re personable and not sales-pitchy, people will follow you because you make it worth their doing so. Then all you have to do is live up to your promise and support them.

Nine times out of ten if I’m pulling a parameter out of the query string, it has something to do with campaign tracking.

s.campaign = s.getQueryParam('cid');

However, when automating your measurement implementation, there is often a wealth of information that can be pulled from the query string. If you are making use of the Omniture ‘getQueryParam’ plugin, remember (I had forgotten) that the plugin can be used to pull query string values out of strings other than the current URL.

Just the other day, I was addressing a requirement to track interaction with social media bookmark buttons supplied by AddThis.com

I needed to capture which social media service was being used and what page was being bookmarked. I was able to make use of getQueryParam along with the linkHandler plugin to get everything I needed.

Example exit link:
http://www.addthis.com/bookmark.php?&s=facebook&title=i%20can%20has%20cheezburger

Output:
s.eVar1 = “facebook”;
s.eVar2 = “i can has cheezburger”;

var url=s.linkHandler("Social Media~addthis.com","e");
   if(url){
     s.events=s.apl(s.events,"event1",",",2);
     s.eVar1=s.getQueryParam('s','',url);
     s.eVar2=s.getQueryParam('title','',url);

     //Track eVar & Event
     s.linkTrackVars="eVar1,eVar2,events";
     s.linkTrackEvents="event1";
  }

1. I used s.linkHandler to capture exit links for the URL ‘addthis.com’

2. event1 denoted a ’social bookmark’ event

3. In the exit link URL ’s’ is the social network being utilized and ‘title’ is the page being bookmarked.

4. I used s.getQueryParam to pull the query string values from the exit link captured by s.linkHandler (notice the 3rd argument, I passed in the URL string generated by the linkHandler plug-in).

Lesson Learned: Query parameters have more uses than just campaign tracking!

Bonus Code:
A friend of mine was working on a issue where a client needed to pull multiple campaign tracking codes, all with the same parameter name, from the query string and concatenate them together. In this case, there were N number of times that ‘cid’ could appear within the query string. I have no idea what the business case was, although now I’m very interested, but here is the code that will solve the problem.

Example link:

http://www.site.com?cid=value1&cid=value2&cid=value3

Output:
s.campaign = “value1:value2:value3″;

<br /> var variable = “cid”;<br /> var query = window.location.search.substring(1);<br /> var vars = query.split(“&”);<br /> var j = 0;</p> <p>for (var i=0;i<vars.length;i++) {<br /> var pair = vars[i].split("=");<br /> if (pair[0] == variable) {<br /> j = j + 1;<br /> if (j == 1){<br /> s.campaign=pair[1];<br /> }<br /> else if (j > 1){<br /> s.campaign= s.campaign + “:” + pair[1];<br /> }<br /> }<br /> }<br />

The following item(s) should be evaluated:
▢ Internal Filters. Although Internal Filters are copied when using the ‘duplicate an existing report suite’ feature, Internal Filters will most likely need to be updated to reflect the new site URL(s).

Contact Omniture Support:
▢ Date Warehouse
▢ GeoSegmentation
▢ VISTA Rules
▢ Discover
▢ IP Exclusions
▢ Visit/Visitor availability in Campaign, Products, Custom Traffic, and Custom Conversion reports
▢ List delimiters for Custom Traffic (props) variables
▢ Pathing for Custom Traffic (props) reports
▢ Customized query parameter stripping
▢ Hierarchies
▢ Participation metrics
▢ Event serialization
▢ Additional ClickMap metrics
▢ Timestamp settings
▢ Customized SiteCatalyst menus
▢ Transaction ID settings

Call me a sentimental geek (apologies Ryan Adams), call me naive, but I miss the Omniture I used to know. I understand things change and that clinging only brings suffering but why kill off a brand that worked so hard to establish itself?

Each day that goes by, I see Adobe bastardizing the Omniture brand more and more. I’ve never run a successful business, I’ve never been asked to sit on any board of directors, so I’m probably not qualified to question the decisions of a large multi-national company but I am. Why Adobe, why are you doing this?

In our small, niche community, Omniture is the brand, and that brand bleeds GREEN. Now I see disjointed conversations on Twitter like “can you help me with Adobe, I mean Omniture, I mean Adobe SiteCatalyst by Omniture?” I feel absolutely no connection with Adobe. We don’t own Adobe but we sure feel like we own Omniture.

In my uneducated and inexperienced opinion, Adobe is alienating a key and somewhat powerful core of Omniture evangelists in order to appeal to the masses.

For me, I pledge to stand strong and resist Adobe’s effort to erase Omniture from the history books.

Who is with me? Drop a simple comment with your feedback, share this link with your friends, spread the word. Adobe may not care about us and what we think but we must try. I will personally deliver all of the feedback gathered here to Omniture, an Adobe Business Unit, HQ.

As I was browsing the July 22, 2010 Product Release Notes from Omniture (Adobe Online Marketing Suite Powered by Omniture), one line stood out from all the rest.

Users with approver privileges can deactivate requests from specified mboxes, or activate previously deactivated
requests.

One of the biggest selling points that optimization vendors like to use is “once deployed, you can operate without IT involvement.” However, in most scenarios, this just isn’t reality with Omniture (Adobe Online Marketing Suite Powered by Omniture) Test & Target.

Without getting too much into the complexities of how Omniture bills for Test & Target, let’s take the following scenario. Client has 3 primary conversion funnels that they would like to focus their optimization efforts on: Registration Funnel, Login/Home Page Funnel, Subscription Funnel. In order to truly operate without IT involvement, Test & Target code (mBoxes) must be deployed to each of the funnels and their corresponding conversion pages, however once completed, the client is billed for all traffic to all of the pages that contain Test & Target code, regardless of the presence of an active campaign or not.

As most organizations rarely test multiple funnels at the same time, this approach is not cost effective. So, to my delight, when I saw a new feature that allowed Test & Target admins to control the activation state of mBoxes, I was excited.

Before you run off to your boss exclaiming the good news, let me give you a bit of background on how and when mBoxes are deactivated. For all intents & purposes, when you deactivate an mBox within the Test & Target admin, the content pushed through the mBox is effectually turned off, however, this does not mean you won’t be billed for the execution of that mBox.(SEE UPDATE BELOW)

I conducted the following experiment, using a visitor who had previously been to the site and had seen content delivered via an mBox.

1. Deactivated a previously active mBox by dragging & dropping the mBox.

2. Viewed a page on my site that contained Test & Target code.

3. Using httpFox, I am able to test for the presence of an mBox request.

What does this all mean? If a visitor had previously “seen” an mBox then they will continue to “see” (although they “see” the mBox from a billing perspective, they will not see the content that the mBox would have delivered) that mBox until either the Test & Target cookie expires (2 years from last session) or the cookie is deleted.(SEE UPDATE BELOW)

IMPORTANT UPDATE: Kimen Field, the Test & Target Product Manager, was kind enough to supply me with detailed information on how the deactivating functionality works. Although, as my testing has shown, the request is still sent out from the browser, when an mBox is deactivated, the request is killed when it hits the Test & Target load balancers and default content is served in the case of an active campaign.

Essentially, each hit is evaluated against the list of deactivated mBoxes. Those hits that match the deactivated list are tossed out and you are not billed for them.

Thanks for the update Kimen, I like this much better than how I had envisioned it working

So, this is far from a perfect solution but it is a major step in the right direction.

Jason Thompson is a Senior Analytics Consultant at Numeric Analytics. You can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/usujason. Please send questions and comments to jthomp [at] gmail [dot] com.

I recently finished up my first project as a volunteer at The Analysis Exchange.

You can read about my experience on Eric Peterson’s Web Analytics Demystified Blog.

If you are new to analytics or a seasoned veteran, I highly recommend giving of your time to such a great cause.