Measured Opinions

The latest news, provocative views and some handy how-tos from the world of data, analytics, cloud and AI.
BigQuery Tips: The subquery in your WHERE clause that's scanning your entire table

BigQuery Tips: The subquery in your WHERE clause that's scanning your entire table

There is a pattern that appears in a lot of BigQuery pipelines and looks completely reasonable. You have a control table that stores the latest processed date. Rather than hardcoding a date into your query, you pull it dynamically: SELECT * FROM `project.dataset.events` WHERE event_date = ( SELECT latest FROM `project.dataset.control_table` ); The query returns the right results. The logic is clean. And if your events table is large and date-partitioned, you might be scanning the entire

Katie Kaczmarek•13 Aug 2026
BigQuery Tips: When your query is technically correct but BigQuery won't run it

BigQuery Tips: When your query is technically correct but BigQuery won't run it

There is a particular kind of frustration that comes from staring at a query you know is correct and watching it fail. No syntax error. No logic problem. Just a wall. We hit two of them on the same project. What we were building The job was to migrate ga4_daily_snapshot for a large enterprise client from a BigQuery scheduled query into a proper Dataform pipeline. The scheduled query had been added to over time until it was too large to maintain with any confidence. Moving it to Dataform w

Katie Kaczmarek•17 Aug 2026
BigQuery Tips: When your query is technically correct but BigQuery won't run it

BigQuery Tips: When your query is technically correct but BigQuery won't run it

There is a particular kind of frustration that comes from staring at a query you know is correct and watching it fail. No syntax error. No logic problem. Just a wall. We hit two of them on the same project. What we were building The job was to migrate ga4_daily_snapshot for a large enterprise client from a BigQuery scheduled query into a proper Dataform pipeline. The scheduled query had been added to over time until it was too large to maintain with any confidence. Moving it to Dataform w

Katie Kaczmarek-17 Aug 2026
BigQuery Tips: The subquery in your WHERE clause that's scanning your entire table

BigQuery Tips: The subquery in your WHERE clause that's scanning your entire table

There is a pattern that appears in a lot of BigQuery pipelines and looks completely reasonable. You have a control table that stores the latest processed date. Rather than hardcoding a date into your query, you pull it dynamically: SELECT * FROM `project.dataset.events` WHERE event_date = ( SELECT latest FROM `project.dataset.control_table` ); The query returns the right results. The logic is clean. And if your events table is large and date-partitioned, you might be scanning the entire

Katie Kaczmarek-13 Aug 2026
BigQuery Tips: Arrays in BigQuery - what they are and how to get data out of them

BigQuery Tips: Arrays in BigQuery - what they are and how to get data out of them

If you have ever opened a GA4 export in BigQuery for the first time and found yourself looking at a column called event_params that seemed to contain an entire table inside each row, this post is for you. Arrays are not trying to make your life harder. Once you understand why they exist and what to do with them, they stop being intimidating. Why BigQuery uses arrays GA4 tracks events. Each event can have many parameters. A purchase event might have a transaction ID, a value, a currency an

Katie Kaczmarek-10 Aug 2026
BigQuery Tips: How to put a spend cap on your BigQuery queries

BigQuery Tips: How to put a spend cap on your BigQuery queries

At some point, most BigQuery users run a query they instantly regret. A missing WHERE clause on a table that turned out to be enormous. A JOIN that multiplied rows in a way nobody intended. A curiosity query on an unfamiliar dataset that scanned several terabytes before you could cancel it. By the time the query finishes you already know something went wrong. And you don't find out the cost until the billing report lands. There is a setting in BigQuery that sits between you writing a query a

Katie Kaczmarek-24 Jul 2026
BigQuery Tips: Why LAST_VALUE keeps returning the wrong result

BigQuery Tips: Why LAST_VALUE keeps returning the wrong result

Say you want to find the entry page and exit page for every session in your events table. The natural query writes itself: SELECT CONCAT(ga_session_id, '-', user_pseudo_id) AS session_key, event_timestamp, page_path, FIRST_VALUE(page_path) OVER ( PARTITION BY CONCAT(ga_session_id, '-', user_pseudo_id) ORDER BY event_timestamp ) AS entry_page, LAST_VALUE(page_path) OVER ( PARTITION BY CONCAT(ga_session_id, '-', user_pseudo_id) ORDER BY event_timestamp ) AS exit_pag

Katie Kaczmarek-13 Jul 2026

Whose stack is it anyway?

Google's running two in parallel - Marketing and Cloud. You'll likely still be using both for the next few years. So here's how to work with them and make them your own. Three Google announcement events recently - Cloud Next in April, I/O on May 19-20, Google Marketing Live on May 20. The Marketing Live keynote actually overlapped with the second day of I/O, which struck me as not accidental - Gemini is running under all of it. And, in doing so, rebuilding your measurement stack. What Google

Mark Rochefort-22 May 2026

Siloed data, central intelligence

Someone in your organisation has already connected an AI agent to a live data source. Probably several people have. They've pointed Claude at HubSpot, asked it to pull numbers from Google Analytics, had it read a Jira board or reconcile figures across two systems. The data never moved. Nobody waited for a pipeline. Nobody asked the data team. They did this because it was easy. And people will always go where the friction is least. This is happening everywhere, across every function, in organis

Matthew Hooson-9 Apr 2026

What we learned building AI agents for clients (and ourselves)

From internal experiments to client-facing data products Eighteen months ago, we started building AI agents internally. Not as a product play - as a way to stop doing repetitive work. Documentation, QA checklists, data validation. The kind of tasks that every analytics consultancy does hundreds of times a year and nobody enjoys. That experiment became our first internal AI assistant. And what we learned building it changed how we think about data products for clients. Here's what we know now

Mark Rochefort-8 Apr 2026

What is a semantic layer and why your AI agents need one

Companion piece to Measure Pod #139 with Colin Zima and #98 with David Jayatillake Your warehouse is full of tables. Your agents can query them. The question is whether they'll get the same answer. Ask three different agents "what's our monthly revenue?" and you'll get three different numbers. Not because the data is wrong - because nobody defined what "revenue" means in a way machines can consistently resolve. Is it gross or net? Recognised or invoiced? Including refunds or not? Each agent ma

Mark Rochefort-7 Apr 2026

What 70% more data actually means for your ad performance

Server-side GTM is usually sold on technical grounds. Better data quality. Reduced client-side load. Privacy compliance. All true, all important, and all completely abstract to the person signing off the budget. Here's what they actually want to know: what does it do for my numbers? We can answer that. When we deployed server-side GTM for Unily, they recovered 70% of previously lost session data. That's not a rounding error. That's a step change in what you can see, what you can attribute, and

Mark Rochefort-7 Mar 2026

Measurelab awarded Google Cloud Marketing Analytics Specialisation

At the start of the year, if you’d asked us whether Measurelab would be standing shoulder to shoulder with Europe’s biggest consultancies by September, we would've been surprised. Not because we don't believe in ourselves, but because these things feel so distant - until suddenly, they’re not. So, here it is: we’ve been awarded the Marketing Analytics Services Partner Specialisation in Google Cloud Partner Advantage. What’s the big deal? In Google’s own words (with the obligatory Zs): “Spec

Will Hayes-11 Sept 2025

BigQuery AI.GENERATE tutorial: turn SQL queries into AI-powered insights

BigQuery just got a major upgrade, you can now plug directly into Vertex AI using the new AI.GENERATE function. Translation: your analytics data and generative AI are now best friends, and they’re hanging out right inside SQL. That opens up a whole world of new analysis options for GA4 data, but it also raises some questions: * How do you actually set it up? * What’s it good for (and when should you avoid it)? * Why would you batch the query? Let’s walk through it step by step. Step 1: H

Katie Kaczmarek-3 Sept 2025

How to start forecasting in BigQuery with zero training

If you’d told me five years ago that I’d be forecasting product demand using a model trained on 100 billion time points… without writing a single line of ML code… I probably would’ve asked how many coffees you’d had that day ☕️ But its a brand new world. And it’s possible. Let me explain What is TimesFM? TimesFM is a new foundation model from Google, built specifically for time-series forecasting. Think of it like GPT for time, instead of predicting the next word in a sentence, it predicts t

Katie Kaczmarek-14 Jul 2025

Measurelab makes the IPA Beacon List 2025

Given in recognition of how we are “Shaping growth, innovation and competition in the modern agency world” - along with 24 other companies in the UK; shaking it up, doing it that little bit better every time. We are honoured to be part of this initiative at the IPA (Institute of Practitioners in Advertising) to recognise the efforts of smaller UK independents - who are redefining what it means to be an agency in today’s fast-evolving media and technology environment. 

Steven Elliott-14 Jun 2025

Easy ways to prepare your BigQuery warehouse for AI

You’ve probably heard that AI is coming to make our lives easier, especially in tools like BigQuery. But here’s the thing: AI isn't magic. If you want it to be accurate and useful, you need to set it up for success. One of the best ways to do that? Improve the metadata in your BigQuery warehouse. Metadata is like the index or contents page in a book, it quickly tells you exactly what’s inside and where to find it. Creating clear metadata means AI can more easily understand your data warehouse

Katie Kaczmarek-23 Apr 2025

Data pipeline optimisation with Google Cloud and Dataform

In our recent engagement with a client, we went on a journey to transform their data pipelines, tackling inefficiencies in performance and cost within their Google Cloud BigQuery environment. Our efforts culminated in a comprehensive optimisation strategy that used Dataform, improved SQL practices, and implemented tailored solutions for significant performance gains and cost savings. Here’s a deep dive into the highlights of our project. Identifying inefficiencies in BigQuery workflows We beg

Prasanna Venkatesan-22 Apr 2025

Dataform for BigQuery: A basic end-to-end guide

Dataform is a powerful tool for managing your data workflows in a structured, version-controlled, and automated way. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced data engineer, Dataform simplifies SQL-based transformations while integrating seamlessly with Google BigQuery. Although this blog offers a basic introduction to Dataform's functionality, users can achieve significantly more with Dataform. From advanced scheduling, parameterised queries, and dependency management to complex data modelli

Prasanna Venkatesan-18 Mar 2025

How to extract GA4's event sequencing in BigQuery using the new batch fields

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) exports event data to BigQuery, enabling detailed user behavior analysis. However, GA4 batches events before sending them, making GA4 event sequencing in BigQuery more complex. Fortunately, three fields—batch_event_index, batch_ordering_id, and batch_page_id—help provide precise sequencing information. For a full schema of the GA4 export, head over to google documentation. This article breaks down these fields in a clear, practical way and shows how to use them togethe

Katie Kaczmarek-24 Feb 2025

Automating BigQuery workflows with conditional logic and data readiness checks

BigQuery offers powerful scripting capabilities that can simplify complex workflows. In this post, we’ll explore two essential techniques: using IF...THEN...END IF for procedural control and leveraging the metadata in project.dataset.__TABLES__ to ensure your Google Analytics 4 (GA4) data is ready before running queries. These strategies help you avoid unnecessary processing, reduce costs, and improve efficiency in your data pipelines. 1. Leveraging IF...THEN...END IF for procedural logic Whi

Katie Kaczmarek-20 Feb 2025

Mastering data loading in BigQuery using Dataform

Efficient data loading is crucial for managing and updating tables in Dataform. Various strategies exist to handle different use cases, including truncate and load, appending data, and leveraging incremental tables with unique keys. This blog explores these primary methods and more: Truncate and Load In this method, all existing records in the target table are deleted and replaced with a fresh table. This approach works well when a full table refresh is necessary or if managing slowly changin

Prasanna Venkatesan-7 Feb 2025

2024: Measurelab's year in review

Same same but different At the beginning of the year, I wasn't quite sure what Measurelab would look like by the end of 2024. Altman's assistants had just been unleashed. The robots were on the march. Would the analytics arena be conquered by AI? Would we all be replaced by intelligent agents? As it turns out, no. Things are pretty much the same - on the surface at least. And that's no bad thing. After the tumultuous ups and downs of a rollercoaster 2023, I'll take steady, deliberate progress

Steven Elliott-27 Dec 2024

A step-by-step guide to migrating scheduled queries to Dataform

Managing scheduled queries in BigQuery often feels limiting — there’s no version control, no easy collaboration, and scaling can be difficult. If you’ve ever wondered how to make SQL workflows smoother, Dataform is your answer. In this post, I’ll show you how I migrated a BigQuery scheduled query to Dataform and how it transformed the way I manage my data pipelines. After all, we all want to know who’s been touching our queries, don’t we? Getting started in Dataform First thing you need to

Katie Kaczmarek-27 Nov 2024

How to set up a Dataform repository with GitHub & Google Cloud integration

Setting up a Dataform repository can be challenging without the right steps. Whether you’re new to Dataform or want to optimise your workflow, this guide will show you how to seamlessly connect it with GitHub and Google Cloud (GC). What is Dataform and why use it? Dataform is a powerful tool for managing version-controlled SQL workflows in a collaborative way. GC incorporates BigQuery and GitHub integration, providing an efficient way to organise and maintain complex data pipelines. Let’s bre

Katie Kaczmarek-27 Nov 2024

What is offline event data import in GA4?

Offline event data import in Google Analytics 4 allows you to upload event data that was acquired outside of your website or app, such as in-store purchases, contact centre interactions, or CRM data. This can be critical for businesses seeking to bridge the gap between online and offline user actions, resulting in a more complete picture of customer behaviour. How to import offline event data into GA4 You can upload event data into GA4 through a process called Data Import. This can be done ma

Nasima Khatun-22 Nov 2024

The modernisation of marketing and the role of marketing analytics

Navigating the ever-evolving landscape of marketing technology, I've come to terms with a key realisation: marketing analytics is marketing. This acknowledgment hasn't always been easy. Years ago, as a humble web analyst, the lines weren't as blurred. However, with the advent of tools like Google Analytics 4 (GA4), stringent privacy laws such as GDPR, and changing browser policies like those of Safari, the role of a web analyst has transformed significantly. In the old world - us web analysts

Daniel Perry-Reed-19 Jul 2024

Customer Data Platforms (CDPs)

Our take on CDPs We’ve been around long enough to have seen the bandwagon-jumping that inevitably happens with any new tech trend as it travels the hype cycle. Right now, Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) are reaching the peak of inflated expectations - and are at risk of descending into the trough of disillusionment. Measurelab doesn’t resell technology licences and we don’t rake in money from vendor kick-backs. So we’re happy to tell it like it is. If you haven’t already got a CDP, you may not

Matthew Hooson-14 Mar 2024

Grand Designs: "The Warehouse to CDP conversion"

Opening scene: A large meeting room at BigCorp. A systems architecture diagram with lots of boxes and arrows flowing from left to right fills a large whiteboard. Kelvin joins Jan (marketing director) and Joe (head of data) at the table, earnest expression, hands clasped in front of him. Kelvin: So, Jan, Joe, tell me a bit about the history of the warehouse. Joe: Well, going way back, it was originally an on-prem system, which was replaced back in 2019 with an Oracle data warehouse as part of a

Steven Elliott-14 Mar 2024

2023: Measurelab's year in review

2023 was a momentous year for Measurelab. It marked a decade of delivering analytics excellence to the world, a year when we were named one of the UK’s best places to work and became a fully-certified GCP partner, a summer that saw the sunsetting of Universal Analytics, followed by the new dawn of generative AI and the beginning of an augmented analytics era. Into the sunset From the very beginning of January, right up to the deprecation deadline of July 1st, we were swamped with GA4 migratio

Steven Elliott-22 Dec 2023

GTM’s new Google tag: one tag to rule them all

Goodbye to the GA4 Config Tag Anyone who’s spent any time implementing the Google Analytics 4 (GA4) tracking in Google Tag Manager (GTM) over the past few years will be familiar with the GA4 Configuration tag. Essentially the top level of tracking within GTM for configuring GA4, this is where you would specify your Measurement ID, configure server requests and specify things like event parameters and user properties. The GA4 Config tag would then typically act as a reference point for all your

Nick Roberts-8 Sept 2023

Customising GA4's reports menu using the report library

By now you’ll all have GA4 up and running (I hope!) but now the realisation is kicking in that you have to actually start using the UI and I don’t know about you all but for me, it didn’t quite feel right. Let’s talk about the UI, where the hell did all my reports go?! I miss Universal Analytics UI! There I said it. GA4 is fantastic and I love some of the new features they have brought out like creating and modifying events from within the UI and the additional layer of user acquisition; howev

George Mendham-29 Aug 2023

The Derelict Data Warehouse

A well-maintained and utilised data warehouse is a thing of beauty. Imagine all your data from disparate sources autonomously extracted, loaded and transformed into nice neat reporting tables. Picture, if you can, impactful analysis, company-wide data-driven decision-making, a true understanding of return on ad spend. It’s enough to make anyone weak at the knees. But therein lies the problem. Companies (or ambitious individuals) can be too desperate to reach the promised land and rush headlong

Matthew Hooson-24 Aug 2023

Getting started with Plotly Dash

This blog post is a brief introduction to Plotly Dash and a short tutorial to learn how to build a custom visualisation. For this tutorial, you will need some basic knowledge of Python, HTML and JavaScript. This article will focus on locally building and visualising your graph. What is Plotly Dash? Let’s start with the basics: what is Plotly Dash? Dash is a Python framework created by Plotly to render interactive dashboards which can also be hosted online, by using just Python. Dash has both

Natalia Rizzi-22 Aug 2023

How to set up GA4’s custom insights and email alerts

What are custom insights? Sometimes the data available in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) can seem a bit overwhelming especially if you have a complex site with lots of users coming and going every day. It can often seem difficult to quickly identify the most important trends or anomalies. Thankfully GA4’s Analytics Intelligence is here to help bring some much needed clarity. This is a group of features that uses modelling to help you understand your data. Insights is one such feature and it comes in

Timothy Gorringe-17 Apr 2023

How to create events in GA4 using the UI

Google Analytics 4 (GA4) now gives users the ability to create new events or modify existing events through the use of the GA4 user interface. This is a fantastic add-on available to all and will be welcomed by those who are not familiar with their existing tag management system or do not have the relevant tech resources available to make some changes in a timely manner. Why would you create an event? First of all, creating a new event keeps you safe from interacting with existing events that

Olade Honvo-11 Apr 2023

How to build an interactive GA4 BigQuery data schema

What and why? One of the great features of Google Analytics 4 (GA4) is the ability to pass data into BigQuery (BQ). There are many benefits to this which have already been covered in some of our previous blogs (i.e. 10 reasons to export your GA4 data to BigQuery). Passing data to BigQuery is no longer just available to enterprise GA360 customers, but to anyone using GA4 for free. What I wanted to create was a simple interactive way to explore how GA4 data is saved in BigQuery. I found the GA36

Scott Hellmund-23 Mar 2022

The sun is setting on Universal Analytics

It’s finally happening. Google has announced the sunsetting of Universal Analytics, or more specifically, the date when UA will stop processing new hits. The 1st of July, 2023. For those without a calendar to hand, that’s fifteen and a half months from now. So plenty of time still to think about migrating to Google Analytics 4, right? Wrong. Well, wrong if on 1st July 2023 you want to be able to compare your latest GA4 data with comparable data from the previous year. And what analyst wouldn’

Dara Fitzgerald-16 Mar 2022

Data warehouse: Repair broken tables in BigQuery

At Measurelab, we love a bit of data warehousing using BigQuery; in fact, we are obsessed with finding the best approach to managing data warehouses in the most optimal way possible.  So in this series, we want to share with you our knowledge and expertise to show what a fantastic and dynamic tool BigQuery is. As you may know, BigQuery has some super powerful features, which allow us to build, manipulate and even run machine learning algorithms within the interface. However, we’re all human, an

Lace Rogers-8 Mar 2021

Customer segmentation: how to get to know your customers better

In marketing, it’s vital to know your customers and how they interact with your brand. You need to know what they buy, when they buy, how often, how much... But why? Because if you know their habits and behaviours, you can tailor your marketing tactics and even personalise your customers’ journey. In doing so, you can maintain and even raise engagement between your customers and your brand. So how do we do this? Before thinking about any targeting strategies, you need to get to know your cus

Oli Paterson-22 Jan 2021

Data warehousing: What is BigQuery and how do I get started?

At Measurelab we live and breathe the Google Cloud Platform, so our specialists are experts in Bigquery.  We have decided in this series to share our knowledge and take you through some great techniques to maintain your BigQuery data warehouse.   So firstly-what is BigQuery? BigQuery is a fully-managed, serverless data warehouse that enables scalable analysis over petabytes of data. ...and that means? Simply put, BigQuery is a fantastic cloud-based data warehouse in which you can store huge

Lace Rogers-21 Dec 2020

How recognising images works - when you're an algorithm

There are many different types of image recognition. The main aim of such practises is to correctly match a new picture to an existing group of pictures. In some instances it is not dissimilar to how a clustering algorithm works, in that common features are identified and grouped together (Moosmann et al., 2008). Although several methods of image recognition exist, this blog post will give an overview of the method of facial image recognition that has been patented by Tsai (2004). This inventio

Katy Beckett-15 Dec 2020

30 sleeps ’til Christmas: our reflections on 2020

Reflecting on a challenging year What a year. I don't think I'm alone in wishing this particular year away and wanting to start Christmas ASAFP! 2020 has certainly thrown up a few challenges that we could never have predicted this time last year. The global pandemic has affected our lives collectively and individually on so many levels. Adapting to remote work For us at Measurelab we have all been working remotely now for just over 8 months. We were thrown into a situation that on one hand w

Mark Rochefort-25 Nov 2020

Google Analytics data import: automate data import with Python & Cloud functions

Why automate data import into Google Analytics A few months back I was granted access to a Google Cloud Source Repository (private Git repositories hosted on Google Cloud part of Google’s Cloud developer tools) that contained Python code and configuration details for automating the extraction of data from a BigQuery table and uploading to Google Analytics as a custom dimension via the Management API on a desired schedule. Choosing the right approach for blog word counts Being primarily a Jav

Victor Sarker-16 Nov 2020

Google Analytics 4

The new future version of Google Analytics has been announced - now branded as Google Analytics 4. Building on the "App + Web" property that was released last year, this sets the direction for Google Analytics going forwards. It is now the default experiences for all new properties and is where all product developments will be focussed. Google Analytics 3, commonly known as Universal Analytics, was released in October 2012. This next product iteration for Google Analytics is a major step on fro

Mark Rochefort-14 Oct 2020

Three popular GTM server-side tagging misconceptions

With the recent release of server-side tagging for Google Tag Manager, a whole new woooooorld of possibilities has opened up. But on that, some people have got the wrong idea, so with that in mind, here's three popular (but wrong!) things people believe about server-side GTM. 1) You still need client-side GTM to make it work This is slightly unfair, as I can see why this misconception arose. You do need something to send your hits to the GTM server, and in many cases the easiest and best thin

Adam Englebright-23 Sept 2020

Life as a new starter: remote edition

In the analytics industry, everyone I have had the opportunity to work with is so passionate about their role and always thrives on learning and sharing techniques. So when you're starting a new job at an analytics agency you know you'll have the opportunity to learn lots of new tricks and experiment with new types of datasets, which is very exciting. Excitement is one of the two feelings you experience when starting a new job. Then comes the unknown, the nerves - What if I'm not what they expe

Jacob Birch-3 Jul 2020

We are going BIG on DATA

See what we did there? Okay, so maybe a tad too much on the title. It is catchy, so hey. Firstly - we are pretty chuffed to welcome Lace to our team. She joins us to spearhead our offering in all things DATA science and data engineering, which (to be completely frank) is where all roads point in this analytics game. With the advent of App plus Web (from Google Analytics), and particularly the opportunity to access raw data through BigQuery, this is an exciting place to be right now. Secondly -

Mark Rochefort-29 Jun 2020

Google Tag Manager form field tracking: capture pre-populated form changes

This is part 5 (and my first contribution, so bear with me) to this "semi-regular" series, dedicated to reusable GTM solutions for scenarios or issues we’ve encountered more than once. Last time, we looked at how to capture existing classic Google Analytics calls with GTM, and this time we'll be exploring how to track changes in pre-populated HTML form fields. Why I did it I was recently approached with a request from a client who wanted to know which fields were updated in a form that was pa

Victor Sarker-22 Jun 2020

Emergency Analytics Support

It can be tricky judging how to pitch a new offer in times of crisis. There’s a fine line between being genuinely helpful and appearing exploitative. Sometimes you have to just jump in and try things, knowing they may be misinterpreted by the minority. In business, indecision can be crippling. While people’s lives are undoubtedly the most precious thing, livelihoods are worth saving too. A number of our clients - particularly those in the retail sector - have been hit hard by recent events.

Steven Elliott-2 Apr 2020

Life moves pretty fast: navigating the remote work transition

Realising change was coming On Thursday, 12 March, advice about the coronavirus was still unclear. We did what we do best, we looked at the numbers. The modelling made it clear that, for the health of our team and community, we should move to remote work and begin social distancing. Adapting to remote work overnight It was a sudden change. Yet, being a digital (and people) business meant that this transition was a relatively easy one. We don't exactly have a factory to dismantle and move. Ou

Mark Rochefort-22 Mar 2020

Allowed to recommended: Week 1 – Remote work challenges in the UK

Last week the government's coronavirus advice moved from "contain" to "delay", and Measurelab moved from "allowing" to "recommending" that we work from home. As people left the office, one at a time, I couldn't help but feeling that I was saying goodbye to people for what would probably be quite a while. It's been a week since I've seen any of my colleagues in person and while we've been trying our best to continue to foster office camaraderie remotely, it's been a bit of a learning curve for al

Adam Englebright-20 Mar 2020

Working From Home: An Alternative Blog Post

I wouldn't really consider myself a writer and to my knowledge I've only ever written one blog post in my entire lifetime (which was more like a sarcastic Dry January Facebook post). But when Adam said he was writing a blog post about their experience of Working From Home during this Covid-19 pandemic and was asking for input from others - it sort of turned into it's own blog post anyway, so here goes: Every day I wake up and I'm full of energy.  In fact, I find myself with enough extra energy

Victor Sarker-20 Mar 2020

Google Tag Manager setup: how to create your first tag

Creating your first GTM tag This is the third of a series dedicated to introducing you, faithful reader, to the wonders and delights of Google Tag Manager. Last time, we took a high-level look at GTM and how it works, and today we'll be looking at how to set up a simple tag. Setting up a Google Analytics pageview tag We're going to set up a Google Analytics pageview tag. This replaces the old hardcoded GA that you'd used to have to put on every page of the site. We start by going to tags and

Adam Englebright-7 Feb 2020

Audience activation in 5 simple steps

Amidst news of cookies crumbling and third party cookies eventually becoming obsolete, there is even more emphasis on identifying visitors who arrive on websites and providing users with a reason to remain loyal to your brand. Here is a simple user case on how to effectively personalise your customer experience using the Google Marketing Platform. According to Econsultancy: “50% of consumers are likely to engage with a brand when they receive an interesting offer.” So how can you demonstrate

Aimée Hart-4 Feb 2020

Capturing existing classic GA calls with GTM – Solutions Corner #4

This is part 4 of a semi-regular series, dedicated to reusable GTM solutions for scenarios or issues we’ve encountered more than once. The challenge with pre-GTM classic calls Last time, we looked at how to turn on-page classic Google Analytics calls to data layer pushes, and this time we'll be looking at a supplement to that—what if the classic GA call you're looking to capture is before GTM loads? This pretty much only matters for ecommerce, so that's what the solution focuses on. We start

Adam Englebright-29 Jan 2020

Google Tag Manager basics: a closer look at GTM’s core concepts

Exploring GTM core concepts This is the second of a series dedicated to introducing you, faithful reader, to the wonders and delights of Google Tag Manager. Last time, we were looking at just what a tag manager is anyway? This time, we'll be taking a look at GTM itself. We're going to go through the three key components of GTM: tags, triggers and variables. We're not going to touch on the other things in the GTM sidebar, folders and templates, for the time being—they're useful extensions but n

Adam Englebright-24 Jan 2020

Google Tag Manager Basics #1 - What Is A Tag Manager?

This is the first of a new series dedicated to introducing the uninitiated to the wonders and delights of Google Tag Manager. Before we start thinking too closely about GTM itself, though, we'll pull back a bit and ask: What is a tag manager? A tag manager is a service that allows you to remotely insert and manage small pieces of code, or “tags”, onto a site by means of a Javascript snippet placed across the whole site. There are a number of different tag managers out there—Tealium, Ensighte

Adam Englebright-17 Jan 2020

Turning classic GA calls into dataLayer pushes with GTM

This is part 3 of a semi-regular series, dedicated to reusable GTM solutions for scenarios or issues we’ve encountered more than once. Last time we looked at how to track clicks on iframes using GTM, and this time we’re looking at how to turn on-page classic Google Analytics calls to data layer pushes. The problem with hard-coded GA calls Say you still have hard-coded calls to classic GA on the page, but the library code itself was being delivered via GTM. It's now been removed, but there are

Adam Englebright-9 Jan 2020

A day in the shoes of an Insight manager: Andrew Fowkes at EDF

For our regular "A Day In The Shoes" feature, Andy - Senior Research Executive at EDF - talks about delivering a fresh insights perspective and tells us about the skills he needs to be effective in his role. Here’s what his day-to-day looks like. Aimée: Can you start by telling me your job title and responsibilities Andy: I manage Customer Insight projects of all types at EDF . My view is that the role of an insight manager in a big organisation has changed massively. It’s moved away from jus

Aimée Hart-6 Jan 2020

How to Conduct an Exceptional Training Session

So… you’ve been asked to conduct a training session and you don’t know where to start. Or, you’re looking for a way to take your current training process to the next level. Whatever your level of experience, the following tips will help you make your next training session exceptional. 1. Know the subject The first step in giving an exceptional training session is being deeply familiar with the subject matter. In the words of Albert Einstein: You may think you know a subject through and throu

Dave Beatty-6 Dec 2019

Team weekend outing: Measurelab’s Dorset adventure

Measurelab hits the Dorset coast for a team weekend Last Friday we all put our "out of office" notifications on our email, ditched the computers and headed off to Bournemouth and the beautiful Dorset coast for a couple of days. It was time to reflect on how the company is evolving and a chance for us all to get to know each other a little bit better. Reflecting on our journey together It was really lovely for us to all be able to get around the same table and share our thoughts. Throughout t

Mark Rochefort-11 Nov 2019

A day in the shoes of a Senior Analyst: Will Deschene at EDF

Our first launch into a ‘day in the shoes’ series is spent with Will Deschene, Senior Digital Analyst at EDF. In this interview, he tells us about managing stakeholders and a team, brands that have inspired him lately, and shares some valuable advice for new analysts. Aimée: Please describe your job: what do you do? Will: The majority of my work is stakeholder management, less of the 'doing' in the analytics world, as I now have two analysts in the team. It's more about stakeholder engagement

Aimée Hart-6 Nov 2019

Product affinity analysis: discovering what items customers buy together

Understanding what customers buy together Being able to answer the question ‘which of my products do people regularly buy together’ with ease and simplicity can be invaluable. Market Basket Analysis, also known as association analysis, is a way of mining shopping data to establish a set of rules that describe purchasing patterns. This analysis can be conducted using a wide variety of software such as SAS, Python and R. Why association rules matter The reason for investigating association is

Katy Beckett-11 Oct 2019

Three Small Recent GA/GTM Improvements

Google are always making small unannounced tweaks and improvements to their products—here are a few of the more noteworthy ones we've spotted recently! Scroll Depth Tracking I gave out at length last year about the fact that you can't specify the trigger conditions for the listener dropping on the scroll depth trigger—meaning the page length couldn't be calculated accurately and causing scroll depth events to fire early. I suggested that they might want to let you select the listener conditio

Adam Englebright-20 Sept 2019

Expanding on optimisation: effective strategies for digital success

Recently I ran a workshop with a leading International luxury fashion retailer. The purpose was to structure thoughts between disparate teams around purpose and definition of an optimisation workstream. Initially we talked about short term imminent goals, with the festive season fast approaching these were not surprisingly highly tactical and focused around maximising peak performance. Setting the scene At this stage I introduced more broader notions around decoupling the shopping journey or

Aimée Hart-17 Sept 2019

How to use BigQuery without GA360: insights from Measurefest 2019

Speaking at Measurefest For the first time in a few years, I took to the stage at Measurefest to talk about how to get your data from Google Analytics into BigQuery, and what you can do with it when you get there. Affordable BigQuery solutions Obviously, Analytics 360 can do this, but it costs $$$ per year. I outlined some more affordable methods, including third-party connector solutions, and provided a detailed example of how we would use our own Pipelines solution and what we could achiev

Adam Englebright-12 Sept 2019

Next‑Generation measurement with Google Analytics 4

Why GA4 has us excited This announcement has us rather excited at Measurelab. It has been a long time coming and represents the beginning of a completely new shift in how we use and think about digital measurement with Google Analytics. Leaving the old pageview model behind What we are effectively looking at here is a move away from Google Analytics as we know it, which inherited its underlying data collection schema and methods from Urchin Analytics; the analytics software product Google bo

Mark Rochefort-2 Aug 2019

GTM iframe tracking – Solutions Corner #2

This is part 2 of a semi-regular series, dedicated to reusable GTM solutions for scenarios or issues we've encountered more than once. Last time we looked at how to fire Google Analytics event to keep track of your Google Optimize experiments in GA, and this time we're looking at tracking clicks on iframes. We have encountered, several times, the situation of a client wanting to track clicks on an iframe. While we can't do much about interactions with stuff within the iframe without having GTM a

Adam Englebright-2 Apr 2019

Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce tracking with Adobe DTM

Here at Measurelab, we work predominantly with the Google stack but that doesn't stop us using other tools. As there's not much documentation available in the public forum on how to implement Enhanced Ecommerce in Google Analytics using Adobe Dynamic Tag Manager (DTM) formerly know as Satellite, I think this blog post would be useful. As good introduction to the tools itself, below there’s a useful overview of Adobe’s Dynamic Tag Management architecture, which is from their learning resource pa

Alex Cirstea-21 Jan 2019

It's nearly the end of term

As we countdown the last few days to the Christmas break, I wanted to share a few moments from what's been a busy and fun-packed couple of weeks at Measurelab. Besides all the great work everyone has been doing (which is de rigeur, of course), there's been much going on. First up to report is our little Christmas outing to Brighton; we went ice-skating at the beautifully picturesque outdoor ice rink at Brighton Pavilion. Some of us were a little more proficient than others (ahem). Gladly no bon

Mark Rochefort-20 Dec 2018

What is a Data Strategy and do I need one?

Let’s assume you’ve been using Google Analytics in your organisation for some time and your digital marketing endeavours at least are data-driven. More and more people are starting to see the benefit in using data to get their jobs done and now everyone’s talking about Data Science or Big Data or whatever. To be clear - when we say “data” we are not talking about just Google Analytics but the proliferation of this tool means that it is very likely a starting point for your data analytics. Alongs

Mark Rochefort-13 Dec 2018

Overcoming the limitations of Google Analytics

Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager are used by around 30 to 50 million companies worldwide. The tools are great for basic web analytics but restrict the user to aggregated data unless a substantial fee is paid (reported to be £90K per annum). This presents a large obstacle for small to medium sized businesses who want to develop a data-driven strategy. Let’s imagine a small retailer wants to implement a recommendation engine. Not a bad idea given that Amazon estimates that around 35% of sal

David Kane-5 Nov 2018

Knead that CRO dough into shape, ‘tis the season for the perfect prove

Whether you’re starting on your CRO journey or have been at it for years, chances are you’re after opportunities to give your bottom line a boost during the festive season. Taking some time to plan and carefully curate those optimisation journeys will not only go some way to making sure the additional traffic works better for you, it’ll result in a meaningful set of results and maximise learnings for the post-Christmas wash ups. Having worked 5 years for a well-known UK health and beauty re

Aimée Hart-29 Oct 2018

Toot toot... All aboard the Measurelab train!

In the last couple of months we've had three new starters and I'd like to give them a little nod of recognition, if I may. First up is (Doctor) Dave, who joined us as a Data Scientist in the Summer; he popped along to one of our Brighton Analytics meetups and it just went from there. Dave's background is in terribly clever machine vision stuff - he was recently working in Barcelona (at Universitat Pompeu Fabra) doing Postdoctoral Research involving adaptive image processing algorithms (wher

Mark Rochefort-16 Oct 2018

GTM event tracking best practices – Solutions Corner #1

This is part 1 of what I hope will become a semi-frequent series on here, dedicated to reusable GTM solutions for scenarios or issues we've encountered more than once. This particular entry is a companion to Mark's piece from a couple of years back, but for Google Optimize rather that Optimizely. In short, it sends data layer pushes so you can fire Google Analytics events when there are Optimize experiments running, which saves you from using custom dimension slots etc in the course of ordinary

Adam Englebright-1 Oct 2018

Goodbye DoubleClick, hello Google Marketing Platform!

Last week, Google announced they were unifying their analytics and advertising platforms under a single new name: Google Marketing Platform. The Google Analytics 360 Suite and DoubleClick brands are being replaced with this single name. What does this mean for DoubleClick? If anything this is a change that has needed to happen for years. DoubleClick always sat rather clumsily alongside other tools from Google and this shift heralds the beginning of a more unified approach. Search Ads 360 wil

Mark Rochefort-17 Jul 2018

Chat about analytics and drink beer

Last night's #BrightonAnalytics&nbsp;<a href="https://www.meetup.com/BrightonAnalytics-Meetup/events/251264167/">meetup</a> was a great success - thanks to all who made it along to the Evening Star pub to chat about analytics and drink beer! The next one will be Tuesday July 17th - again at 6pm-9pm in the Evening Star, Brighton. See you there! [ngg_images source="galleries" container_ids="1" display_type="photocrati-nextgen_basic_thumbnails" override_thumbnail_settings="1" thumbnail_width

Mark Rochefort-20 Jun 2018

Adding Firebase Analytics to your React Native app

<span style="font-weight: 400;">This article describes how to integrate Google Analytics for Firebase (formerly Firebase Analytics) to a React Native app. </span><span style="font-weight: 400;">In order to do this, you need to use a JavaScript bridge called </span><a href="https://github.com/invertase/react-native-firebase"><span style="font-weight: 400;">RNFirebase</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. &nbsp;</span> This is lightweight layer sitting on top of native Firebase librarie

Alex Cirstea-23 May 2018

Firebase Analytics demystified

<span style="font-weight: 400;">After a steep learning curve into the world of Firebase Analytics or Google Analytics for Firebase, it seems that a blog post about it would be much valued and appreciated. I’ve compiled a list of the most frequently asked questions.</span> 1. How does Firebase Analytics define a session? Firebase Analytics defines a session as a user engaging with your app for a minimum amount of time (10 seconds by default) followed by your user not engaging with your app

Alex Cirstea-5 Feb 2018

The Problem With Google Tag Manager Triggers: Those Shiny New Built-In Options (And a Possible Solution)

Hey folks. The shiny new Built-In Triggers for things we used to have to use big old Custom HTML tags to track before—Youtube tracking! Scroll depth! Element visibility!—have had a bit of time to bed in now. We had a look at changing over to the new built-in solutions everywhere we were using Custom HTML—if it's being done by Tag Manager itself, it has to be better, right? Right? Wrong. This issue is related to a fact that I've discovered through experience but not seen actually documented exc

Adam Englebright-18 Jan 2018

Measurelab turns 4: celebrating our anniversary & journey

Our fourth birthday in Paris Measurelab turned 4 in September and to celebrate we all shut our laptops (except Mark, who got very excited about the organisations announcement from Google) and took the Eurostar to Paris for some well deserved and much needed rest, relaxation and culture. First taste of Parisian adventure The trip was unofficially sponsored by Heineken (no craft ales or even Harvey’s best for sale on Eurostar unfortunately) and we toasted the start of our trip in style with pe

Dara Fitzgerald-26 Oct 2017

Activist analytics: using digital analytics to drive change

Hey folks, Adam here. I had quite a busy weekend last week - one that has now been documented in the national press! - and thought I'd share some thoughts about it on here. My journey into activist analytics I've been a member of the Labour Party and the related grassroots movement Momentum for several years now, but beyond a bit of leafleting here and there social anxiety has kept me away from the phonebanking, street stands and doorknocking that lie at the heart of party political activity.

Adam Englebright-26 Jul 2017

Data Studio new countries availability

<span style="font-weight: 400;">The time has come for more of you to enjoy the benefits of Data Studio reports! Today, Google has announced long-awaited expansion of its product availability to more than 180 countries. </span> More and more people will now be able to enjoy the benefits of this powerful tool - you can now create, share and edit reports, and impress your boss and clients with your skilful dashboard creation skills. But that's not all! With that great news come other useful f

Magdalena Pajak-7 Mar 2017

Free Google Analytics Health Check Template by Measurelab

Hey Folks, It's been a while since the last time I wrote anything on the blog so I thought I'd make it up to you with a little freebie. Why GA health checks are important One of the most common tasks at Measurelab (and I'm sure in many other analytics agencies) is to run a "health check" of the main features and configurations of the Google Analytics user interface. How the template works This varies in depth and level of detail depending on various factors but we do find it quite helpful

Juan Barros-17 Feb 2017

Google Data Studio: just getting better & better

We have some great news for all those of you who live and breathe Data Studio! Google has just announced two big changes to the tool: 1. The 5 report limit for the free version has been removed 2. What is even more exciting, Data Studio is now free for both basic and 360 (enterprise) version users! Up till now, the only real downside of the free version of the tool, was its limitation in the number of reports you could create per account. So if you are a free version user, you won’t be reall

Magdalena Pajak-2 Feb 2017

Google Data Studio tips: tricks and best practices

Getting started with Google Data Studio Since its release back in May 2016, Data Studio (a free version of Data Studio 360) has made quite a lot of progress on improving its functionality. Of course, it is still in beta, so you might come across some system bugs and limitations, but the Google team is working hard to add new features and fix any issues the user may face, with at least two new releases per month (so far). I won't go into details as what you can do with the tool, as you can chec

Magdalena Pajak-7 Dec 2016

When GA just isn't enough - my #measurefest talk

<span style="font-weight: 400;">I spoke at <a href="http://www.measurefest.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">#Measurefest</a> in the Barbican last Friday. Here are the slides from my talk but I wanted to write a quick summary to give a bit more context as the slides on their own don’t tell the story. </span> When GA just isn't enough from darafitzgerald The title of the talk was "When GA just isn't enough". For some that know me this might sound like an unexpected title. I sp

Dara Fitzgerald-24 Nov 2016

How to integrate Optimizely with GTM & Universal Analytics

If you want to integrate your Optimizely experiment and variation data with Google’s Universal Analytics via Google Tag Manager, you will soon see that the official documentation assumes a custom‑coded implementation. It then instructs you to edit your GA pageview tag directly. If you are using Google Tag Manager, then you obviously will not want to follow this guidance as you probably have the Google Analytics pageview tag in a tag template. It is always advisable to keep custom JavaScript an

Steven Elliott-16 Sept 2016

Understanding GA non-interactive events: month 1 insights

Starting a new adventure in analytics When I first decided to quit my ohh-so-lucrative job in the investment banking, most of my friends and family thought I was going bonkers! Neither were they impressed with my idea to start a new career in Web Analytics, working for some small start-up based in Lewes (wait why exactly do you want to work in Loos?!?). I must say that I had my doubts as well - will I be able to adapt to a totally new working environment? Will I ever learn what all the cookies,

Magdalena Pajak-15 Sept 2016

Bounce rate vs. Exit rate part one

<span style="font-weight: 400;">Many companies consider a high bounce rate an issue that needs to be addressed quickly. Others support a high bounce rate. The truth is that most people don’t understand what “bounce rate” really means.</span> So what is a Bounce rate? According to Google: Bounce Rate is the percentage of single-page sessions (i.e. sessions in which the person left your site from the entrance page without interacting with the page). A better definition would be: Bounce Ra

Alex Cirstea-12 Sept 2016

GTM workspaces: how to manage multiple workspaces in Google Tag Manager

Exciting news in the world of analytics! Recently, Google has launched a new feature called Workspaces for both GTM and GTM 360 users. The goal of this new feature is to solve workflow challenges for multi-user teams working within the same container. Workspaces allow you to make changes in a specific instance of GTM, while others can work in a separate instance of the same container. Basically, when a Workspace is created, a new Container Draft is separated from the latest GTM container versi

Alex Cirstea-31 Aug 2016

Learn With Measurelab beta launch!

Measurelab already offers some of the <a href="https://www.measurelab.co.uk/training/">best in-person training around</a>, with monthly courses on <a href="https://www.measurelab.co.uk/training/google-tag-manager-training/">Google Tag Manager</a> and <a href="https://www.measurelab.co.uk/training/google-analytics-training/">Google Analytics</a>&nbsp;in London and <a href="https://www.measurelab.co.uk/training/google-analytics-training/">custom in-house training available on request</a>, but w

Adam Englebright-8 Jul 2016

The Measurelab Year of Self Betterment

As Measurelab, we have been running bi-monthly Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager training sessions up in London for nearly 18 months now. We like to keep the groups small enough (under 10) to be personable and really help each attendee out with their questions and unique&nbsp;requirements. Due to the success of these training events, we are now running them every month (see all the dates for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.measurelab.co.uktraining/google-analytics-training/">GA Training</a>&n

Daniel Perry-Reed-27 May 2016

Data Visualisation with Power BI

Since the recent(ish) announcement of <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/analytics/360-suite/data-studio/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Google Data Studio 360</a>&nbsp;(Google's answer to&nbsp;Tableau), we wanted&nbsp;to&nbsp;see where Data Studio 360 will fit into the mix by trying to compare what little we currently know about it with&nbsp;other data visualisation tools that are already on the market. Fast forward a few weeks, and to cut a long story short, Microsoft Power BI

Daniel Perry-Reed-6 May 2016

Core Reporting API v4

<p class="p1">“<a href="https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/core/v4/changelog#header">Core Reporting API update</a>” doesn’t sound like the most exciting thing in the world, but trust me: it is. Well, maybe not <i>the</i> most exciting thing, but certainly getting on that way. So what’s new?</p> * Metric Expressions Are you sick of having to do post-processing on metrics in a separate sheet before you pipe them to your presentation layer? Well, guess what – you can

Adam Englebright-14 Apr 2016

Google Analytics 360 Suite: what it is & why it matters

So it's finally happened, Google has brought their enterprise-level analytics offerings together in one neat package: the Google Analytics 360 Suite! What they have done is re-branded Google Analytics Premium as Google Analytics 360 and Adometry as Google Attribution 360, and released 4 all new tools. What’s included in the suite: Google Audience Center 360 (beta) A data management platform (DMP) that helps understand and identify customers across channels, devices, campaigns, etc. Google

Daniel Perry-Reed-15 Mar 2016

Cafe Analytique... 2

<img class="wp-image-3615 size-medium alignleft" src="https://measurelab.ghost.io/content/images/2025/07/skandinaviska_konstnarernas_frukost_i_cafe_ledoyen_-_fernissningsdagen_1886-300x300.jpg" alt="Skandinaviska_konstnärernas_frukost_i_Café_Ledoyen_-_Fernissningsdagen_1886" width="300" height="300"> After the rousing success of the first Cafe Analytique back in November, we thought we'd have another one on Wednesday the 16th of March from 6pm, and immediately make the name redundant by h

Adam Englebright-4 Mar 2016

When GA isn’t enough: beyond Google Analytics & better analytics tools

My Measurefest talk After a few nerve-wracking weeks of preparation, I did my talk about Google Analytics, the API and R yesterday afternoon at Measurefest in Brighton. I must admit, the whole thing is a bit of a blur, but I've been assured by several people (not just my friends!) that it went well, so I'll take their word for it. I was even approached by people afterwards and asked questions! (and if you were one of those people: apologies, I didn't quite get back to normal for several hours,

Adam Englebright-26 Nov 2015

We are Google Tag Manager Certified!

Measurelab is officially Google Tag Manager certified We are proud to announce that, following a rigorous testing process, Google have approved Measurelab to be certified partners for Google Tag Manager – re-affirming our position as one of the UK’s top Google Analytics consultancies, specifically when it comes to using Google Tag Manager. Why this certification matters As well as demonstrable advanced technical skills with Google Tag Manager implementations, a pre-requisite of the certifica

Mark Rochefort-10 Nov 2015

Google Tag Manager training course now available from Measurelab

Google Tag Manager training is now live Right, folks, it’s happening! Our new Google Tag Manager training workshops are now live and ready to be booked! Thank you! Thank you! It has taken a bit of thinking and planning but we’ve finally decided to go ahead with it and we’re pretty pleased with the end results. What the workshop covers We’ll take you from the very basics - what’s a tag management system and how it works - to the more techy stuff such as how to deploy different vendors and c

Juan Barros-2 Oct 2015

Extract conference highlights: key takeaways & insights

Heading to extract conference It was a bit miserable last Friday morning; the kind of day when you don’t want to get out of bed. Not only did I get up, I got up early, as bringing me from Brighton, downcast under slate-grey skies, to London, land of steel and glass, and in particular the dull purple glow of the trendy The Brewery’s rave-lit interior, was Extract, a conference by web data company import.io, billed as “data stories worth sharing”. First impressions of The Brewery The Br

Adam Englebright-3 Jun 2015

Dara Fitzgerald: international analytics conference speaker

Dara at ADWorld experience Last week Dara was speaking at ADWorld Experience, in Bologna, about Enhanced Ecommerce in Google Analytics. On his return, Dara rather sheepishly let slip that he was awarded "Most Voted Speech" for the event. Well done, Dara! @measurelab @darafitzgerald demonstrating the wonders of enhanced ecommerce analytics #adwexp pic.twitter.com/NmwydFPqmV — Alan Coleman (@AlanCWolfgang) April 17, 2015 If you would like to book the internationally acclaimed Dara Fitzgerald

Steven Elliott-24 Apr 2015

R for analytics beginners: part 4 – building graphs and analysing data

Earlier in this series we reviewed several R libraries for Google Analytics. Then we started using RGA. Next we pulled data from Google Analytics using RGA. What now? I’m reaching for my university notes, because we’re getting into proper R territory. Diving into graphs with R Let’s start with graphs! Who doesn’t love a good graph? It just so happens there’s a lovely R library called ggplot2 that does really excellent graphs of all shapes and sizes1. We’re probably best looking at a few speci

Adam Englebright-19 Feb 2015

R For Analytics: A Beginner’s Guide, Part 3

<strong>IMPORTANT: THE PACKAGE HAS BEEN UPDATED BUT ADAM HASN'T HAD TIME TO UPDATE THIS YET! PROCEED AT YOUR PERIL!</strong> Last time, we had a look at how we could use RGA to pull in account details and suchlike. It’s not essential, but I’d suggest you go back and read through it, as it might make some of what we do next a little easier – and, of course, if you haven’t done so already, read the first piece too and follow the instructions enumerated therein to allow you to do, well, any of

Adam Englebright-4 Feb 2015

R for analytics beginners: part 2 – authorizing GA access

In Part 1 of this series, I discussed R briefly and explained why it might be useful for people doing analytics work. I also introduced the libraries that allow you to interface R with Google Analytics. At this point, you should have R and RStudio installed on your computer, along with the RGA package. If you have not done this yet, please return to Part 1 and complete these steps first. Next, we need to authorise the package to access our GA data. You have to go to the Google Developers Consol

Adam Englebright-29 Jan 2015

R for analytics beginners: part 1 – getting started

Two years ago, or thereabouts: I was introduced in my statistics lectures to a programming language and software environment called R. I took to it immediately, preferring it by far to the simpler software we’d used before, and also to the proprietary software (SAS, SPSS) we used in addition. Flash forward to: A couple of months ago, sitting in the audience for the talks at MeasureFest, and then we had what was, I think, by broad agreement, the best talk by Ela Osterberger, about using R with

Adam Englebright-22 Jan 2015

Google Analytics training 2015 – master your analytics skills

Join our Google Analytics training If you have ever attended one of Dara's talks or workshops, you know the allure of his beard and Irish accent. Now you can spend a full day learning from Dara (aka “Data”, yes, that name’s courtesy of predictive text). Register now for one of our Google Analytics Training days in Covent Garden, London. Google Analytics training course dates - 2015 (until June) Description Date Time Location Price Book online Standard Google Analytics Training Course

Mark Rochefort-6 Jan 2015

GAIQ: How I prepared...and passed it!

It’s been exactly a month since I started to work at Measurelab, and so far it has been an amazing experience. Much of the industry jargon and tools are starting to sound familiar and I can make tea or coffee for almost anyone in the team without having to ask how they take it. In order to celebrate the fact that I had survived for a whole month, Mark suggested me to have a go at the Google Analytics Individual Qualification, (which I did..and passed!) For those of you that are not familia

Juan Barros-2 Dec 2014

Google Analytics health check: Part 2: third week guide

Continuing the GA health check Last week, I covered the first few steps of our Google Analytics Health Check, as one of the first, and most important steps when putting together a measurement plan. To recap a bit, the main aim of a Health Check is to ensure that we are collecting the right information, filtering out any undesired data, to allow us to create actionable reports for the stakeholders that, at the same time, help them to make informed business decisions. Checking goals and funnels

Juan Barros-24 Nov 2014

Google Analytics health check – Part 1: second week guide

Diving into GA health checks Right, now that some of the basic concepts and industry jargon are starting to sound a bit more familiar, things are starting to get interesting – not that last week was boring but this week I’ve been having a go at one of the most important parts of a piece of “initial discovery” for a client: A Google Analytics Health Check. Our approach to health checks In this document, which the team creates for every single one of our clients, we run a detailed audit of the

Juan Barros-17 Nov 2014

Floods, Scroll Depth, Bonfire and lots of coffee: My first week at Measurelab

<p class="p1"><span class="s1">It’s been, without a doubt, an unusual first week. Upon arrival to the mind-blowing <a href="https://www.measurelab.co.ukcontact/"><span class="s2">Old Candlemakers</span></a> building in central Lewes, I walked into the office to see the team running up and down trying to clean up the mess: one of the roof windows was left open during the weekend and we ended up with a meeting room that looked more like a fish pond than a place to catch-up or meet clients. Fort

Juan Barros-10 Nov 2014

GTM’s new interface: public‑beta update, API & feature changes

Things move fast in the digital world. Even more so when the might of Google is behind a product. Even so, a complete overhaul of the Google Tag Manager interface is quite a leap - considering how accustomed we have become to seeing incremental changes in product development. This morning I was using Google Tag Manager as usual, this afternoon I noticed that an import/export feature had become available. That was great news in itself, as it opens up all sorts of possibilities - for example, link

Mark Rochefort-15 Oct 2014

How to use the Google Analytics Embed API: guide & examples

When I started at Measurelab, way back in July, one of the items on my List Of Things To Do was to look into new and exciting ways of visualising data for clients. A few weeks ago I spent some time experimenting with dc.js but then, Mark and Dara went to MeasureCamp in London (I was going to go but I had other commitments) and came back bearing glad tidings of great joy for all analytics consultants, because unto Google, in the town of Mountain View, was born an API, and the angel Justin C

Adam Englebright-1 Oct 2014

Enhanced Ecommerce & Data Import - #BrightonSEO slides

On Friday the Measurelab team attended <a href="http://www.brightonseo.com/">BrightonSEO</a>&nbsp;and I did a talk on two exciting features of GA: Enhanced Ecommerce and Data Import. Here is the deck for those who are interested, as well as the Twitter feed that followed the talk. Enhanced Ecommerce & Data Import for GA - #BrightonSEO Sept 2014 from darafitzgerald The advanced Google Analytics training course was an eye opener and really helpful! thanks @darafitzgerald #BrightonSEO — Man

Dara Fitzgerald-15 Sept 2014

Key universal analytics insights: lessons for a GA transition

The conference bit of BrightonSEO is happening tomorrow, and for those who aren't going along we thought it might be nice to post the little piece I wrote for the newspapers they're distributing at the conference this year. If you are going, look out for us and say hi, and make sure to come along to Dara's talk in the afternoon! When Universal Analytics came out of beta earlier this year, many were overwhelmed by the plethora of new features. Not a day goes by without a client asking us "how do

Adam Englebright-11 Sept 2014

Measurelab has moved!

Last Friday afternoon, instead of the usual <del datetime="2014-09-01T09:27:54+00:00">slacking off</del> hard work right up to the end of the day, Measurelab (and our good friends at <a href="http://www.brightlocal.com/">Brightlocal</a>) were emptying cupboards and bookshelves, taking the legs off desks and disposing of never-watered plants, in preparation to load all the&nbsp;gear into cars and bus it down the road to the new office! Measurelab Manor has served well for the first year of so

Adam Englebright-1 Sept 2014

Adam's Analytics Adventure: Week 5

<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="http://measurelab2.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014-07-01-14.30.281-1024x768.jpg" class="kg-image" alt="View from the hill, 1 month ago." loading="lazy" width="1024" height="768"><figcaption>View from the castle, 1 month ago.</figcaption></figure> I started working for Measurelab a month ago today (has it really been that long?) and fortunately I'm still really enjoying myself. However, it's no longer the urgent exciteme

Adam Englebright-1 Aug 2014

Adam's Analytics Adventure: Week 4

<figure class="kg-card kg-image-card kg-card-hascaption"><img src="http://measurelab2.wpengine.com/wp-content/uploads/2014-07-19-15.22.35-1024x768.jpg" class="kg-image" alt="Went for a wander around Lewes itself over the weekend. The images aren't super-relevant, but they're quite nice. This one is down near the Priory." loading="lazy" width="1024" height="768"><figcaption>Went for a wander around Lewes itself over the weekend. The images aren't super-relevant, but they're quite nice. This on

Adam Englebright-25 Jul 2014

Adam's Analytics Adventure: Week 3

<h1 style="color: #141412;">New Laptop!</h1> New laptop finally arrived! It’s so shiny! aaaaaaaaaahhhhhh ahem. Bit shorter than usual this week, as the time I’d usually use for blogging has been spent installing/configuring the laptop which just arrived. On top of that, it's been a busy week, but not one in which the majority of my activities lend themselves to interesting anecdotes – I spent Monday just looking at spreadsheets. Fun for me, but not very interesting for you to read about

Adam Englebright-18 Jul 2014

Adam's Analytics Adventure: Week 2

<em>Because of the way events transpired this week, I’m going to go through a few notable things rather than a day-by-day (because that would be boring) and give them all pithy-ish subheads, like I’m a newspaper columnist or something.</em> Coffee habit Now that I work in a hip web 2.0 dotcom startup dealie, I clearly need to develop a coffee habit. I had my first cup from the office Nespresso machine (nary a burr grinder in sight - a disgrace) this afternoon – a purple pod marked ‘Arpegg

Adam Englebright-11 Jul 2014

Adam's Analytics Adventure: Week 1

<h1>Day One</h1> Upon alighting from the bus as I arrived for my first day of work, I found myself crossing the road next to a group with whom I immediately felt a degree of kinship – casually dressed (but not overly so), a scattering of black-plastic-rimmed glasses – the sort of people who, upon immediate visual inspection, you might peg as the employees of some kind of dotcom, web 2.0 startup. Such proved to be the case, in fact, as they all funneled into the shared office space where I w

Adam Englebright-4 Jul 2014

How to set up Google Analytics Enhanced Ecommerce (5 easy steps)

If you are anything like me, you will have seen the fandangled new “enhanced” e-commerce reports that are starting to become available in Google Analytics accounts (N.B. - Universal web properties only) and thought “yes, I’ll have some of that”. The reports allow for much deeper analysis of shopping behaviour - to understand things like influence of product impressions on conversion - as well as providing much anticipated refund and voucher/ affiliate code support. In the spirit of catchy blog

Mark Rochefort-30 Jun 2014

Universal Analytics is out of Beta... So What Now? #brightonseo talk slides

Yesterday, at BrightonSEO, <a href="http://measurelab2.wpengine.com/blog/author/dara/">Dara</a>&nbsp;(our Analytics Director) gave a talk on the state of Universal Analytics now that it is out of beta. It was well received by all (see Twitter feed below). Here's the slides (on <a href="http://www.slideshare.net/darafitzgerald/universal-analytics-out-of-beta-brightonseo" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Slideshare</a>) from the presentation in case you missed it or wanted to view them

Mark Rochefort-25 Apr 2014

Universal Analytics is out of Beta...BrightonSEO talk (coming up)

In line with the announcement on Wednesday that Universal Analytics is <a href="http://analytics.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/universal-analytics-out-of-beta-into.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">coming out of Beta</a>, I changed my upcoming talk at <a href="http://www.brightonseo.com/agenda-2/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">BrightonSEO</a> to focus entirely on this. When I spoke at events previously about Universal Analytics, there was still a lack of parity with Class

Dara Fitzgerald-4 Apr 2014

Import your Cost Data to GA with our new (Free!) Uploader

<blockquote>Please note that this app is no longer relevant as Google have provided their own cost uploader tool!</blockquote> GA has long since allowed you to import AdWords cost data with a few simple button clicks. However other cost data - Bing/Yahoo paid search activity, affiliate marketing, email, Facebook advertising, etc. - were not catered for until about 18 months ago when GA released the Cost Data Import tool in beta. This Cost Data Import tool, which feeds data into a new repor

Dara Fitzgerald-4 Apr 2014

#brightonanalytics

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en">We're kicking off <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23brightonanalytics&amp;src=hash">#brightonanalytics</a> again - Thurs 3rd April from 6.30pm in the Evening Star. Pass it on all you <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23measure&amp;src=hash">#measure</a> types in <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23brighton&amp;src=hash">#brighton</a> — measurelab (@measurelab) March 25, 2014 More at Brighton Analytics

Mark Rochefort-25 Mar 2014

Creating an effective Measurement Plan

When helping clients with their analytics implementations, we often run Measurement Planning workshops - bringing together stakeholders to better understand their measurement requirements. This video (part of the excellent <a href="https://analyticsacademy.withgoogle.com/">Analytics Academy</a> series) demonstrates a typical measurement planning and implementation process - closely aligned to the <a href="http://measurelab2.wpengine.com/blog/analytics-planning-is-at-the-heart-of-a-truly-measu

Mark Rochefort-17 Jan 2014

Google Tag Manager auto-event tracking - useful Tags, Macros and Rules for Google Analytics events

The recent introduction of <a href="http://analytics.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/no-code-required-auto-event-tracking.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">auto-event tracking</a>&nbsp;for <a href="http://www.google.com/tagmanager/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Google Tag Manager</a>&nbsp;was a welcome piece of news for many of us keen to remove custom jQuery from within the container. But it quickly became apparent that, to make real use of the auto-event tracking feature,

Mark Rochefort-25 Nov 2013

Analytics planning: the heart of a truly measurable digital strategy

Google Analytics is free and that’s a wonderful thing. But it does mean people can often undervalue the reports and the benefits that a truly structured approach to analytics brings to a business. Sadly, more often than not, a developer or webmaster adds the default Google Analytics tracking code to a website and leaves it at that. Trawling through the reports to find any kind of insight is left up to an analyst or marketing executive – who, later, attempts to find some kind of meaning in this

Mark Rochefort-21 Nov 2013

Cart Abandonment Segments - GA Screencast

The new segment builder in GA (available to all users now!) offers one major improvement to the previous Advanced Segments feature. It was previously possible to segment based on visit data only, which made cross-session segmentation and analysis impossible by default. The new segment builder allows conditions and sequences to be defined based on both visit and user data. This takes segmentation in GA from being an underused and limited feature to being a swiss army knife for intelligent

Dara Fitzgerald-14 Nov 2013

Migrate jQuery event listeners to GTM auto‑event listeners: a better way

Tag Containers are great. In a former life I was developer and I can really appreciate how much help they can be to people wanting to just add a "bit of code" to a website. But, as said former developer, I can also appreciate what a potential disaster it is to give the marketing guys the ability to add code to a website - outside of your carefully considered source control mechanisms and deployment routines. So - the recent announcement (there's quite a few on that link) from the team at Google

Mark Rochefort-10 Oct 2013

GA Summit 2013: Key Google Analytics updates & insights

The theme of this years summit is a focus on helping customers in three areas: Access, Empower, Act. The slide above was shown by the GA team to summarise the 3 part theme. Babak Pahlavan (Director of Product Management, Google Analytics) let the crowd know that GA have made 70+ releases in 2013 so far, which makes sense on reflection given how busy the year has been. This has included major updates such as the global roll out of Universal Analytics, the introduction of the Attribution Modellin

Dara Fitzgerald-2 Oct 2013