Facebook, Apple's 'Walled Gardens' Make Analytics That Much Harder for Brands

Author:

Jack Neff

Source:

Tracking the effectiveness of advertising on the web was hard enough. Tracking it in the era of "walled gardens" could become that much tougher.
 
The rapid shift of web audiences and marketer attention toward closely controlled properties such as Facebook or Apple's iAd platform is presenting a growing challenge for web analytics. Nearly a quarter of online time at the PC is now spent with social media, the lion's share of that on Facebook, according to Nielsen Co.
 
With more of marketers' "owned" media -- i.e. their online relationship marketing programs -- now hosted within Facebook, that only becomes a bigger challenge. "A number of companies have invested heavily in their analytics platforms over the past five years," said Michael Stich, group director of strategic planning for Bridge Worldwide. "They've spent lot of money on reporting and scorecards. This really does put a black hole in the middle of those scorecards."
 
By far the biggest issue, because it has by far the biggest and most diverse audience, is Facebook, which now counts a quarter of the world's internet users as members and more than ...
 
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