Why Mobile Analytics?

Web-analytics tools generally fall into two main categories: client-side tracking and web server log-file processing. Each has their own drawbacks and neither type works well for mobile tracking for the following reasons:

• The tracking mechanisms of client-side implementations aren't widely supported
• Web-analytics tools don't capture the data needed to process mobile accurately
• The algorithms web-analytics tools use do not handle the nuances of mobile
• The web tools lack mobile metrics

Client-side web-analytics tracking mechanisms like JavaScript, cookies, and beacon images are not widely supported.

Any client-side tracking mechanism means some set of users and pageviews will not be tracked either because the device or operator doesn't support the mechanism, or the nature of mobile traffic results in a loss.

• There are thousands of mobile device and carrier combinations
• Not all devices support JavaScript
• Cookie support across carriers and devices is low - a device may support cookies, but the operator gateway may block them or render them useless for tracking
• Beacon tracking images may get cached by gateways and depending on implementation may not capture all the data possible, including referrers
• If a user navigates away from a page before the call to the beacon image is made, the page won't be tracked

• There are special fields present in mobile which are important for accurately tracking usage.
• Web-analytics tools, both client-side implementations and web-server log processing implementions, do not capture these fields.

• The rules and algorithms for processing are different for mobile reporting vs. web reporting.
• IP addresses in particular need to be handled differently as users go through operator gateways and proxies.
  • For example, with web-analytics tools an IP address and user-agent over a particular time period may be considered a unique-user. But in mobile, thousands of users would look the same as they go through an operator gateway.At the same time, one user may have multiple IP addresses during a visit as they are bounced from gateway to gateway.
• There are mobile nuances like determining the underlying operator and country for a user on a Blackberry
• Traditional web tools, usually show Blackberry users as coming from RIM in Canada or from a corporate network.
• There are techniques to figure out the underly operator and country information.

• Web tools often lack the full carrier and device information