Thanks for this article. It summarizes some of the methods I use very well, and it even uncovers the mystery behind the "undebuggable" request payloads of the native Firebase Analytics requests. I would not recommend using BQ streaming as a debugging solution because it is notoriously incomplete in my experience…

… withOUT writing a single IT ticket — Adobe Analytics has a great analysis interface. But getting reports out of Adobe Analytics into a dashboarding solution like Google Looker Studio or even a Google Sheet was so far impossible without some tech-heavy process in-between (or expensive). At some of my clients, there are occasional requests like: We need…

Test-driving Piwik Pro: Results, please! — How did Piwik Pro fare in the POC? How easy was the implementation via GTM, how smooth the integrations with Google Ads, Search Console, and Looker Studio? What about the data quality? Where should Piwik Pro improve? And which tool did the client choose finally? This is part 2. Check…

And why Matomo didn’t make the cut — A client that was unhappy with the limitations of Google Analytics 4 finally looked at other options and decided to test-drive Piwik Pro. But why not Matomo? Disclaimer: This is NOT a full-fledged review of Piwik Pro, it is simply a story focused on that client’s needs. It is also…

An eVar, Classification Rule Builder, RegExp Extractions — and “Combo Hierarchies” — My great late grandfather often lamented that today’s youth has no more respect for hierarchies. Adobe Analytics has caught up to that trend and retires the good old “Hierarchy” variable. This post shows how you can migrate it to an eVar or prop. And if you have not done any…

We are not really in an “Age of User-Centric Analytics” yet — rather the Opposite — Especially since the advent of Google Analytics 4, I have been hearing the argument ever more frequently: Sessions have become irrelevant. We are in an age of “user-centric” Analytics. Not really. But what would be the ideal measurement time frame? A myth that became popular when GA4 became a thing The argument that Sessions are irrelevant and that we are…

You deleted a segment, calculated metric or workspace project and want it back? Don’t worry, that is very easy, because deleted components in Adobe Analytics are not really dead, but rather “undead”. Read on to find out how to deal with these zombies! I am cultural scientist by education, so…

The Long Journey around the UnicodeDecodeError — Adobe Analytics Clickstream (Raw Data) Feeds can be highly useful, but getting started with them can turn out a bit cumbersome. Especially complex is the treatment of non-ASCII characters (äöüßéàê“” etc.). If you try to open a file that has such a character in the wrong spot with Python’s popular…

Why creating or modifying Events via the GA4 Admin section should only be last resort — Recently, I got to spend some time with some really nice Digital Analysts from one of those Google-only monolith agencies. At some point, we got to the topic of vendor tunnel blindness — when you are sticking to your current vendor, not looking left or right, as if there were…