“We're so happy with the way RTmetrics™ is working for us. I think it's an excellent product, excellent service.”-- Chad, IT manager, Weil Lifestyle, LLC
Customer Profile - Weil Lifestyle, LLC, is an organization founded with the purpose of providing a funding mechanism to the Weil Foundation. Its mission is to be the leading resource for education, information, products, services and philanthropic contributions based on the principles of integrative medicine. Headquartered in Phoenix, Ariz., Weil Lifestyle is the owner of the web site DrWeil.com and the exclusive worldwide licensor of distinctive products and services selected and designed by Dr. Weil.
Vendor Profile - AuriQ Systems is a leading provider of Web Analytics and Network Performance Management solutions. Founded in 1996, AuriQ's goal is to help their customers gain visibility into the key performance indicators critical to the success of their web business. Their products help enterprises, data centers, and e-businesses succeed by increasing revenue and reducing operation costs. More than 200 global enterprises including Time Warner Cable, Epson, Disney, Honda, Terra-Lycos, NTT, KDDI, and Fuji-Film have chosen AuriQ solutions to power their business.
Drawbacks of Conventional Third-Party Ad-Tracking Service
• Ad-tracking was often slow
• Lengthy process to create a new link
• Long delay time from creating tracking link to link activating
• Links sometimes failed and would not go to the destination site
• Reporting lacked convenient summaries
• No automated email distribution functions
Key Benefits of Using RTmetrics™
• Reduced operating costs
• Real-time, immediate reporting results on newly placed ads
• Tracking new ad requires no change to settings in RTmetricsTM
• Better analysis of data for determining success of website and email campaigns
• Simplified reporting through user-defined summaries
• Daily and Weekly summaries sent via email
Executive Summary
Weil Lifestyle, LLC, the managing company for the popular online destination for health and wellness information, DrWeil.com, saw a need to improve the tracking and reporting of their sponsors’ banner advertisements by better utilizing RTmetrics™ which they had been using for web analytics since 2002.
With RTmetrics™, they’ve been able to replace a frustrating and costly third party ad-tracking service as well as improve reporting efficiency and accuracy. Estimated ROI of the first year was 289%.
Business Profile
DrWeil.com is the flagship web site for Dr. Andrew Weil, M.D., an internationally recognized expert on Integrative Medicine, often seen on Larry King Live, Oprah, PBS, and the author of several best selling books.
It is one of the most popular online destinations for information, products and services for those seeking health and wellness, with partnerships with Drugstore.com, MSN and Yahoo, among others.
Challenge
With over 2 million unique visitors per month, and a circulation of 700,000 and 500,000 for their weekly and daily email bulletins, respectively, Weil Lifestyle, LLC, the managing company for DrWeil.com, has leveraged their popularity by offering banner advertising placement to qualified sponsors.
To ensure a fair accounting of the number of click-throughs to their sponsors, they employed a link based ad-tracking service. The basic methodology was to create a redirect link that would first take the visitor clicking on an ad to the ad-tracking server which in turn would direct it to the sponsor's destination web site.
Although serviceable, this process had some distinct drawbacks.
In order to set up the tracking link for a new ad, Chad, the IT manager, would have to “login to their (ad-tracking service) URL...go to ad placement, add link, choose month, date range ... It was like 8 steps and every time someone would give me a new ad, I would have to go over the same process all over again. Each time, it would take about 10 minutes for each tracking link.”
Even once the tracking link was created, it would take “at least 40 minutes for it to activate" and sometimes the "link would go nowhere.” Placing the actual banner ad onto the DrWeil.com website would always be delayed until they could be assured that the tracking links were not only working but working correctly.
The reports themselves also had much to be desired, as “the weekly reports generally couldn't include the current day. It wasn't real time.” If they wanted to include today's date, “it would be about 3 or 4 hours behind.” Also, no tools were provided for easy email distribution of the reports and required that someone login each time and pick and choose what they needed. “It couldn't just default to a summary report.” With its lengthy setup process, inconvenient reporting options, and monthly service fee, the link based ad-tracking solution was a source of frustration for the management at Weil Lifestyle, LLC.
Solution
Fortunately, a solution to their ad tracking woes presented itself in an existing tool, AuriQ’s RTmetrics™, which DrWeil.com had been using since 2002 for their web analytic needs. Primarily, they had been using RTmetrics™ to get detailed reports on their site statistics such as pageviews, visitor session counts, average pageviews/session, and more.
During a routine new features demonstration offered by AuriQ’s support services, they recognized that RTmetric™’s unique ability of extracting query information in a URL (POST and GET data) could be an alternative to using the link based ad-tracking service. Moving quickly, they scheduled a one-day, on-site training session from AuriQ to work out the best possible methods to extract and receive reporting on the
various categories of advertisements. Using a combination of Group Controls, Site Settings and Mapping, they were able to utilize their already existing redirects, but instead of redirecting to an ad-tracking server, they would simply redirect to the sponsor’s destination site and use RTmetrics™ to extract the following information from the redirect URL:
• Category (Advertisement, Vitamin Advisor, My Optimum Health Plan Online)
• Location of banner ad on web page
• Sponsor’s destination URL
With the reporting targets defined, the delivery was fine tuned, utilizing the Summary and Mailing List features in addition to the normal login through the RTmetrics™ Interface.
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