[White Paper] Interconnections via API: Improving the performance of digital analytics

Interconnections via API:
improving the performance of digital analytics
by Marion Joffre, Product Marketing Manager
and Bernard Segarra, Editorial Communications
Online Intelligence Solutions
W H I TE P A P ER

22
Summary
INTRODUCTION 3
The API:
a promising data exchange template 4
How can connecting different
platforms help digital analytics? 8
CONCLUSION 13
AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / Interconnections via API

3
Introduction
Nowadays digital marketing must include the new uses and
trends of the fixed and mobile Internet: the social network
boom, the rise of web and mobile applications, online
commerce (e-commerce, m-commerce, f-commerce),
Smart TV, gamification, the Internet of things etc. These
different phenomena are completely changing the way in
which we use the Internet and the way in which we interact
with brands.
Data is becoming an essential element, making the link
between user/brand interaction to provide users with
an increasingly targeted, relevant and personalised
experience. Data is becoming a competitive advantage by
providing companies with better knowledge and a better
understanding of their market, and will also have an effect
on the company’s overall performance. Data is no longer a
luxury but a true necessity for survival.
If we consider data as being a central element, it will
create an environment whose existence will revolve around
the data. This environment is known as a digital ecosystem.
A digital ecosystem can be defined as an environment
which is made up of multiple items that continually
interact with one another. For marketers, the goal is to
identify market trends, view their audiences’ behaviour,
identify new opportunities and communicate with users as
personally as possible.
The challenge is rather about synchronising all of the data
so that it can be put into perspective, analysing the link
between cause and effect, and establishing correlations.
The aim is to take a reliable piece of information from the
abundance of data available which can then be used to
make appropriate decisions. With this is mind, a digital
analytics project can help companies rise to this challenge
by playing a more or less central role within the digital
ecosystem.
API (Application Programming Interface) technology makes
it possible to programme the different systems within a
company so that they communicate with each another
automatically. This fast-growing communication channel is
starting to become integrated into web analytics and looks
set to vastly improve the performance of digital audience
analyses.
The aim of this white paper is to deal with the main
challenges associated with interconnections and to
understand the potential of using APIs in digital analytics
projects.
The challenge
is rather about
synchronising
all of the data so
that it can be put
into perspective,
analysing the
link between
cause and effect,
and establishing
correlations.

4
The API: a promising data
exchange template
Goal: synchronising data
Companies have to accept one of the most complex and
complicated challenges out there: to be increasingly
effective, proactive and personal when communicating
with each of their clients. Nevertheless, companies are
still confronted with another problem: size. The lack of
homogeneity of the different internal environments within
a company means that information is not shared correctly,
and as a result affects the smooth running of exchanges.
To make things more complicated, the number of contact
points with brands both in the online world and in the real
world have increased dramatically over the last few years.
The digital world has experienced a dramatic increase and
companies nowadays are required to consider the online
world as part of their strategy and operations. As a result,
we demand marketing teams to be very versatile, and use
a wide range of marketing levers which makes reporting
increasingly difficult, and also reveals problems associated
with making budget-related decisions for the different
marketing channels used.
Let’s take the example of television. For many years
marketers understood and mastered TV advertising as the
audience was spread out over a small number of channels.
Advertising costs were, of course, prohibitive and for some
channels this is still the case today, but companies were
guaranteed the positive impact that this advertising would
have on sales. Today, the introduction of satellite television,
digital terrestrial television, pay as you go and replay
channels etc., have seen the same audience be distributed
over many more different channels, making it more difficult
to predict audience needs.
Potential customers can now view brands on a wider range
of media than just the traditional media such as TV, radio
and newspapers for which brand advertising is no longer
exclusive. User/brand interaction has clearly become
increasingly complex. Some people will use a brand’s
website, maybe even the online store to find out consumer
opinion on discussion forums, ask questions directly on
the company’s blog, keep up to date with the company’s
latest information on social networks etc. Other people,
however, prefer to contact the customer service directly by
telephone, fill in a request for contact form or go directly to
the shop etc.
Potential customers
can now view brands
on a wider range of
media than just the
traditional media
such as TV, radio
and newspapers
for which brand
advertising is no
longer exclusive.

Let’s not forget the different technological channels used
in the process! Tablets, mobile applications, Smart TVs,
the Internet of things all represent the different channels
which online operations have to be adapted to. In a certain
way, the customer takes control of what they are exposed
to, meaning that they have become increasingly volatile
and are not as easy to influence as before.
From a brand perspective, these exchanges are more often
than not separate from one another as they rely on the
use of different management tools (email campaign tools,
CMS, CRM, hotline management software, cash register
software in shops) which are management by different
departments (marketing, sales, supply chain, customer
service client etc.). With such a wide range of tools
available, information providing details on the different
interactions with users starts to get lost, preventing the
brand from implementing any automated actions according
to a set of engaging criteria.
According to the “2012 Brite/Nyama Marketing in
Transition study» 36% of marketers in the USA know that
they have “lots of customer data” but “don’t know what to
do with it.”
http://www4.gsb.columbia.edu/null/2012-BRITE-NYAMA-
Marketing-ROI Study?exclusive=filemgr.download&file_
id=7310697&showthumb=0
5AT INTERNET / WHITE PAPER / Interconnections via API
Sales history Call center E-Commerce Real time Maintenance
and repairs
Email Saleforces Support
Competitor
web content
Refunds and
rebates
Credit rating Related
accounts
Location Purchases Demographics Accounts
payable
Existing
customer
Existing
customer
Potential
customer
Potential
customer

6
The large increase in the number of data sources
available today has forced companies to implement data
synchronisation solutions, whilst taking into consideration
the diversity of the different environments and different
technological platforms used.
Popularisation of the API
As we have just seen, it can be very difficult to make all
of the different marketing tools communicate with one
another, simply because they were not designed for this
purpose. Up until very recently a lot of effort had to be
made so that data could be shared.
Today, however, this constraint is disappearing, little by
little. The arrival of new man/machine exchange protocols
allows us to foresee connections which, not so long ago,
were not possible on increasingly large volumes of data.
The advantage of these new exchange protocols is that they
allow any tool to communicate with another irrespective of
their technical structure and the language that they have
been developed in.
The term synchronisation is no longer used to refer to
data duplication or data replication. The challenge is
much greater as it requires a much smoother exchange
of information between the different systems in place.
The aim is to optimise the flow of data and to improve the
responsiveness of those involved.
This is where the idea of API becomes key, as it offers a
level of operability between software components which up
until now had been unmatched. What exactly do we mean
by APIs?
“An application programming interface (API) is a protocol
intended to be used as an interface by software components to
communicate with each other. An API may include specifications
for routines, data structures, object classes and variables.”
Source : Wikipedia
Numerous economic models based on APIs exist including
free, fee-paying, and limited models. After Ebay, Amazon,
SalesForces, GoogleMaps, Facebook, Twitter, there were
almost 8,000 APIs in October 2012, in other words a 100%
increase in the space of one year (source: FabelNovel,
6 reasons why APIs are Reshaping Your Business,
November 2012).
They allow any tool
to communicate
with another
irrespective of their
technical structure
and the language
that they have been
developed in.

7
The Gartner market research company predicts that 75%
of Fortune 1000 companies will have an API in 2014 with an
estimated 1 million APIs in 2017.
It cannot be denied that the openings generated by the
APIs will greatly impact the different brands. Let’s take
the example of Facebook and its “Like” button. Before
2010 the button was only available on the Facebook site,
but it has become an unavoidable functionality on social
networks. As of 2011 the “Like” button became exportable
to external sites, linking Facebook to external sites through
the Facebook API. Potentially, each visitor who visits
an external site has the opportunity to “Like” a piece of
information without having to sign in to Facebook. This
functionality has had mind-blowing success: 1,000 new
sites add the “Like” button to their site on a daily basis,
in addition to the 2.5 million sites which already use it.
(Source: FabelNovel, 6 reasons why APIs are Reshaping
Your Business, November 2012).
When developing AT Internet solutions, the notion of API
has always been central, allowing us to provide a wide
range of possibilities in terms of configuration, automation,
data exports and imports.
The decision to open up our solution was also strengthened
by our will to maintain and develop a very wide network of
technical partners, and to respond to customer needs on
connecting different platforms. This opening is essential
for us as we would like our clients to be free to choose
the set of tools to be used in addition to the AT Internet
solutions.

How can connecting
different platforms
help digital analytics?
Marketing ecosystems are becoming increasingly
enhanced with new tools on a daily basis. During
implementation, the teams concerned want the tool to
respond to the first level request. Once this step has been
overcome, many teams face restrictions and realise the
importance of being able to connect their different systems
with one another.
As part of any digital analytics project, connecting different
systems using an API will make each step of the project
easier. Let’s see how.
Tagging and automated
configurations
All digital projects have at least one essential point in
common: tagging.
Whether it be campaigns, content, rich content (videos,
podcasts), newsletters etc., it is necessary to use a certain
number of tags to collect information in order to accurately
monitor a project’s KPIs.
Once the implementation phase is over the marketing
teams are then faced with a new challenge: making it
easier to tag new, often temporary, sometimes permanent
or recurring campaigns.
Today our technological partnerships allow us to offer
our customers with procedures to automate campaign
declaration. Instead of manually tagging each campaign
by adding a tag to it in the URL containing the correct
parameters, we have created bridges (technological
solutions using APIs) between our solution and other email
campaign, affiliation, adserver, CRM, SEO, CMS solutions
etc. These bridges save our customers a lot of time, as the
entire process described above becomes automated.
This automated process ensures the integrity of the tagging
in place and avoids any incorrect human manipulation.
Furthermore, it also allows users to instantly view the
impact that a new campaign has had on their traffic and to
quickly measure whether the goals, which were set, have
been met.
This automated
process ensures
the integrity of the
tagging in place
and avoids any
incorrect human
manipulation.

9
Let’s take the example of one of our technological
solutions, AT Connect Retargeting, which has a partnership
with the Criteo company.
Thanks to the connections between our two solutions,
customers benefit from reduced costs and require less
time to implement each campaign.
Criteo campaigns are declared automatically in the AT
Internet solution configuration zone. The Criteo analyses
are available on the AT Internet interface in real time,
meaning that users are able to access and read their
results immediately.
Mastering incoming/outgoing
data flows
Once tagging is in place (automated or manual), data
collection is operational and can begin. Marketing teams
can now work with the data.
• Data imports
To make it easier to read data, some connections enhance
web analyses with new variables from our partners. These
variables are imported directly into our solution, meaning
that they can be considered alongside web analytics data.
Let’s take the example of a current bridge that exists
between our web analytics platform and an adserver
solution (AT Connect Adserver AdPerf). In addition to the
automated tagging process, we also import an AdPerf
metric known as Post view.
Online Intelligence Solutions Data collection
for AnalizerNX
Displays information on
viewed, purchased or
abandoned products
1 single
TAG

By using a set of specific variables this metric accurately
measures the impact of a campaign display by providing
a complete view of the path taken by visitors. Users can
evaluate the impact that advertising campaigns have on
Internet users who view banners before their visit and
any conversion, irrespective of the traffic source. Such
information can be used to improve how advertising
investments are managed, and to allocate a budget
according to the best performing combinations that have
been identified.
• Data exports
Integrating data from a third-party solution into a web
analytics solution provides users with a certain level of
comfort. However, it is sometimes necessary to do the
reverse and export data from our tool to a third-party
solution to reuse the data. Our partner programmes
have also set-up such outflows. Whether the data is to be
integrated into a partner tool or into an internal tool, we
have different methods available which can be adapted for
use in both cases.
The need to go further in personalising analyses and
adapting them to meet specific user job requirements has
led us to develop a simple, intuitive and customisable data
export tool.
Data Query is a tool which allows users to structure and
export reports using formatted, customisable templates.
The templates can be exported in different formats, 2 of
which use our API: the IQY connector which is used to
create dashboards can be updated directly in Excel, and
the REST URL which is created to automatically import
data into a third-party solution used by the company. Each
format has very specific goals and meets a large number of
expectations by providing a generic solution which can be
integrated into all types of external tools.
Automatic performance management
One of the most important requests from marketing teams
is about how they can manage their activity and implement
accurate reporting so that they can easily measure the
ROI of each marketing action in place. This activity can
quickly become time consuming and often requires human
intervention on a regular basis. To make this task much
easier, and to limit any risk of human error it is therefore
necessary to automate this process as much as possible so
that the marketing teams can focus on analysing data.

Data Query contains an innovative and easy to use
functionality: a connector which links Excel files, in our
case dashboards, directly with our API. The connector
retrieves web analytics data which has been collected so
that it can be integrated directly into an Excel file. This
functionality is particularly adapted to regular reports
which use information from rolling periods. Each user
can then easily manipulate the dashboard without the
assistance of technical teams.
One of our clients, the Solocal Group (Pages Jaunes,
Mappy, …,) manages their traffic audience via a set of
automated dashboards thanks to the AT Internet API.
Bruno Guilbot, Data and Behavioural Marketing Manager at
the Solocal group commented on the API’s effectiveness:
“The easy to use Data Query tool means that our web
analysts are completely autonomous in creating the API
URLs”.
(Re)exploiting the value of web data
Web data has a clearly defined function: to generate an
exhaustive vision of Internet user behaviour in order
to measure the different actions which have been
implemented. Of course this feature is essential but the
data does not really have any particular goal: for example,
it can be used to target a specific audience as part of a
remarketing campaign. In this example the data is reused
for customisation purposes where the aim is to slightly
improve conversions or to send an additional incentive via
email reminders to potential customers who abandon their
shopping baskets.
As part of our technological partnerships, clients benefit
from connections between 2 different solutions (for
example between a web analytics and email campaign
platform) providing them with an increasingly accurate
level of detail.
Let’s take the example of a leading e-Commerce player
who has realised that an important share of their orders
does not lead to conversion. To improve the conversion
rate, the e-Commerce trader decided to link their email
campaign platform (for example our partner 1000 mercis)
with the AT Internet solution. This allows the e-Commerce
trader to send reminder emails to visitors who have
abandoned their shopping basket.
The data is reused
for customisation
purposes where the
aim is to slightly
improve conversions.

This automated exchange can be implemented several
times a day, allowing our partner to add these users to
their remarketing process. In this case we can imagine a
sequence of email campaigns which is sent in two distinct
phases:
• Phase 1: a first targeted email is sent, containing up to 6
products which the visitor has viewed
• Phase 2: a second targeted email is sent to promote an
additional product if the first reminder email sent failed
to generate any conversion.
Crossing online and offline data
How can specific individuals be targeted? By going beyond
the limits of online data. In other words, connecting a web
analytics solution to the company’s CRM tool. This level
of customisation allows companies to provide services
which are adapted to each customer or prospect profile by
combining all of the data collected on all of the different
commercial tools.
Online and offline data can be crossed directly in the web
analytics solution. Data from the CRM will identify each
visitor and will allocate specific custom criteria to them.
The advantage of importing this data is that it allows for
accurate segmentation on imported criteria such as sex,
age, socio-professional category etc.
On the other hand, data collected by a web analytics
solution can also be exported to a CRM tool, for example,
an insurance company whose goal is to increase sales
on their web site. To be successful, the company has
implemented several different types of acquisition
campaign on different marketing channels (affiliation,
sponsored links, social networks, newsletters, etc.).
By using a multichannel analysis solution (such as AT
Internet’s ChannelOptimizer), the company is able to
collect the set of marketing and organic sources leading
to conversion. The company is then able to inject this data
into its CRM tool, at the core of the customer database, to
segment customer profiles and implement targeted offers
according to the different customer behaviour observed.
Online and offline
data can be crossed
directly in the web
analytics solution.

Conclusion
Now that the different technical constraints are being
overcome one after the other, connection possibilities
are becoming infinite and business opportunities are
increasing considerably. However, before any company
thinks about connecting their tools to another solution,
they need to take a step back and think about the goals to
be reached. The aim of the vast range of tools available is
to make life easier but the danger is that too much time
and energy would be spent on some, incorrectly identified,
projects, taking us further and further away from the
original goal.
As far as analytics is concerned, thanks to API exchange
protocols the daily work of teams in charge of data
processing looks set to be optimised in each phase of the
digital project. The enormous potential that this technology
provides is transforming companies’ web analytics
activities. Not only does web data strengthen in value, it
also becomes a key element of the marketing ecosystem,
because as of now it can be synchronised with the different
entities of a company’s information system (imports,
exports, crosses, re-exploitation, etc.).
This approach, which is mainly based on the exchange of
data flows with a total opening of the analytics platform,
is unique in the online industry where the trend is to
develop proprietor systems and formats. This singularity
is promising as it provides clients with a very high level of
flexibility and agility, whilst at the same time leaving them
the choice to work with the best tools available.

Bordeaux (HQ) / Paris +33 (0)1 56 54 14 30
London +44 (0)20 3178 5356
Madrid +34 (0)911 105 829
Montréal +1 514 658 3571
München / Hamburg +49 (0)89 / 324927-0
Contact
© 2013 AT Internet. DE.CL.8-000001075
Online Intelligence Solutions
AT Internet, a major player in the field of Web Analytics since
1995, helps companies drive their online performance and
optimise their presence on all online marketing channels
such as web and mobile sites, applications, e-CRM, social
media etc. The company’s Online Intelligence solutions
provide reliable, valid, complete decision-making data. AT
Internet has placed agility at the heart of its innovation
process to provide its clients with an evolutionary and 100%
modular solution that responds to the challenges faced by
companies today. The strength of AT Internet’s technology
and the quality of its customer relations are recognised
worldwide. AT Internet has more than 3,500 clients all over
the world from all sectors. The company, which has more
than 150 employees, is present in 20 different countries
through its subsidiaries and partners.
AT Internet - Agile Business Decisions
www.atinternet.com

[White Paper] Interconnections via API: Improving the performance of digital analytics

Recomendados

Recomendados

Mais conteúdo relacionado

Mais procurados

Mais procurados (19)

Semelhante a [White Paper] Interconnections via API: Improving the performance of digital analytics

Semelhante a [White Paper] Interconnections via API: Improving the performance of digital analytics (20)

Mais de AT Internet

Mais de AT Internet (20)

Último

Último (20)

[White Paper] Interconnections via API: Improving the performance of digital analytics