Google Analytics is always compared to Omniture SiteCatalyst when it comes to customizing analytics reports and more specifically when it comes to traffic segmentation (among other features).This has been a part in which Omniture has had an edge in the past and where clients saw serious limitations in Google Analytics.

If you use Google AdSense on your website, you’ll be glad to learn that the enterprise class feature set will integrate your Google AdSense data into your Google Analytics account. This should translate into more in-depth analysis for you to increase your AdSense revenue.

Other features that are announced and that should give all web analysts much more flexibility and data analysis possibilities are access to the Google Analytics API as well as the new motion charts.Combining multi-dimensional analysis with Google Analytics usual user-friendly interface is definitely a feature that I want to see in action.

I’m very curious to try these new features, I’ll keep you posted as soon as the beta starts and we have the chance to play around with them. In the meantime, go to Google Analytic’s blog to read the full press release.

It was turning out to be a roundtable with lots of ideas and concepts being thrown around when all of a sudden, someone from the audience came up with an interesting comment to the panel: “so, it’s already been 40 minutes and we have yet to learn how to measure success of 2.0 initiatives; could you please give concrete examples?”.

The panel didn’t seem to know how to react because really, there are no standards in the industry yet and each website is different, a one-size-fits-all answer is out of the question. You have to measure your initiative according to what matters to your business. What are you trying to accomplish? Are you trying to get users to register? To post comments? To upload content? Stick with the basics, there are lots of ways to measure your initiatives, but stick to what really matters in your decision making. Agreed, easier said than done, it is easy to throw floods of data on a spreadsheet that your boss will see, not really pay attention to and have the impression that you really know what’s going on. But choosing just two or three KPIs will most likely help you get everyone in the chain of command clear on what’s being measured, how it is being measured and how it is going to be actionable. This is even better! You’ll see that your boss and your colleagues will start to become more educated, more informed and more interested in the actionable data you can feed them with.

In the end, 2.0 or not, it remains about being able to provide actionable data.

This post is indeed my first one ) It’s been floating in my head for a while… The title, Growing Pains of Facebook, has been haunting my thoughts for a couple weeks. I’ve been working on Facebook for some of my clients for several months and I had a tonne of comments (negative and positive) to share. What better way than to simply blog about it!

The emergence of a new platform, in any field, is cause for celebration. To me it represents growth, evolution, thirst for change and most importantly it is NEW. For all the ones who had been proclaiming that web 2.0 was here, it was a complete confirmation. Social Media is still defining itself but key players are identifying themselves and evolving. Facebook took off like a rocket and everyone was holding on to it, trying to be part of its explosion. We can definitely thank students for their ability to gravitate towards trends quickly and for their huge (not always meaningful) networks.

With change come difficulties ). As I began to use Facebook to advertise my clients I was very pleased to discover the low CPCs but very frustrated by the interface. But since money talks ) I keep buying ads because clients are pleased with the results (so was I) even though the CTRs are very low. Often enough, I login and notice new improvements to the Ad Manager interface. Reporting is now much easier but still at a very basic level. Billing still requires a calculator since the interface does not allow a quick isolation of data. The possibility of an advertiser account does not exist which forces us to mix our personal profiles with work. (A company profile for the purpose of advertising cannot be created, trust me, mine was rudely disabled with no possibility of recuperating data) But the possibility of targeting profiles by interests was my favourite feature of all. Unfortunately CPCs have sky rocketed lately and the benefits of Facebook ads have to be re-evaluated.

Since the flow of new applications within this social network is going strong we can deduce that Facebook will easily continue to offer new innovative ways to reach and market to a precisely targeted audience. From Bumper Stickers to Snowball Fights and passing through so many…there’s an infinite amount of possibilities within this social network. Another great advantage of the emergence of a new platform; it promotes the creation of other similar yet different platforms like Twitter, Linkedin, Plurk and more…much more! So maybe I shouldn’t call it the growing pains but more something like The Growing Delights of Facebook )