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Price
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- Adobe's pricing structure depends on the number of hits analyzed per year as well as the specific tier/SKU. Different tiers/SKUs unlock different number of variable slots and product features.
- Compared to Google Analytics, the pricing structure can be somewhat opaque. It is not uncommon for a contract to run several hundred thousand USD per year, usually sold on a multi-year term, along with SKUs for professional services.
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- Google Analytics Standard is free and has a limit of 10 million hits per month.
- Google Analytics 360 usually starts at $150,000 per year and is usually procured through a Google-licensed reseller.
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Ecosystem Integrations
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- Adobe Analytics has integrations with other offerings in the Adobe Experience Cloud ecosystem (Target, Audience Manager, Campaign) as well a variety of connectors with third-party MarTech vendors.
- Activation of marketing efforts against audiences created in Adobe comes with additional cost and effort.
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- The sweet spot for Google Analytics are the many free integrations with the Google ecosystem, making it easy to implement marketing activations through the sharing of audiences with other Google platforms enabling paid search placement, advertising management, A/B testing, etc.
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Barrier of Entry
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- Implementing Adobe Analytics in an enterprise setting requires a lot of planning and coordination of resources across different teams, including development, legal, product, etc.
- Onboarding users is also not trivial and successful adoptions usually require some form of specialized training for self-service as well as managing processes around scheduled delivery and integration of data across different enterprise functions.
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- In a non-enterprise setting implementing GA Standard using the generic Google Analytics page view tracking can often be achieved quickly with minimal resources, either through enabling GA directly on the page or through GTM. A variety of popular CMS plugins can make this process even faster.
- The effort of implementing GA360 in an enterprise settings is comparable to Adobe Analytics implementations. Significant planning is required around surfacing meta data in a structured data layer, deciding on the best usage of properties/views, managing report/dashboard distribution, user access etc.
- It is fairly easy for users to get started with GA Standard, which provides a variety of built-in reports in a simplified interface. The same set of reports are also available for GA360 accounts, lowering the entry barrier.
- The complexity of user on-boarding escalates quickly with more advanced reporting requirements, becoming similar to the effort required for onboarding users in Adobe Analytics.
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| Ongoing Maintenance |
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- While minor tag versioning maintenance is usually straightforward, especially for implementations using a Tag Management System, upgrades between major versions (e.g. s_code, AppMeasurement) require significant planning and resources.
- The maintenance of meta data (used to inform key metrics and dimensions) is one of the more significant challenges for any MarTech vendor, and Adobe Analytics is no exception. Some of the complexity comes from the sheer volume and variety of such meta data, inconsistency of implementations across different teams/applications, as well as the neck-breaking speed of changes across web/app properties.
- Configuration/reporting maintenance usually requires dedicated resources in an enterprise setting with companies usually employing full-time analysts and/or supplementing the team's capabilities with external agencies/contractors.
- Management of user accounts (new users, updating user permissions, deletting/disabling accounts) does not usually require full time resources but is an important aspect of the Adobe Analytics footprint upkeep. Effective user onboarding/training, keeping up with developments, and up-skilling of team members is a very important aspect of managing Adobe Analytics.
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- For the large majority of Google Analytics implementations the standard JavaScript library maintenance is trivial, with more effort needed when switching between major versions or upgrading to a GTM-driven implementation.
- Meta data maintenance is no different in scope than Adobe Analytics. The more customized your Google Analytics implementation, the higher the likelihood that data collection will be compromised at some point, and therefore, the higher the maintenance cost.
- Maintenance of GA configurations across many properties is not to be underestimated. While GA has APIs that can automate some of that work, in many cases (Marketing Channels) analysts need to resort to manual management of settings across a large majority of properties.
- User maintenance in an enterprise GA setting is similar in nature and effort to Adobe Analytics.
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Data Governance
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- Data governance is an essential (yet often neglected) part of the upkeep of any enterprise-level Adobe or Google Analytics implementation.
- Data governance efforts can include a number of different disciplines such as: review of privacy considerations and legal requirements for data that is being collected, ongoing audits of the data, compliance with data deletion request for GDPR or other legal provisions, policies around data access, ongoing data documentation.
- Data governance with respect to data quality should start with monitoring the data collected across key user journeys. Key user flows generate the vast majority of KPIs and are usually the trickiest to validate, requiring advanced knowledge of the expected meta data and the exact timing of when it fires.
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| Training Resources |
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- Adobe offers a variety of paid classes/courses following a curriculum developed by Adobe.
- Adobe also offers paid certifications for Adobe Analytics architects, business practitioners, and developers.
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- Google Analytics Academy is an excellent free resource for getting started with GTM, Google Analytics, and Data Studio. Upon completing the courses, users can optionally take free online certification exams.
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| Community |
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| Support |
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- Authorized users can contact Adobe Client Care directly in the Adobe user interface through a live chat feature. Support is also available via email and phone.
- Escalation/prioritization of support requests can be done through the account manager.
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- GA 360 support is provided usually through third party, Google-authorized partners.
- GA 360 accounts come with SLAs covering data latency, collection uptime, as well as access to support specialists via chat/email/phone.
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| Product Developments |
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- Both Adobe and Google analytics have offered dynamic product developments in aspects such as data collection, data organization, processing and visualization.
- On the Adobe side, exciting developments have featured the ongoing evolution of Analysis Workspace which has quickly become a standard for data reporting/analysis/visualization. The introduction of Adobe Launch has marked a step in the evolution of data collection and the recent unveiling of Adobe Alloy will open a new chapter in migrating data collection from the client to the server side. Customer Journey Analytics is another recent development that is worth following.
- Google Analytics pioneered a TMS standard in data collection with the introduction Google Tag Manager. The integrations with BigQuery and DataStudio have made GA data easily accessible for external systems and in the context of BigQuery have enabled even direct data science applications. The introduction of Google Analytics Web + App and GTM Server-side containers will set new standards for data architecture and collection.
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Adobe Analytics
Google Analytics
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