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Roman Prokashev.

This is an archive of the Last Click City blog, which was published at lastclick.city from 2019 to 2024.

Last Click City

Digital analytics blog

User-Journey and Multi-Channel Funnel from App promotion using AppsFlyer Data.

February 21, 2023

There are at least two trajectories of user-journey tracking: within a product, which is the scope of product analysis, and within traffic channels, which is within the scope of marketing analysis. The latter is called a multi-channel funnel. Nowadays, there are web and app promotions, so there are three multi-channel funnels: for the web, for apps and for a combination of these. Continue reading

Six differences between a session in GA4 and a session in UA.

April 18, 2022

The session has always been one of the keystones in Google Analytics, and while it will also continue to be one of the essential concepts in GA4, the session has evolved. Let us take a closer look at these changes so that you can better understand GA4 metrics. Then, you will be able to adopt these metrics to evaluate your website and apps’ performance more effectively. Continue reading

How to set up events in Google Analytics 4 (GA4) correctly.

April 15, 2022

Starting from July 1 2023, Google has claimed that there will no longer be any Universal Analytics (UA). Instead, you will have to use Google Analytics for Firebase or, shortly, GA4.If you are a newbie in web analytics or you are transferring events for UA to GA4, we recommend that you follow our simple instructions, considering the main restrictions of GA4. Continue reading

Watch the trap: Unique events in Google Analytics.

April 1, 2022

Events in Google Analytics, in both Universal Analytics (which will be deprecated next year starting from July 1, 2023) and in Google Analytics 4 (which will be a replacement), are indispensable tools for measuring various activities on website pages and across applications. Continue reading

Get the value of UTM parameters using SQL.

July 28, 2021

Parsing HTML with regular expressions is a really bad idea, but if you are using a tracking template for your ads, I’m sure your URL has well-defined, structured UTM parameters. Therefore, this method may actually be used in this case. Continue reading

Marketing Budget Allocation via Linear Programming.

May 28, 2021

Budget allocation is definitely a real headache for marketing. First of all, it is about attribution models, which try to represent as accurately as possible the real contribution of each marketing channel in terms of converting customers. Secondly, a business may require a spend that is more (or no less) than some amount of money on the channel which is not considered as being a very good performer. Continue reading

Checking events firing on Android App at Firebase/GA4.

May 24, 2021

Before starting to advertise your mobile app using Google App Campaign, you must be sure that all your app conversions, based on events, are tracked by Firebase. The way the marketer can check it is similar to debugging events at Google Tag Manager, but it’s a little bit trickier. You see, you need to have an emulated Android device, connected to Firebase. Continue reading

Comparative Measurement Methods of Global Changes for Marketers.

August 24, 2020

The A/B test may be used to ascertain whether there is any effect on the audience by implementing certain changes on your website, app, etc. But occasionally, there is an urgent need to change, for example, the websites’ flow at once, affecting all users. Or it may be necessary to enlist the help of a digital marketing agency too and allow it to fully control one or even all source channels. Continue reading

Myths About Bounce Rate.

June 30, 2020

Before evaluating your website efficiency with the bounce rate, define your website goals clearly. Does your goal involve multiple-page visits or events (in other words, multiple requests to the GA servers)? If it doesn’t, a high bounce rate will probably be acceptable. Continue reading

Requirements and Rules of Application Promotion via Google Ads.

June 25, 2020

Welcome to the black box Google Ads Application Campaign. It is easy to set up and takes just 5 minutes: 2 minutes for campaign settings and 3 minutes to write some headlines and descriptions. Google claims that it is now super efficient and that it uses multidimensional signals to find your users etc. Continue reading

Prediction of Campaign Results using Python.

June 14, 2020

Among the challenges faced by online marketers, are the expected results from paid campaigns. An answer to these challenges is often a media plan that is based on experience, expertise and a quick superficial analysis of the business area. That’s good, but it is not sufficient, as it doesn’t provide the range of expectations in a specific sense. Continue reading

Simple Attribution Models via SQL in BigQuery.

May 31, 2020

You know, one of the main reasons why this blog is named like the old-fashioned attribution “Last Click” is that I and my co-host started our marketing careers when this attribution – like other classical ones such as “First Click” – was the only one we could use. Continue reading

YouTube Brand Lift Study: measuring video ads impact on brand awareness.

May 27, 2020

YouTube’s brand lift measurement is a powerful tool that helps users to understand how their video ads are influencing audiences; whether they have increased awareness across the target group or boosted purchase intent. The brand lift study (BLS) is one of the few tools which make it possible to better understand how video campaigns contribute to overall brand awareness. Continue reading

Reverse Page Path in Google BigQuery.

May 7, 2020

BigQuery export for Google Analytics is one of the most powerful tools, which can show you up to three of the steps preceding goal completion. But, to my bewilderment, there isn’t an option to obtain a similar report which can show you the reverse top paths to a particular page. Such reports can undoubtedly be useful in many cases when a user’s journey to a specific page needs to be analyzed. Let’s try to build it using BigQuery. Continue reading

Google Analytics user-based events funnel in BigQuery.

April 24, 2020

There are a few ways to create an event funnel in Google Analytics. The first is the default events flow report but everyone who has tried this report will know that it’s only suitable for the superficial analysis of small resources. When you work with data of a significant size it’s impossible to avoid sampling and therefore, it is challenging to analyze certain events. Continue reading

Markov Chain Attribution Model.

April 10, 2020

Accurate attribution is crucial for marketing and business. And today we will implement the Markov Chain attribution model, using python, to evaluate the contribution of channels’ performance to overall marketing activities. Continue reading

How to work in Google BigQuery using SQL.

March 26, 2020

This might be your first guide to SQL and BigQuery. If so, that’s cool, but if it isn’t, we hope that our guide will provide clear explanations and help you understand things better. The goal of this guide is to help you become more familiar with SQL and BigQuery as quickly as possible so that you can make simple queries by the end of it. Continue reading

BigQuery: User-Defined Functions.

March 8, 2020

BigQuery has an option called User-Defined Functions, which helps users to maintain data as they want, row by row, using JavaScript. You will only want to use this if you cannot do something with data by standard BQ methods. Continue reading

Custom Dimensions in Google Analytics.

February 22, 2020

Google Analytics provides us with a large number of useful dimensions that help us understand what is happening on the website. But to make full use of GA opportunities, you should definitely use custom dimensions. Only custom dimensions will allow you to get a lot of data that are not tracked automatically, e.g., you can export some information from your CRM or add some domain-specific dimensions. Continue reading

Yandex Direct Starter Pack.

October 20, 2019

Yandex.Direct, or Direct for short, is an ads platform for posting search and display advertising in the Yandex Search Engine and the Yandex Advertising Network (YAN, or RSYA in Russian). Continue reading

The Shapley Value in Data-Driven Attribution: How It Works.

October 2, 2019

To accurately evaluate marketing efforts, proper attribution is crucial. These days, increasingly diverse approaches are being suggested by vendors to help advertisers in this domain gain deeper insights into how different touchpoints, channels and campaigns contribute to overall marketing outcomes. Continue reading

Google Tag Manager Events: Proper Usage

September 17, 2019

When configuring Google Tag Manager triggers and tags, it’s crucial to understand when they will fire, so that all the necessary tracking will be tied with the right events. Three main GTM events to which you can tie your trigger are: Continue reading

Campaign Timeout: A Google Analytics Setting That Matters

August 16, 2019

Usually, Google Analytics implementation includes a few steps such as testing the tag, configuring the settings in the Admin panel and setting up all necessary permissions and integrations. It can be quite easy – especially if you are new to GA – to miss something important. Continue reading

BigQuery Interface Overview.

July 2, 2019

These instructions will help you to get started with the BigQuery interface. All you need to try it is a Google account: that’s it! BigQuery, in a nutshell, is cloud storage that may include data from many data sources, such as Google Analytics, Google Ads, Salesforce, etc. Continue reading

Pulling out the next page visited by new users in Google BigQuery.

June 28, 2019

Suppose that you have a particular landing page on your website, and you want to understand how it works for new users: how often they abandon the site after visiting this page or, for those who continue, which pages they visit afterwards. You could try to find these data in Google Analytics – it appears that the Navigation Summary report was invented for exactly this purpose and, to some extent, this is true. Continue reading

Top Conversion Paths in Google Analytics and BigQuery.

February 5, 2019

Understanding top conversion paths can be a crucial part of the customer journey analysis and an important step towards better understanding of how marketing channels cooperate. It is particularly useful to know the top paths to conversion when planning marketing and advertising budgets. Continue reading