Troubleshooting Analytics Discrepancies

It is not uncommon to see analytics data discrepancies between third-party reporting systems and our in-house analytics system. We've seen per media variances ranging up to 20%. To better understand what may be causing these discrepancies, we recommend reviewing the following common causes and following our troubleshooting steps below.

Causes

Discrepancies may result from:

• Latency: Lag between an initial request and the media loading can lead to differences in counts. Viewers often navigate away after the video embeds but before the third party responds with the requested line item.

• Tracking Methodologies: Brid defines its analytics via its ping definitions, but a third party may record dimensions differently or trigger them at a different time.

  Filtering: Third-party analytics have different methods for filtering pings from various sources dropping values from spammers, bots, spiders, etc.

• Timezone: Depending on the timezone in which Brid analytics is made and your own custom reporting, there may be data discrepancies due to this differentiation.

Troubleshooting

Should you want to troubleshoot these discrepancies, here are some suggested steps:

Define issue

1. How big is the discrepancy?
   • Sub 20% is acceptable
2. How long has this discrepancy occurred?
   • If central to a day, what changed that day? (Player updates, custom code, new pages, etc.)
3. Is it across all media and domains or isolated?
   • If isolated what is special about that page/media/setup/ad?
4. Has the discrepancy remained constant or changed over time?
   • If changed drastically over time have measurement definitions changed? Player updates? Custom code? etc.
5. What player setup is being used? Is there any additional code or scripts?

Build test pages

Test page #1: Only Brid Player

1. Build a test page with a Brid Player, customer content and nothing else
2. Capture Brid Analytics
3. Capture GA Analytics
4. Compare results

Test page #2: +Custom Code

1. Build a test page with Brid Player, customer content and include added customer Player Code
2. Capture Brid Analytics
3. Capture GA Analytics
4. Compare results

Test page #3: Base Brid player code + 3rd party Analytics

1. Build a test page with Brid Player, customer content and include added customer Player Code
2. Capture Brid Analytics
3. Capture GA Analytics
4. Compare results

Test page #4: Base Brid player code + 3rd party Analytics + Brid Analytics/GA

1. Build a test page with Brid Player, customer content and include added customer Player Code
2. Capture Brid Analytics
3. Capture GA Analytics
4. Compare results

Test page #5: Customer player code + 3rd party Analytics + Brid Analytics/GA

1. Build a test page with Brid Player, customer content and include added customer Player Code
2. Capture Brid Analytics
3. Capture GA Analytics
4. Compare results