About PBS:
Launched in 1970, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is a television broadcaster of America headquartered in Virginia. It has around 354 television station members spread across various categories starting from non-commercials to educational to news channels. They Distributes and Promotes all these sections of shows through PBS.org. To effectively track the data they installed web analytics tools, from which they wanted to get informed of their future strategic decision while maintaining the massive data analysis and reporting.
PBS’s Business Objective:
The basic requirement of web analytics team at PBS was an integrated system solution across the entire enterprise. They wanted that all the channel partners of individual programs should look only the data related to their pages & microsites instead of digging out of others. Some of basic objectives of PBS are listed below:
- They wanted to have a single platform to monitor the web performance of all PBS links.
- Provide all channel partners with web performance of their TV program only.
- And keep track of vital elements like video views, no. of hits, registrations etc. to strategies future actions.
Approach / Strategy Adopted By PBS:
The challenge was difficult, since the web analytics team at PBS knew that giving access to one show will obviously allow them to look all others shows data, which can not be resolved by simply having Google Analytics at place. For same PBS took help from 2007 Google Analytics Certified Partner LunaMetrics to divise a custom solution for PBS. With the help of LunaMetrics, PBS included two GA account coding standards on each page in order to provide administrative access to its thousands of partners. In short below mentioned are some approaches adopted by PBS:
- Formation of two accounts: first one for entire website and its pages. Another customized one for each and every channel partner.
- Use advanced features of GA, like event tracking tools, to monitor video views and related links.
- Set up goals and conversion funnels to monitor user registrations and no. of hits.
Result:
Web Analytics Director at PBS Amy Sample says that LunaMetrics and GA helped her and her team to better serve the distribution networks of their various stakeholder from centralised approach transition to a decentralised approach. The PBS web team have the appropriate metrics at place and know how to refine them for online medium. On the other hand all stakeholders and channel partner can easily keep track of all their tabs and web performances so as to make dynamic changes and improve online offerings. Some of the results also listed into measurements and figures are as follows:
- Increase in overall traffic by 30%
- 30% increasing in number of registrations as they improved the process of registration.
- With the help of clear track of video consumption and hits on it, designed two new video portals PBS Video and PBSKIDS Go!
Learning:
In online transformation of PBS, GA has been a key facilitator. The tool builds robust reporting, which meaningful and tailored at same time, with the help of same stakeholders no longer have to depend upon monthly static reports, rather they can get data whenever they want on day-to-day basis. The tools is also very flexible so that to customize according to needs of PBS at future as broadcasting platforms constantly expands and transforms. They, now also learned to create more complicated code tracking for video streaming and smart phone or mobile usages apps for its customer database.
Good post except few editing errors.