"Taming Advanced Analytics Implementations at EA Scale" - Electronic Arts, Digital Velocity 2015

Taming Advanced AnalyticsImplementationsat EA Scale#DigitalVelocity15

Ani LopezMeasurement Strategist

@AniLopez

Pamplona

Barcelona

Vancouver

@AniLopez

• Former web developer / project manager / SEO

• Measurement strategist working for agencies or in -house

@AniLopez

• Aug 2013 Joined EA’s DI as Technical Solutions Architect

• Feb 2015 Full time employee as Measurement Strategist

DigitalIntelligenceTeam

EA’s LandscapeWhy analytics is so important to our business

Gaming industry was simpler way back

Transition from physical to digital distribution

Multi-platform

PCs Consoles

Mobile

Devices

Online

Multi-device game experience

Product publishing cycle has evolved

Revenue = (Units sold x Price) - (Production + Distribution + Marketing) Cost

1993

New monetization opportunities

Base Game FIFA + Ultimate Team



Freemium + in-game micro-transactions

Why analytics is so important to us

Attract

Engage

Convert

Retain

Advocate

• Measurement tools have become more sophisticated

• We can measure pretty much everything

• Do we have a more accurate picture?

• Not in the videogame industry

• Connecting the dots is challenging

• Analytics even more important!!!

EA ScaleWhat we deal with

What we deal with

+35 properties 1 e-commerce

New

+10 Production & Analysis teams

• Business Intelligence• CRM / DBs managers• Campaign Managers

• Producers• Programmers• QA engineers

• UX experts• Ops• Data Analysts

What we deal with

Programmers

+1,300 tags: Measurement, A/B Testing, Heat Mapping, Marketing

+5 Billion hits a month sent to GA via Tealium

Monday first hour

Wednesday noon

Friday late afternoon

ProjectsLet’s get to the meat of the matter

1. Migrate from SiteCatalyst to Google Analytics

2. Global Revenue Attribution Project

3. Migrate from Classic GA to Universal

4. House Cleaning

5. Customer Data Integration

6. Ongoing Standardization

7. Executing and Tracking Semantic SEO

1. Migrate from SiteCatalyst to GA Premium

Issues

• Poor adoption of the tool

• Complicated implementation

• Not flexible enough for our changing environment

• Very expensive


Solution


• Optimal adoption of the tool• Very flexible implementation• Remarkable amount of money saved

that we invested in brain power

ROI




4. House Cleaning




2. Global Revenue Attribution

SourceCampaignMedium

+35 websites 1 E-commerce

Issues

• GA accounts at franchise sites with no transactional data

• Origin GA account (e-commerce) with no original attribution


Campaigns

GA AccountCampaign data

No revenue data

GA AccountNo campaign data

Revenue data

Solution

• Cross-domain tracking from franchise sites towards Origin


SourceCampaignMedium Franchise GA tracker Franchise GA tracker

Origin GA tracker

Extended Session

Solution

• Cross-domain tracking from franchise sites towards Origin


Campaign dataRevenue data

Campaign dataRevenue data


• Much better analysis about whatincreases revenue & saves money

• No programmers required, all done via Tealium

ROI




4. House Cleaning




Scenario

• When we migrated from SiteCatalyst to GA, Universal was in beta

• Universal Analytics got out of beta April 2014

• Classic GA is not an option anymore, Universal is way better

Issues

• Large number of tags to replace

• Even larger amount of JavaScript code in extensions to review

• Legacy sketchy implementations

• Countless hours of QA

• “Non-Stop production” environment


Solution


And the patienceof a loving mother



• All the benefits of Universal Analytics• No programmers required

More money saved!!!

ROI

What I mean by “No programmers”

Before Tealium

• Digital Intelligence sent specifications to programmers

• They implement alongside their regular stuff (more workload)

• QA testing

• DI validated

This means

• Resistance

• Lots of back and forth

• Less time to test

• Higher risk of inconsistent data collection

What I mean by “No programmers”

With Tealium

• Programmers do their stuff at their own pace

• DI implements tracking

• DI + QA test

This means

• Earlier integration of tracking in the project

• Agile implementations

• Perfect data collection

• Everybody happy!!

• (Requires certain technical knowledge though)




4. House Cleaning




4. House Cleaning

Everything tends to chaos

After a year and a half

• Are all Tealium profiles active?

• What happens with the marketing tags when campaigns are over?

• Who has access to the tool and what level?

@tomomichu

4. House Cleaning

Solution

• Hired extra brain power for a short gig

• Audited all profiles and removed

orphaned tags, load rules, and data layers

• Reviewed / revoked user permissions

65 users now, very few publish to Prod

• Audited privacy practices and updating

profiles to meet compliance

• Developed governance and user guidelines

4. House Cleaning

• Less margin for errors• Tighter governance• Privacy policy enforcement• Money saved!!

ROI




4. House Cleaning





“Full customer journey” but how do we get to know the customer*?

Stitching the pieces

• Before we know customer at a personal level

• When they register and give us their details

• Whether they buy or not

• In-game data. How, what, when they play

• Campaign evaluation

• Product quality / User satisfaction


Solution

Encourage then to register


Solution

Facilitate log-in

Automated cross properties


In Tealium

• CRM makes it available on our properties after login

• It’s passed to Tealium’s Data Layer

• Mapped to tags that attach info to rest of data they collect

Outside Tealium

• Data exported from different tag vendors

• Data captured from other sources like

social media

• Warehoused / mix and match

• Better understanding ofcustomer cycle / ecosystem

• Increases revenue and saves money

ROI





4. House Cleaning





Issues

• Entropy

We already know everything tends to chaos already

• Frantic production rhythm

There is never a good moment to come up with standards

• Teams change / technologies / business models evolve

There is never a unique standard

• Lack of buy-in from stakeholders

“Best” is often times trampled by circumstances or egos


Solution

• Learned from errors

• Introduced standardization during:

• Migration from Classic GA to Universal

• House cleaning

• Got decision makers involved, educated

and presented with evidence


What did we standardize?

• Best practices around implementing measurement strategies

• Code in extensions: GA function wrappers

• Naming conventions

• Tealium elements: Data Points, Load Rules, Tags, Extensions

• GA elements: Events, Custom Dimensions

• Less margin for errors• Easier deployments• All that saves money

ROI





4. House Cleaning




7. Semantic SEO

What is got to do SEO and Tealium?

The EA Content Service is a flexible, API-driven mechanism that, in conjunction with

a model that defines different content types and elements, allows content to be

published on any platform and consumed on any device.

Aaron Bradley@aaranged

7. Semantic SEO

How we tell better to Search Engines what our site is all about?

They now read “JSON for Linking Data” or JSON -LD

7. Semantic SEO

Learn more > http://www.seoskeptic.com/json-ld-big-day-at-google/

EA Content Service

http://www.seoskeptic.com/json-ld-big-day-at-google/

7. Semantic SEO

Consequence is “SERPs domination”

7. Semantic SEO

• More and better organic traffic• Deeper content analysis• Significant increases in revenue

ROI

Wrapping Up

How Tealium Helps

• Centralized control

Who does what and where (Dev, QA, Prod)

• Performance

Task separation, everyone focused on what they do best

• Agility

Ability to react quickly to last minute changes

• Scalability

Marketing campaigns growing across

products / properties / territories

What I’ve learned

• Taming chaos is your job

Don’t chicken out of it!

• Everything evolves including measurement strategies

Don’t panic, question everything and adapt

• No tool is perfect

But support and commitment should. Be demanding

• No tool, or set of them, is going to provide a 100%

complete vision of the customer journey

• No tool is going to solve the biggest issue

Lack of measurement strategy

ROI

What we deal with (recap)

• +35 properties

• 1 e-commerce (across several platforms)

• +10 production teams

• Quite a few Data Analysts, BIs, DB managers

• +1,300 measurement and marketing tags

• +5 billion monthly hits via Tealium (only Google Analytics)

• Advanced tracking implementations

• How many people required to manage all that?

All this chaos wrangled by only one guy and

No programmer was harmed in the making of these implementations

ThanksQuestions?

Wait!!Game License

Giveaway

Data & Analytics

"Taming Advanced Analytics Implementations at EA Scale" - Electronic Arts, Digital Velocity 2015