What is a Measurement?

What is the purpose of Measurements?

Measurements is a new method for importing data into Piano Analytics. It allows you to add context to analytical data and put it into perspective.

In this example, we put the evolution of sales from Facebook into perspective with the evolution of the number of subscribers on the Facebook page, in order to identify whether the increase is significant.

How do you define a Measurement?

A Measurement is :

• Numerical: the information must be represented by a value, such as the number of Facebook subscribers.
• Linked to a time period. A date must be associated with the value, which can be the number of subscribers per day, hour, etc.
• Aggregated data: it's important that this data is global, like the number of Facebook subscribers.

Now, if we want to have information for each user and know whether they are a Facebook subscriber, the Measurement product would no longer fit the bill, as we'd be dealing with granular data, not necessarily linked to a temporal or even numerical basis. We do, however, offer data enrichment solutions to meet this need.

What can a Measurement contain?

We've just seen that a Measurement is numerical data, but it's also possible to use properties to qualify it. To illustrate, let's take an example: I want to import weather data to see if it can have an impact on analytical data. Here we have a temperature, which is an aggregated, numerical value linked to a time period. However, limiting ourselves to one temperature per day is not very relevant, as the information is not sufficiently qualified. So we're going to improve our Measurement by adding properties:

• Country and region: here I'm going to use two standard Piano Analytics properties to give me more precise data. In France, for example, there's a big meteorological difference between mainland France and the French overseas departments and territories. But also, this is what will enable me to combine the analytical data and the Measurements data, as these values will also serve as a reconciliation key and enable me to have in one analysis the number of visits from Nouvelle-Aquitaine with the temperature of Nouvelle-Aquitaine.
• Weather report: This information doesn't exist in Piano Analytics, so I'll have to create a custom property that I'll use in my Measurement to pass on the day's weather as well as the temperature. This will include information such as "Rainy", "Sunny" etc.
• Temporality: Here I have the choice in my Measurement of obtaining information by the day or by the hour. I can import historical data, i.e. data from the previous year, but also data from the present, such as the current hour's temperature. But I can also import data into the future with weather forecasts.

Where to analyze Measurement data

When you create and send Measurement data, you create one or more metrics and send data via properties. Wherever this information is available, the Measurement data in question will be available in Explorer, Data Query, Workspaces and so on.

However, as these data are based on metrics, they are not available in Data Flow or Data Sharing.

Does my Measurement have to be linked to analytics?

You don't have to have a Measurement to extend the analytics domain. Some Measurements can operate independently, but it's a good idea to include them in the Piano Analytics interface to simplify reporting.

Do you have any examples of Measurements?

Measurements can be used in many different situations. All you need is access to the data (via API or exports) to send it to Piano Analytics. To help you, here is a non-exhaustive list of examples:

• Podcast tracking: you can import playback data from Spotify, iTunes, Deezer etc.
• Number of social network subscribers
• Analytical targets: Import sales targets to compare current sales with your target.
• Weather information
• In-store sales
• Offline campaigns, e.g. retrieve number of emails sent
• Import history from third-party tools (Google Analytics)
• Data from Google Search Console