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FAQ - Activation Insights

Barbara Kees
  • Updated

What is Activation Insights?

Activation Insights is an analytical product that streams events from Composer, VX, and ID to the Piano Analytics interface, providing complex data, metrics, properties, and reports to address the most important use cases in the media business

 

Activation Insights can be part of full Piano Analytics license or it is coming as standalone, free,  Workspaces boards version of Piano Analytics in Q1 2025 for eligible Activation clients (Clients using Composer, VX and ID)

What Piano products do I need to have activated to use Activation Insights?

The only requirement is Composer. While using VX (Piano's subscription management tool) to process payments can result in richer data with less effort from the client's side, clients who use Linked Terms, Custom Terms, or forgo terms entirely can still use Activation Insights effectively by sending conversion data from their own systems. To learn more about how to track conversions from third-party tools, please see this article, which outlines Activation Insights implementation.

What are different Activation Insights product variations?

Activation Insights can used alone or can be fully utilized by implementing the Piano Analytics SDK, allowing data from two different sources to be combined. Additionally, clients can implement supplementary ARI and Content profiles. To learn more in details about all these options we do recommend to contact your account manager. 

What is the difference between having fully licensed Piano Analytics vs Activation Insights only?

Activation Insights can be used alone or implemented alongside Piano Analytics by implementing the Piano Analytics SDK. Using the Piano Analytics SDK allows you to send non-Piano data through to Piano Analytics and use it as a full data model. This offers greater flexibility but requires additional implementation effort and will incur incremental costs, as it involves obtaining a full license for Piano Analytics.

With Activation Insights alone, Piano owns both the data streaming and data model. All traffic data comes from the Composer SDK, and clients cannot modify the data model, add their own events, or customize properties. However, other than ensuring the data outlined here is no additional implementation is required, as Piano handles data quality and streaming.

What is the main difference between Composer reporting in dashboard and Activation Insights?

A primary difference between Activation Insights and Composer reporting in the dashboard is that Composer reports only allow you to see each individual experience, while Activation Insights provides global reporting across all experiences. Activation Insights also offers much more flexibility in manipulating the data, provides near real-time data, and includes significantly more data points than standard Composer reports.

What data is available within Activation Insights?

Activation Insights tracks the most valuable Composer actions, focusing on specific events like showOffer, showTemplate, and showForm exposures, along with subsequent events such as clicks and conversions. It also provides additional data points such as detailed user interactions, content consumption patterns, and propensity scores from predictive models, which are not available in standard Composer reports.

It captures events like page views, template exposures, clicks, conversions, and identity actions (e.g., logins). The data includes content metadata (authors, publication dates), template details (IDs, names, variants), user segmentation information (likelihood to subscribe or cancel), transactions (amounts, payment methods), and form interactions (exposures, submissions). This comprehensive dataset enables publishers to analyze user behavior, engagement, and conversions to optimize their experiences and drive revenue.

While the Activation Insights data model is robust, actions like nonSiteAction, runJS, or template close actions are not streamed to Activation Insights, nor are card executions that feed into the Flow report. This is because such data is would significantly increase event volumes and the associated cost to Piano clients.   
 
For a more detailed understanding of the data available within Activation Insights, see this documentation on the Activation Insights data model.  

How I should read Activation Insights data in the context of Composer?

Composer is a tool for managing the acquisition journey and defining targeting strategies. In the context of Activation Insights, the acquisition journey is tracked by gathering data on Template/Offer/Form exposures and visitor interactions, which are measured as clicks and conversions.

  • Exposures: In both Activation Insights and Composer reports in the dashboard, exposures occur when an action card—showTemplate, showOffer, or showForm—is displayed. In Activation Insights, this is logged as the event experience.action.
  • Clicks: Each time a visitor clicks on a specific object with external event tracking, the event is logged as experience.interaction in Activation Insights. Activation Insights includes deduplication logic, meaning if the same external event is executed multiple times, it is only logged once. The type of click is stored in Activation Insights as "Interaction type".
  • Conversions: Conversions that come from VX, such as subscription terms, registration terms, and gift term conversions, are logged in Activation Insights as vx.conversion event. For clients using Linked Terms, conversion data is sent back to Piano, ensuring accurate revenue and conversion data in Activation Insights. 
    • For clients using Custom Terms or forgoing terms entirely, conversions logged through Composer's conversion API are tracked in Activation Insights as composer.conversion events. It's important to note that this API must have the "SentToCI" parameter set to "True" for the conversion to be tracked in Activation Insights. For more information on this type of conversion tracking, see here.
    • If a conversion event lacks site details, it is logged as vx.conversion.offsite in Activation Insights. These offsite conversions can be analyzed in VX reporting and Activation Insights but cannot be attributed to any Composer experience and are thus not reflected in Composer dashboard reports. Custom term conversions, for example, would be logged as offsite conversions. 

What if there are differences between Activation Insights and Composer reports

Composer reports and Activation Insights are built on top of the same data source. If there are data discrepancies, it will most often be caused by legitimate differences, such as differences in metric logic, differences in application settings, or differences in data processing. Minor differences should not be a major cause for concern.

Some common reasons the data may differ include:

  1. Application in Composer Dashboard has different default timezone than Activation Insights
  2. In Activation Insights the ECO mode is turned on. Eco Mode is a Piano Analytics feature designed to optimize performance and reduce environmental impact by using statistical approximations, resulting in faster data retrieval with a typical margin of error of less than 2%. 
  3. In Activation Insights, you are using "Visitor level" metrics instead of "Event-based" metrics that are available in the Composer reports. Most standard Composer reports only have event-level data (number of template exposures, for example). Whereas within Activation Insights you also have the option of visitor-level data (where there is the deduplication of events on browser ID).
    • For example, if you look at “Exposures” in the Composer Conversion report and compare it to “Experience exposed visitors” in Activation Insights, you will see a significant difference due to de-duplication at a visitor level. To see the event-based equivalent metric within Activation Insights, you would instead want to look at “Experience action.”
  4. Activation Insights data is not retroactive, meaning that data begins populating in Activation Insights once the implementation is complete. Composer and VX data from before the implementation was completed will not be present, which can create data differences when looking over longer time ranges.
  5. In Composer reports, you might analyze KPIs around action cards that are not integrated into Activation Insights. Activation Insights supports showTemplate, showOffer, and showForm action cards.
  6. Conversions from 3rd party tools are logged without the specific Activation Insights implementation as mentioned previous section. For more information on this type of conversion tracking, see here.
  7. If you are looking at the current day’s data, Activation Insights may have more up to date figures since its data processing completes in a few minutes while many Composer reports are batch processes that complete every four hours. 

How I should read VX data in the context of Activation Insights

VX is a subscription management tool that generates many events relevant for evaluating revenues, subscription growth, and active and passive churn. For acquisitions managed by Composer experiences, then most of the events are covered by Composer events mentioned in previous FAQs.

  • For new subscriptions or conversion of VX type (registration term conversion, grant access, gift purchase, etc.) use vx.conversion event. 
  • For new subscription that has been created in the system different way, e.g. telemarketing, or by migration/import, or does not contain on site data use vx.conversion.offsite event
  • To learn more about renewals and associated revenues use subscription.action.offsite event and filter the "Subscription Action" for renewal events
  • For active and passive churn, use the same subscription.action.offsite & subscription.action event "Subscription Action" for:
    • Passive churn "Renewal failed, will retry" & "Renewal failed, will not retry"
    • Active churn "Auto-renew disabled" & "Deferred canceled" & "Expired" & "Cancelled"

For clients using Linked Terms, accurate revenue numbers, conversion events, renewal events, and churn events must be sent to ensure the data appears properly in Activation Insights.

What if there are differences between VX reports and Activation Insights

The possible reasons mentioned earlier for data differences mentioned for Composer reporting also apply for VX reporting. There are also a few additional legitimate reasons for differences:

  1. Application in Composer Dashboard has different default timezone than Activation Insights
  2. In Activation Insights the ECO mode is turned on. Eco Mode is a Piano Analytics feature designed to optimize performance and reduce environmental impact by using statistical approximations, resulting in faster data retrieval with a typical margin of error of less than 2%. 
  3. Ensure you are comparing the correct KPI aggregation. Much of the confusion in VX comes from the fact that one user can have multiple subscriptions, and we differentiate between "Subscriber = user" and "Subscription" level reporting. If you go to "Mine Users" and ask the tool to generate the total number of users with a specific action, then you need to select the corresponding metric in Activation Insights at the user level. Within Activation Insights and Piano Analytics “user” is defined as a known user with a user ID.
  4. In VX, most reporting is focused on the current snapshot of the subscription base so you can retrieve the list of current and former subscribers over all time. Activation Insights, by contrast, collects information on events around subscriptions and VX in real-time rather than looking historically. In Activation Insights, you can retrieve data, for example, on how many subscriptions were renewed in the past week.
  5.  If the revenues in the dashboard platform differ from Activation Insights, it might be because you are using automatic currency conversion in Activation Insights. This is a significant benefit in Activation Insights because you have all revenues in one metric to monitor topline performance. VX reports keep revenues in the original currency because this is required for financial reporting. For financial reporting purposes, VX reports should remain the source of truth.

Is data from the Piano propensity models available within Analytics?

Yes, they are available as part of the standard Activation Insights model. To get these data populated to Activation Insights, client needs to collect data via Composer SDK and use these segments in live experiences with action cards show Template or show Offer. More details available in our data model

Are we able to attribute content that lead to paid subscription?

Yes, there are two ways of attributing the content to conversion event.

  1. If the checkout process is indirect and leads through the landing page, we offer solution with "ptid" parameter. 
  2. Additionally to "ptid" solution, we have build the "Content that converts" feature which attributes the conversion to the last article read before the conversion event. To make this feature work the content type tagging needs to be defined. 

How can we send custom events?

To integrate to Activation Insights custom events, the client needs to have activated Activation Insights and Piano Analytics. To learn more in details about all these options we do recommend to contact your account manager. 

What reporting is available for Site Licensing

Site Licensing is VX feature that allows to create a Site license on behalf of a client via the Piano dashboard. These licenses will allow any users associated with the contract to redeem access to your site by visiting a landing page and registering. In Activation Insights we do support site licensing reporting for different analytical use cases:

  1. Site licensing audience segmentation: Each site licensing visitor who is logged in can be identified in Activation Insights using property "Has access to Term type" or "Has access to Term name". Thanks to these audience segmentation, you are able to identify main attributes of site licensing visitor such as geo location details, technology, traffic sources, engagement levels but mostly, their editorial preferences. 
  2. Site licensing access redemption: For customers who receive an offer to redeem access, we track these events. You can analyze redemptions as conversion events where the property 'Goal type' is set to 'Licensee contract converted.' Additionally, you can cross-reference these conversion events with any on-site property you need.

Where can I find data about active subscribers?

For analyzing the number of active subscribers or active subscriptions please use the new measurement metrics available in data model. 

To analyze the total volume of subscribers on page, use the property `Has access to Term type` or `Has access to Term name` to filter out active subscribers on specific term type or term and use metric "Users"

If property `Has access to term/term type` is not available, please check this article

How I can export data from Activation Insights?

Data can be downloaded in Piano Analytics interface to CSV but if you need more systematic exports, here are two ways:

For aggregated data, even down to event-level:

For raw event-level data:

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