Businesses May Be Under-Reporting 80% of Their Social Media and PR Traffic by Not Tracking ‘View-Through,’ According to Tealium

Standard Web Analytics Packages Unable to Detect Large Majority of Social Media Traffic

San Diego, CA – May 5 – Tealium (www.tealium.com), a provider of high-end, results-oriented Web analytics integration and consulting, today announced the results of a new study revealing that businesses are grossly under-counting their social media and PR traffic by not measuring “view-through” traffic.

According to the study, only 20 percent of visitors to web sites from social media and public relations are the result of a direct click. The remaining 80 percent are from “view-through,”, which measures traffic from Internet users who come to a site after viewing a piece of social media or online PR content that either did not contain a direct link to the site, or did not acquire the user as a result of a direct click from the content.
The study was conducted from a sample of over 15 sites using Tealium Social Media, the first and only service for measuring the ROI of social media and online PR, including tracking view-through traffic.

“The study shows that marketers measuring the impact of their social media marketing and online PR based on existing analytics tools are underreporting their performance by 80 percent,” said Ali Behnam, Tealium co-founder. “View-through reporting provides marketers with a true measure of social media and PR success.”

“This study shows why marketers who are serious about measuring the ROI of social media need to use view-through measurement in addition to existing click-though measurement,” said Erik Bratt, CEO of Engage Social Media, a social media and public relations agency focused on monitoring and measurement. “We’ve been using Tealium Social Media for several clients with great success. It has improved our reporting and helped us make more actionable decisions.”

Social media and online PR traffic to a web site can be categorized into one of three scenarios:

• The social media outlet provides a direct link to a site and the visitor clicks the link – this is what is currently measured by existing analytics tools
• The social media outlet provides a direct link to a site, which is not clicked on, but the outlet still generates the interest for a future visits
• The social media outlet does not provide a direct link to the site and all traffic generated will be indirect and occurs as a view-through.

Using its patent-pending process, Tealium Social Media provides measurement around all three scenarios.

Tealium Social Media is easily integrated into all popular web analytics solutions. The integration lets marketers gain an apples-to-apples comparison between their Social media marketing, online PR, and other marketing channels such as pay-per-click and banner advertising.

More information can be found during the eMetrics San Jose conference at booth 16 or from the Tealium web site.