One of the most common questions we get is why doesn't what you see in the dashboard match your personal analytics. And we understand why it can be confusing.
What does SHE use for our metrics?
SHE Media has an embedded Google Analytics 4 tracker built into our ad code. We use that for the reporting in the dashboard.
Prior to the switch to GA4, we saw an average of 12-20% discrepancy on sites. We're seeing a wider discrepancy since switching to GA4, but that's because GA4 gives you more ways to define who you count and when.
What can lead to discrepancies?
- Time Zones. Our reporting runs on the calendar day based on East Coast Time in the US. If your analytics are based in your local time zone, that can lead to some small discrepancies.
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Load Times. Your personal analytics is usually one of the first things to load on the page. By default, SHE Media's code has a wait to scroll feature. Our script won't execute until a user scrolls on the page. Because of this, it is entirely possible for visitors who open your page and then navigate away to not be counted by SHE, but be counted on your analytics.
In addition, if you have visitors on a slow connection, it is possible that they can read a page and click away before our tracker fires. -
Privacy Laws. SHE Media includes a consent management platform (CMP) for GDPR & US based privacy laws. GDPR is the EU and UK data privacy law. It's requires anyone visiting a website in those geographic regions to opt-in to share their data. If someone doesn't choose an option with that pop up, or if they opt-out of sharing their data, SHE Media's ads and our Google Analytics tracker cannot fire. This is by design, and what is required of us as a network.
(As a reminder, if you have any questions about your circumstances and what settings you need, you will need to get a legal consult to determine what coverage you need. SHE Media cannot tell you exactly what settings you should pick, as that would be legal advice and we're not lawyers. We can explain what the settings are and what they do, but that's essentially the full extend of it.) - Ad Blockers. If you have visitors who use ad blockers, then our ad code will not fire and we cannot track them. There are some sites that naturally attract a larger % of audience that uses ad blockers. SHE Media now partners with Admiral to help address this - using their ad block recovery service. Learn More about Admiral.
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Conflicts with scripts. Sometimes there are conflicts between SHE Media's code and other scripts on your page that can lead to our code loading much later. (If you have any optimization plugins, please make sure that you are excluding SHE Media's javascript. Our team can help you with that if you have questions)
- Misconfigured Google Analytics. Sometimes we find that publishers have installed their GA tags in a way that it's counting pageviews multiple times. You want to make sure that you're installing your GA tag once, and only once on the page. If you're on Wordpress and have multiple analytics plugins installed that connect to your same GA property, ask yourself which one you use the most, and uninstall the rest. You can also be configuring your personal GA differently than SHE Media to calculate events in a way that might be counting more than ours. While we cannot help you configure your GA4 tags, we can certainly take a look to see if that is a concern.
The monetizable audience
If you have a big discrepancy, we know that it can be frustrating to realize that there's a gap between the audience who are receiving ads, and those who aren't. But it's important to note that the discrepancy isn't SHE Media deciding not to monetize an audience - it's an audience that's actively opting out, or aren't sticking around your site long enough to see any ads.
What you see in our dashboard is your monetizable audience. These are the people who are supporting you, so you can use our data to make decisions about your ads based on them - and not the overall audience who might not be seeing any ads.
How can I reduce the discrepancy?
Admittedly, there is no single answer. You should take a technical and social approach.
Technical Measures
- Ensuring that you are not optimizing or deferring SHE Media's scripts is the first step. Reducing any kind of technical conflict helps as well - so we recommend that if you don't yet, that using some sort of optimization script to help your site run as quickly as possible. (Nitropack, WP-Rocket are both reliable services. Services like Autoptimize and Perfmatters are not very compatible with our code)
- Make sure you only have your Google Analytics tag installed once. Otherwise, you're artificially inflating some of your metrics.
- Removing unused code or plugins. This can help reduce your site's load time, which reduce the time it takes for SHE's code to load.
The Social Approach
- With privacy laws, you'll only monetize optimally if people opt in through consent manage platforms. If people opt out, you will get non personalized ads, but we can't always track them through Google Analytics.
- Sometimes a small reminder in your sidebar that the ads on your site help keep visitors aware that they are here to help you succeed.
- Using a service like Admiral (which SHE includes for all Collective members at no cost) to ask visitors using Ad blockers to whitelist your site.
As mentioned above, we do offer Admiral to all the Collective. If you are unsure if Admiral is active on your site, reach out to us at support@shemedia.zendesk.com and we'll look into it for you!
Have questions about your metrics? Don't hesitate to reach out to us at support@shemedia.zendesk.com - our team is happy to help.
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