Our intrepid data dream team Josh Crawford and Nirmal Joe donned their shorts (well Josh did) and packed their rucksacks for MeasureCamp on the weekend to get the low-down on the latest in digital analytics.
“MeasureCamp isn’t like your typical conference. It’s run by the Digital Analytics community for the Digital Analytics community. It’s free to attend, hosted on a Saturday (so only people who are really into it will go!) and everybody is encouraged to contribute a session, so it’s quite organic (some would say a little chaotic). It was a full day of learning, sharing, and discovering practical ways to improve analytics, AI, attribution, and campaign performance.
Unsolved Problems w/Server Side Tagging
Simo Ahava presented a topical discussion on the consideration of ethics and privacy when implementing server-side tracking. Whilst black hat deployments can skirt around privacy and cookie consent, they can be a force of evil in a privacy conscious world. We were encouraged as measurement practitioners to build ethical tracking strategies with privacy in mind, only tracking what we need to. Ultimately adhering to the Ahava rule… “Don’t be a dick!”
GA4 Anomaly Detection at Scale
As analyst’s, our recommendations are only as good as the quality of our data. With an increased focus on privacy, it’s more important than ever for us to be tracking accurately. Marco Tognon outlined how he uses BigQuery cloud functions to scale GA4 anomaly detection across a series of quantitative and qualitative checks to reactively resolve tracking issues. The greatest value is unlocked when we can scale resolution of data quality at the point of tracking.
num=100 vs. Google Rank Trackers
Tom Capper of Moz hosted a great flipboard session on Google disabling the num=100 URL parameter in September, resulting in a Google Search not being triggered within 100 results on the first page. Rank Tracking tools use this parameter to cost effectively crawl the top 100 results. This update forces them to crawl results in increments of 10, resulting in an increase in costs (some estimate at 15 times) with the potential for rankings to change between pages. As a key measure of SEO growth, this change has consequences for how we measure performance.
Disabling the num=100 URL parameter has closely aligned with a drop in impression tracking within Google Search Console. Many believe that less bots (rank trackers and LLMs) crawling search results pages is behind this change, however, Tom shared an alternate hypothesis. By citing the maths and data, Google is revealing the actual volume of rank trackers and LLMs, which is far less than the actual drops observed. Of course, only the official Google data will show us the truth, and that’s still missing!
Google Search Console To Big Query: The SEO Dataset You Really Should Be Using
Charles Meaden covered a series of tips, tricks and his favourite queries for maximising the value of a Google Search Console and BigQuery integration. He reinforced just how valuable the integration is, by highlighting the data limitations of the UI and API. BigQuery can reveal significantly more, in some cases up to 5 times more. He highlighted the power of NGRAMS for discovering keywords, and doubled down on the importance of both SEO and Paid Media teams utilising this valuable hidden data for identifying long tail keyword opportunities.
Using Analytics to Improve Form Conversion
Forms are an integral function of any lead gen site, yet can often be overlooked from a tracking point of view. Alun Lucas delivered an excellent presentation detailing his advanced techniques to track and optimise forms. He covered tracking the completion time for form fields, and emphasised the benefit of strong segmentation for analysing performance. Alun also suggested creating a non-completion segment, against which you map out future interactions to gain further insights.
Identity Stitching by Adobe Experience Platform (AEP)
With data restrictions making customer journeys more fragmented, identity resolution is more important than ever. This session encouraged us to stay curious about the tools and methods that can connect the dots for our customers.
AI in Data
Around 75% of MeasureCamp attendees are already using AI to generate code or SQL. Seeing this adoption in action was inspiring, it’s a great reminder to keep experimenting with new ways to work smarter and unlock more insights.
GA4 / GTM Audits
Having wondered how to go beyond an audit checklist, Neal Cole’s session on his approach really nailed it. The key is to empower teams, ask meaningful questions, use the client’s language, and align business goals with user goals. Neal also highlighted Core Web Vitals, AOV, device/OS insights, and session replays. Their audit resources go well beyond a tick box task and are a great example of gaining actionable insight and value from data.
Attribution Models in GA4
With GA4’s event based tracking and data driven attribution (DDA) now set as the default, it was great to learn about how machine learning can assign value across channels and to understand its limitations. This session reinforced that measurement isn’t just about data collection, but about interpretation and informed action.
Zoho PageSense
Similar to Hotjar and Clarity, but with built in A/B testing and experimentation features, Zoho PageSense guides personalisation and improves CRO. This session was a great reminder of the value of taking a test, learn, and iterate approach.
MeasureCamp was a day full of inspiration, practical tips, and new perspectives. The event reinforced how AI, attribution, and experimentation are transforming measurement and how audits and insights can create real business value, not just outputs. We’re excited to bring these learnings into our agency and are inspired to continue learning, experimenting, and growing.”
