Adobe Analytics Overview: Key Differences With Google Analytics

If you work in digital marketing or web analytics, chances are you’ve heard of Adobe Analytics. But what is it, exactly? Adobe Analytics is a robust web analytics platform that provides users with insights into their website traffic. In this blog post, we’ll give you a brief overview of Adobe Analytics, its main features and explain how it differs from Google Analytics. By the end of this post, you should have a good sense of which platform is right for your needs. Let’s get started!

What is Adobe Analytics?

Adobe Analytics is a web analytics platform that provides users with insights into their website traffic and marketing campaigns. The platform uses cookies to track website visitors and collect data on their behavior. This data is then used to generate reports that help businesses understand how well their website and campaigns are performing.

Source: Adobe Analytics

Adobe Analytics Main Features

Adobe Analytics offers a variety of features that make it a powerful tool for digital marketing and web analytics professionals. These features include:

• Multi-touch attribution

  Attribution is the process of assigning credit to different marketing channels for the conversion of a customer. With Adobe Analytics, businesses can attribute conversion rates to multiple marketing channels, including paid advertising, organic search, email marketing, and social media. This helps businesses understand which channels are most effective at driving conversions.



Source: Adobe Analytics: Attribution Panel

• User path analysis

  User path analysis is a feature that allows businesses to see the sequence of events (or “path”) that led a customer to convert. This includes the specific pages that were visited, the campaigns that were clicked on, and the keywords that were searched for. User path analysis can be used to optimize websites and marketing campaigns for better results.

• Funnel analysis

  Funnel analysis is a tool that allows businesses to see where customers are dropping off in the conversion process (“funnel”). This helps businesses identify areas where their website or campaign could be improved in order to increase conversions.

• Cohort analysis

  Cohort analysis is a method of grouping customers based on shared characteristics (e.g., acquisition date, purchase history). This type of analysis can be used to track customer behavior over time and identify trends.



Source: Adobe Analytics: Cohort Analysis

• Revenue reporting

  With Adobe Analytics, businesses can see how much revenue they’re generated from their website or campaign. This information can be used to make decisions about where to allocate resources for maximum ROI.

Adobe Analytics vs. Google Analytics

There are a plethora of analytics tools on the market, but two of the most popular ones are Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics. Both tools have their own unique features and benefits, so it can be difficult to choose which one is right for your business. We’ll break down the key differences between Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics so that you can make an informed decision about which tool is right for you.

1. Data Processing

   Adobe Analytics uses a data processing system called MapReduce, which is a distributed computing paradigm that processes large amounts of data in parallel across a cluster of computers. MapReduce is much faster and more efficient than the data processing system used by Google Analytics, which can be slow and cumbersome when dealing with large data sets.

2. Functionality

   Another key difference between these two analytics tools is functionality. Google Analytics provides users with basic features like website tracking, conversion tracking, and campaign tracking. Adobe Analytics, however, offers users advanced features like audience segmentation, customer journey analysis, and touchpoint analysis.

3. Data Collection

   When it comes to data collection, there are also some key differences between these two analytics tools. Google Analytics relies on first-party cookies to collect data, while Adobe Analytics uses a combination of first-party cookies and third-party tags. This difference affects the accuracy of the data collected by each tool; because Adobe Analytics uses third-party tags in addition to first-party cookies, it is able to collect more accurate data than Google Analytics.

4. Cost

   When it comes to pricing, the cost of Adobe Analytics is generally higher than Google Analytics. Adobe Analytics is a paid service. It offers a subscription-based pricing model, so you’ll pay a monthly or annual fee to use the platform. The price will vary depending on the features you need and the size of your website. For example, if you have a small website with less than 500,000 monthly pageviews, you can expect to pay around $120 per month. However, if you have a large website with more than 5 million monthly pageviews, your costs could run as high as $750 per month.

   Google Analytics is a free service. However, if you want access to more advanced features and data, you can sign up for Google Analytics 360. This premium version of the platform starts at $150,000 per year for businesses with up to 10 million hits per month. So, while the initial cost of Google Analytics is lower than Adobe Analytics, the costs can quickly escalate if you need to use the premium features.

5. Ease of Use

   Due to its increased complexity, Adobe Analytics can be more difficult to use than Google Analytics. Google Analytics is designed for businesses of all sizes and has a user-friendly interface that makes it easy to interpret data. On the other hand, Adobe Analytics is designed for enterprise-level businesses and can be challenging for users unfamiliar with its complicated interface. However, Adobe offers extensive training and support resources to help users get the most out of the platform.

6. Reporting & Visualization

   Adobe Analytics offers more powerful reporting and visualization capabilities than Google Analytics. Adobe’s reports are highly customizable and allow users to slice and dice data in many different ways. Additionally, Adobe’s visualization capabilities are second to none, allowing users to create beautiful charts and graphs that shed light on complex data sets.

7. Integration With Other Tools & Platforms

   Adobe Analytics integrates with many other tools and platforms, such as marketing automation tools, CRM systems, and web content management systems. This makes it easy for organizations to centralize their data and get a complete picture of their customer journey from end-to-end. Additionally, Adobe’s integration with other Adobe products, such as Adobe Experience Manager, makes it easy for organizations to manage their web content and personalize the user experience across all touchpoints.

   When it comes to Google Analytics, the platform integrates with other products, including Google Ads, Google Data Studio, Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Google AdSense, Google Optimize 360, Google Search Ads 360, Google Display & Video 360, Google Ad Manager, and Google Search Console.

GA4 — the Latest Version of Google Analytics

At this point, you’re aware of the main benefits and features of both Adobe Analytics and Google Analytics. However, if you’d like to get more insights into your marketing campaign, you can use the latest version of Google Analytics — Google Analytics 4 (GA4).

GA4 is an event-based platform that makes it easier for businesses to collect data about how users interact with their websites and apps. It uses a “tagless” approach that automatically collects data about user interactions. This data is then used to generate insights that can help businesses improve their marketing efforts. One of the benefits of this approach is that it makes it easier for businesses to track how users interact with their sites across multiple devices, since GA4 collects data at the individual user level rather than at the page level.

In addition to its event-based architecture, GA4 also introduces a number of other new features, including:

• Streams: A stream is a real-time feed of events that are happening on your website or app. Streams can be customized to show specific types of events, such as purchases or form submissions, and can be viewed on both web and mobile devices.
• Analytics Intelligence: This feature uses machine learning to surface insights based on your historical data. For example, if you typically see a dip in website traffic during the summer months, Analytics Intelligence will automatically generate a report showing you this trend so you can adjust your marketing efforts accordingly.
• Funnels: Funnels allow you to track how users move through your sales or conversion process. You can use funnels to identify where users are dropping off so you can make changes to your website or app accordingly.

Wrapping Up

Both Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics are powerful web analytic tools that offer a variety of features to help businesses track and analyze their website data. The key decision factors when choosing between the two tools are budget (Adobe Analytics is a paid tool while Google Analytics is free), functionality, and integration (Adobe Analytics integrates with other Adobe products while Google Analytics integrates with other Google products). If you’re not sure which tool is right for you, we recommend starting with Google Analytics and then upgrading to Adobe Analytics if you need more features or want to integrate with other Adobe products.