Multi-party web-beacon-based analytics
View Patent ↗Tools and techniques are provided to allow partners of analytics providers and others who use web-beacons to submit executable web-beacon plug ins. Analytics providers and others may also write web-beacon plug-ins. Certified plug-ins are executed in response to page loads, visitor clicks, and other visitor and programmatic actions at a website that has been tagged by the analytics provider's web-beacon, without requiring re-tagging of the website with a separate web-beacon for the partner. Web-beacons may invoke core analytics code of an analytics provider, where core analytics code may include multiple plug-ins selected by respective analytics provider partners, where each plug-in may send different analytics data from a website visitor's system to a respective analytics provider partner server. This allows the partner to obtain analytics data by piggybacking on the analytics provider, without re-tagging, and without compromising the availability and accuracy of the analytics data already being gathered.
1. A website visitor's system configured for multi-party web-beacon-based analytics, the system comprising:
a processor;
a memory configured to work in conjunction with the processor, the memory configured by a web page;
a web-beacon code within the web page in the memory to invoke core analytics code from an analytics provider;
wherein the core analytics code comprises a plurality of plug-ins, wherein each plug-in is selected by a respective analytics provider partner, each plug-in being configured to send respective analytics data from the website visitor's system to a respective analytics provider partner server,
wherein each plug-in is an executable function, and
wherein the respective analytics data sent to each respective analytics provider partner server comprises different respective analytics data;
wherein each plug-in of the plurality of plug-ins is provided by a respective provider partner of the plurality of analytics provider partners, and
wherein each plug-in of the plurality of plug-ins is invoked through the core analytics code and is configured to send respective analytics data to a respective analytics provider partner server of the plurality of analytics provider partners; and
wherein the processor executes the web-beacon code to invoke each plug-in of the plurality of plug-ins to send the respective analytics data to the respective analytics provider partner servers.
2. The website visitor's system of claim 1 , wherein each of the plurality of plug-ins from the plurality of analytics provider partners has a respective partner-specific namespace.
3. The website visitor's system of claim 1 , further comprising at least two cookies which are read and/or written by respective plug-ins of respective analytics provider partners.
4. The website visitor's system of claim 1 , further comprising a unique visitor ID which is used by the core analytics code and which may be used by a plurality of partner web-beacon plug-ins.
5. The website visitor's system of claim 1 , wherein the system and code are configured to execute partner server call(s) only after executing analytics provider server call(s).
6. The website visitor's system of claim 1 , wherein the plurality of plug-ins belong to execution classes, and plug-ins in one class have higher execution priority than plug-ins in another class.
7. The website visitor's system of claim 1 , wherein the system and the core analytics code are configured to execute each partner web-beacon plug-in prior to executing an analytics provider server call, such that the analytics provider server call can track partner plug-in usage, and a partner image request will not be sent until after the analytics provider server call.
8. The website visitor's system of claim 1 , wherein the system is configured to send an image request to a server of the analytics provider, and to send a different image request to a server of a partner.
9. The website visitor's system of claim 1 , wherein the core analytics code comprises a JavaScript file.
10. A web visitor analytics method comprising the steps of:
receiving a web page which is tagged with a web-beacon comprising a plurality of plug-ins, wherein each plug-in is an executable function, and wherein each respective plug-in is selected by a respective analytics provider partner; and
in response to executing the web-beacon:
sending a web-beacon request comprising analytics provider analytics data to an analytics provider server;
sending, from a first plug-in of the plurality of plug-ins, a web-beacon request comprising first partner analytics data to a first partner server; and
sending, from a second plug-in of the plurality of plug-ins, a web-beacon request comprising second partner analytics data to a second partner server;
wherein the first partner analytics data sent is different analytics data from the second partner analytics data sent in response to the same web-beacon in the web page.
11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the method comprises the following steps in the order indicated:
including a core analytics file into a memory on a web visitor system;
running at least a portion of a first partner plug-in;
running at least a portion of a second partner plug-in; and
wherein said sending a web-beacon request comprising analytics provider analytics data to an analytics provider server occurs subsequent to said running the at least a portion of a portion of the second partner plug-in;
wherein said sending a web-beacon request comprising first partner analytics data to a first partner server occurs subsequent to said sending the web-beacon request comprising the analytics provider analytics data to the analytics provider server; and
wherein said sending a web-beacon request comprising second partner analytics data to a second partner server occurs subsequent to said sending a web-beacon request comprising the first partner analytics data to the first partner server.
12. The method of claim 10 , wherein the step of sending a web-beacon request comprising first partner analytics data to a first partner server and the step of sending a web-beacon request comprising second partner analytics data to a second partner server each occur after the web page loads into the memory.
13. The method of claim 11 , further comprising the step of setting analytics provider variables after including the core analytics file and before running the first partner plug-in.
14. The method of claim 10 , further comprising the step of updating an image placeholder.
15. The method of claim 10 , further comprising the step of recording information for reporting to the partners.
16. The method of claim 10 , further comprising the step of recording information for billing the partners.
17. The method of claim 10 , further comprising at least one of:
tracking website user behavior based on a query string;
tracking website user behavior based on interaction with a DOM object;
tracking website user behavior based on viewing of specific website content;
using an event listener;
writing data to a cookie;
reading data from a cookie;
placing an advertisement in a web page for display to a website user;
writing HTML to a web page;
submitting text to be displayed in a web page;
submitting an image to be displayed in a web page;
returning a value;
returning a base URL value;
returning an array of name-value pairs.
18. A web analytics provider method comprising the steps of:
obtaining a first web-beacon plug-in from a first party;
obtaining a second web-beacon plug-in from a second party; and
providing, to a requestor of a web page, web-beacon code within the web page, the web-beacon code configured to invoke core analytics code, wherein the core analytics code is configured to execute the first web-beacon plug-in and to execute the second web-beacon plug-in, wherein each plug-in is an executable function, wherein each plug-in sends respective analytics data from a system for the requestor to a respective analytics provider partner server, and wherein different respective analytics data sent to different respective analytics provider partner servers comprises different data;
wherein the web analytics provider provides an infrastructure which allows multiple plug-ins that are written by disparate sources but invoked through the single web-beacon code within the web page.
19. The method of claim 18 , further comprising receiving a standard image request, namely, an image request to collect analytics data for the first party and to also collect analytics data for the second party.
20. The method of claim 18 , further comprising tracking execution of the web-beacon plug-ins.