The End of Facebook Analytics: Now What?

Facebook recently announced that it will effectively discontinue Facebook Analytics on June 30, 2021. The announcement was not particularly informative and was limited to pointing out ways of retaining the tool’s users by means of diverting business to other features that Facebook already offers. However, the reasons behind this decision were not addressed by Facebook and it brings up the question of what this means for the industry.

Why is it happening?

First, we need to understand that Facebook Analytics was never a flagship product, but more of Facebook’s reaction to Google Analytics. However, even though Facebook Analytics offers the perks of cross-device data tracking, it has the limitation that it is fed by Facebook SDKs, rendering all data analyzed as an add-on to a Facebook-based customer journey and not truly a 360°-solution for a business’ product analytics needs. Thus, this phase-out means that Facebook will retain Facebook Business Suite, Ads Manager, and Events Manager — three tools that perform analytics solely in the Facebook and Instagram environments.

In this scenario, it is no surprise that Facebook Analytics, although coming out strong, had been losing momentum even before the announcement.

However, given the declining levels of user trust in Facebook overall and the disruption that iOS 14.5 is causing in the tech world, it is no surprise that Facebook would decide to scrap its Analytics tool for good.

Simply put, changes in privacy policies around the world and from within the tech industry have put Facebook Analytics out of business.

What are the opportunities?

Actually, the demise of Facebook Analytics may not be so bad in the end. On the one hand, it demonstrates that the industry is making a turn towards developing with a privacy-conscious approach (something that was demanded by policy-makers and users). And on the other hand, it presents a golden opportunity for those organizations currently using Facebook Analytics, a source of actionable data that may, in the end, have been too limited for the scope their businesses require.

The fact that organizations are using Facebook Analytics in the first place is another indicator of the level of tech stack dispersion in the industry when it comes to dealing with data. For instance, organizations might have chosen to use Facebook Analytics for its attribution and advertising analytics but then needed a different tool when managing push notification campaigns, along with a third software for its crash analytics, and a fourth for its basic user behavior data. The dispersion can also be a consequence of changes, as maybe an organization’s initially chosen platform for product analytics could not keep up with data privacy regulation for example, forcing them to migrate only some processes to other platforms in a rush.

Of course, no two products or services are built equal, but a single, powerful product analytics and marketing platform can be a superior alternative that will save countless time, effort, and resources when deployed correctly. Countly has the power of doing all this AND provides 100% data ownership in a fully data-privacy-compliant environment.

Switching over to Countly

Facebook Analytics uses Facebook pixel in order to send data from end users to Facebook directly. In the Countly case, the Countly SDK is integrated into a web page or app in order to send data to Countly services. The installation of both options are very similar, which means that if you have experience with Facebook pixel, migrating to Countly is very straightforward.

Comparatively speaking and due to Facebook Analytics’s limited capabilities, the Countly Enterprise Edition provides many additional features, covering more stakeholder types. Those features are related, but are not limited, to feedback performance management, and crash and error management and analysis.

Particularly speaking, below are a handful of such features that are available in Countly Enterprise Edition:

• Net Promoter Score® (NPS®): retrieves feedback and detailed insights from users at all touch points to help understand user satisfaction with the product or service, to identify brand loyalty, and to determine referral potential of users.
• Surveys: quickly assesses individualized user sentiment and opinion by tracking, logging, and measuring customized customer feedback over time.
• Remote Config: helps make changes on the app’s default behavior and appearance by changing server-side parameter values, without having to update the app.
• A/B Testing: in websites and mobile apps, helps test which versions perform better with end users, in order to gradually improve the app performance depending on the results.
• Performance Monitoring: monitors and tracks the performance of web or mobile applications, in order to identify and solve any performance issues with the rendering and networks, allowing to tie and track performance with customer journey.
• Crash reporting: monitors the stability of Android and iOS applications, and allows to fix problems helping increase user satisfaction and increase retention.

By far, the greatest areas where Countly offers something that Facebook Analytics does not are data security, user management, and data management.

In summary, the difference between Facebook Analytics and the Countly Enterprise Edition is vast, but making the transition to Countly is quite straightforward. If you are ready to jump forward and migrate from Facebook Analytics to Countly, get in touch with us or book your demo, so that we can provide a migration roadmap.

Why Switching Makes Sense: Use Cases

Of course, the benefits of Countly features vary wildly per industry, product, service, or even within a single organization. However, given the pressing need to find an alternative for Facebook Analytics, we will briefly detail where our clients in the healthcare technology sector and organizations in the eBanking and crypto industries have seen an incremental opportunity when using Countly.

Switching over to Countly in the healthcare technology industry:

• User intelligence: granular analysis of user behavior (like the performing of events) and user properties (like country), as well as running surveys to find the best performing channels for acquisition or to learn more about user experience,
• Engagement increase: ability to show personalized content or customized interfaces to users or visitors who came from a particular campaign in a specific channel or touch point.
• Retention: communicate and follow up on users via push notifications that can be targeted to users who were acquired during a particular campaign.

Switching over to Countly in the eBank and crypto exchange industries:

• Individualized user tracking: analyzing users on an individual-basis, keeping track of all their interactions and activity from one single place.
• Path analysis: understanding the completion of personalized funnels as well as seeing both the flow of events triggered and the overall usage of the user interface.
• Brand loyalty: using feedback tools like NPS and surveys to address overall feelings, receiving direct user feedback and comments, and avoid long-lasting negative feedback by identifying and actioning on pain points quicker.

Bottomline

Why crumble under the weight and pressure of a change in your product analytics stack when you can take this moment as an opportunity to reshape your whole analytics and marketing strategy? Yes, Facebook Analytics is on its way out, but this can be taken as a natural transition towards a more data-sensitive industry, where resources are more efficiently aligned and kept under one single umbrella. Countly is that umbrella, replacing Facebook Analytics and many other platforms, unifying your tech stack — and your bill — , and letting you focus on what is important: the resources of your company, the growth of your revenue and, above all, the privacy of your data.