Gumtree creates cross-device single customer profiles in Google data-tool pilot

Gumtree has tested the tool, which has let it unite previously disparate data sets while monitoring and de-duplicating the behaviours of its customers across tablets, mobile phones and PCs.

This has provided single profiles of customers across devices, on an anonymous basis, which will in time enable it to target its marketing communications to be more individually relevant, according to Gumtree analyst Duncan McKie.

“The data that is being recorded is nothing new, but it helps us by giving us more access to it so we can understand more about our customers….it democratises the use of big data. Using this we can understand when a person views a page, replies to an ad or interacts with one of our forums, and then break this down by user to understand the sequence of hits and the journey prior to the conversion across devices – something we weren’t able to do previously,” he said.

The newly integrated tool has provided a transparent view of individuals, rather than groups, which was all Gumtree could previously view using Google Analytics, according to McKie.

“Now we can track users across multiple sessions. Previously we could see what groups of thousands of people were doing in one session, now we can start to understand how users interact with our site over multiple sessions.

“For example, a person may come to our site via a mobile phone, browse and click on an ad, then pick up on their desktop a week later and after that explore another vertical on a tablet - before we used to think of that as three different users, but now we can tie that information together to show the full picture of what that user is doing,” he said.

The insight will also help refine cross-device attribution as it can see which devices people prefer and what channels are most influential in the overall path to purchase, having previously had to rely on conversion data alone.

“We can now build a picture of the user like we never could before. Every marketer is looking for that audience of one, and this is a big step in that direction for us,” he said.

Gumtree has three different types of user: the casual users and then the buyers and sellers and it is the latter two that we can understand more about and refine and personalise their experiences according to their preferences, according to McKie.

The tool will be available to Google Premium Analytics members this September.