Disney and Web Analytics

For a company that has been around since 1923, I am sure everyone is familiar with the company we have grown to love and cherish, Disney. I automatically envision the shaky black and white cartoon of Steamboat Willie followed by a stream of other iconic images. Through the years, Disney has transformed itself in the entertainment industry through making movies, theme parks, resorts, and a mass amount of merchandise. 

Because of this rapid expansion, the internet plays an essential key role in the furthering of Disney’s evolution and success. Behind the show curtain of all of Disney web pages and applications waits the web analytics. In this post, I will discuss how and why Disney uses web analytics to collect information about their online users along with other key topics.

With all the separate entities owned by Disney (ESPN, ABC, Marvel Entertainment, etc.) you may be wondering how does Disney do it all? According to Ross McDonnell , who works with Disney Online, Disney primarily uses Adobe’s Digital Marketing Suite of products for online reporting. McDonnell explains that they also use “an array of other tools for specific purposes, such as for in-game analytics, electronic panel measurement data for competitive intelligence and survey software for Voice of Customer data”.

To be more specific, a tool that has been openly advertised as “used by Disney” is SEOmoz. SEOmoz checks up on your website every week to figure out what the SEO tactics are doing and if they are working to meet goals. Using a tool like SEOmoz will also give your insights on the performance of specific keywords with advice on how to shift the SEO approach. Unlike its other search engine optimization competitors, G Shift Labs and Raven Tools, SEOmoz offers something called Open Site Explorer, which measures how many inbound links your competition gets. 

In 2007, Disney utilized Omniture, a leading provider of online business optimization software. Omniture’s CEO and co founder Josh James remarked saying:

“Omniture has always focused on and been very successful in serving the largest and most complex sites on the Web, and our unique experience in providing services and solutions to enterprise-class companies has prepared us to meet the Walt Disney Internet Group's needs and help them take advantage of opportunities to provide their customers with a world-class online experience."

• Registration information: Provided when a user creates an account. This includes a first name and surname, country of residence, gender, date of birth, email address, username and password

• Transaction information:  The user provides this when they request information or purchase a product or service. This information is shared on Disney’s varying sites or through applications, and includes a postal address, telephone number and payment information.

•  Public Forum information: anything a user creates on public forums based off Disney sites and applications.

• Communication: Information that is sent either to an individual or within a limited group using Disney’s message, chat, post or similar functionality. Interestingly enough, Disney is permitted by law to collect this information.

• Location information is used when one visits Disney sites or uses an application. This category also includes using a mobile device that is interacting with a sites or applications, or associated with the users’ IP address. Usage, viewing and technical data are collected using the IP address upon site visitation and application usage, or open emails Disney sends.

• Consumer information is gathered through technology (cookies), Flash cookies and Web beacons. Certain informative elements are acquired through other trusted sources to update or supplement the information already provided.

When it comes to managing the web analytics of such an extensive company such as Disney, it is going to take the hard work of a large team with each member focusing on their area of expertise. In addition, the amount of funding for web analytics will determine which tools are the right ones for the job. In Disney’s case both Omniture and SEOmoz are two excellent options for keeping track of their online power houses. Both tools offer extensive services that would benefit a large corporate company. This being said, I do not have any advice as to what tools would be better than what they are already using.

Types of Information Collected

There are two types of information that Disney collects - personal information and anonymous information. Both sets of information may be used and to create a third type of information that they call “aggregate information”.

Third Party information: Users provide this when using Disney sites and applications, applications on third-party sites or platforms such as social networking sites, or link their profile on a third-party site or platform with a registration account. Think of entering a contest for Disney using Facebook and you are required to enter through an application. Disney will have access to your profile information and anything you may fill out during the entry process.

How Your Information Is Used

• Provide consumers with products and services
• Communicate about account/transactions, send consumers information about features on the websites/applications or changes to policies
• Sending offers and promotions for products and services or third-party products and services
• Personalize content and experiences on our sites and applications
• Providing appropriate advertising based on user activity while online
• Improving products, services and operations

When I chose to analyze Disney, I realized that the bullets listed above may  not make sense to all audiences, and by this I am referring to children. Children make up a huge part of Disney’s demographic. Though they are not the primary audience when it comes to online retailing, they are still a force to be reckoned with and for this, there are specific guidelines that cover their safety. Some of the features on Disney’s sites and applications are age-gated so that they are not available for use by children. If information is collected by the falsifying of information, it is unknowingly done so.

Additional steps to protect children’s privacy include:

• Notifying parents about our information ( the types of personal information we may collect from children, the uses to which we may put that information, and whether and with whom we may share that information).
• Obtaining consent from parents for the collection of personal information from their children, or for sending information about our products and services directly to their children
• Limiting our collection of personal information from children to no more than is reasonably necessary to participate in an online activity
• Giving parents access or the ability to request access to personal information collected from their children and the ability to request that the personal information be changed or deleted