

Analytics Startup Mixpanel Is Tracking 4 Billion Actions Each Month - FredBrach
http://techcrunch.com/2012/02/29/mixpanel-4-billion-actions/

======
idoh
Mixpanel looks great, but by my calculations it seems really expensive. It
looks like their CPMs are on the order of $0.30 to $0.08. If I've got a
Facebook app, maybe I make on the order of $0.30 CPM per impression through
ads or purchases.

For each impression I'm going to make at least one mixpanel call, maybe more
if I'm tracking CTR on different page elements, so mixpanel fees would be a
significant portion of my revenues. The only way I can think to get around it
is to sample the calls, e.g. based on FBID.

How do people afford it? I'm not trolling, people use them and they are
growing, so what am I missing?

~~~
dchuk
we just got started using it at my company (serpIQ.com). We're tracking a SaaS
signup funnel though, so we're only collecting a few hundred data points a
day. It was tricky to get setup, but I would imagine we're an ideal use case
for them.

Also, they offer a deal where if you put a banner of theirs on your home page
you get like 150k free data points a month extra. Definitely sweetened the
deal for us.

~~~
chlee
Unrelated. But I want to say serpIQ is great for SEO purposes. Its one of the
legit SEO tools that I would consider paying for.

~~~
dchuk
Thanks! That means a lot!

------
endlessvoid94
That's...actually not very many.

(cough) [http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/10/facebook-analytics-
platform...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/10/facebook-analytics-platform-
kontagent-now-tracking-100m-users-15b-messages-per-month/) (cough)

~~~
Danieru
Actually, I'd say one 3.75rd of facebook qualifies as very many.

------
bradleyjg
FTA:

 _For example, rather than just telling a customer how many visitors came to
their site from Twitter, Mixpanel can show how many visitors came in from
Twitter, broken down by country, and limited to those were between the ages of
10 and 13._

I don't want to know for certain that I have any users under the age of 13. I
don't even want to provably have the capability of knowing.

There are serious implications under COPPA if you have such knowledge. Without
it, you instead fall under the "directed at children" prong of the test which
is far easier to avoid.

------
kijin
4 billion actions but none of those are mine. _Checks Ghostery to make sure
that Mixpanel is blocked_

I'm curious, because a lot of people on HN seem to be genuinely concerned
about the spread of online surveillance. Collusion was on the front page just
a few hours ago. But a lot of startups and other web services also benefit
from tracking everything their users do. How does one resolve this apparent
moral dilemma?

~~~
dangrossman
> 4 billion actions but none of those are mine

Some of them almost definitely are. Half the benefit of Mixpanel is tracking
how people use your web and mobile apps.

HN could be using it. "User kijin logged in. User kijin viewed a story. User
kijin commented on a story." -- all these events can be sent from the server
to Mixpanel, then you can build ad-hoc reports on things like "how many users
that read a story last week came back and read a different story this week".

You can't block that kind of tracking, it's not happening in your browser, but
it's just as specific to you. Mixpanel has APIs for server-side tracking in
all the popular languages and all the mobile platforms. Every website you log
in to, every Facebook app you interact with, every game you launch on your
phone could be sending all the event data to Mixpanel and you wouldn't know.

~~~
kijin
Yeah, that was probably an exaggeration. Server-side third-party tracking is
scary.

I use AdBlock and Ghostery to block pretty much every client-side tracking and
analytics tool (including everything from facebook), so the best that I can
say is that no data goes _directly_ from me to an analytics service. But I
honestly have no control over same-domain server-side scripts that pass my
data to third parties behind my back.

At least they'll have to go through a lot of hassle to track me across
different sites.

