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Beacon vs. DASH

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Written by Yogeshwari Sevugarathinam
Updated over a week ago

Beacon vs Global KPI vs Audience Dashboard:

Aspect

KPI Dashboard - 2025

Audience Dashboard

Beacon (Content Analytics Tool)

Purpose

Tracks how brands across Markets pace against the goals set at corporate level on monthly basis

Monitors brand performance across key KPIs and many dimensions

Focuses on content-level analytics while also providing brand-level views.

Traffic/Data Coverage

Only Organic traffic.

From Jan 2024

Web and App traffic

Organic + Paid traffic.

From Jan 2024

Only website Traffic

Organic+Paid Traffic.

Includes rolling 24 months data.

Only website Traffic

KPI Definition

KPIs defined annually by the Finance team (can change year to year).

Tracks many Audience KPIs as defined by Audience Strategy

Covers KPIs that overlap with the Audience dashboard (UV, UPV, PV) and KPI dashboard(UPV) , plus Time Spent (Page/Audio/Video)

Beacon also covers MAI , Commerce, Attribution metrics at story level.

Granularity

Monthly at Brand, Market level

Monthly at Brand, Market, Channel, Device, Visitor Country, Paid/Organic level

Content-level insights plus brand-level views (Hourly, Daily & Monthly)

Limitations

Focused on goal tracking against monthly targets.

So it includes sites which has only goals/Targets

Currently misses some sites (Vogue Business, GQ Middle East & Vogue Middle East)

Includes only Verso sites. Misses France Market as snowplow tracking is not resumed yet.

Data Sources

Parsely + Snowplow.

Parsely + Snowplow.

Snowplow only.


Beacon vs Global KPI Dashboard:

  • The data between the Beacon dashboard and the Global KPI Dashboard 2025 will not be directly comparable due to the following key differences:

    • Aggregation Level: Beacon aggregates data at the content level, whereas the Global KPI Dashboard presents metrics at the site and monthly level.

    • Site Coverage: The Global KPI Dashboard includes only those sites with defined goals for 2025, while Beacon may encompass a broader set of sites.

    • Traffic Scope: The Global KPI Dashboard primarily focuses on organic traffic and includes app data for Vogue, The New Yorker, and Epicurious. In contrast, Beacon captures both paid and organic traffic and does not include app data.

    • Click Data Sources: For EMEA markets, the Global KPI Dashboard relies on Snowplow Clicks, whereas Beacon utilizes Network Clicks sourced from Trackonomics, Narratic, Amazon, and Skimlinks.

    • Live Articles: The Global KPI Dashboard includes data around all the Articles but Beacon captures data only for articles which are live.

Beacon vs Global Affiliate Dashboard:

  • The data between the Beacon dashboard and the Global Affiliate Dashboard are not directly comparable due to the following key differences:

    • Click Source and Level of Aggregation: The Global Affiliate Dashboard uses Network Clicks at the site level in the Summary tab to represent Commerce Clicks. For article-level reporting, it relies on Snowplow Clicks due to limitations in story-level attribution within Tracknomics.

    • Data Source in Beacon: Beacon exclusively reports Network Clicks, which are sourced from Tracknomics, Narratic, Amazon, and Skimlinks.

Beacon vs Global Content Dashboard:

  • The data between the Beacon dashboard and the Global Content Dashboard are not directly comparable due to the following key differences:

    • Level of Aggregation: The Global Content Dashboard uses Brand, Market, Month Level whereas Beacon aggregates data at Content and day level as well.

    • Article Level: Global Content Dashboard has article level data for Traffic metrics only for the top 25 articles whereas Beacon includes all the articles and other metrics for MAI, Commerce & Attribution Metrics as well.

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