Collecting statistical data

Metric events

When a user interacts with the Prenly Reader, metric events will be triggered, containing event data, i.e. information about the interaction. The event data includes event attributes as well as contextual data.

An event has a name that describes what happened when the interaction was done. For example, when a user opens an article in article reading mode, an event with name article_open is triggered.

Event data

To simplify data extraction, we categorize event data into two distinct types. Most external analysis tools distinguish between these two categories:

• event attributes that are specific for one event type, and
• contextual data, that describes the user’s environment and other details that typically remain constant over multiple interactions.

This separation is done for several reasons:

• To clarify the conceptual difference between the two categories.
• To allow sending data more efficiently when possible.
• To support exporting event data to analysis tools that also makes this distinction.

Event attributes

Each event is associated with a set of event attributes, containing detailed information about the specific event being triggered. This allows analyzing what happened, how it happened and details about entities involved such as an article, publication, banner etc.

Event attributes are thoroughly documented on the event reference page.

Contextual data

Examples of contextual information that may be collected:

• Technical environment: device information, screen size, Prenly application details.
• Session information: allows grouping a user’s interactions into visits.
• User details: identifiers such as user id, for detailed tracking on an individual level.
• User consent: preferences set by the user in the application’s consent dialog.

The details are documented on the contextual data page.