Google have announced that they are now showing you conversions for when someone sees your ad but does not click however still buys within 30 days of seeing your ad. The new report is called ‘View-through Conversions’. View-through conversions are tracked through an AdSense cookie and are only reported for display ads on the Google Content Network. Unfortunately it does not provide data for search campaigns or for text creatives in content campaigns.
The ability to measure the effectiveness of display ads is something which has almost eluded marketers and is a metric that can provide useful information that could save marketers money and also help steer marketing efforts a lot more effectively.
Take this for example of a site that sells computer games. A person visits a random site on the Content Network that displays an ad about a new computer game from said site and the person sees it. The person a few days later wants to buy the game and remembers the ad. The person, remembering the site, types it in Google and clicks through to site. The person buys the new computer game.
Normally this conversion would be attributed as an organic sale and no credit is given to the display ad even though in this case the display ad was possibly the most effective attribute in the buying process. If this happens again and again the site owner/marketer may think display ads are ineffective as they are not generating conversions and pull them, and from the data provided you wouldn’t blame them. However now the display ads have been pulled this has had an adverse effect on overall conversions and much confusion is generated.
However by having the new ‘View-through Conversions’ data you are able to see whether your ads are in fact having a profound affect in the buying process. From this you can better understand which display adverts are effective and identify ones which are perhaps not helping you to control spending.
Naturally the new reporting tool has some drawbacks including whether people actually see the advert as the cookie will be added regardless. However having this sort of data is far better than not and so is definitely a step in the right direction…