Car insurance Channel

Last month we introduced the Display Network tab, a new interface in AdWords dedicated to making display buying easier and more efficient by combining your targeting, bidding and optimizing in one place. To give you even more control over your display ads, we’re pleased to announce the new Flexible reach targeting setting on the new Display Network tab.

In the next couple of weeks, the Networks and devices section of your Settings tab in AdWords will include a new targeting option called “Flexible reach.” Flexible reach enables you to fine-tune where your ads show by choosing your settings at the ad group level instead of the campaign level. This will give you more control over where your ads appear and who sees them.


Why the Change?
Today, you can manage your display targeting on the campaign level by selecting Broad reach or Specific reach.

• When you select Broad reach, your ads are shown on pages that match your primary targeting method.
• When you select Specific reach, your ads will show on pages that match all of your targeting methods.

Flexible reach allows you to select any combination of multiple targeting selections at the ad group level, plus the control to combine different methods for targeting and bidding at the ad group level. It also provides transparency into how your targeting selections are affecting the reach and impression volume of your campaigns.

How will this affect my campaigns today?
The Flexible reach campaign setting will appear as an optional setting in AdWords accounts in June and will eventually replace the Broad and Specific reach options later this year.

Once you’ve selected this option in an existing campaign, you can’t revert back to Broad or Specific reach and any new ad group will have Flexible reach by default. Your current targeting and bidding selections will remain the same, but you’ll now have the control to select how to target and bid on an individual ad group basis.

Learn More!
To find out more about how to take advantage of Flexible reach, visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Subha Subramanian, Product Manager, Flexible Reach

We’re investing in many ways to give users control over the ads they see. On YouTube, our TrueView ad products enables users to skip video ads. On Google search, you can click “Why this Ad?” and stop sites you’re not interested in from showing you ads. Our Ads Preferences Manager, available with one click on the AdChoices icon on ads on the Google Display Network, enables you to edit your interest categories, or opt out of all interest based ads including remarketing ads on our Display Network.  

Over the next few weeks, we’re introducing a small [x] which will appear in the corner of some display ads on the Google Display Network. When a user clicks the [x], he or she will no longer see ads from that campaign. We’re starting by showing the [x] in ads that are based on remarketing and interest categories.


Users who click the [x] on an ad will be shown a confirmation page explaining that the advertisement has been muted, along with a link to the Ad Preferences Manager. The feedback this provides will also help improve our ads over time.

The muting is not a 100% guarantee you won’t see that ad again  -- for example, the same ad could be shown by a different ad company, or the marketer could run a separate campaign targeting specific web content.  But we believe it’s an early step in the right direction of giving users control over ads, while helping marketers and websites deliver ads that perform better.

We believe this early-look feature can bring benefits to the entire ecosystem: users have a way to control their experience and signal that they aren’t interested in certain ads; advertisers are no longer paying to show ads to people who aren’t interested; and publishers will receive better performing (and potentially more valuable) ads, and spend less time filtering out ads they think won’t be of interest to their audience.

Online advertising underpins the web and supports millions of businesses. It’s already unique in the level of control it can offer users. We’re at the early stages of these innovations, with much more to come in months and years ahead.

Posted by Michael Aiello, Product Manager

Today we're pleased to announce AdWords Editor version 9.8.1, which includes the ability to add and edit dynamic search ads and product listing ads, as well as quickly and easily modify location targets. Here's an overview of key updates:

Manage location targeting more easily
The new Locations tab (under Targeting) lets you add, update, and copy location targets more efficiently.

Dynamic search ads and product listing ads now in AdWords Editor
Each of these ad formats has its own tab, where you can view your ads and make changes or additions. You can also manage your dynamic ad targets and product targets on two new targeting tabs.

We've also updated topic targeting, posting, and CSV import, along with other improvements. We encourage you to read through our version 9.8.1 release notes to become familiar with all of the changes.

The next time you launch AdWords Editor, you'll see a prompt to upgrade to version 9.8.1. To learn more about upgrading, including how to keep unposted changes and comments when you upgrade, please review these instructions. You can also download version 9.8.1 from the AdWords Editor website.

Note: Support for previous versions of AdWords Editor will continue for four months to allow you time to upgrade. To ensure uninterrupted use of AdWords Editor, you will need to upgrade by October 28, 2012.

Posted by Katie Miller, Google Ads Team

In last week’s webinar on search attribution, we explored how AdWords Search Funnels can show you the full search path your customers take prior to purchasing or “converting” on your site. This path can include different types of keywords, ranging from early searches on generic keywords (often referred to as “upper funnel” or awareness-generating keywords) to later searches for your specific brand. By better understanding the full search path and the role that different keywords played in leading your customers to buy or convert, you’ll be able to improve your advertising campaigns.

During the webinar, we walked through the Search Funnels reports, the insights the tool can provide, and some practical uses:


We received a lot of great questions from webinar participants. We weren’t able to get to all of them during the allotted time, so below are some responses and more pointers on Search Funnels.

If you’re interested in learning more about digital marketing attribution, you can also watch the previous recordings in our attribution webinar series and register for our upcoming webinars:

• Attribution Insights from Google and Econsultancy (4/26/2012) – watch recording here
• Building Blocks of Digital Attribution (5/24/2012) – watch recording here
• Search Attribution: AdWords Search Funnels (6/20/2012) – watch recording here
• Multi-Channel Funnels: Attribution Across Channels (8/9/2012) – register here
• Next Steps with Attribution – registration details coming soon

What is digital attribution? What is search attribution?
Digital attribution is the process of assigning credit to the various online interactions your customer has before a “conversion” (conversion = making a purchase or performing some other valuable action on your site). These interactions could include display ads, paid or organic search results, email campaigns, affiliate coupon programs, social network posts, and other digital interactions. Today, many marketers by default use “last click” attribution, assigning all of the credit to the last interaction before a conversion rather than considering the entire conversion path.

Search attribution focuses specifically on understanding and assigning credit to the keyword searches, search ad impressions, and search ad clicks a customer performed before converting. The Search Funnels reports allow you to view these “search paths” in detail and how some keywords assist conversions earlier in the path while other keywords occur later in the path, immediately before a conversion. By understanding the role these keywords play in the conversion path, you’ll be better equipped to design your search marketing programs.

What are the requirements for Search Funnels?
Search Funnels works automatically with AdWords Conversion Tracking. Once this feature has been set up, the Search Funnels reports are automatically available within the AdWords interface. If you aren’t yet using Conversion Tracking, Bill Kee’s recent webinar on the Building Blocks of Digital Attribution provides a great overview on how to set up Conversion Tracking. You may also wish to view our help center articles on Conversion Tracking and Search Funnels.

Could you please define the Search Funnels terms?
Sure, during the webinar we provided some definitions. Here they are:

• Search Funnel: Report describing Google.com search ad click and impression behavior prior to a conversion 
• Conversion Path: Sequence of ad clicks and impressions leading up to a conversion 
• Last Clicks: Any search ad click that happened immediately preceding a conversion 
• Assist Clicks: Any search ad click that happened prior to the “last click” before a conversion 
• Assist Impressions: Any search ad impression that was not clicked and happened prior to a conversion 
• Assist Clicks / Last Clicks: The ratio of assist clicks / last clicks for a particular campaign, ad-group, or keyword 
• Assist Impressions / Last Clicks: The ratio of assist impressions / last clicks for a particular campaign, ad-group, or keyword

This is my first time using Search Funnels, what three analyses do you recommend?
Search Funnels offers some great ways to quickly pull out some actionable insights. First, in the Assisted Conversions report, sorting in descending order by the ratios “Assist Clicks / Last Clicks” and “Assist Impressions / Last Clicks” provides an easy way to identify which of your keywords assist the most conversions and are having most of their contribution overlooked in AdWords’ last-click model. You may choose to test different bidding or budget strategies for these keywords to ensure you capture their value. For example, if a particular keyword has a ratio of three, then for every last click conversion the keyword provides, three additional assists were provided. The keyword would receive no credit for these assists within AdWords under the last-click model. However, utilizing the insights gained from Search Funnels you may wish to explore whether increasing this keyword’s bid drives more users down the conversion path by placing these high-assisting ads in higher positions.

Second, the ‘Time Lag’ report can help you to identify how long your customers take to convert. In particular, the ‘Time From First Impression’ report can help you approximate your customers’ research cycle, from the time they first see one of your search ads, to them eventually converting with you. Within this report, you may also want to explore whether your most valuable customers take a certain period of time to convert. For example, many advertisers find that customers that consider their purchase for longer are actually more valuable customers.

Finally, the top paths report is another great resource. You can dive in to the most common paths your customers take before converting with you. In particular, you can try to identify whether customers begin their journey by researching on broad generic keywords and whether they complete their conversion on more branded keywords.

What is the history window and how important is it?
By default, Search Funnels includes all of the paid search interactions your customers had in the 30 days prior to the conversion occurring. However, this feature can be customized by selecting from the drop down menu at the top of the interface. You can select to change the history window to either 60 or 90 days. This is an important consideration. The length of time that makes most sense for you will likely depend on the type of products you sell. For example, if you’re a business that sells high-consideration product or services, you may want to extend the window to 90 days, as it may take customers a long time to purchase and you would want to ensure that you include all of their interactions with your search advertising. Before selecting a history window, you may also want to examine the ‘time lag’ report to identify on average how long it takes your users to convert.

What are impression assists? And how should I value them?
Impression assists occur when a customer sees one of your search ads, but does not click on it, before later clicking on another of your ads and converting. The impression could be providing a branding effect.  For example, if you are getting a lot of assist impressions and their average position is relatively high, it's possible that those impressions had a positive impact on the customer coming back and converting later. You could test this hypothesis by bidding keywords to different positions and measuring the impact on impression assisted conversions.

What about attribution beyond search?
Search Funnels uncovers a crucial part of the path to conversion by showing all of your Google search ads that a user either saw or clicked on, before they converted for you. However, you may be interested in understanding how your customers interact with your other online channels too. In our upcoming webinar on August 9, we’ll be walking through Google Analytics’ Multi-Channel Funnels, which allows you to examine not only the path within paid search, but also display, organic search, social, e-mail marketing, and more. Register here.

Happy analyzing!

Posted by Simon Rosen, Global Sales Lead for Search Funnels and AdWords Conversion Tracking

In this fourth and last part of the series “AdWords Examples,” we’ll examine how to select and then evaluate keywords. If you missed the previous parts in the series you can find them here: Campaigns, Ad groups and Ads.

In this series we’ve been following Lisa, who has been creating a campaign specific to lava lamps in the Google Store. To ensure people can find her lava lamps on Google.com, Lisa makes a list of relevant keywords that closely match the theme of her ad group:


The following image shows what it may look like when an ad written specifically for the lava lamps in the Google Store is shown for a relevant search. Lisa has been able to achieve this by creating a tightly themed ad group with related keywords and ad text, which, along with strategic bidding and Quality Score, has increased the likelihood of having her ads appear as they do here:


How to choose keywords

When choosing keywords there are several good strategies:

• First and foremost it is important to think like the customer. In this case, you may ask yourself the question “If I really wanted to buy a cool lava lamp, for what would I search?” Then write these ideas down and try to expand on them, using synonyms and alternative ways of saying it. 
• You can also get additional keyword ideas by using the Google Keyword Tool, which helps you generate keywords based on your initial ideas. In this case a good alternative keyword that is not already in the above keyword list could e.g. be ‘google motion lamp’. You can find the tool in the Opportunities tab. Here’s how you can use the Keyword Tool. If you discover some good keywords you would like to use, it’s never too late to add them. Here’s how you can add more keywords to your existing ad groups.
• Use negative keywords: if Lisa knows that a keyword is less likely to lead to a sale, she may exclude the keyword from her ad group or campaign. In the ad group for lava lamps, Lisa might consider using ‘make your own lavalamp’ or ‘DIY lavalamp’ as negative keywords, which would prevent her ads from showing to users who make such searches. Discover how to use negative keywords here.

See a number of other useful tips about keyword selection in our article How to build the best keywords list.

We hope you find these examples useful and that you feel better equipped to regularly improve and optimize your current campaigns.

Posted by Gorjan Dimitrov - The Help Center Team

Since we showed you a preview of AdWords’ new look, we’ve been reviewing feedback and working to make even more improvements. Over the next several days, we’ll begin rolling out the new design to all AdWords accounts.

The new look simplifies the interface with newly designed menus, tabs, navigation, and buttons so that the important things -- such as your data -- stand out. The latest web technologies have been used to make the interface more visually appealing and zippy, while keeping the features where you are accustomed to finding them.



If you’re curious about specific design choices, or how we think about UX (user experience) at Google more generally, please join me for a live discussion and Q&A on Thursday, June 21st at 9:30am PST/12:30pm EST. To tune into this Hangout On Air:

1. Visit the Google Ads +Page at 9:30am PST/12:30pm EST Thursday June 21st.
2. Look for the stream post (see image below for what it will look like), and click to tune in. Be sure you’re signed into Google+!
   
   

We aim to deliver a simpler, more beautiful experience across all Google products. I hope you’ll find the experience using AdWords easier and more enjoyable, too. I’m looking forward to hearing your comments and questions soon!

Join us tomorrow, June 19, 2012 for the Learn with Google webinar, "Bringing the Power and Control of Search to Display,” to learn from the experts about Google’s major update to contextual targeting. The webinar starts at 10amPST / 1pmEST.

It’s now possible to target, bid and report on keywords on the Google Display Network, which means that you can fine-tune the performance of your contextual campaigns with the same level of control you’re used to in Search. It’s now easier for you to extend search campaigns to display and more efficient to run the two types of campaigns together.

Key areas that will be covered include:

• The benefits of combining display with your search campaigns
• Step-by-step campaign set-up guide
• Campaign optimization tips and best practices

This webinar will be presented by Charlie Vestner, Global Director of Display Solutions and will include Q&A. The session is suitable for advertisers who are already running campaigns on the Google Display Network, as well as those who have not yet tried it.

Register now!

Posted by Katie Hamilton, Product Marketing Manager, Google Display Network

Last year in the U.S., we launched the AdChoices Icon on the Google Display Network. AdChoices is an industry standard "i" icon that expands to “AdChoices” when users move their cursor over the icon. Giving users clear notice about the ads they see is a high priority for Google and for many in the online advertising industry at large. Users who click this label are taken to a page where they can learn more about online advertising and the ads they see.

We’re now rolling out the AdChoices feature across Europe, supporting industry-wide efforts to provide more information to consumers. We'll soon start to change our “Ads By Google” in-ads notice icon to a new icon that expands to an "AdChoices" label. These notifications were developed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB Europe)-led Self-Regulatory Program for Online Behavioral Advertising to proactively give users notice and choice about the ads they see. With the adoption of a common icon users will see on ads across the web, we hope to show our support for the industry-wide initiative and to increase users' understanding about their choices.

Over the next few weeks, we'll start showing the new icon and label on most ad formats across the majority of European-language sites. Over time, we’ll expand the notice to ensure that all European-language publisher sites in the Google Display Network come within the Self-Regulatory Framework. This will be the single largest rollout of the "AdChoices" label to date, and we're encouraged that others in the industry are also adopting the label.

Users who click on the "AdChoices" label will be taken to a page where they can learn more about online advertising and the ads they are shown. This page will also link to the Ads Preferences Manager, where users can control the types of interest-based ads they see on the Google Display Network. We think this rollout will help users better understand the ads they're seeing, and we look forward to seeing widespread adoption of this label throughout the industry.

Posted by Jason Bigler, Product Management Director

We know that you're always looking for more efficient ways to manage your AdWords accounts. We also hear that many of you would love to use your own external data to make decisions in your accounts. Today, we're excited to announce the limited release of scripts in AdWords. With scripts, you can make changes to an AdWords account by writing simple JavaScript programs.

With scripts, you can:

• Use external inventory data to either change bids or pause/unpause keywords. 
• Output account statistics to a spreadsheet from which you can create reports and visualizations. 
• Use stats trends over several weeks to change keyword or ad group bids.

Scripts run in the Google Apps Script infrastructure, and we're enabling Apps Script integration with three services: you can use Google Spreadsheets and Url Fetcher to integrate with external data, as well as email results of a script execution from the script itself.

To get started with scripts, visit the Campaigns tab, and select “Automation” then “Scripts” from the left toolbar:


To make the most of scripts, we recommend that whoever is writing them has a basic understanding of JavaScript.

In the coming weeks we plan to enable this feature for everyone. In the interim, we are accepting applications for access. Applicants will be whitelisted in batches as we ramp up usage in the system. In order to apply, you will need an AdWords customer ID (not a My Client Center ID). Please refer to our developers site for more instructions and best practices for using scripts.

Posted By: Prashant Baheti, AdWords Product Manager

Last week, in partnership with the Learn With Google program, we held our first “Mobile Education Week” webinar series for your agency or business to learn more about the tools and resources to help you succeed on mobile.

Below are video recordings of these webinars - check them out, and share with your colleagues.

Our Mobile Planet: Understanding U.S. Smartphone Consumers
Our first webinar provided an overview of the 2012 Our Mobile Planet smartphone research. Watch this video if you’d like to learn:

• How smartphones are transforming core consumer behavior around the world, and the way we connect with others, stay informed, keep ourselves entertained, shop and navigate the world around us.
• Implications for advertisers and strategies businesses can use to win the moments that matter with mobile.

Ideal for: global agencies and marketers


GoMo: Mobilize your Site with Quickly and Easily New Tools from Google & DudaMobile
The second webinar was a joint effort between Google’s GoMo initiative and DudaMobile on how it is now even easier for small businesses to create a free mobile-friendly website.

View this video if you’d like to learn:

• Why mobile sites matter
• Review Google's HowToGoMo.com resource
• New: How to create free mobile sites for your small business directly from HowToGoMo.com, using a tool powered by DudaMobile
• Examples and best practices for mobilizing your site using the free DudaMobile tool

Ideal for: small businesses and agencies interested in free tools to create a mobile site


Introducing Mobile Apps Inventory in AdWords
The final webinar shared the new opportunity available with the availability of AdMob inventory to AdWords users.

This video is great if you’d like to learn:

• How AdWords now makes it easy for you to extend your campaigns to reach users inside mobile apps.
• Review mobile-specific targeting, ad units, and reporting than enable you to optimize your ROI.

Ideal for: marketers and agencies looking to promote and target mobile apps


Want to learn more about how to help your business or agency succeed on mobile? Stay tuned to all new Mobile Ads news at the Google Mobile Ads blog and YouTube channel.

Posted by Sonja Lee, Product Marketing, Mobile Ads

This post is part of a four-part series called AdWords Examples. We'll show you an example of an account with a structure of campaigns, ad groups, keywords and ads that can be used by an online retailer. We hope you’ll find this helpful in creating your first campaign, and if you need help with the individual steps you can always find them in our AdWords Help Center.

In this second part of our series of AdWords Examples, we’ll go a little deeper and examine how to use ad groups effectively. If you didn’t catch the first post of the series, you can find it here: AdWords Examples: Structuring your campaigns.

When building an account for the Google Store, Lisa created different ad groups for each and every product in the store, as you can see below.



Using this structure in the AdWords account, Lisa is able to create relevant sets of keywords for each product on the webshop, create relevant ads for each product, and link these ads to the relevant landing pages.

In this case, each ad group will contain ads and keywords that are only related to one product, to increase the relevance of the ads. So when someone is searching for a Google lava lamp, an ad for Google lava lamps will be shown, and a click on that ad will take the user directly to the page for lava lamps. 

Without this structure, the ads would not be able to accurately match the keywords. Matching the users’ search queries with targeted ads greatly increases the number of relevant clicks and purchases, as the customer is sent straight to the page for lava lamps.

You can find step-by-step instructions for how to create new ad groups here. In the next part of this series, we’ll look into some examples of ads. Stay tuned!

Written by Jens Larsson, The Help Center Team

Small businesses are realizing that they can go beyond search ads with the Google Display Network, reaching new customers and leads with engaging and relevant messages. In the past year alone, the number of small businesses running ads on the Google Display Network has almost doubled, and this growth trend is just beginning!

To help propel other small businesses to win the moments that matter with display, we decided to learn more from our customers, highlight their success, and share the strategies they’ve employed to achieve successful display campaigns.

Making display work for you
The key to being successful on the Google Display Network is understanding the mix of targeting types you should use to achieve your marketing objective. While there is no one-size-fits-all strategy, we know there are recurring themes among businesses who have set up successful display campaigns.

We found three small businesses that are great illustrations of these different approaches to display: Julian Bakery, Legacy Learning Systems, and Bedder Way.

Let’s take a closer look at their successful display network strategies:

• Drive sales online and in stores – Since ramping up their GDN campaign to drive online and offline sales, Julian Bakery has grown from 40 distributors and 100 customers to 1000 distributors and 300,000 customers nationwide.
• Control and understand every dollar you spend – Legacy Learning System achieves, on average, 1M impressions per day on the Google Display Network and 150 online sales per month by maximizing their ad performance using conversion tracking data.
• Harness the power of an image – Bedder Way has increased their display network conversions by 50% and decreased their cost per conversion by 25%, by using image ads on the display network to visually showcase their murphy beds.

To help inspire you, we’ve compiled these companies’ strategies into three short videos and downloadable guides on our revamped Google Display Network website. The videos provide an overview of each company’s strategy and the PDFs act as a guide to help you follow their lead, developing your own successful campaigns on the GDN.

Take a look, browse the site, and try out the Google Display Network for yourself!

Posted by Brad Bender, Director, Product Management - Google Display Network

Cross posted from the Google Mobile Ads blog

When we acquired AdMob two years ago, we made a big bet on mobile - and on mobile display advertising. As smartphone adoption has continued to grow around the world, we’ve seen that bet pay off with the increasingly strong appetite to engage customers on mobile devices.   Starting today, over one million AdWords advertisers will now be able to reach engaged consumers on more than 350 million mobile devices in the AdMob network and in some of the world’s most popular mobile applications.

By bringing our products and tools together, advertisers can work with Google to more effectively accomplish their marketing goals.  Earlier this week, we unveiled a newly unified digital ad platform that makes online marketing easier and more effective for large marketers and agencies using Doubleclick’s ad serving tools.  Similarly, with today’s announcement, AdMob mobile advertising becomes a seamless part of AdWords.

AdWords advertisers’ will now have access to mobile app inventory from directly within the AdWords interface, giving them the ability to create and manage ad campaigns that run across more than 300,000 mobile apps in the AdMob network.  Advertisers will be able to easily build, launch, and optimize their mobile campaigns across multiple platforms, and have full transparency about where their mobile ads run. AdMob’s network of apps gives advertisers true global reach with 23 countries each generating over one billion ad-requests last month, up from 11 countries in April 2011.

Starting today, a new campaign type is available in AdWords that makes it easy to launch an ad campaign to run on mobile apps on the AdMob network.  To start this new campaign type, advertisers can select “new campaign” from the Campaigns tab, and then “Display Network only (mobile apps)”.  

In addition to the ability to launch a mobile app campaign from within AdWords, advertisers can now reach individuals by targeting specific smartphone or tablet device models (e.g. Samsung Galaxy) or by targeting a particular manufacturer brand.  AdWords already enables targeting by operator, wifi, or operating system version.

Advertisers can also reach their desired audience by selecting from the categories available in the Google Play Store (e.g. ‘Games’) or App Store and search for individual apps (e.g. ‘Flood it’).  In the next several weeks, we’ll also provide an estimate on the number of devices reached and impressions targeted given your selections.

For more information on these new features, please join our webinar on mobile apps inventory in AdWords today at 10:00 AM PT / 1:00 PM ET (register here).

This is the latest chapter in our ongoing efforts not only to bring AdMob’s and Google’s tools together, but to mobilize all of our ads products and services.  Over the last year, we’ve brought mobile app inventory to the Doubleclick Ad Exchange, transitioned AdMob CPC campaigns to an AdWords-style auction, and launched the ability for advertisers to serve ads from DFA into the AdMob network.

As mobile continues to grow, we’ll continue to develop integrated advertising solutions designed to harness the specific features of mobile devices, usage, and context.

Posted by: Jonathan Alferness, Director Product Management, Mobile Ads

(Cross-posted from the Analytics Blog)

What are the key steps to getting started with marketing attribution? Are you ready to move beyond the “last click” attribution model? How can you use Google’s tools to better understand your customer’s journey and calculate the impact of your digital marketing channels?



To help answer these questions, we’ve put together a series of webinars on attribution:

• Attribution Insights from Google and Econsultancy (4/26/2012) – watch recording here
• Building Blocks of Digital Attribution (5/24/2012) – watch recording here
• Search Attribution: AdWords Search Funnels (6/20/2012) – register here
• Cross-Channel Attribution: Multi-Channel Funnels – registration details coming soon
• Next Steps with Attribution – registration details coming soon

If you didn’t have a chance to catch last week’s webinar on Building Blocks of Digital Attribution, it’s a great place to start your attribution journey -- you can watch the recording above. During the webinar, Bill Kee, Product Manager for Attribution and Multi-Channel Measurement, discussed how to lay the foundation for digital attribution. First and foremost, it’s important to get your organization ready. In our work with customers and our recent attribution research, we’ve discovered that many companies try to pursue attribution before their culture or their data is ready. In the webinar, Bill describes the steps and the potential pitfalls to make sure your company is heading in the right direction.

Second, even if the organization has taken the necessary steps culturally, it’s challenging to find the right technology, and to ensure that technology is properly implemented.




We know that finding the right technology is a challenge, which is why Google offers several great attribution tools – including AdWords Search Funnels, Multi-Channel Funnels in Google Analytics, and Attribution Modeling in Google Analytics Premium. In order to get the most out of these tools, it’s important to ensure that the basics are set up correctly.  So, during the webinar, Bill also did a live demo of how to get started with AdWords Conversion Tracking and Google Analytics Goals. The setup is quick and easy – and once it’s in place, users can start accessing rich attribution data.

Naturally, we also received a lot of great questions from the webinar participants. We weren’t able to get to all of them during the webinar, so here are some responses and more pointers on getting started with attribution.



How do you define “digital attribution”?
Digital attribution is the process of assigning credit to the various online interactions your customer has before a “conversion” (conversion = making a purchase or performing some other valuable action on your site). These interactions could include display ads, paid or organic search results, email campaigns, affiliate coupon programs, social network posts, and other digital interactions. Today, many marketers by default use “last click” attribution, assigning all of the credit to the last interaction before a conversion. By understanding the full path to conversion – including early “upper funnel” touch points – and giving credit to all of those interactions, you’ll be able to budget more effectively and design better marketing campaigns.

What about attribution beyond digital channels?
Attribution is about improving the measurement of how ad spend drives conversions. To address this challenging topic, it’s important to consider all the factors that might affect conversions. These factors include the digital channels mentioned above, as well as how users interact with your brand across multiple devices, and the influence of online advertising on offline sales. This webinar series is focused on how to get the most out of digital attribution.

How do I know which interaction is the trigger for the actual conversion, out of the entire funnel?
The goal of attribution is to more accurately measure the impact of all your digital channels on sales, including how these channels interact in the path to conversion. This means acknowledging that, in most cases, there is no single “trigger” for the conversion, but rather a group of campaigns or touch points working together to help drive a conversion. So, a user might see a display ad which makes her start thinking about your product, then a few days later view an organic search result, then receive a targeted email, and finally buy your product. In this example the email was the last pre-conversion interaction, but all three interactions probably had an impact on your customer’s decision. Attribution is the process of deciding how much credit you want to give to each of those interactions.

How do I set up those tools you discussed during the webinar? Can you provide more detail for advanced setup needs?
Our help center provides very detailed information about how to get your AdWords and Analytics set up correctly, and responses to frequently asked questions. Check out our pages on:

• AdWords Conversion Tracking
• Google Analytics Goals
• Ecommerce Tracking
• Linking AdWords and Google Analytics

In addition, if you'd like more help, we recommend contacting one of our certified partners – they can assist you with all aspects of implementation, as well as with interpreting your results. You can also check out our AdWords user forum and our Google Analytics user forum to get answers to your questions.

Does adding all this code to my website affect the site speed at all?
If the code is installed correctly by following the directions outlined on our help center pages (see above for links), it should not impact your site speed, or have only a very tiny impact. Setting up goals and conversion tracking will provide much richer data on how users arrive at your site and whether they’re doing what you want them to do once they get there. With that knowledge, you’ll be able to improve your marketing programs and your website.

What are some sample use cases for “event” goals?
A goal or a conversion can be more than just a purchase. Indeed, you can define multiple “micro-conversions” that represent various actions that are important to your business. So, you might use event goals to keep track of when a PDF was downloaded, or when a user watched a video or played an audio clip. Each of these “events” could be tied to goals that are of value to you. You can find more detail about event tracking in this article on the Google Developers site.

Why do I need to set up conversion tracking and goals? Can’t Google Analytics track without conversions?
It is possible to see some useful information without conversions, but defining conversions helps you measure what's important, rather than just general behavior. Plus, after you have these conversion tools set up in Analytics and AdWords, you’ll be able to access Multi-Channel Funnels, Flow Visualization, and Conversion Reporting in Google Analytics, as well as Search Funnels and Conversion Optimizer in AdWords. It’s quick and easy to get started, and it’s much more useful to look at a user’s path if you know that they’ve reached your desired end point and performed an action that’s valuable to your business.

Marketing attribution is a complex but very rewarding process – we hope that these tools and webinars will help you to get started.

Happy analyzing, and hope you'll join us for the next webinar in the series!

Posted by Sara Jablon Moked, Product Marketing Manager for Conversion and Attribution