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Google & Overture Provided Conversion Tracking - Pros &
Cons
Friday, June 18, 2004
When you set up a direct response online ad campaign, you want
to be able to measure its success. Success would be defined by the
number of sales, leads or transactions that are completed on your
site in comparison to what it cost you to garner those transactions.
The ability to track the productivity of your marketing/advertising
spend is referred to as Return On Investment ("ROI").
One way to measure online ROI is to implement conversion tracking
tools. There are multiple software applications you can purchase
and implement to help you do conversion tracking, but when it comes
to paid search campaigns, Google and Overture have come up with
conversion tracking tools of their own that they currently offer
for no cost. Is free necessarily a good thing, however? You might
want to review the pros and cons before leaping at a complimentary
offer.
Google's Conversion Tracking Tool
In order to implement Google's conversion tracking system, you
must already have an approved Google AdWords campaign running. Google's
conversion tracking system only works with Google AdWords campaigns.
Google not only offers basic conversion tracking to determine general
conversions, but it also has more customizable options for advertisers
who are tracking different measurements. There are four customizable
tracking options called "Labels":
1. Purchases/Sales - For commerce sites tracking purchases and
sales to determine ROI.
2. Leads - Appropriate for sales organizations interested in tracking
lead generation, e.g. a request for a follow-up call.
3. Sign-ups - Enables measurement of subscription sign-ups.
4. Page Views - Helps sites track how many pages an ad-generated
visitor has viewed or the length of a visit.
Once an advertiser chooses the label that suits them best, the
next steps is to install a Google- generated tracking image and
_JavaScript code on the page of the site on which the desired sale
or particular action is confirmed. The tracking image is called
"Site Stats" and is visible to the user on the advertiser's
site. The implementation process for Google's conversion tracking
requires knowledge of basic HTML, so if that's not your competency,
be prepared to involve your webmaster.
Google conversion tracking works by placing a cookie on a searcher's
computer when s/he clicks on an ad. If the searcher makes it to
the confirmation page containing the tracking image, the cookie
sends a notification to Google's server that makes the connection
between the ad click and the final transaction.
Overture's "Conversion Counter"
Overture's Conversion Counter is available only to Overture advertisers
and like Google, Conversion Counter only works with Overture campaigns.
Conversion Counter tracks overall conversions for your Overture
campaign as well as for individual keywords and match types. (If
you don't understand about match types, read our archived article,
URL at bottom.)
The set-up process works like Google's, though Overture doesn't
offer the various tracking options that Google does and Overture
only provides a line of HTML code to embed in the confirmation page.
And Overture's tracking works in the same way.
Pros of Google & Overture Tracking
By utilizing conversion tracking tools, an advertiser can truly
get a better handle on the impact of their campaign and ad spend.
Using the data provided by conversion tracking, an advertiser can
both determine what keywords to invest in for the best results and
the overall ROI for its particular ad campaigns. If you are running
an AdWords campaign, for example, you will not only be able to see
how many clicks you are getting on each keyword (data that's provided
in the AdWords advertiser dashboard), but you will also be able
to see how these keywords perform in terms of sales.
Just because you have a lot of clicks or a strong click-thru rate
doesn't mean that you're making money or generating the desired
end result from the clicks you're paying for. In fact, the very
opposite might be happening and without a means to measure your
conversions, how would you know?? That's why, if you don't have
your own means to do conversion tracking, considering these free
options from Google and Overture might be a good idea.
Cons of Google & Overture Tracking
What could be wrong with using free conversion tracking, right?
How about exposing your visitor and sales data to an organization
who is also marketing to your competition?? Let's explain.
With Google's Site Stats image apparent to the site visitor, the
visitor is informed that their actions are being tracked -- not
everybody is comfy with that fact, even though most Internet users
now realize their online actions are 100% trackable.
Furthermore, Google and Overture are theoretically able to access
every advertiser's private sales information. Google and Overture
are huge marketing companies who just love crunching numbers and
identifying sales opportunities and trends. If you are marketing
in a category without much competition and getting fantastic results,
might Google and Overture want to start promoting your category
to other companies like yours? What will this do to your competitive
market conditions then? And how do you feel about Google and Yahoo
(which owns Overture) knowing your private sales information?
A separate drawback about using these propreitary conversion tracking
tools is that while they work fine for the individual campaigns,
they ONLY work for those campaigns. So if you have both a Google
and Overture campaign going on, you need to implement two tracking
systems and the information cannot be consolidated in one place.
Nor can you track any non- Google or non-Overture campaigns.
And with Google's and Overture's click-only tracking system, one
big potential loss of information occurs: if your potential customer
sees your ad but doesn't click at that moment (or ever) and goes
to your site directly instead, the Google and Overture systems don't
have a means to record and track this "impression." If
this person does a transaction on your site some time in the future,
you'd have no way of knowing.
Definitely weigh the pros and cons to these free conversion tracking
systems. If they're not right for you, there are always others,
but in the words of department store tycoon, John Wanamaker, "Half
my advertising is wasted, I just don't know which half." If
conversion tracking was around then, he might have a better idea!
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