Google Tracking Conversions, Even if you don’t Click!
Google announced on Wednesday that they are improving the measurement of conversions for display advertising campaigns on the Google Content Network. With the addition of View-through conversion reporting, advertisers can track the number of conversions that occurred from display ads which were viewed in the past 30 days by potential customers but weren’t clicked. In other words, display ads are attributed with the conversion if a customer later arrives at the website and converts without having clicked the display ad or other active ad in the campaign.
This is half of a giant step forward in attribution reporting. The downside of this new reporting feature is that, to my knowledge, if a customer views but does not click the display ad but later does a search for the brand and converts from a search ad no view-through conversion will be attributed - only the search ad that was clicked will be. It would be ideal to see all of the touch points that occurred prior to leading to a conversion.
Most research on the value of impressions concludes that the average converter has 15 to 20 interactions with a brand, depending upon vertical, prior to converting. Often times the lag between first impression and conversion can be 30-90 days down the road. This same research indicates that added impressions, from media such as display advertising, increases conversion rates on sponsored search ads by as much as 22% on average.
Enough numbers. This data proves that we need better attribution reporting. Advertisers don’t want to just see an instance where a single impression happened to lead to a conversion. Advertisers need to see all touch points leading up to a conversion, a snapshot of the full conversion cycle!
Google, let’s take that full step!
Update:
I just found this old post on the Google Blog that mentions View-through conversion reporting way back in August of 2008. View-throughs are tracked via a DoubleClick ad-serving cookie across the content network.
There is also hopes for better attribution reporting with improvements in technology being made by companies such as Clearsaleing.
