Estimated Total Conversions: New insights for the multi-screen world

People are constantly connected, using multiple devices throughout the day to shop, communicate and stay entertained.  A September 2013 study of multi-device consumers found that over 90% move sequentially between several screens for everyday activities like booking a hotel or shopping for electronics.

As consumers are increasingly on the go and switching between devices, marketers are telling us they want to see a more complete and accurate picture of how their online advertising drives conversions.  Conversions can come in many forms: visits to stores, phone calls, app downloads, website sales or purchases made after consulting various devices.  Getting better insight into these complex purchase paths can help you optimize your online advertising and allocate budget more effectively.

Introducing Estimated Total Conversions

Today, we are introducing Estimated Total Conversions for search ads on Google.com.  This is an exciting first step to give marketers more insight into how AdWords drives conversions for your business by showing you both the conversions you see today, like online sales, as well as an estimate of conversions that take multiple devices to complete.  Over time, we’ll be adding other conversion types like phone calls and store visits as well as conversions from ads on our search and display network.

Estimated Total Conversions will provide you with a holistic view of all of the conversions driven by your Google search advertising that can be used to make important decisions like how much to bid and how to assign budget across your various marketing channels.  For the last few years, many sophisticated advertisers have been using their own analysis to get to these insights.  Today, we are beginning to bring this level of insight and measurement to all advertisers.

Estimated cross-device conversions

Estimated cross-device conversions is the first new conversion type to launch as part of Estimated Total Conversions. Cross-device conversions start as a click on a search ad on Google.com on one device and end as a conversion on another device (or in a different web browser on the same device).

For example, say someone shops for “blue jeans” on her mobile phone while waiting for the morning train.  She clicks on a mobile ad for ABC Blue Jeans.  When she gets to her office, she goes directly to the ABC website to make a purchase.  This is an example of a cross-device conversion.  We calculate cross-device conversions using a sample of data from users who signed into multiple devices.  Learn more about how this works.

Estimated cross-device conversions will begin rolling out globally to all AdWords advertisers starting today and continuing over the next few weeks. To see these new statistics, you’ll need AdWords conversion tracking and a sufficient volume of conversions on which to base a reliable estimate.

In the last few months, we’ve analyzed data across thousands of AdWords advertisers to learn more about cross-device conversion patterns.

When advertisers in the travel industry use AdWords estimated cross-device conversions, they are able to measure 8% more conversions, on average, than they did before.  In addition, they can now measure 33% more conversions that originated on a mobile phone and later converted on different device.  This helps them attribute all those sales -- from customers who searched for flights and hotels on their mobile phones and then made a purchase from another device -- to the right ad.

Similarly, other verticals, like entertainment and retail are also seeing positive results.  Businesses in these industries are now able to measure 12% and 7% more conversions, respectively, than they could before using Estimated Total Conversions.

Sean Singleton, Marketing Manager at American Apparel noted that, "We always knew our online ad investment was influencing conversions across devices, but we didn't know how to begin estimating these numbers. Once we saw that 5.3% more conversions could be attributed to cross-device conversions in AdWords, we knew we could more accurately calculate the value we were receiving from each ad click.  We also learned that mobile ads are driving 16% more conversions than we thought, so we are now investing more into this channel to gain more sales.”

More results from other verticals can be seen below.

Paving the way for marketers to measure the full value of their online advertising

We are committed to helping you gain insight into the new conversion types that are part of a constantly connected, multi-screen world so that you can make the best advertising decisions possible. In addition to cross-device conversions, both phone calls and store visits will be included as part of Estimated Total Conversions in the coming months. These are important conversions to consider — people make more than 40M calls to businesses each month directly from Google ads and are often looking for physical store locations when they search on Google, particularly on the go.

We look forward to your feedback on estimated cross-device conversions and are working hard to add new features.  Over the coming weeks we’ll dive into the new features with tips and best practices on the Inside AdWords blog and on the new Think Insights page for conversions. We hope you will join us.

Posted by Sridhar Ramaswamy, SVP, Ads and Commerce

Unleashing the Combined Power of Google Analytics and AdWords: Webinar Next Tuesday, 6/18

In many ways, Google Analytics and AdWords were made for each other. AdWords helps advertisers reach an audience and reports on advertising performance, and Google Analytics can tell you what actions your users take when they actually get to your site. You may have a high clickthrough rate (CTR) in AdWords, but what if you could see that 70% of those users left immediately after arriving on your landing page? While understanding the conversion rate of AdWords ads is critical, it’s also important to understand what happened to the users that did not convert or complete the action you wanted them to. For example, did users ‘bounce’ after landing on your site or did they view a few other pages and then leave? How much time did they spend on your site? Which keywords drive the majority of your Ecommerce revenue?

Thanks to built-in Google product integrations that provide unique insights into your data, you can view reporting and data in Google Analytics that directly relates back to your advertising in AdWords. Understanding how to use both of them together will help you refine your AdWords campaigns and improve the performance of your business.


Next Tuesday, join Rachel Witalec and Simon Rosen, Global Sales Strategy Leads, for a detailed look at how to use Google Analytics and AdWords together. In this webinar, we'll show you why it's important to link your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts, how to see both Google Analytics data in AdWords and AdWords data in Google Analytics, and walk through a live demo of the reports and how to use them. You'll learn how to make your marketing more effective by analyzing Google Analytics data, such as bounce rate, pages per visit, conversion rate, and Ecommerce revenue in conjunction with AdWords factors, such as keyword performance, ad copy, ad groups, and more. The webinar will also include a live Q&A section.

Date: Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Time: 10am PDT / 1pm EDT/ 6pm GMT
Duration: 1 hr
Level: 101 / Beginner
Register: Register here

Posted by Sara Jablon Moked, Google Analytics team

Optimizing for conversions made easy with Search Funnels data in your AdWords tabs

Search Funnels show you how users search for products before converting, allowing you to make better informed decisions in AdWords. Now, we're making it easier than ever to incorporate Search Funnels data into your everyday optimizations by introducing new Search Funnels columns that you can simply add to your campaign, ad group, keyword and ads tabs.  You should see this feature available in your account within the next couple of days.

If you’ve enabled conversion tracking, you’ll be able to see a new section within the column customizer for Search Funnels.  This section will allow you to add columns for many common Search Funnels metrics, such as assist clicks, click assisted conversions, and assist impressions.

If you’ve already enabled AdWords conversion tracking and are ready to get started, you can try some of our favorite optimization techniques:

• Find keywords that are best at assisting conversions -  Look for keywords with low conversion rates and a high click-assisted conversions / last-click conversion ratio. These keywords contribute significant conversion assists, meaning they are important early in the buying cycle as they drive visitors who are still researching your site. Consider setting up automated rules to increase your bids when conversion assists cross a certain threshold.   Also, try creating a separate ad group for these keywords with ads that are geared more towards research than immediate purchase.
• Pay your assist keywords their fair share -  Make sure you’re not underbidding for keywords with assist clicks. You could be missing conversions if your bid management strategy only accounts for last-click conversions. Keywords with assist clicks are in the click path of users who eventually convert, so it’s important to assign value to these keywords.
• Update your underperforming ads - Consider revising ads that have impression-assisted conversions and have a strong average position. These ads were shown to users who eventually converted but who did not click. Entice potential customers to visit your site with stronger call-to-action phrases in your ad creative. You may also want to consider raising your bids on these keywords if your average position is low to ensure that people see your ads.

Success in action

Jimdo, an international Internet company helping people build their own websites, talked to us about their success using Search Funnels columns:

Using the Search Funnels columns in AdWords has allowed us to both improve the volume of sales and efficiency that AdWords delivers.

By using these columns, and in particular the ratio of assisted conversions to last click conversions, we are able to identify and value keywords that play an important role in the upper funnel. Now knowing their importance, we improved our bids for these keywords, and have seen overall conversions increase by 30% and our ROI increase by 16%.

For more details on how to enable Search Funnels columns in your core reports, visit our help center.

Posted By Dan Friedman, Product Manager, AdWords

Enhancing AdWords for a constantly connected world

Today we’re upgrading AdWords, by rolling out enhanced campaigns. This is a first step to help you more simply and smartly manage your ad campaigns in today’s multi-device world.

Why enhanced campaigns?
People are constantly connected and moving from one device to another to communicate, shop and stay entertained. In fact, a recent study of multi-device consumers found that 90% move sequentially between several screens to accomplish a task. There’s also a proliferation of new devices — PCs, laptops, tablets, smartphones, hybrid devices, mini-tablets, televisions, and more. And there are many more digital screens and devices to come, with the lines between them continuing to blur. For example, as devices converge, consumer behaviors on tablets and desktops are becoming very similar.

This creates great opportunities for businesses, but can also make marketing more complex and time-consuming. For example, a pizza restaurant probably wants to show one ad to someone searching for “pizza” at 1pm on their PC at work (perhaps a link to an online order form or menu), and a different ad to someone searching for “pizza” at 8pm on a smartphone a half-mile from the restaurant (perhaps a click-to-call phone number and restaurant locator). Signals like location, time of day, and the capabilities of the device people are using have become increasingly important in showing them the right ad.

With enhanced campaigns, instead of having to cobble together and compare several separate campaigns, reports and ad extensions to do this, the pizza restaurant can easily manage all of this in one single place. Enhanced campaigns help you reach people with the right ads, based on their context like location, time of day and device type, across all devices without having to set up and manage several separate campaigns.



Key features
Here’s an overview of some key features.

1. Powerful marketing tools for the multi-device world
   People want search results that are relevant for the context they are in — their device, location and the time of day. Enhanced campaigns help you better manage your campaigns and budgets for this multi-device world. With bid adjustments, you can manage bids for your ads across devices, locations, time of day and more — all from a single campaign.
   
   Example: A breakfast cafe wants to reach people nearby searching for "coffee" or "breakfast" on a smartphone. Using bid adjustments, with three simple entries, they can bid 25% higher for people searching a half-mile away, 20% lower for searches after 11am, and 50% higher for searches on smartphones. These bid adjustments can apply to all ads and all keywords in one single campaign.
   
   
2. Smarter ads optimized for varying user contexts
   People on the go or near your store may be looking for different things than someone sitting at their desk. With enhanced campaigns, you’ll show ads across devices with the right ad text, sitelink, app or extension, without having to edit each campaign for every possible combination of devices, location and time of day.
   
   Example: A national retailer with both physical locations and a website can show ads with click-to-call and location extensions for people searching on their smartphones, while showing an ad for their e-commerce website to people searching on a PC — all within a single campaign.
   
   
3. Advanced reports to measure new conversion types
   Technology is enabling people to take action on your ads in new ways. Potential customers may see your ad and download your app, or they may call you. It’s been hard for marketers to easily measure and compare these interactions. To help you measure the full value of your campaigns, enhanced campaigns enables you to easily count calls and app downloads as conversions in your AdWords reports.
   
   Example: You can count phone calls of 60 seconds or longer that result from a click-to-call ad as a conversion in your AdWords reports, and compare them to other conversions like leads, sales and downloads.
   

Upgrading to enhanced campaigns
Enhanced campaigns will roll out to advertisers as an option over the next few weeks, and we plan to upgrade all campaigns in mid-2013.

Enhanced campaigns are designed to help you succeed in a multi-screen world, but we know that transitioning may involve some initial changes. Here are some resources to help you:

• Website
  
• Help Center
  
• Upgrade videos and guides
  
• AdWords Community forum
  

Over the coming weeks we’ll dive into the new features with tips and best practices on the Inside AdWords blog and on our Google+ page. We’d love your feedback.

Posted by Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior Vice President of Engineering

Learn with Google Webinar: Driving Conversions Using Google Products

Is your online campaign performing as well as it could be? Do you want to get more out of your digital marketing campaigns and increase your ROI?

We’ve heard from many of our users that with so much data, it can be hard to know where to begin. If you’d like to get a deep dive on how to increase your conversions, then please join us on Thursday for a Learn with Google webinar:

Webinar: Driving Conversions Using Google Products 
Date: Thursday, December 15
Time: 11am - 12pm PST / 2pm - 3pm EST
Sign up here! 

This webinar will teach you how to optimize your AdWords account for conversions on Search, Display, and Mobile. Learn to navigate Conversion Tracking, Search Funnels, and the many product features that can help you get your ad in front of the most relevant audience to drive more conversions.

The webinar will be presented by Tiffany Bristol, a Google account manager, and will include Q&A.

Posted by Dora Nagy, Product Marketing Manager

Show ads that are most likely to receive conversions more often

Today we're announcing the launch of a new ad rotation setting in AdWords that allows you to optimize for conversions. Previously, you had two options:

• Optimize for clicks: Ads that are expected to provide more clicks are shown more often
• Rotate: Ads are shown more evenly

Now, with a third option, you can choose to show ads that are expected to provide more conversions more often. We'll look at a combination of clickthrough rate and conversion rate to determine which ads to show.

We’ve always encouraged you to test multiple ads in each ad group, and we’ve offered our help by showing ads with the highest clickthrough rates more often. However, some of you have told us that the ad with the highest clickthrough rate isn’t always the ad with the highest conversion rate and that you’d like to be able to optimize for conversions rather than clicks. Starting today, we’re allowing you to do just that.

To use the new setting, you’ll need to have Conversion Tracking in your account, as we use the data from that tool to determine which ad is the most likely to receive conversions. When we don’t have enough data to make a decision, we’ll show the ad that is the most likely to receive clicks. If you have Conversion Tracking, the Optimize for conversions option will be available in the Ad delivery: Ad rotation, frequency capping section under Advanced settings on the Settings tab of any campaign. Once enabled, it will apply to all ads that appear on Google and our search and display partners’ sites.

(click for full-size image)

By providing another way to define the “best-performing” ad, we hope to make it easier for you to experiment with your ads and learn which ones are the most successful in helping you reach your advertising goals. For more information on ad rotation settings, please visit our Help Center.

Posted by Lisa Shieh, Inside AdWords crew