Common questions we get asked:
- Why do Google Ads and Google Analytics not match?
- Why do the PPC numbers not match with the backend numbers?
- How does tracking work? (sometimes with added expletives!)
We wanted to try and answer these questions here so below we have created a scenario where a sale occurs on a Wednesday – and then explained why this sale may report differently across Google Ads, Google Analytics, and backend data systems.
Google Ads allocates credit when the click occurs, not when the sale/lead occurs, so our conversion reports may differ to the client’s backend sale/lead data.
*if you are still using last click attribution then in the above example it will not report on Monday in Google Ads, only on Tuesday. Ideally advertisers should move away from last click attribution to a different model.
We also need to remember Google Ads and Google Analytics do not track in quite the same way.
Google Analytics credits when the last non-direct click occurs, so if the conversion journey was Paid > Organic > Direct then Analytics would credit Organic, but Google Ads would ignore the organic and credit the paid click.
*there are reports in Analytics which allow you to see the data in different attribution models, which better reflect reality.
This can be quite confusing and cause a great deal of hours to be spent looking through data, only for it to not add up.
Other platforms also work differently which can create further confusion if you are managing the accounts yourself.
If you are unsure as to why you have tracking issues, or need the help of an expert agency who understand this and can help you better strategize for the future, then please do get in touch.
Monthly Updates – March 2019
Welcome to a new series of blogs which we will do at the end of every month. We will look at some of the latest tests we are running and analyse some findings.
Automated Bidding
This is a huge area but for this month lets focus on target CPA bidding. This is an area which can help elevate your accounts performance quite drastically overnight almost however there are quite a few elements you need to be careful of:
- Do you have the correct tracking in place? This is a key area. If you are tracking extra conversion points the technology will try and get more of these conversions as well which may be not what is worth anything to you. E.g. if you are tracking newsletter signups as well as sales the software would try and drive more of all conversions.
- Is your account CPA focussed? Retailers wont always care about CPA as much as they do about ROI or cost of sale. A ROAS strategy may be better in this case.
- What campaigns drive the higher value conversions?
- Do you need to consider using different targets for different campaigns?
- This is especially more relevant for lead gen campaigns.
- The account can go from spending £100’s to £1000’s overnight if you are not careful. Whilst you would still expect a strong CPA, the spend can increase quite drastically which may not be your goal. Having campaign budgets in place will help control this as well as monitoring this closely.
- Do you need to consider using different targets for different campaigns?
What results have we seen for this:
In February we saw a 23% increase in leads with a 19% reduction in CPA. For March we have already seen a further an increase of 100% in leads from February with a further reduction in CPA by 18% from February. – Simon Wells
In the first month of using target CPA bidding we saw a 26% increase in sales with the ROI improving by 38%. This has improved further this month with a 59% increase with the ROI continuing to improve. – Meg Wilson-Taylor
Amazon Advertising
Whilst we have been doing this for a while, we thought it would be worthwhile highlighting this, this month. Amazon advertising is something we have ran a series of blogs on separately. It is slowly becoming a key area for retail clients.
We have seen 5 times the ROI on Amazon than that on Google Ads (case study coming soon). However, there are other chargers that can incur which do need to be considered when looking at cost of sale.
This month on Amazon there have been 2 recent changes that are being tested. These are detailed below:
Bidding Strategy BETA
- Old bidding strategy options
- Fixed bids (equivalent to Manual CPC)
- Dynamic Bids – Down Only (only to lower bids when a conversion is less likely to happen)
- New bidding strategy BETA
- Dynamic Bids – Up & Down (equivalent to Enhanced CPC in Google Ads, increases/decreases based on how likely a conversion is)
- This is very new so next month we will cover some results on this.
Sponsored Products Campaigns – Product Targeting
- Old SP targeting option
- Target search keywords
- New SP targeting option
- Target specific product(s)
- Again, this is very new so next month we will cover some results on this. Anna Wood
Shopping Feed Optimisation
This has been extensively covered in our guest blog last month, so I won’t go into detail here however it is worth looking at this in more detail as it can totally change the game for you when it comes to shopping ads. The link to the blog is below: