Last year we’ve written in our company blog about view through metrics, and apparently Google has listened Last few days I discovered a cool new column in my Google AdWords panel called “view through conversions“.

These conversions, are, as Google states on their blog conversions which occurred on the target web site within 30 days of a display ad impression, in the content network. Yes, you are reading correctly – Google is reporting on conversions which occurred due to an Impression, not a Click.

This is simply HUGE.

Running display campaigns usually brings lower conversion rate and higher acquisition costs than search campaigns (except from very specific verticals). This does not mean that display does not work, it simply means that search is more goal oriented and that the display activities are geared more towards awareness and reach, and usually contribue to increase the search volume.

For example- An airline would launch a special sale on their website, and promote that sale in many online channels. In our standard conversion attribution models, we will see that the display campaigns show impression, clicks and very little to no sales at all.

However, the search volume (impressions, clicks, conversions) would amazingly soar. The soar in searches and search based conversions is much related to the fact that users see the ads in the diaply formats, assimilate the message and then when the time is right, they would search for the product or the brand, and convert.

View through conversions will let us, as campaign managers optimize our media plan not only by those display outlets which convert directly, but those which influence the audience to convert.

As website in the google content network may send clicks and lack in conversion rate or acquisition cost – but influence with its impressions on latent sales which may arrive due to direct traffic, search, email campaigns etc.

I highly recommend adding this metric to your KPI list.

Ophir

It’s been a while since I last wrote here, and I am thrilled to have the opportunity to share something I found to be very useful and could be somewhat revolutionary to Google AdWords bud management.

Google Released their new “bid simulator” a few days ago, a super-cute tool which helps us find that sweet-spot where the keyword bid would be high enough to get the traffic and low enough not to waste all the budget.

The actual news here, is that Google is now revealing the very common question my colleagues ask – How much to raise/decrease the bid? Is X% enough? Well up until now it was mainly experience and guesswork – but Google is now showing us how much X% raising the bid will affect our traffic and how much Z% decreasing the bid would hurt the traffic (Hint: Sometimes you can cut the bid by 50% and not lose a single click, other times you can increase the bid 400% and win just a few more clicks).

Google’s official email describes the new feature herein:

Have you ever wondered how many impressions or clicks you could have received if you had used a different maximum CPC bid? Until now, finding the right bid has typically involved a lot of trial and error.

The bid simulator, launched today, is a feature of the new AdWords interface that shows you the potential impact of your bid on your advertising results. While it can’t predict the future, the bid simulator allows you to explore what could have happened if you had set different keyword-level bids.

Using data from the past seven days, the bid simulator re-calculates the number of impressions for which your ad could have shown had you chosen a different maximum CPC, how many clicks your ad could have gotten for those impressions and how much those clicks could have cost. The feature provides increased transparency into the AdWords auction and gives you the insight to make more informed bidding decisions to meet your advertising objectives.

This simulation data can help you figure out the trade-off between click volume and cost, enabling you to answer more confidently questions such as:

• How can I increase traffic to my site without raising my costs too much?
• For which keywords should I alter my spend?

As you use bid simulator, it’s important to note that past performance does not guarantee future results. Additionally, simulations will only be provided if there is enough traffic on a given keyword to conduct a meaningful analysis. These simulations are currently available only for Google.com and the Google search network.

For more information, view the bid simulator video and visit our help center.

To see data from the bid simulator, go to the ‘Keywords’ tab in your AdWords account.

(Click here for full size image)

Then, click on the bid simulator icon in the Max. CPC column next to the bid of any keyword you could like to see data for.

In this example, you are seeing simulations for the keyword “search email.”

(Click here for full size image)

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew

So day 1 at SMX London 2008 has ended..

It was a crazy long day, lots of fun and very interesting. Below are the day’s highlights, from my personal perspective. Read More »

SMX London 2008

The famous Search Marketing Expo is coming to London this week. I’ll be speaking about Paid Search on the first day (Tuesday, Nov 4th 2008) and I’m very excited and thrilled.

For me, every time when I get a chance to visit on of these S** (SMX, SES…) events It’s sort of a fest. You see I’ve been involved in this industry since it’s very beginning back in 1998, and I’ve seen these events grow from a couple of hundred visitors small – friendly – cosy meeting to a full blown conference with thousands of enthusiastic professionals. Read More »

hitwise

Google is gaining market share, says Hitwise. According to Hitwise’s latest report, Google receives 71% market share of searches, while Yahoo! receives 18.26%, MSN (Live) receives 5.32%, Ask.com receives 3.45% and the remaining 46 other engines accounted for 1.95% all together.

Search Engines Market Share US 08 2008

Read More »