It is an extremely interesting and compelling presentation about Google’s fresh attempt to position itself as a one-stop shop for online display advertising. We know that they have been making inroads in all sorts of areas (Google Display Network, Google Ad Exchange, etc.) for some time, but this is the first time I have seen it packaged up so nicely and squarely targeted at advertisers, ad agencies, etc. Google does have the muscle to resolve a lot of the issues that plague our industry through integrating all of their solutions and makes a compelling case for using their platform.

What does this mean for all the rest of us? I think that remains to be seen, but it is clear that Google sees value in aggressively pursuing the dollars that are currently running through other ad networks. If they can do for display what they did for SEM by making it ultra-turnkey to flight display campaigns, it could change the way people are buying display advertising, even at the biggest shops.

That said, what Google has in technology, it lacks in customer service. We know this from the stories we hear from many of our clients. It is their ubiquity that makes it hard to provide a customer experience (not computer user experience) that many businesses and agencies need. Their hands are in almost every pot. Even some of their technologies acquisitions have been orphaned to focus on others (Doubleclick being the most relevant example here).

The other thing that Google doesn’t do is create brilliant advertising concepts. It’s one thing to own the network and develop tools to analyze success of online marketing campaigns from a metric perspective, but coming up with the idea that will affect consumers’ buying decisions is another. Admittedly that’s not Google’s business, but in the rapidly changing advertising marketplace, technological innovation is often confused with marketing insight. Good ad units, networks, and metrics do not a great marketing campaign make. They are simply the vehicles for the ideas that will turn heads and open pocketbooks.  What makes advertising work is the compelling, inspiring, revolutionary presentation of ideas that inform the way people see their own needs/wants/desires. This has nothing to do with technology. It has to do with creativity.

When they finally make their move as it seems they are now (look at the cover of Advertising Age), Google moves with such force that it seems like the entire playbook is being rewritten. We all know that it isn’t, but when a giant moves the ground definitely shakes. The best thing about giants for all of us little guys is that they can’t move or turn fast. That leaves lots of room for us to operate as the David to their Goliath (and we know who won that battle). We had best be ready to do what only we can do and do it better: serve our customers with excellence and help them cultivate the genius ideas that will help their businesses engage the marketplace. We can’t confuse what we do best with what the Googles of the world do best.

Then again, this could all just be a bunch of amazing advertising on Google’s part…

Before discussing the differences it is important to understand the terms, so here are a few definitions.

DART is DoubleClick’s campaign administration tool and is one of the industry standard tools available today. Red McCombs Media uses DART for Advertisers to count the number of clicks a banner receives.

The term analytics refers to any web analytics package. Google Analytics is probably the most widely known, but the same information applies if you’re using Clicky, Omniture, WebTrends, Mint or any other.

A cookie is a small piece of text stored on a user’s computer by the browser, and may contain user preferences, referral information, or other data used by websites. Most web analytics packages, including Google Analytics, require the use of a cookie.

A publisher site is the site on which a banner or advertisement appears.

A landing page is the target webpage for a campaign.

A click is counted by DART when a person clicks on a banner or advertisement on a publisher’s site and is redirected to a landing page to find out more information about the promotion. This is in accordance with IAB click measurement guidelines. A click is not counted when a user interacts with the banner content in some way (expanding to find out more, retracting or closing an auto expandable, adjust volume levels, play a game within the banner, etc). And, a click is not counted when it is automated via a script or web crawler.  The only way a click is counted is if a person’s web browser exits the publisher’s site.

A visit is counted by analytics when a person interacts with a landing page through a web browser, and ends when the browser is closed or shut down. This term is interchangeable with the term session. A script or web crawler would not be counted as a visit, because they are not operating within a browser.

Because clicks and visits are two different metrics being measured by two different services across two different websites, it should come as no surprise that discrepancies exist between them. Regardless of the campaign it is unlikely that there will be a one-to-one correlation between clicks and visits, and in most cases the number of clicks will be greater than the number of visits.

There are a number of reasons for discrepancies between these two metrics. According to Google Analytics Help there are four explanations for a discrepancy between clicks reported by AdWords and visits recorded by analytics. Three of these four factors also apply to banner advertisements:

• A visitor may click on your ad multiple times. If a person clicks on your ad more than once during the same session, each click will be counted but Analytics recognizes each pageview as one visit. This is a common behavior for anyone that is comparison shopping. Multiple clicks equals one visit.
• A user may click on an ad, then later, during a different session, return directly to the site through a bookmark. In this case the referral information would be retained so one click would result in multiple visits. One click equals multiple visits.
• A visitor may click on an advertisement then click back, stop or close the browser before the page fully loads. In this case the click would be counted but Analytics would not record the visit. One click equals zero visits.

The issue of correlating clicks and visits becomes more complicated when searching within analytics.  It can be challenging to identify which visits are from a specific banner campaign. The easiest way to identify the campaign traffic is through referring sites. This is how most clients identify their campaign traffic. Yet, according to documentation within DART for Publishers (login required) this is an unreliable measurement. Because there are a number of ways for an ad to be implemented on a publisher’s website, analytics could report this traffic as being referred by the page where the ad is displayed or DoubleClick.com.

We at Red McCombs Media have even seen instances where the referral information is not passed at all. This can happen when a campaign banner is served by two or more ad servers, and the cookie is either corrupted or stripped. This is an artifact of the way that the banner for a campaign is distributed to publishers. In this case the click would be counted by DART and the visit would be counted by analytics, but it would not be attributed to a referring site at all.

For these reasons it is unlikely that the number of referrer visits will match the number of visits generated by a campaign, increasing the discrepancy between clicks and visits. There are, however, steps that can be taken to ensure that analytics counts as many visits as possible.

• Use Google’s URL Builder to tag the campaign. This ensures that all of the visits that are counted will be correctly segmented and labeled, making them easy to find. If you’re using something other than Google Analytics, there should be a similar means of campaign tracking available for that specific tool.
• Ensure that the same Analytics tracking code is installed on every page of the landing website. This ensures that if a visitor navigates to another page of the site it isn’t recorded as a bounce.

Note that even with these measures the number of visits will still not match the number of clicks.

Since any comparison between clicks and visits requires data from DART and analytics, how accurate is the data being reported by these services?

According to DART’s counting methodologies whitepaper (login required), their algorithm takes measures to prevent automated clicks and they are excluded from reports if detected. Over time this strategy has proven effective, very few clicks by real users are discarded, and once a user is identified as fraudulent all subsequent clicks are discarded.

Analytics packages are generally slightly less accurate when reporting the number of visits. As mentioned above, most analytics require the use of a cookie. Users have the option of blocking or deleting cookies and ad servers may also affect cookies. According to Brian Clifton, author of Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics and a whitepaper on the accuracy of analytics software, these factors lead to most analytics services (including Google Analytics) slightly under reporting the number of visitors. This would be in addition to the factors suggested by Google, increasing the discrepancy between clicks and visits.

Now that you understand the factors that contribute to a discrepancy, consider its magnitude. Our experience has shown that the size of the discrepancy between clicks and visits is different for each campaign. Because of this, it’s not safe to assume what the discrepancy should be before a campaign begins. Any assumption about what the discrepancy ‘should be’ is arbitrary at best.

Because of the discrepancies between clicks and visits, in our experience, a much more meaningful metric is the landing page conversion rate. This is the rate at which visitors to your landing page convert (complete a purchase, fill out a form, download a file, etc). While it is not possible to predict what the conversion rate will be before a campaign begins, once the data begins to appear there are a number of things that can be done to optimize the campaign to convert as many visitors as possible. By taking steps to optimize the conversion rate, advertisers can maximize the return on their advertising dollar. There are quite a few books available that cover the topic of landing page optimization. If you want to avoid all that reading, Red McCombs Media offers this as a service.

There are simply too many factors that contribute to discrepancies between clicks and visits for them to be considered the same, they are two different things measured by two different tools across two different domains. The supporting articles provided should show that the industry agrees. In short, this is not an actionable metric. Landing page optimization, on the other hand, is an effective means of evaluating the performance of a banner or search campaign. Do you agree or disagree with the conclusions drawn here? Please post questions or comments below.

In the coming weeks this blog will be updated with tips for optimizing the conversion rate of your campaign.

Category: Display Advertising, CPC Expandable & IAB Standard Banners

Client Demographic for IAB Standard Banner: Adults that are Teachers

Client Demographic for CPC Expandable: Men & Women seeking
Educational Opportunities on the Non-Profit

Campaign Goals: To target one U.S. state and to increase traffic to their landing pages was a main goal for both campaigns. For the Standard Banners they wanted to drive teachers to their landing page to download supplemental materials on lesson planning and to order resource kits for their classes.

The CPC Expandable campaign wanted to drive traffic to their website for those seeking to find out more about an exhibit they were hosting, to show the exhibit locations and to help visitors find out more about what the non-profit does and how to help internationally.

Challenges: Getting the desired reach and conversions, as well as visitors to their landing pages with a limited budget.

Strategy: RMM and client decided together to run their campaigns through our network on a Run of Network. This would help them maximize their reach as well as work for their budget.

Results: The Standard Banners delivered over 1,211,800 impressions and had a CTR of 0.15 for their two and a half month campaign. A typical CTR for a standard banner campaign is 0.05 but for the CPC Expandable, in just one month they delivered approximately 800,000 impressions with a CTR of 0.75. Thus far, the CPC Expandable has proven for this client to provide five times what the CTR was for the standard banner campaign and the client is very happy with the results.

We are so confident in this product that we offering free banner creation and of course, you only pay for clicks and are never charged for impressions. These banners start at $0.40 CPC for Run of Network distribution or $0.80 and up CPC for RMM Custom Channel targeting with a minimum of $5,000 starting campaign budget. With a 3% pre-payment discount, daily campaign optimization, including impressions, clicks and post click activity upon request AND Geographic, demographic, and behavioral targeting …what’s not to love?

Our goal is for you to use expandable on a consistent basis to help generate performance brand awareness, leads, sales and any other desired post impression/click activity. RMM CPC Expandable Banners can help you collect consumer information used for mobile and email marketing campaigns as well. Rich Media advertising spend is set to increase approximately 31% between 2009-2013 according to eMarketer.

RMM CPC Expandable Launch is the first of many products we will be re-introducing to the online market in 2009. These products are what we’ve built our foundation here at RMM and moving forward you can look out for the new and improved ways of tracking, reporting and optimization for Search Marketing, Display Advertising on our Premium Network, Mobile and Email Marketing, and Custom Channel Building.

Have more questions about the RMM CPC Expandable? Check out our FAQs or contact us for more information at 512.380.4400.