Microsoft Advertising adcenter Campaign Analytics Getting Started Guide
Contents Introduction... 3 What is Microsoft Advertising adcenter Campaign Analytics?... 3 Useful terms... 3 Overview... 4 Get Started... 5 Step 1: Enable campaign analytics... 5 Step 2: Configure campaign goals and steps... 6 Step 3: Get and apply tracking codes... 9 Step 4: Configure custom report dimensions (optional for advanced users)... 10 Conclusion... 12 Reporting features... 13 Report details... 14 Additional information... 16 2
Introduction What is Microsoft Advertising adcenter Campaign Analytics? In fall 2010, adcenter introduced Campaign Analytics, a smart new tool for helping you to get your campaigns up and running quickly. Campaign Analytics, including conversion tracking, is available to all adcenter advertisers whether you re already using adcenter or you ve just transitioned your account from Yahoo! Search Marketing this fall. Campaign Analytics gives you a number of great ways to measure your campaign performance. Here are just a few: Track multiple conversion goals and steps toward those goals. Track revenue and costs related to conversions. Run user segmentation reports. Perform keyword-level analysis. Campaign Analytics reports provide information about site-visitor activity that occurs on your website as a result of your paid search campaigns including conversions, revenue from conversions, advertising costs, assists, and other visitor-related data. Additionally, the reports cover such information as sources of traffic to your website and segmentation by attributes such as age group, gender, and geographical location. Useful terms Conversion: A conversion is a transaction that an advertiser wants potential customers to complete. A conversion can be any user action that the 3
advertiser desires, such as completing a form, signing up for a newsletter, or making a purchase Conversion tracking: Conversion tracking is functionality that provides data and about the quantity of conversions that result from advertising campaigns. Conversion tracking can also provide useful information about the visitors who click an ad and complete a transaction. Campaign Analytics: Campaign Analytics provides data about conversions and site-visitor behavior, typically the steps leading to a conversion. Conversion tracking is one piece of Campaign Analytics. Tracking code: Tracking code is a small piece of JavaScript that is placed in the source code of a webpage and enables adcenter to collect data about conversions and campaign effectiveness. Conversion tag: A conversion tag is a type of tracking code that records completed transactions. Overview In this guide, we ll walk you through four steps to get up and running with AdCenter Campaign Analytics: Step 1: Enable Campaign Analytics Before you can begin to use Campaign Analytics, set up your adcenter account to begin tracking conversion data. Step 2: Configure conversion goals and steps You may have multiple goals for your ad campaigns. Each campaign goal might have multiple steps, depending on your needs. For instance, a website whose primary goal is to have users make a purchase might track different steps, such as visiting the site s home page, clicking a product link, adding an item to a shopping cart, and making a purchase. You can track how many of your users are completing each of these steps. Step 3: Get and apply tracking codes Add tracking code snippets to key pages on your website, so that adcenter can record sitevisitor activity in a way that provides the campaign insights that you want. Step 4: Configure custom dimensions (optional) By creating custom dimensions, you can track third-party campaigns, such as your Google ad campaigns, email advertising campaigns, and display campaigns inside of adcenter. 4
Get Started Step 1: Enable Campaign Analytics By default, new conversion and campaign analytics functionality is not enabled in your account. But enabling it requires just a few clicks. Sign in to Microsoft Advertising adcenter, choose an account, and access the Tools tab. 5
Under Performance Analysis Tools, click Campaign Analytics to configure settings. Click Edit next to Tracking Status to access the conversion tracking settings. Northwind Traders Click the radio button to Enable conversion tracking. Northwind Traders Northwind Traders Important! To enable conversion tracking for all of your adcenter campaigns, de-select Limit to individual campaign conversions only. If the box is checked, you can enable conversion tracking manually for each of your campaigns. Step 2: Configure Campaign Goals and Steps Once Campaign Analytics is enabled, your Campaigns tab in adcenter will include a goals table that lists your conversion goals. Click Create goal to define the action that you want your site s visitor to complete (such as making a purchase or signing up for a newsletter). 6
Northwind Traders Then, choose your Goal settings. Give your new goal a name (e.g. Sell product). You are required to include conversion steps toward your goal; if you create a goal with only one step, you will be tracking only conversions. To track the full performance of your campaign, outline additional steps. Steps as defined in Campaign Analytics relate to the stages in your website s campaign conversion funnel, which is the series of actions that your user must take from entering your web site until completing a conversion. Each step in a conversion goal can be one of three types: Land, Browse, or Prospect. Land: The first page accessed on a site Browse: General information screens or a list of products Prospect: Information viewed just before completion of the conversion 7
LANDING PAGE (PRODUCT DETAIL) In this example, landing page is a Land step, and add to shopping cart and enter payment are Prospect steps. The final step, confirm purchase, is the Conversion step. Campaign Analytics offers the ability to define up to five steps toward each goal. ADD TO SHOPPING CART ENTER PAYMENT CONFIRM PURCHASE In addition to the steps toward conversion, you may also configure revenue and cost tracking. Additionally, you can use the conversion period setting to adjust the timeframe in which Campaign Analytics tracks events. The default conversion period is seven days. Click Save and generate code when you have finished defining your campaign goal. 8
Step 3: Get and Apply Tracking Codes For each of the steps you defined in your campaign goal, the tool will generate tracking codes. You must add these tracking codes to the source, or HTML, code on your website. Once you have defined the steps that make up your goal, scroll down to the bottom of the campaign goal screen to view the codes. A drop-down field will include your defined steps; click through them to view the different codes. The HTML in the code window must be copied and inserted into the HTML code of the page on your site that matches each step. For instance, if you defined a step called Landing page in your goal, choose that step in the drop-down, then copy the tracking code into the HTML of your ad s Landing Page. Retrieve the tracking code for each of the steps you selected and copy the code into the appropriate pages of your website. Important! Each conversion step that you ve defined will have a different tracking code. This allows adcenter to know how to count each step in your reports. Be sure that each step you define corresponds to a single page on your site. No page on your site should have more than one adcenter Campaign Analytics code. Click Close to return to your Campaigns screen. The new campaign goal you have created appears in your Goals table, along with a list of the steps you defined for the goal. 9
You may define up to six goals for each account. To delete a goal, click its corresponding checkbox in the Goals table, and choose Delete. Step 4: Configure Custom Report Dimensions (optional for advanced users) Custom report dimensions allow you to track the performance of ad campaigns served through thirdparty services, enabling you to conveniently view all your ad campaigns in one tool. These might include display campaigns, email campaigns offering product discounts, or campaigns running through other search engines. The available dimensions are: tactic, channel, third-party campaign, third-party ad group, and third-party term. Append the dimension parameters to the third-party ad s destination URL, using the URL s query string (the characters?key1=value1&key2=value2 at the end of the URL) and to the webpage tracking code. When a visitor views a tagged web page, adcenter logs the data, including the dimension parameters, which it obtains from the query string appended to the webpage URL (e.g., www.contoso.com/vacations/fall-discount.aspx&tactic=email&channel=g&campaign=pnw). The dimension parameters record a user visit generated from a third-party campaign, plus a few details about that campaign, as defined by you. You can configure Custom report dimensions. Click Add custom dimension to begin. Choose a dimension Type. Select Tactic to specify the type of advertising service, such as affiliates, email, or pay-per-click. Select Channel to specify the advertising channel, for example, Google or Price.com. Select Third-party campaign to specify the name of the third-party campaign. Select Third-party ad group to specify the name of the third-party ad group. Select Third-party term to specify the term that generated the visit. 10
Next, key and value correspond to the key=value portion of your URL s query string (e.g., www.contoso.com/page?key=value). You are allowed one key for each dimension you define and up to 100 values for each key. Because URLs can only contain certain characters and have length limitations, the custom dimensions feature allows users to define values in a name**value format. Name is how you would like the value represented in reports Value is how the value is spelled in the URL. Example: You are running an ad campaign on Price.com, and you would like that campaign to be represented in adcenter s Campaign Analytics. You create a custom dimension with the following settings: Type: Key: Value: Channel chn Price.com**prcom The URL described by these settings includes the query string chn=prcom (e.g., www.contoso.com/page?chn=prcom), and Price.com is how the value would be represented in the Campaign Analytics reports. When you are finished entering a dimension, click Save to see that dimension represented in the dimensions table and included in your reports. 11
Conclusion Once you have defined at least one campaign goal and the tracking codes have been installed in your site, data about user visits will flow to the Campaign Analytics tool, and you can expect to be able to pull reports on that data about four hours after each event. You are now ready to collect data and measure the effectiveness of pages in your website s conversion funnel! 12
Reporting features Campaign Analytics reports provide information such as conversions, revenue from conversions, advertising cost, and other visitor-related data about site-visitor activity as a result of your paid search campaigns. Additionally, the reports provide insights into other information, such as sources of traffic to your website and segmentation by attributes such as age group, gender, and geographical location. The Campaign Analytics reporting options are integrated with other adcenter reporting features in the Reports tab. The Campaign Analytics report types include: Conversions: Impressions, clicks, conversions, and revenue Goals: Performance statistics associated with each step leading to the goal* Traffic sources: Conversions and goal data by traffic source domain name* Segments: Conversion and goal data by geographic and demographic attributes* Tactics and channels: Performance of ad campaigns served through third-party advertising channels* *Requires configuration of at least one campaign goal. 13
Report details Conversions: Analyze the performance of advertising campaigns Goals: Performance statistics associated with each step leading to your campaign goal. In order to configure a goal report, you must have implemented at least one goal in your Campaign Analytics configuration. Traffic sources: Conversion and goal data by traffic source (domain name of originating visit). Traffic source reports help you analyze paid advertising sources. In order to configure a traffic sources report, 14
you must have implemented at least one goal in your Campaign Analytics configuration. Segments: Conversion and goal data by geographic and demographic attributes of your site s visitors. Segment reports help you better reach targeted audiences. In order to configure a segments report, you must have implemented at least one goal in your Campaign Analytics configuration. Tactics and channels: Performance of ad campaigns served through third-party advertising channels. In order to collect data for these reports, you must have configured your custom report dimensions in your 15
campaigns screen (see Step 4 of the Get Started section in this guide). Additional information Please visit the Microsoft Advertising Support Center, www.advertising.microsoft.com/support-center, for additional information, guides, and announcements about Campaign Analytics. 16