In our last blog on Attribution in Google AdWords, we discussed the nitty gritties of how attribution modelling is defined in AdWords, the different types of attribution models, and how to configure them within the AdWords platform. Now comes the most interesting part – analysing results. What use will attribution be to us if we can’t see the value it brings to the table, right?
So here’s what we do. Go to Tools & Settings> Measurement> Attribution
The Overview tab provides a snapshot or a higher level view of path analysis, device analysis, model comparison and top assisting campaigns. You can select the Conversion action (specific or all conversions) and Look Back Window to be of 30, 60 or 90 days. You’ll be able to understand, in a nutshell, what campaigns, ad groups, keywords and devices were instrumental in driving or assisting in getting that important conversion for you, within the Look Back Window of your choice.
Now, if you want to delve deeper into Path Analysis, simply click PATH METRICS from the Overview page, or just click the PATH METRICS tab on the left.
Path metrics guides you on the time elapsed from a user’s first exposure to your ad until conversion happens. From the Overview, You can toggle between AD INTERACTION and DAYS to learn about the number of ad interactions before conversion happened, percentage of ad clicks that assisted in the conversion and also the number of days it took to achieve that Conversion.
The Top paths report provides an insight on the most common paths your customer took to complete a conversion. The top paths can be viewed for the slice of data of your choice selected from the Dimension drop down.For most reports you can select Campaigns, Ad groups, Keywords and Devices. The Conversion Action can be chosen to be for all conversions or for specific conversion actions.
For instance, if we select Keyword in Dimension, and choose a Conversion action of my choice, for a look back window of 30 days, the top paths will show the number of keywords that drove that particular Conversion Action. Now I know which keywords are important to my macro or micro conversions and where to put my buck in.
The Assisted Conversions report informs you on all interaction, barring the last, which led to a conversion.Even here, you can choose the Dimension you want to view the slice of data for, the Conversion action and Look back window of your choice.
This report is pretty resourceful in terms of discovering segments of your advertising efforts that assisted in driving more conversions for your account. For instance, certain keywords can be found to be assisting conversions, rather than being the last click. This gives you good insight into what keywords you might consider increasing bids on, to further improve performance.
The Model comparison report gives you a breakdown of the different attribution models in use and how each of them impacted the success of your marketing channels. You can play around with the attribute drop down list and choose the Dimension, Conversion Action, Look Back Window of your choice and compare performance between two different attribution models in use within your account.
Below, we can see that a comparison between Linear and Last Click attribution to the a campaign /keyword shows the change in results as seen through the Conversions and Cost/conv. columns.
The Linear attribution applied to the particular campaign/keyword brought in a slightly higher number of conversions, at a lower cost/conv, as opposed to Last click. Do note, however, the Conversion Action is set to All actions in Conversions, as we wanted to compare performance for all actions. Now we know what attribution model to choose for our chosen account to enhanced performance.
At the end of the day, every business is different and it is presumed that the Goals and KPIs will be unique to each account as well. Attribution modelling analysis helps you drive your advertising efforts towards driving optimal performance, all the while keeping your unique goals in mind. Let us know how you are using the Attribution reports in Adwords to make some serious data driven analysis and drive success. Don’t shy away from dropping a comment below. Happy advertising!
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