Improvements to view-through conversion reporting for display campaigns

This week, we’re making two new feature enhancements to our view-through conversion reporting to help you more effectively measure the ROI of your display campaigns on the Google Content Network. View-through conversion reporting, which we launched last year, helps you measure the conversions that result from users who have seen but not clicked on your display ads. The enhancements we’re making will allow you to customize this reporting to better fit your needs.

Customizable view-through conversion window. You’ll be able to set a custom range for the window of time for which you’d like view-through conversions reported. Previously, this window was set to 30 days, meaning we reported on the number of view-through conversions that occurred up to 30 days after a user saw your ad. Now, you’ll be able to customize this time-frame, based on what makes sense for your product or service. For example, if you’re a local pizza shop looking for users to download a coupon and order a pizza, users will generally respond to your ad within a day or two after seeing it. In this case, you might set a reporting window that’s much shorter than if you were an auto dealership, for example, as it may take several weeks before a user schedules a test-drive, given the a longer sales cycle for automobiles.

De-duplication of search conversion reporting. In addition, you’ll also have the option to exclude reporting for view-through conversions that are duplicated across both the Search and Content Networks. If you enable this feature, we will exclude from your view-through conversion reports conversions that come from users who have also clicked your search ads. These conversions will only be attributed to your search ads.

If you decide to apply these settings for your campaigns, please note that they will affect data moving forward in your account.

We believe these improvements will make view-through conversion reporting more accurate and actionable for you. If you’re using view-through conversion tracking today, we recommend you evaluate these two new options and implement them based on your needs. However, try to avoiding flipping back and forth between enabling and disabling these settings as this can muddy the usefulness of your campaign metrics.

If you’re advertising using display ads on the Google Content Network, but are new to view-through conversion tracking, we encourage you to implement it to more effectively track the ROI of your display campaigns. Remember, display ads often drive performance beyond immediate clicks and conversions, like from users who may visit your site and make a purchase after seeing your display ad, even if they haven’t clicked. Learn more in our Help Center.

Posted by Dan Friedman, Inside AdWords crew