Customer Tracking and Bid Management

How Tracking Works

If you are paying by the click, you need to know what those clicks are doing. From the second they click until they leave or purchase.

If your server is already equipped with great tracking software it is easy to add a tracking tag on the back of your ads. Instead of your Yahoo! listing going to http://www.domain.com/salespage.html, have it go to http://www.domain.com/salespage.html?source=y+ad=6+keyword=fred.

Tracking Software

My favorite log file analyzer is ClickTracks. It displays the web page in a viewable browser highlighting the click ratio for each of the links. ClickTracks also allows you to set up custom tracking tags to view traffic through different visitor paths. While the software is expensive to some at $500, it is a steal for some larger commercial web sites. ClickTracks also offers a hosted tracking solution.

Some other popular conversion tracking software options are Keyword Max, IndexTools, and WebSideStory. If you are working with an exceptionally large account, you may also want to try Efficient Frontier or Omniture.

ConversionRuler is inexpensive, suitable software if you are primarily concerned with tracking pay-per-click results. ConversionRuler starts out around $20 a month. Yahoo! and Google also provide built-in conversion tracking software which they provide free.

There are also free tracking services such as eXTReMe Tracking and SiteMeter if you want to access referrer stats easily, but I would not recommend using them for tracking any of your pay-per-click statistics.

If you are a heavy spender on pay-per-click, you will most likely want to use bid management software.

 

Google Analytics

Google also created a free, cross-platform conversion tracking tool which comes with their AdWords product. It works for tracking e-mail ads, banner ads, and various PPC search engine ads.

On top of the free, built-in tracking feature, Google also bought Urchin and re-branded as Google Analytics. Google Analytics is free, and perhaps as full-featured as the most premium conversion tracking tool, but if you use it, you are sending your valuable market data back to your source of traffic. That may work against you if they use your best converting terms and most frequent referrals to recommend keywords to your competitors. If you were Google and you sold traffic to multiple competitors, would you recommend my best words to my competitors?

Bid Management Software

There are automated software programs which will track your bids and change them multiple times a day so that you achieve optimal efficiency with your ads. These programs can do various things such as: list your site relative to another web site, bid to a maximum lead cost, or other similar functions. However, some of the major search providers are rendering some of these features useless, either through replicating them, or by obfuscating data. For example, if a search engine does not say what the bid prices are you can’t bid jam competitors, and Google AdWords allows advertisers to schedule ad delivery time and bid to position.

The best part of bid management software is that good bid management software can allow you to dynamically change the bid price from price-per-click to other metrics such cost-per-action or ROI.

If you get big into pay-per-click search engines and are managing multiple accounts, it is worth using a bid management program to help save time and money. Currently, three market leaders in this field are BidRank (downloadable software), Keyword Max (hosted software application), and Atlas OnePoint (hosted software application).

Fraud Prevention Software

Most major pay-per-click search engines have fraud protection built into their system to protect the value of click prices. Google, for example, will allow you to see how many invalid clicks you had within the AdWords platform.

You should use your server logs to validate clicks if you are running a large campaign. Generally due to time overlaps and differences in reporting, it is considered acceptable to have an error up to 10%. If your error is much larger than that, be sure to notify the search engine.

If you have a good log file analyzer and understand how to use it, then you have no need for a fraud prevention tool, but these tools make it quick and easy to spot potential fraud.

If you believe your competitors are clicking your ads or you are investing heavily in a competitive market, you will want to take a look at additional fraud protection. Two of the current leaders in the PPC fraud prevention software market are Who’sClickingWho and Keyword Max Click Auditor. VeriClix is a similar, but free, product. Other analytics companies, such as ClickTracks, have also been getting into the click fraud monitoring market.

Even if a competitor only clicks on your ads every few days, it still adds up over time. This software allows you to accumulate the evidence you need to reverse charges and potentially file a lawsuit, but you need to have a large enough spend to justify its cost, unless you are just doing it for publicity.

Earning (and Buying) Trust

Hidden Bids

Google has never offered an entirely open ad service. Yahoo! used to be more open, but as time passed they have become more closed off. If the advertisers do not know exactly how much they need to pay or who they are bidding against, and publishers do not know exactly what they are getting paid for, it is easier for search engines to adjust how much they are charging advertisers or paying publishers for matching them and removing market friction.

Noise is Relative

When Google AdWords was new they heavily relied upon affiliates to match merchants with market opportunities. As more merchants have become accustom to using AdWords, Google has got better at filtering duplicate offers and other affiliate noise out of their ads.

In an ideal market Google would prefer to deliver leads directly to the merchants. Affiliates who largely built Google into it’s current market position may be considered little more than noise by Google in many markets today.

New Filters

As markets evolve the types of noise (affiliate, arbitrage, double dipping ads, dictionary attacks, deceptive ads, etc.) change and search engines must come up with new ways to protect the relevancy of their ads.

Google has  blocked some forms of ads using a mixture of sophisticated algorithms and editorial guidelines, but they have also began to look at ways of pricing noise out of the market by discounted ads from trusted sources and charging new advertisers, unproven advertisers, or abusive advertisers premiums to be displayed.

Buying Trust Over Time

In much the same way that old domains may be trusted more in organic search results as they age and gain links, Google may trust proven advertisers more, and give them a discount for the trust they have built up.

Just by having an AdWords account, spending money, and not being abusive your ad account gains some level of trust.

Free Market Feedback

Google keeps collecting more and more market data using a wide array of data points along the supply chain. They can see relative changes in

• Brand awareness and search volumes and trends


• News trends and content production trends


• Number of advertisers, types of advertisers, bid prices and trends


• User acceptance via conversion data and their toolbar


• General trust based on the link graph and surfing trends via their toolbar


• Keyword relationships (based on AdWords accounts and text analysis of web content)


• Conversion data (via Google Analytics, Google AdWords Conversion Tracker, and Google Website Optimizer)


• Conversion data via Google Checkout

 

Each of these tools layered on top of one another add more value to how much value Google can extract by making their ad platform more relevant and more efficient.  The tools that Google offer cost them next to nothing in regards to the value they help Google create by offering Google a clearer picture of the market.

Deception as a Filter

Google keeps collecting more and more market data using a wide array of data points.

Google calls the price offsets as something related to a quality score, but may even be offering a bit of misdirection in what they consider of high quality. They largely state that quality is based on relevancy and mention things like conversion rate and clickthrough rate, but how hard would it be for them to mix in usage data, link reputation, or other signs of trust into their quality algorithm?

If marketers are chasing the wrong data points it is going to be hard for us to manipulate Google’s market.

Hidden Message

Google is even using their quality based minimum bids on syndicated contextual ads, aiming to pull noise out of their distributed ad network.

Google’s hidden message is that they want to police the web, and they invariably are pushing to marginalize the profits of anyone who is making a good living without creating much real tangible value.

If the other PPC players are going to be able to compete with Google they are going to have to do it on margins, ad price, and relevancy. Filtering out noise and keeping their ads as relevant as possible is going to be crucial for people to keep paying attention to their ads.

Customer Tracking and Bid Management