Adcenter Conversion Tracking

The new Bing-Yahoo Search Alliance will require Yahoo Search Marketing advertisers to move to Bing’s PPC platform, Adcenter, manage PPC campaigns through Adcenter Desktop Tool, and track Bing PPC’s performance through Adcenter Conversion Tracking tool.

Measure with Adcenter Conversion Tracking Tool

Measure your Bing PPC’s marketing spend through Adcenter conversion tracking tool, which can identify:

  • The ad copy that works best to achieve your campaign goals.
  • The keywords that acquire most new customers to your website.

Set Up Adcenter Conversion Tracking

Turn on Adcenter conversion tracking feature. Pick up the conversion tracking code snippet (http://, if you are to track conversions on a non-secure page; https://, if you are to track conversions on a secure page).

    Adcenter Conversion Tracking Code Snippet Example

Select one of the Adcenter conversion tracking options:

  • Count one conversion per click: This conversion tracking option prevents double counting of your website’s conversions, but may under-count.
  • Count one conversion per unique URL: This conversion tracking option requires more than inserting Adcenter’s conversion tracking code snippet onto your purchase confirmation page / thank you page and allows you to track each conversion through a unique URL.
  • Count all conversions: This conversion tracking option may include duplicate conversions when visitors refresh your site’s purchase confirmation / thank you page.

Define your “conversion confirmation page”. Your conversion confirmation page (or thank you page) will be:

  • The lead confirmation page, if your website offers a form for visitors to fill in information.
  • The purchase confirmation page, if your website sells products to visitors with a payment mechanism.

Insert Adcenter’s conversion tracking code snippet onto your site’s conversion confirmation page.

Review Adcenter Conversion Reports

Turn on conversion tracking in the “Reports tab” in Adcenter’s user interface, and view conversions and conversion rates (conversions / click) through Adcenter reports:

  • Account performance report
  • Campaign performance report
  • Ad group performance report
  • Keyword performance report

To optimize your Bing PPC’s marketing budget, identify the keywords that convert the most and performance the best (i.e. cost-per-acquisition) through keyword performance report, and raise or reduce keyword bids accordingly.

Disable Adcenter Conversion Tracking

Adcenter conversion tracking is enabled or disabled per campaign. If you no longer need Adcenter conversion tracking for a campaign, turn off Adcenter conversion tracking for only that campaign in “campaign settings”.

If you want to stop conversion tracking for your entire Adcenter account, remove the conversion tracking code snippet from all your conversion confirmation pages, and turn off Adcenter conversion tracking for for each campaign in “campaign settings”.

Conversion Discrepancies to Google Analytics

If you are using both Google Analytics PPC conversion tracking and Adcenter conversion tracking tool simultaneously, the number of conversions in Adcenter reports may not match those in Google Analytics reports.

  • If someone clicks your ad on Bing but your site is unavailable, AdCenter reports the click but Google Analytics does not record the visit.
  • Adcenter counts the click when someone clicks your ad on Bing and then stops his/her Internet browser before your web page’s Google Analytics tracking code snippet is loaded.
  • Google Analytics does not recognize the visit from Bing PPC ad as a keyword’s URL tagging is missing, but Adcenter counts the click.
  • Adcenter automatically filters invalid clicks (due to click fraud), but Google Analytics reports all visits to your site.

Review Google Analytics metrics.

Best Practices to Adcenter Conversion Tracking

Microsoft Adcenter’s learning center offers:

  • The best practices for using Adcenter conversion tracking.
  • The How-to-guide (.pdf) for setting up different Adcenter conversion tracking options.

Comments

One Response to “Adcenter Conversion Tracking”

  1. Tweets that mention Adcenter Conversion Tracking -- Topsy.com on July 27th, 2010 5:22 pm

    [...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Lloyd Thomas, Gordon Choi. Gordon Choi said: PPC Blog: Adcenter Conversion Tracking – http://tinyurl.com/39dgmzy [...]

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