How conversion tracking helps advertisers
In a previous blog post Ad Campaign Automation Tools: free from AdNation, which you can read here, we highlighted two free advertiser features provided with our ad network platform: The Bidder and Conversion Tracking. In this article we show you an advertising case study example showign you how both these features work together. The Bidder gives you full control of your bidding optimization to block underperforming ad zones while ensuring that campaign bids are kept within your KPIs and your budgets are not burned on non performing ad zones. Secondly, the Conversion Tracking feature gives you real time data in order to see if your campaign is making a profit, breaking even or making a loss. So in this Conversion Tracking case study, you get a great insight on how to use Conversion Tracking, in order to make real time optimization decisions to generate a positive Return On Investment (ROI).
Remember AdNation’s Conversion Tracking tool is totally free. This is great news, because other third party Conversion Tracking tools charge a monthly subscription, for example Voluum starts at $149 per month and limits you to 20 active campaigns. AdNations Conversion Tracking tool includes unlimted campaigns to track. The additional savings from not having to pay for a third party Conversion Tracking tool can be invested into your campaigns.
Conversion Tracking Case Study: Introduction
In this advertiser case study we will show how conversion tracking helps advertisers. It is an example of how to use AdNation’s conversion tracking tool. First, we want to highlight the usefulness of The Bidder because you cannot use The Bidder without implementing a Conversion Goal. So, by using the Bidder the advertiser was able to automate the bidding whilst ensuring an effective optimization of the campaigns. Because AdNation’s Conversion Tracking tool works in real time, the advertiser could see all the campaign’s data and conversions instantaneously. This ability to track in real time meant that the advertiser made immediate optimization decisions, to ensure that the campaigns were successful.
In this case study, the Advertiser wanted to optimize their ad campaign using The Bidder to clean out ad zones that didn’t perform, whilst tracking the overall campaign performance, using AdNation’s Conversion Tracking tool. This is a great way to demonstrate to you how to use Conversion Tracking. This case study features a Dating offer targeting Mobile users. The Conversion flow was from a banner ad, to a Prelander, to the offer’s landing page.
How to use Conversion Tracking: Setting Conversion Tracking Goals, Payout and Target Values
First the advertiser set a new conversion goal, the Conversion Value was set to ‘Fixed’ with a value 5$. Setting the right Conversion Value is potentially the most important step in the process, since it represents the payout of the conversion and is used to calculate the Revenue, Profit and ROI of the campaign. See below:
With this information set, the advertiser was able to see how much revenue he had made from each conversion and whether those conversions were covering the costs of a campaign.
How to use Conversion Tracking: Setting Automatic Bidder Optimization
As can be seen in the screenshot below, once the value was set, it was time to set the Automatic Bidder Optimization. The target Conversion value was set to $3 instead of using the initial Goal’s Conversion Value $5 to start testing. When setting Bidding Algorithms, it is recommended that the advertiser does not use his entire budget, this will leave enough room to test out a wide range of ad zones and sites, bearing in mind that some will not perform and will be blocked by The Bidder’s algorithm. Then, it is a good idea to start small and increase later to avoid spending all the budget at once. The Bidder algorithm will identify the zones that don’t perform as it learns the campaign’s behavior, in order to optimize bids and achieve set conversion goals.
For this Advertiser’s dating offer, under the category ‘Rules’, basic rules were set to be applied to all ad zones. This means that, with the rules set out in the screenshot below, once a specific zone generates 5,000 impressions, if the CTR is equal or inferior to 0.01%, the ad zone gets blocked.
How to use Conversion Tracking: Testing out results, bidding prices adjusted by ad zones
After a few days of running the campaign, the advertiser could see how these rules affected the campaign. Because the Blocking rules and the Conversion Tracking method that the advertiser picked were ‘by Zone’ {zone_id}, it tracked the results of each zone that had been tested by the algorithm. As shown in the Campaign Statistics below The Bidder and the Conversion Tracking tool worked together to check how many leads were converted and how much of the set budget was spent, by zone.
On the far right column (New/Old Bid) The Bidder adjusted the zone’s bid automatically: ‘Old’ refers to the initial bid, and ‘New’ is the automatic adjustment that has been prompted by the Bidder to optimize results. This demonstrates that in this case study, for some ad zones, the bidding price was adjusted to be under the original spending.
Now lets see how conversion tracking helps advertisers! Now the advertiser used the Conversion Tracking feature to check the overall campaign evolution and how The Bidder’s algorithm affected it, as can be seen in the screenshot below. The Advertiser launched the campaign on 2022-08-01, starting from a single bid that kept getting adjusted, and the campaign kept running, the algorithm kept learning and working until the trend in ‘Profit’ and ‘ROI’ evolved from negative to positive.
To help quickly identify negative and positive trends, AdNation’s Conversion Tracking feature shows Profit and ROI data in 3 different colors:
GREEN: ROI is more than 0%. The return on investment was positive and the advertiser was paying less for each conversion.
BLACK: ROI is equal to 0%. The return on investment was break even. So the advertiser could check the detailed statistics of the campaign to improve some sources of traffic.
RED: ROI is less than 0%. The return on investment was negative and the advertiser was paying more for each conversion than he could afford. The advertiser could check the sources of traffic and if the campaign setup had errors that needed fixing.
In this case, the eCPA decreased until reaching below $5, which showed green numbers for ‘Profit’ and ‘ROI’. From 2022-08-13, the Advertiser started making a profit, after a couple of weeks of testing. This may seem like a long time to run the campaign before making gains, but this is a normal trend tendency, because it will take some time for the bidding algorithms to test out all of the ad zones and select only the performing ones. For this reason, it is key for advertisers to devote some time and budget to testing pre-launch.
In the ‘Impressions’ column you can see that the Advertiser’s campaign kept decreasing. Again, this as a result of non-performing sites being blocked. An increase in Clicks as CTR was also observed as non-performing zones were blocked.
This is how to use AdNation’s conversion tracking tool.
Conclusions
We hope this gives you plenty of insights on how to use conversion tracking and how conversion tracking helps advertisers. The accurate measurement of metrics and conversions is key to the success of an online campaign, especially when we are juggling multiple campaigns and offers. Keeping track of everything that happens within our campaigns won’t only allow you to gain control and prevent losses, but also to learn from the behavior of the several elements that are within a campaign and your audiences, which will directly impact your future handling and managing of new campaigns. AdNation’s Conversion Tracking and The Bidder are both free to use within the Admin Panel and provide a powerful tool combination for advertisers, since they combine the potential of a privileged insight into ad campaigns and their inner workings, as well as being able to cut out non-functioning elements and optimizing results automatically.
