Conversion tracking provides AdWords advertisers with valuable information as to how well their AdWords-derived traffic performs once it reaches the advertisers’ websites.

Most advertisers who use conversion tracking do so in order to track sales or purchases.

The problem with purchase conversion tracking is that it is based on a cookie which lasts for 30 days.

Many people routinely delete cookies from their systems, and  in so doing, they wipe out any chance you have of recording their purchase as a AdWords conversion.

The 30-day time limit can also be an issue. If most of your customers download and purchase within that time frame, they should be trackable. However if it does take longer than 30 days between the time the ad is clicked and the visitor returns to make the purchase, that purchase will never be tracked or counted as a conversion.

The other problem with tracking purchase conversions occurs when the person who initially clicked on your AdWords ad (and gets the cookie on his/her system) is not the same person who ends up purchasing the product. Oftentimes, especially with business products, the person who initially discovers a product is not the person who ultimately decides what to buy and makes the actual purchase.

For all of these reasons, AdWords advertisers, such as software vendors, who offer a downloadable trial version of their product, should also setup conversion tracking for downloads as well as purchases.

We’ve found that most of the time, download conversion tracking is more accurate than purchase conversion tracking.

This is because there is a much better chance that the tracking cookie will still be on a visitor’s computer when they download the software, as opposed to when someone is ready to purchase the software. While the ultimate goal is for people to make a purchase, the more immediate action that a visitor usually takes is to download the trial version. The ability to accurately track downloads is therefore far greater than tracking actual purchases.

Download conversion tracking can add a whole new level of performance data for, and understanding of, your AdWords efforts.

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On Wednesday I wrote a post entitled Doom and gloom? Share your views! I was pleased to get an interesting mix of comments, and a few people emailed me as they wished to remain anonymous.

The results weren’t quite what I expected, and I’ve tried to roughly group them into categories.

45% of you felt positive about what’s happening.

25% were more or less neutral; things weren’t great but you were getting along.

30% were concerned, struggling or in trouble.

Note that the data sample was very small – there were 16 comments on the blog and four emails. Thank-you to all who responded for giving me such a nice round figure to work with – perfect for a Friday morning. But let’s assume that this is more or less representative, at least for the purpose of this blog entry.

My original post mentioned that I was fed up with all the doom and gloom, so I was pleasantly surprised that 45% of the feedback was positive.

A number of you have been positively affected by the increase in the US Dollar exchange rate, but this raises the interesting question of how current sales compare with sales before the Dollar started falling?

But the best news of all came through email. Four companies wrote to let me know that their sales are great right now. Better still, two of them have seen record months since the start of the year, and one of them missed beating their previous record by a whisker! Note that two out of the four are clients of SoftwarePromotions – thereby proving that 50% of all successful software companies work with our company. Right?

Our company’s experience has been that consumer products are more likely to struggle right now, yet a number of respondents have seen the exact opposite.

So what conclusions can we draw from all of this?

The first and most obvious point is that it’s not all doom and gloom at all. Forget the precise economic semantics; things have been bad for some time now. And while there are plenty of individuals and businesses suffering great hardships, plenty are surviving, plenty are doing quite well, and some are even thriving.

Secondly, the ramifications of the recession are complex. People and businesses are in theory spending less money, but why are the shopping malls as busy as ever during the weekends, and why are some companies (10% of the respondents!) thriving during these difficult times? Remember that a recession is a vague term, and contrary to what you might read in the news, each recession is different.

None of us know what lies ahead. We can only prepare to the best of our abilities. But there’s never been a more important time to be seen.

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I have a close friend who owns a small company which produces and sells several speciality men’s clothing items.  For the past year, with a little help from yours truly, my friend has managed a successful AdWords account advertising his products.

I was recently talking with this friend and he was bemoaning the fact that his total number of sales last month were the same as they were six months ago, and he felt like AdWords was failing him.

My first thought was, “Are you crazy?”

In the economic climate of the past six months, his ability to maintain a consistent level of sales and income should be seen as just short of a miracle. I suggested that he takes a closer look at his web logs, as he would very likely find that without his AdWords efforts, many of his sales would never have occurred.

In the current economic environment, AdWords performance should be measured a little differently. These days it is simply not reasonable to expect tremendous gains in conversions and sales.

If over the past 6-12 months your sales resulting from AdWords have stayed the same, or even dropped off just a little, you could view that as a success. It’s tough out there.

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I can’t help but feel that we live in a very strange age.

At risk of sounding like a miserable old man, there’s a whole generation (or maybe more than one) who believe that they’re entitled to have everything they want. Whether it’s the latest gadget, the car of their dreams, their fantasy lifestyle (no work but lots of money), the house they can’t possibly afford and more.

Is it such a leap to look for a connection between this way of thinking and the current financial crisis?

I can’t help but wonder why so many people are pursuing so much for so little reason.

Every new gadget or idea is held up as the latest life-changer, and many of them are pushed as the perfect solution to a problem that didn’t exist.

Paul Dunay has an interesting and well-written blog – Buzz Marketing for Technology. Yet for such an intelligent person, Paul has put forward the incredible idea that businesses don’t need a website anymore; they can use Facebook.

“With Facebook Fan pages you can build your own website on the Facebook “Platform”. A website that is totally FREE of hosting and server costs, public and indexable on all search engines, with unique URL’s for individual landing pages that you can tune based on if they are Fans or Non Fans, where you can host all your video (so long as it is under 10mb) and upload your product catalog with detailed descriptions (and get feedback from Fans), where you can throw an event or show presentations on a Slideshare ap, run a contest or a survey, host your blog or retweet your status updates (or better yet – just use Facebook instead of Twitter). Oh don’t forget send emails to your Fans for FREE and if you want to buy targeted ads you can do that too.”

Paul is writing a book called Facebook Marketing for Dummies, so you can forgive him for being a little over-zealous. Yet even factoring in the legitimate self-publicising, I can see why the idea might be a good fit for someone who’d like their own website, but businesses?

I was going to write a list of 50 reasons why a business shouldn’t consider the idea, but I’m hoping that this is obvious enough already.

Facebook is a great idea, but it’s not a substitute for a business website.

Twitter is incredible, but it isn’t going to replace email.

And Spotify is absolutely wonderful, but will replace nothing whatsoever.

Social Media is a young, developing and thriving idea. Use and enjoy it for what it is. But keep a grip on reality.

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Ah the joys of living in a recession!

I got fed up with all the doom and gloom on Radio 4, so switched to Radio 5. This proved to be a slightly faster and more dynamic form of the same misery.

Switching off the Radio, I headed for the BBC’s Business pages:

“Unemployment passes two million”

“Uk recession ‘will last longest’” (Does that mean we win?)

“Economic woes hit Dubai ratings”

“Downturn ‘risks Africa conflict‘

I know there’s a lot of hardship and suffering going on out there, but is it all doom and gloom?

How’s the downturn affecting your business? Please share your thoughts and views in our comments below.

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A number of companies have received a Dear John from Google, over their use of the term “mySQL” in their ads.

Google’s trademark policy is at best puzzling, and as pointed out in an earlier post, there appears to be a three-stage hierarchy:

Level 1 – companies who direct enough legal heat at Google to make them wince. Sunburnt but not charred. Try to use one of these keywords, and Google won’t let you save or upload them.

Level 2 – companies who contact Google over trademark infringements, and are prepared to jump through Google’s hoops. Google then pull the offending ads.

Level 3 – modern-parenting rules: let the parties involved sort it out on their own.

Today’s MySQL story is an odd one though. The bewildered offenders haven’t had some of the ads pulled. They’ve had all of them taken down. Usually when this sort of thing happens, Google disallow some of the ads but leave others.

It’s puzzling. I’m surprised that the world’s best company at searching and indexing the web can’t do the same within an AdWords account.

More puzzling still is the fact that this appears to have affected a large number of AdWords accounts, and Google appear to have proactively suspended all offending ads in all applicable accounts.

But that’s not all.

Being the obsessive thorough person that I am, I ran a quick search on AdWords mysql on Google, to see if I could find other people reporting the issue. The results displayed an interesting ad, shown below.

The first ad appears to be a phishing attempt. If you go to that site (I recommend you don’t) the page appears to be the regular Google login, but it’s not. It’s a Chinese website that looks like a phishing attempt for Google AdWords login details. The icing on the cake is that they are advertising through AdWords itself. Their ROI must make it worthwhile. Worrying in itself.

I would have thought that Google would be on the lookout for that sort of thing, but apparently not. If you’re going to phish for AdWords login details, the obvious place to do so would be in AdWords itself. I would expect Google to take good care of their advertisers, yet these ads are being shown in the UK and US, and probably in other countries too.

I did notify Google by phone 20 minutes ago, and credit where it’s due – the ads are now gone. It’s good to see that Google protect their advertisers as well as themselves.

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It’s another good-news/bad-news Monday for online marketing:

The good news is that Microsoft have ended their adCenter Analytics beta.

The bad news is that there will be no more adCenter Analytics – beta or otherwise.

Yes, you did read that correctly. Current users will be able to continue using the failed service until the end of the year, after which time the service and all historical data will be gone.

From Microsoft’s blog:

“Our team would like to sincerely thank you for your participation and your invaluable contributions to the program. Our objectives at the outset were to serve the needs of small and midsize self-service customers, as well as evolve the Microsoft strategy to address the Web analytics space.”

I’m all for spin but this is incredible. The strategy seems to have evolved in much the same way that roadkill evolves after their final meeting with products of the car industry.

However there is more good news:

“We hope you’ll continue to read posts on the adCenter Analytics Blog which will be renamed “Insights & Analysis” in the coming weeks. The blog will remain focused on research and best practice, helping online marketers navigate to better ROI and more efficient marketing optimization.”

Using what? Google Analytics?

True to their word, however, there is a posting today entitled “Web Analytics and Monetization: Prioritizing Change”. The irony kills me.

Google 1 – Microsoft 0.

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The Social Science Research Network have released a paper that claims advertising doesn’t necessarily negatively impact TV viewing.

“Consumers prefer to watch television programs without commercials. Yet, in spite of most consumers’ extensive experience with watching television, we propose that commercial interruptions can actually improve the television viewing experience. Although consumers do not foresee it, their enjoyment diminishes over time. Commercial interruptions can disrupt this adaptation process and restore the intensity of consumers’ enjoyment.”

Enhancing the Television-Viewing Experience through Commercial Interruptions

Great news for advertisers? Not exactly. Recurring illness might make a person appreciate their health more, but they’re never going to enjoy their periods of illness. And they’re never going to buy a pill that makes them sick for a day, so as to appreciate the rest of the week. At least I hope not.

Seth Godin believes that the days of interruption marketing are over. Interrupting your movie to demonstrate how Detergent X really does make your whites whiter than white isn’t a good idea. Or is it?

Assuming you don’t use the commercial break as an opportunity to run to the bathroom (or toilet as we vulgar Brits say), you’re unlikely to hold Detergent X responsible for the interruption. And chances are that when you’re next strolling along the mile-long aisle at your local WalMart (or 25 metre aisle in Tescos in Britain) you’ll notice Detergent X.

Ultimately there’s no way of comparing an interruption ad with one shown in context. Even ads in a magazine interrupt your reading, unless they’re placed at the end of a review of similar products. So if you’re reading this month’s Cleaner Household magazine and there’s an article on Making Your Whites Look New, the ideal place for the full page Detergent X ad would be at the end of the article. Especially if Detergent X gets a favourable mention.

The effectiveness of an ad is therefore going to be affected by placement, relevancy, context and how much the viewer is looking for a solution.

If the movie you’re watching contains a scene where the white t-shirt wearing soldier is spattered by mud and blood just before the ad break, and the typical viewer is sitting there shaking their head at the soldier’s poor mother who’s going to have to wash those clothes, a Detergent X ad might be perfectly timed.

The rest of us have to make do with Google AdWords.

Putting your product right in front of the people looking for it makes sense. You’re not interrupting them, you’re helping them. Assuming you’re targeting the right keywords, the ads tie in with their needs and the landing page screams out that they’ve found what they’re looking for, you can’t go wrong. Target the itch, present the solution and the itchy people will come running with their dirty white t-shirts and credit cards in hand. Without having to interrupt them.

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Until recently, Google would always show ads on the content network, based on the content of the particular web page that you were viewing. Now that entire process is about to change.

Google want to make your ad experience more interesting. They are introducing interest-based advertising which means you will see ads that interest you specifically.

They will accomplish this by monitoring the sites that you visit, and show ads based on how Google categorize each of those sites. In Google’s example, they explain that someone who enjoys gardening will see more relevant gardening ads because they frequent many gardening websites.

You might recall that Google acquired a company called DoubleClick a few years ago. Their system was known for monitoring people’s web activities and displaying ads relevant to their interests. It is thought that Google are probably using this system in order to accomplish their new interest-based ads.

Google seem to be going out of their way to reassure us all that no personal information is captured in this process. They have setup up a way to opt out of this system if you so choose, and have even created a browser plug-in which helps maintain the opt out status.

The problem for many is that Google already have so much information about each of us, in fact far more than DoubleClick ever had.  I am sure privacy advocates are going to have a field day with this.

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It looks like the “too good to be true” period is over.

As of May 5th 2009, Google checkout will start charging account holders for their transactions. How dare they! Worse still, the AdWords spending will no longer offset the fees.

Their fee structure, however, is interesting.

For monthly sales less than $3,000, the fee will be 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction.

For $3,000 – $9,999.99, 2.5% plus $0.30.

For $10,000 – $99,999.99, 2.2% plus $0.30.

$100,000 or over, 1.9% plus $0.30.

All of this seems reasonable enough.

And then this:

“An additional 1% fee will be assessed on transactions where the merchant’s country is different from the buyer’s billing country.”

I’ve tried to think about this from every possible angle, but I really don’t understand why they should do this.

Secondly:

“With 10 days notice, we may also charge higher transaction processing fees to merchants that incur excessive chargebacks or otherwise pose financial risk to Checkout.”

Note the missing “the”. It’s not “we may also charge the higher transaction processing fees” meaning 2.5%, it’s a fiscal carte blanche – they reserve the right to charge anything as they see fit. They do give 10 days notice, however, so there would be no need to accept the new rate. Meaning this effectively acts as a “get out or get into jail” card that Google can throw at you at any point.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. These Google folk are clever indeed.

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