In the world of advertising, especially as breach into the often treacherous realm of the display network (be it Google’s or anyoneelses), relies on the advertiser knowing what they’re doing. There’s just one trick: Without appropriate knowledge and experimentation, it’s impossible to provide the right answer. To help advertisers find the right answer more quickly, GoogleAdWords has added new tracking features to the AdWords display network.
The first feature is “relative CTR.” While having a CTR (click-through rate) on advertisements regardless of their location has long been a part of Google’s feedback, there’s one barrier in the display network: Different sites offer entirely different success rates, based on content type, publisher organization (such as the prominence of ads), and so forth. The relative CTR tells you how your ads are doing compared to other ads on the site by providing you with a multiplier. If the multiplier is .8, your ads did 80% as well as others on the site; if the multiplier is 2.7, your ads did 270% as well. You get the idea.
The second feature is an improved set of tools for learning how often your ad is appearing on the site. The number of total impressions does little to tell advertisers what percent of the time their ad is being displayed. The new set of features indicates the portion of the time the ad is visible and lets users know why their ad is appearing less often. Most frequently, advertisers will need to either increase their budget or improve their AdRank (the relevance and targeting of both the ad and the content it links to) to resolve this.
Additional enhancements have also been implemented, including a filter known as the “unseen impression filter,” that prevents users from being charged if their ad is never seen due to non-prominent placement by the content publisher.
[via the Google AdWords Blog]
