In the past, only Google AdWords has had cost data available within Google Analytics, making it easy to evaluate results like margin and ROI from AdWords, but difficult to evaluate margin and ROI on third-party sources such as Bing, Facebook Ads, email marketing campaigns, and more.
Several weeks ago, Google released a new feature in beta that allows Google Analytics users to import their own cost data from third-party applications.
Google also made new API endpoints available to automatically push custom cost data into Google Analytics, opening up an entire realm of possibilities when it comes to evaluating the performance and effectiveness of all paid marketing channels. These new opportunities create reliable solutions to old problems. Connectalytics solves one of these problems by combining Bing Ads cost data with Google Analytics click data.
Connectalytics automatically pushes Bing Ads cost data into Google Analytics
After signing up, you’ll have the ability to create a “feed,” or a connection between Bing Ads and Google Analytics. After authenticating with Google and Bing, and setting up a cost data upload source within your Google Analytics Web interface, the app will immediately run and import the previous day’s click data.
Connectalytics updates nightly, pushing the previous day’s data into Google Analytics for up to 10,000 Bing Ads’ keywords (you can email support if you have over 10,000 keywords). After initial setup, there’s no additional work or management from you, making the entire process pretty simple.
There are a few caveats, however. Your Google Analytics account must have access to the cost data upload feature. Because this feature is still in beta, it’s not yet available to everyone. Additionally, Connectalytics only supports connections from Bing to Google, so no Facebook or LinkedIn (although the creators say data feeds from Facebook and LinkedIn are coming soon).
Lastly, if you’re not using Google Analytics, Connectalytics does nothing for you.
I talked to the founders (a group out of Arizona called Vuurr) and they explained the tool was originally built to make their internal workload easier. There are some extra features that aren’t available in the interface yet, such as importing historical data all the way back to your Bing Ads or Google Analytics account’s original creation.
The Vuurr team also stressed how much opportunity this brings for PPC managers; it should mean a lightened workload when comparing network effectiveness to opportunities that better allocate PPC budget.
In the end, Connectalytics is a simple, effective product that solves a very real problem with relative ease.
