Estimated Total Conversions has been active for about a year through the AdWords platform, and it has been used by thousands of advertisers around the world. This program provides valuable insights into how their ads are taking customers from just browsing the web to actually making a purchase. During this initial year, this information was only available for search ads.
Effective immediately, however, AdWords is rolling this feature out for display ads as well. This will help marketers who benefit from the Google Display Network to gain additional information about the behavior of those who click on their ads.
A specific example of the information that will now be available was given in the AdWords announcement. The example given took a visitor reading an article on a bike review site, who then clicked on a Display Network ad located on the page, which brought her to a local bike shop. After looking at the site for a time, she closes the browser only to return to the webpage later in the day from her PC. With this new feature, the bike shop owner will be able to clearly see how the display ad click was the original trigger that drove the purchase.
Following the Path to Conversion
Essentially this feature will make it easier than ever to watch the path that customers are taking while in the decision making journey. This is extremely important because of the fact that according to a recent study, 9 out of 10 customers begin activities on one device, and then move to another to complete them.
One specific example of success that was given in the announcement was from LendingTree, which stated, “LendingTree has used the estimated cross-device conversion metric to measure 6% more conversions from their mobile display campaigns on AdWords. Mike Doll, head of programmatic marketing at LendingTree, says that this new metric ‘can provide valuable new insights into how users interact with our ads and where they ultimately convert.’”
You can see in this image how the estimated cross-device statistics will show up under the campaigns tab in your AdWords dashboard:
In an increasingly ‘multi-screen’ world where people are doing all types of web activities from every device they own, this type of information will only become more essential for brands that are planning their marketing strategies.
