Microsoft announced it is rolling out two new settings related to conversion reporting for users of its Ad platform:
- Include in conversions
- View-through conversions
These new settings will allow advertisers to better-assess how channels contribute to sales and leads with their ad efforts.
It will also allow multiple conversion types to be accounted for in bidding strategies.
“Include in Conversions” Setting
Many businesses no longer focus on a single metric as an indicator of conversion, traffic quality and/or whether targeting is successful.
The increasing awareness of customer journeys and the micro-conversions that reflect them have value in the marketing ecosystem.
For example, long sales cycles might mean things like a whitepaper download or a webinar before sale.
With this new setting, advertisers can choose to have those additional conversion types included in how Microsoft Ads uses its automated bidding strategies.
In our example of a long sales cycle, a sale might be a rare thing.
However, if something like webinar sign-ups are more frequent, adding that action as an additional conversion type allows Microsoft to use it for optimization.
Advertisers can also opt to have tracking of additional conversions but not include them in things like metrics involving conversion totals or in autobidding situations.
These conversions can be viewed on their own, or if the advertiser wants them included in certain instances, they can choose metric columns that specify “All Conv.”
View-Through Conversions
Microsoft Audience Network-enabled ads can now track view-through conversions for users who visited these properties and viewed (but not clicked) an ad.
This helps advertisers have a better understanding of how the Audience Network may be providing valuable impressions that are assisting in eventual conversion.
Things to Know About View-Through Conversions
These will need to be specified via the new setting that will be called “View-through conversion window.”
It will be located in the “Conversion Goals” area by clicking on the Goal you want to work with and enabling it.
The view through conversion window defines how long you want the impressions to be counted after someone sees an ad.
That number will vary depending on your business’s typical sales cycle, and your internal benchmarks for how quickly media should generally perform. It will default to 1 day until changed.
So, for example, if you set a 7-day window, users who see the ad but don’t click and later purchase via some other avenue to your site would trigger a view-through conversion.
Users who click on the ad or come back later via Microsoft’s search engine and then convert will not trigger a view-through conversion. This avoids double-counting of single conversions.
Historical view-through conversion data will not populate for prior to the roll-out, and the data can be viewed in the “All Conv” column.
The full announcement with further detail can be read on Microsoft’s site.
