Measuring AdWords effectiveness

[Phil Steinmeyer]

OK, so I did a pilot Google Adwords campaign this month. Really moderate - $1/day (at $0.05 per click). I've gotten 70,394 impressions, and 467 click-throughs (0.66%). I have no idea if that's good, bad, or otherwise - I'd be interested in others' data.

But moreso than that, I'm curious what percentage of those 467 click-throughs are then downloading my game, and what, if any, percentage of those are buying it.

What's the best way to measure this? I have Google Analytics on the site, but I don't see any way to tie my AdWords campaign to Analytics.

Pointers, anyone?

[Phil Steinmeyer]

Actually, it appears there's some good stuff for this linkable from the Google Adwords page, though not directly viewable in Google Analytics - not well integrated, but oh well...

[lennard]

One way to track this would be to put a silent counter on a sub-page where you are directing Google traffic along with a version of your software with a different id for tracking sales.

I'm assuming that this means you are paying 5 cents per visitor? I saw somewhere last winter that a hit game was earning around 25-28 cents per download so the biz. math is pretty easy.

[arcadetown]

< 1% CTR seems low so perhaps your ad copy isn't strong and careful as below 1% google may stop your ad.

To track sales, place the analtyics converion tracking code into the last success page of your order process.

Analytics has two types of conversions it can track. Was using those to track downloads and sales but for some odd reason it seemed to mush them both together into one uber inflated conversion rate so dropped download tracking. Anyone know how to track those separately?

[BantamCityGames]

Also check to see if you have alot more clicks in Content total instead of Search total. The content total is usually not as targetted as your search total and your search total should be much higher. There is even a way to turn off content total if I remember correctly. I think what you are looking for is average CPC of under 5 cents and average CTR of over 5%.

[Jack Norton]

I've read in a newspaper that google is going to change his adwords, so that you pay only if you get a sale (of course with much higher bid than 0,05$).
Don't know WHEN and IF this will work, but I presume it can't work for a simple reason: the big publishers would all use it. If you pay even 15$ a click that generate a sale of a 19.95$ game, is still worth only for portals and not much for individuals.

[Fost]

You probably know this, and it may not be related, so apologies if it's obvious:

If you want to track anything that goes to a download, then you can insert:

onClick="javascript:urchinTracker ('/random_name');

into the anchor, and it will show up as a page in analytics.

Here's the full one for the link on our page for example:

<a href='externaldownloads.php?f=InstallStarscape.exe ' onClick="javascript:urchinTracker ('/downloads/starscape'); ">

That was extremely helpful to us for tracking this kind of data.

[James C. Smith]

I'm curious what percentage of those 467 click-throughs are then downloading my game, and what, if any, percentage of those are buying it.

Ask your DRM provider/payment processor to create a unique channel ID for you. Then you can track the exact number of downloads and sales generated by that ad. Reflexive support this but does not have an automated interface for it (at least not exposed to affiliates). Ask your account manger to make a new channel for you and then you can do the rest yourself. Each affiliate can have an open ended number of channels that are each tracked separately and all grouped under the one affiliate.

[terin]

Most adwords I see range between 1.6% and 5% CTR

Just so you know... .66% is pretty darn low :)

HOWEVER.. keep in mind low CTR is actually better with adwords sometimes... especially if your ad is self-selecting high potential buyers.

IE: Buy VGSmart's Game vs. Free VGSmart's Game

-Joe

[arcadetown]

I've read in a newspaper that google is going to change his adwords, so that you pay only if you get a sale (of course with much higher bid than 0,05$). Don't know WHEN and IF
I would suspect that would be when pigs fly. cpc is guaranteed payment whereas with cpa that depends on the advertiser being 100% honest and/or their sales tracking working 100%, which don't think it ever could. Plus how would google make that extra premium from what some report is average 10% click fraud rate.