Running contextual advertising does not guarantee a constant stream of conversions without regular monitoring of its effectiveness and optimization. To understand how well the campaigns were configured and how economically feasible it is to use contextual advertising in a particular business, there are special tools:
- module e-commerce;
- standard indicators of the effectiveness of contextual advertising;
- calculated indicators of the effectiveness of contextual advertising.
E-commerce: why is it needed and what can it give?
The e-commerce module is connected via Google analytics and calculates all the necessary indicators to analyze the effectiveness of contextual advertising, linking them to campaigns, ad groups, keywords. It allows you to take into account all transactions made on the site, taking into account prices and quantities. When connected, a number of indicators are automatically calculated in the advertiser's statistics:
- Transaction Ratio - The percentage of sessions that ended with a transaction.
- Transactions - the total number of purchases / orders made on the site.
- Income is the total amount of income. May include taxes and shipping charges (varies by marketplace).
- average cost order - the average value of the transaction.
- Session value is the average income per session.
- Sessions - The total number of sessions.
- Users - the number of users for whom at least one session has been registered.
Such a report can be obtained by following the path: “Conversions” - “Ecommerce” - “Overview” - “Source or channel” - “View entire report”.
If you have an e-commerce module configured, in addition to the above metrics, Google Analytics reports will provide data on the performance of each product and sale.
By the way, we have a cool article about. Read it if you haven't already.
Indicators of the effectiveness of contextual advertising
Since most sites do not have the ability to register all purchases / orders online (through the site exclusively), there are indicators of the effectiveness of contextual advertising, on the basis of which you can calculate the costs and revenues from its work manually.
CTR (Click-Through Rate)
CTR is the metric that every context expert seeks to grow. It reflects the percentage of clicks on advertising announcement from the total number of impressions. In other words, the percentage of impressions that led to the transition to the site. Calculated automatically.
You can view the indicators in the interface of advertising systems, as well as in the report designers.
CPC (Cost per Click)
CPC shows how much an advertiser pays for a keyword click. It allows you to identify the most expensive, cheap keywords, compare their click-through rates and regulate their subsequent impressions. The cost per click is individual for each keyword, is formed with each new auction, and its size depends on various factors:
- bids (the maximum amount that an advertiser is willing to pay for a click on an ad);
- the level of competition (the number of advertisers with the same keywords and targeting, their maximum bids);
- time of day (user activity - demand), etc.
In reports on ads, ad groups, campaigns, the cost per click is shown as an average. You can view the metrics in the interface of advertising systems, as well as in the report designers.
Analyzing the effectiveness of an advertising campaign is an important task facing the advertising industry. PPC advertising, which we have been doing since 2002, has tools to measure any data. The results of contextual advertising can be tracked by the following indicators:
- For an ad campaign - CTR, average cost per click, number of clicks
- According to the performance indicators of the client's site - the number of visitors who came through the ad and made a purchase.
To measure these indicators, special counters are used, the codes of which are installed on all pages of the advertiser's website. We can offer setting up several web analysis systems at once:
We define the goals of the advertising campaign
If the goal is set incorrectly or is not there at all, then the effectiveness of the advertising campaign cannot be measured and will put the agency in an unpleasant situation when the client will be dissatisfied, despite the money and time spent.
"We want to get 100 registrations a month, and each registration should cost no more than 400 rubles."
Bad example:
"We want to increase the number of clients." If such a goal is set, when assessing the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, the advertiser and the agency will have to go into philological disputes.
Objectives that can be measured quantitatively or numerically are called KPI(Key Performance Indicators). Effective contextual advertising, as well as how correctly the keys were selected, can be seen from the KPI. It is by key performance indicators that you need to judge the results of an advertising campaign.
When analyzing an advertising campaign, it is important to compare KPI data with similar indicators before the campaign was launched. So, tracking the effectiveness of advertising should be started even before its start... How to do it? Let's talk about this below.
More about efficiency counters
In order to analyze the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, web analysis systems are used. There are a huge number of them, counters are divided into server and html counters. Google Analytics, Yandex.Metrica and LiveInternet are best suited for solving the problems of advertising campaigns.
These counters belong to the type of html counters and are installed directly on the site pages (as opposed to the server versions). This means that to install them, it is enough to have access to the site's content management system. They are short html code that works when you open the web page where it is installed.
The main usability of Google Analytics and Yandex.Metrica is that they are closely integrated with management systems for contextual advertising campaigns. Google adwords and Yandex.Direct. It is easier to get the reports that are of interest to the advertiser in them than when using other counters, and to analyze the advertising campaign.
Using these tools, you can track and analyze the effectiveness of contextual advertising, as well as any other advertising campaigns carried out on the Internet. Can track banner advertising, mailings, campaigns in Google AdWords, Direct , in Magna, MediaTarget and any other systems.
To start tracking the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, in the counters need to define Landing pages(or simply " Goals"), The achievement of which will mean the" transformation "of an ordinary site visitor into the one who has performed the targeted action on the site. The process of this transformation is called "conversion ».
However, the moment a visitor interested in our services lands on the Landing Page, for example, a contact form with the sales department, instantly turns into an individual useful to us, and the counter credits the “conversion” - a useful action displayed in the corresponding counter reports.
Conversion rate - This is the ratio of the number of useful actions to the total number of site visits - this is one of the most important parameters showing effective contextual advertising at the moment or not. It shows how "high-quality" audience was attracted to the site with the help of an advertising campaign.
The huge responsibility for the effectiveness of the campaign lies with the site owners - if the site is inconvenient for the user, no amount of advertising can turn interested visitors into useful ones.
The above example is worth clarifying: the landing page for the completed form will not be the form itself, but the page that is shown after clicking on the "submit form" button. This way we will know that the visitor has filled out and sent it for sure. This is how tracking works on the iConText website - take a look at our contact form with the sales department.
Calculating the limit values of target indicators
As soon as we know our conversion rate, we can do some fun arithmetic: calculate how many of those who come from the advertisement become useful visitors, and how much each of them cost. Further, by analyzing the advertising campaign, you can calculate how many of the "useful" clients become customers and what is the average transaction size. And knowing the margin from each trade, you can Calculate the click-through rate you can afford to pay for each ad visitor. Let's consider an example:
1. Let's assume that the conversion of the site is 5% (that is, 5% of the visitors who come buy our service or perform another targeted action on the site). This means that out of 20 attracted visitors, only 1 will become a client.
2. Let's assume that the average sale through a website is 2,000 rubles. If the margin is 20%, then from each sale the profit will be 400 rubles.
3. Accordingly, the maximum amount of money that can be spent on attracting one client is these same 400 rubles (provided that we are ready to work "to zero" and not receive any profit at all).
4. Therefore, we are ready to pay 400 rubles for every 20 visitors (after all, the conversion is 5%). It turns out that the marginal cost per click is 400 rubles / 20 visitors = 20 rubles.
5. Check: If a click costs 20 rubles, then attracting 20 visitors costs 20 × 20 = 400 rubles, out of these twenty only one will buy a product that will bring us a profit of the same 400 rubles.
6. These simple calculations can be adjusted taking into account how much of the $ 400 profit you are willing to spend on attracting new customers. Accordingly, the lower this figure, the lower the marginal cost per click will be.
7. After you have decided on the maximum cost per click, it's time to look at the competitive situation in this topic - is it possible to buy clicks for such a price at all?
We measureROI – cthe most important performance indicator
After we have measured our KPI we are ready to calculate the most important parameter of any advertising campaign - ROI (return on investment)). ROI of an advertising campaign is expressed as a percentage and shows the effectiveness of advertising investments.
For calculationROIthe following indicators are used:
- Cost of goods - all costs for the purchase of parts for products, delivery to the warehouse, production of goods, salaries of employees, etc.
- Income- profit from the sale of a product or service.
- Amount of investment - the total number of investments in advertising.
V general view the formula for calculating the ROI of an advertising campaign looks like this:
If ROI = 100%, that means you got twice as much money than invested in advertising. ROI can be negative. Only with its help it is possible to understand whether an advertising campaign was successful or failed.
This ROI analysis it is recommended to hold it at least once a month in order to track the actual indicators.
What tracking gives ROI?
You get a significant advantage over competitors who do not keep such detailed statistics. Realizing the return on your investment, you have the opportunity to increase the return on investment due to their competent distribution.
Case for increasing the ROI of the Yulmart cybermarket
Our tasks before launching a campaign:
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I remember the times when it was possible to launch contextual advertising on a website and get clients.
Following the increase in competition, investments increased, while efficiency, on the contrary, began to decline rapidly.
Therefore, now you cannot just hope at random, you need to be able to measure the effectiveness of contextual advertising and punish the performer for his mistakes in time.
But let's decide right away. Specialists in setting up contextual advertising will hardly be able to calculate the effectiveness of the provided models. Why so, you will soon understand.
Therefore, the article will primarily be useful to business leaders who are brought in reports with a huge number of figures that are impossible to understand. If this is about you, then sit down, we are on the way.
One by one
To start an article about the effectiveness of contextual advertising with a story about what is contextual advertising in my opinion is bad manners. If you are not aware of what it is, then you are welcome to read the article
It describes everything in great detail and with examples (as in all our articles).
I'll start with the fact that for a specialist who makes contextual advertising (directorate), and for a business owner to whom the directorate brings these reports, efficiency are completely different things, and the criteria for its assessment are also completely different.
In the head of the director
For a typical directorate, the effectiveness of contextual advertising is measured in 4 dimensions. Rarely do we meet a specialist who looks further and deeper:
- Transitions. How many customers after the launch of the ad clicked on the ad.
- CTR of the company. The ratio of ad impressions to the number of people who clicked on the ad.
- Click cost. In contextual advertising, you pay only for clicks.
- Refusals. Displays the number of people who have been on the site for less than 15 seconds (in Yandex.Metrica).
Healthy. You can easily look at the first two indicators of the effectiveness of contextual advertising in any one.
From the most intuitive, choose either Google Analytics. To see the rest, you need access to personal account contextual advertising.
It is by these indicators that directors evaluate their work. “Is the CTR high? Is the cost per click going down? So what more do you want from me? I am doing everything perfectly! ”.
Here comes the fun part. Because the employer sees everything in completely different colors.
WE ARE ALREADY MORE THAN 29,000 people.
TURN ON
In the head of the head
For a business leader, the effectiveness of contextual advertising is measured as follows.
And ... In theory, there should be clear criteria by which each manager evaluates the “effectiveness of online advertising”.
But they are not. For some, this is website traffic, and for others, calls and orders. For the third - advertising budget that is being spent. For the fourth - money at the box office at the end of the month.
But if the owner has not been married for the first day with contextual advertising, then, discarding imaginary criteria, he begins to come to logical goals, which, depending on the business, can have one of three forms of result:
- New (form on the site);
- Calls;
- Purchases.
The third goal is the best. The first two are also not a bad option, although in the end they will still lead to the latter.
Each leader takes as a basis one of the listed results. And they are fundamentally different from what the directologist measures. Where the truth is now we'll figure it out.
Three approaches
- I spend 200 thousand rubles monthly on advertising on the Internet. Where are my clients ?.
- You have a very high CTR.
- To hell with your CT ... how is he? Where is the efficiency?
- What do you think is efficiency? What is the formula?
- What is the formula? I see little sales.
- Clearly.
Will not work Do not do like this. We are all serious businessmen, which means we must measure the results of contextual advertising with a serious approach.
Ideally, you should be able to understand the indicators of the director, but if you don't like them, then you need to count everything in the money received.
Therefore, especially for you, beloved reader, I have prepared 4 approaches for making a decision - is your campaign effective or not.
These are ready-made formulas according to the level of your knowledge and desire to know every atom in your advertisement.
ROMI: Beginner level
The easiest way to assess the effectiveness of contextual advertising is to calculate the ROI.
It is a rate of return on investment that is used in almost every line of business.
If the ROI is more than 100%, then this is good news, it means that you most likely have no loss.
I say “most likely not a loss”, because you still need to remove the cost and other expenses. That is why this model is for beginners.
If you want to learn more about this approach and see how to calculate ROMI with examples, then I highly recommend reading our article.
CPL: Experienced level
CPL is the cost of one call or, as it is now fashionable to say, the cost of a lead / application.
This indicator is calculated by the formula for a certain period of time. The typical period is a month, as once a month the company pays the salary to the director.
Since sometimes not all applications can be reached and talked about your product. Therefore, be sure to remove low-quality leads.
All that remains is to combine the number of calls with applications for the final result.
By the way.If you want to connect call tracking, then I have a gift for you - a selection of TOP services. - 1,000 bonuses to the account (by code 99129), Roistat - 5,000 rubles. to the account (to the INSCALE code), Callibri (code 76C6IMERUQ), Mango-office .
CPS: The level is very experienced
CPS is the cost per sale. We only call it customer value.
For example plastic windows, this is the one who left a request on the site, made an appointment with the manager and came to the office to make an advance payment. It is also considered by the formula:
In order to understand how adequate the client's value is from the context you have now, you need to know the maximum allowable value, taking into account all expenses and income.
Plus, customer value is a great start to a conversation with any directorate.
After all, after you tell him that you need sales (in the worst case, orders) for 2,000 rubles, then he will not have any thoughts to justify himself to you with a huge CTR.
But directors are not stupid either, they will ask you for conversions on each one. So be prepared for this.
LTV: Master level
If you do this, then, firstly, you will be greatly surprised by the received figures, and secondly, you will greatly change your view of attracting customers.
And thirdly, you will be a cut above 90%. Russian entrepreneurs that are still peephole oriented. This means that an increase in work efficiency is not far off.
But believe me, it's worth it. This analysis of the effectiveness of contextual advertising is the most reliable. And looking ahead, there is no need to say that you do not have repeat sales.
They are in any business, you just haven't implemented them yet. I bet anything 😉
By the way. If you are interested in analytics, then I recommend testing the following services: Roistat (for the promotional code "INSCALE" +5,000 rubles for testing), Comagic or Callibri (with the promo code “76C6IMERUQ” + 500 rubles).
BRIEFLY ABOUT THE MAIN
Business is not only luck and flair, but also calculation. In business, everything has to be measured in numbers.
They can be beautiful on paper (high CTR and low), but the quality of applications leaves much to be desired and, as a result, you will spend more on attracting a client than you earn from him.
Therefore, the time for general calculations has passed. Consider everything in detail. Moreover, now you know what to ask from the director: ROMI, CPL or CPS adjusted for LTV.
The directologist will give you the first two indicators easily, but to get the second he will have to work hard, and this, as you know, no one likes to do. But stand your ground.
P.S. Most business leaders do not like advertising in Google.Adwords, believing that since I am not sitting there, then it will be effective for me.
And I want to disappoint you with fresh statistics on the cost of advertising in Google relative to Yandex:
- For the center of Russia, the cost of attracting was 11.2% lower;
- For cities with populations over a million, the cost fell by 14.6%;
- For cities less than a million, the result reached 25.3% in Google's favor.
Modern website promotion is impossible without the right contextual advertising. Contextual advertising on the Internet is becoming an effective element of the work of SEO specialists, who guarantee the growth of popularity of pages, their perception by search engines. Contextual advertising is essentially a text-based paid advertisement that is shown when certain queries are entered into a search.
Such a tool becomes the best option for commercial sites whose success depends on targeted visitors. If top positions in search results are unavailable for a number of reasons, contextual advertising becomes the right solution to the problem.
Contextual advertising on the Internet
Management of contextual advertising and assessment of its effectiveness
In order to assess the effectiveness, it is enough to use tools to measure such indicators as CTR (click-through rate), the number of clicks, the average cost per click, and others. In addition, you need to evaluate the effectiveness of the behavior of visitors on the promoted site. Not only does a potential customer click on your ad to your site, but it also needs to make a purchase.
Understanding how it works and how to assess its effectiveness is difficult, sometimes very difficult. But with our small guide, it will be a little easier to do. If you do not know what a good advertising campaign should be in Yandex.Direct and Google AdWords, look for Zen, read and become enlightened. I've already.
How to evaluate the effectiveness of contextual advertising
First, you need a plan. State your campaign goal as clearly as possible. “Bring new customers” is not a goal. But “getting 15 applications per month” is fine. The second important point: an assessment of the effectiveness of contextual advertising should be carried out in comparison with any period. If this is your first ad, you can look at the abandoned cart conversion rates that your site is already generating.
Targeted actions identified
It can be:
- Purchases;
- Calls;
- Filling out the feedback form;
- Adding a product to the cart;
- View contact page;
To assess the effectiveness of contextual advertising, it is also useful to analyze user behavior on the site. This will help you understand how users are interested in your offer and how it meets their expectations. Be sure to look at:
- Time spent on the site;
- Viewing depth;
- Bounce rate;
- Repeated visits.
To track all this, be sure to set up goals in Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics. And don't forget about the utm tags for your campaigns.
Well thought out the structure of campaigns
It's okay if different types ads are grouped into separate campaigns - this makes it easier to calculate the conversion. For example, by type of services or goods, region, type of requests.
Ads are correct
For everything to work well, your ads need to be optimized. Here is a small checklist:
- There is a keyword in the title and text;
- The ad contains short description benefits, price, call to action;
- Phone, address, quick links are indicated (for example, to the corresponding category in the store) No.
- Landing pages are selected correctly and meet the expectations of users;
- Links have UTM tags;
- The correct semantic core has been selected.
KPIs determined and calculated
Let's say you figured out the metrics and AC settings, stocked up on popcorn and prepared to watch the profit growth with tears of happiness. Now it's time to calculate KPI - this is the main tool for checking the effectiveness of contextual advertising. They help estimate the value of each visit, call or sale. If the values are within the normal range (which depends on the average check and other parameters), then you can just sit and enjoy life, and if the campaign is unprofitable, go through all the points of the checklist again and look for errors. It is worth paying extra attention to CPA and, because these are key indicators, but analyzing everything else is also useful. Let's deal with each incomprehensible abbreviation separately.
ROIstands for return on investment, and in Russian "return on investment". It is calculated as follows:
ROI = (Income - Investment) / Investment x 100%
CPAIs the cost of one targeted action. It is calculated like this:
CPA = Costs / Number of targeted user actions
CPL- the cost of one call. Here, too, everything is simple:
CPL = Costs / Number of hits
Finally, the indicator can be calculatedCPO / CPS(cost per order / sale) is the cost of the actual sale. As in other cases, to estimate this indicator, you need to divide the cost of contextual advertising by the number of sales.
Limit rates set
It is imperative to decide how much you are willing to pay greedy search engines for one visitor. This metric is calculated from conversion rates and average sales profitability. If you do not set a limit value for the cost of a visit, money will fly away very, very quickly, and the efficiency will not be very high. It is also helpful to define your daily budget to help you optimize costs.
How to check the effectiveness of contextual advertising?
Compare the dynamics and KPIs of campaigns among themselves and in different periods of time. Obviously, you need to evaluate the number of conversions and their cost.
Budget = Number of clicks x Average cost per click
Yandex.Direct
Direct has a special service accessible from the main interface. It's called (suddenly) Budget Forecast.
It helps to calculate advertising costs and predict key indicators: cost per click on requests, CTR, number of impressions and clicks. The main thing to remember is that a forecast is a forecast and indicators are calculated from the statistics available to Yandex. And it consists of the results of campaigns of other advertisers, which vary greatly in quality: some do everything with jewelry, while others just drain the budget for no reason. The real picture will greatly depend on the settings of the RK. If everything is done correctly, the budget may well turn out to be less than projected.
Google adwords
On Google, the Keyword Planner Tool does the same.
All the same is available there: calculating the average number of impressions and clicks, their cost. All indicators are also calculated based on statistics, so the real picture may differ and will depend on the campaign settings. It is also important to take into account that only the placement in the search is taken into account, i.e. the forecast is not built on impressions and clicks in partner networks (this is true for both systems).
What does context cost depend on?
- Type of allocation. The most clickable places - to the left above the SERP - are the most expensive.
- Campaign settings. If you set up impressions for the whole of Russia and do not set the time range, then the advertising budget will grow dramatically. Good way optimize costs - set geotargeting as accurately as possible and show your ad only during "hot" hours.
- Season. The demand for air conditioners grows strongly in the summer, and for heaters in the winter. This should be taken into account when planning an ad, because the higher the demand, the higher the cost per click will be. You can see the dynamics of changes in the frequency of requests in Yandex.Wordstat and Google Keyword Planner.
If each ad group has its own advertising campaign launched, goals are correctly defined and KPIs are calculated, it will not be difficult to assess the effectiveness of the context and in which case it will not be difficult to adjust the strategy. Calculating advertising costs is also easy: for a rough estimate, you can use the special tools of Yandex and Google.
