I’ve blogged before about how Google AdWords can track revenue within the AdWords interface, without relying on Google Analytics. You can do the same for Yahoo Sponsored Search.

A note about why you might not want to only use Google Analytics to report revenue: Google Analytics attributes a conversion to “last touch” while Google AdWords and Yahoo Sponsored Search attribute it to “first touch.” What that means is if someone came to your website on a Monday through a paid ad, and didn’t buy anything, then returned a week later (either through a bookmark and manually typing in your URL) and bought something, Google Analytics would count that conversion as a Direct referral (the last way they came to your site), while AdWords and Sponsored Search would attribute it to PPC (the first way they came to your site).

It’s not a big deal when the vast majority of your visitors order on their first visit, but becomes a big deal when a large percentage of them don’t. I have several clients where over 50% of their visitors don’t buy on that first visit, which makes PPC look like it doesn’t perform that well. Once you factor in those “first touch” conversions, PPC certainly is a much more important piece of the marketing puzzle.

So back to how you track revenue in Yahoo Sponsored Search… I have to give Yahoo credit – they beat Google on this by including revenue right in the normal screens you use to manage your Yahoo Sponsored Search campaigns. Google only reports revenue on their actual reports, which makes it more of a pain to manage; Not impossible, just not as easy to analyze and then make quick changes.

To track Yahoo Sponsored Search revenue, you’ll just need to add one more tiny bit of code to your conversion tracking. Replace where I have ORDER.SUBTOTAL with your dynamically generated Order Subtotal field into this line of your Yahoo Sponsored Search Analytics code (You can also do Order Total, but I recommend doing the Subtotal which excludes tax and shipping, for a more accurate picture of your revenue.):

window.ysm_customData.conversion = “transId=,currency=,amount=ORDER.SUBTOTAL“;

That’s it. Pretty simple and pretty powerful. Now you can actually see what kind of revenue your Yahoo Sponsored Search campaigns are actually generating, and then make better informed decisions about where your PPC advertising dollars should be spent.

A note on this: I attempted to do it for a client that uses a Volusion cart and processes credit cards offline (meaning they don’t actually process the credit card at the time of order, but do it manually at a later time), but this won’t work for them. I’m guessing that this will hold true for any shopping cart; if you don’t process credit cards in real-time, it won’t work. In fact, for this client, it also prevented the number of conversions from tracking.

One last note: Unfortunately, MSN AdCenter does not have the same functionality. Here’s hoping they get that solved before they take over supplying Yahoo’s paid ads.

If you need help getting Yahoo Sponsored Search Revenue Tracking implemented and/or analyzed, contact a reputable PPC management company for assistance.

Google AdWords provides a lot of data regarding your campaign performance.  And if you have Google Analytics installed (which you should – it’s free and easy), you have access to a lot of useful data there as well.  

It can actually be overwhelming when you first start to poke around your PPC advertising campaign or your Google Analytics account to figure out what the most valuable data really is, so let me point you in a couple key places.

The new interface has some really great ways to view, filter and analyze your Google AdWords campaign data quickly and efficiently.  These options used to only be available in the reports area, but now they can be seen for every campaign and ad group.

With the new Google AdWords interface, you now have a great new data reporting tool on the right hand side.  It is a graph that will show you the trend for the time period you have selected on several different data values.  You can change the date range to view as many days as you like – I prefer either 30 or 7 depending on the campaign.  The two data items I keep an eye on from this “30 thousand foot” view are Impressions and Cost.  Basically we are looking for any trends – up or down – of the number of impressions your ads are getting and the amount that is being spent on the entire account.  If either one has an unusual spike, there is going to be some digging to do to be sure everything is running as planned.

Also, while you are getting that overview perspective for your AdWords account, go ahead and sort campaigns and ad groups by Cost (descending). This way, your attention is focused on the highest spenders at a high level.  This will also alert you to situations where your highest spenders shouldn’t be your highest spenders and you can make changes accordingly. If you have PPC advertising questions, you might want to consider contacting a professional PPC management company with questions or to plan a consultation.

Google has made yet another change to their Google AdWords reports in the area of conversion tracking.

Conversion tracking is one of the most important aspects of any PPC advertising account and you need to be sure that you have this installed correctly. Conversion tracking allows your account to be managed to the most important criteria for your business – and that is – “What am I getting out of this?”.

What Google AdWords has changed is the name of “Conversions” to “Conversions (1-per-click)” and they have added a new metric called “Conversions (many-per-click)”. The Conversion (1-per-click) field can only be filled once per customer and the Conversions (many-per-click) is incremented whenever any conversion occurs within 30 days after a click.

This can mean a couple of things to you depending on what your conversion structure is.

First, if your conversion is strictly measuring sales, it can mean that you have customers that come back within the first 30 days after their first purchase to purchase again. This is especially common in stores that sell commodities or that cross-sell a customer with more accessories to compliment their first purchase. (By the way – that begs the question – what kind of follow-up do you have with a first time customer to be sure they have everything they need and are you measuring the success of that follow-up?)

Also, if you have setup several types of conversions to be tracked on your site – for example, mailing list sign-up, contact form and sale – the “many-per-click” field will give you information about customers that have performed several goals on your site. You may have customers that do all three and that will show up in the many-per-click field. There are additional fields regarding the type of conversion that will give you the information you need to micro-manage these conversion types as well.

And don’t forget, Google AdWords revenue tracking can be exceptionally powerful for tracking specific revenue achieved for each specific product sold. This is certainly not for everyone, but can be incredibly valuable when applicable and is usually very easy to implement. If you have questions or need help with this, contact a professional PPC Management Company for asssitance.

The bottom line is this – understand what these Google AdWords conversion tracking numbers mean to you and use this valuable information to enhance your sales-funnel on your website.