Things have changed considerably with the state of marketing measurement and we wanted to know how dealers are adapting to new measurement tools like Multi-Touch Attribution. So, in April 2017, we decided to ask and surveyed approximately 120 dealers for our State of Automotive Attribution study.

In general, the survey found most dealers feel accurate measurement of their marketing campaigns is important. Most rely on in-house reporting (68%) and/or vendor reporting (64%). However, a key point in this survey is that only 30 percent of dealers report being satisfied with how they currently measure their data.

Out of the many reports dealers use, each puts emphasis on different metrics and different attribution models. This leads to a confusing mess of data forcing dealers to, in a way, compare apples to oranges.

In response to the question, “Which vendor categories need the most blind faith as to if they are working?” 40 percent of dealers stated display ads, followed by third-party listing sites at 38 percent.

The display ad answer is a little curious as, set up properly, they should be easy to measure. However, the third-party listing site answer is not that surprising. The actions a consumer takes following a visit to a third-party listing site and viewing a vehicle of interest can vary over an entire spectrum of possibilities: they could submit a lead on the third-party listing site; call a phone number; bounce to the dealership’s website and convert there; call the dealership; or simply show up. The effectiveness of a third-party listing site can be far from black and white in terms of measurement. And, more often than not, attribution depends on proper sourcing by the salesperson or last-click attribution models – both of which have huge gaps in accuracy.

As far as what dealers want from an attribution tool, 46 percent would like a multi-touch attribution solution. They believe last-click is unreliable for reporting accurate sources and what really influenced the sale.

When asked what their ideal attribution solution should include, 59 percent stated the ROI contribution of each marketing channel, 57 percent replied that they want analytics that deliver actionable insights; 48 percent want a transparent view of a customer’s full purchase path and 41 percent desire reporting accountability and accuracy.

When asked, “How knowledgeable are you about marketing attribution?” 30 percent think attribution and analytics are important, but don’t know where to begin, and 20 percent do not know anything about marketing attribution.

Overall, 68 percent of dealers aren’t effectively using, or are failing to use any type of marketing attribution to measure the results of their advertising. This is a glaring hole and effectively makes measuring marketing efforts and spending a guessing game.

First and last-click attribution is the most commonly used attribution model, used by a full 77 percent of respondents. This is largely due to the fact that these attribution models are used by most vendors, as well as Google Analytics. While widely used, these models give poor results and a skewed picture of what sources truly influence customers in their decision to buy at the dealership.

If dealers can’t – or aren’t – getting the data they need to make intelligent decisions, what are their biggest challenges? According to the survey, 57 percent replied proving ROI for marketing spend, followed by targeting marketing to the best audience, at 41 percent, and evaluating vendor performance, at 35 percent. These challenges, of course, lead full circle back to the same question asked since dealerships first came into existence “Did it sell cars and, if so, how many?”

The survey results show that dealers certainly know the importance of attribution. Vendors increasingly recognize that dealers need and want this data. So, slowly but surely, the back end of marketing is becoming more transparent as vendors are more open to new attribution models and are starting to integrate with attribution solutions. This is a great trend that will see dealers and vendors creating stronger partnerships while bringing confidence and true accountability to both.

These pain points for dealer marketing and decision-making prove that better and more accurate reporting and attribution models are necessary for dealers to maximize their marketing dollars and feel confident that they are not wasting money.

Knowing which sources lead the customer down the road to your dealership, and which are simply a waste of money, can empower you when making your marketing decisions. You no longer have to rely upon skewed metrics, follow different attribution models and then attempt to make sense of it all.

To download a copy of the State of Automotive Attribution study visit:http://content.clarivoy.com/auto-attribution-study.

Clarivoy’s 2017 Attribution Study Reveals What’s Really Going On With Auto Industry Marketing Measurement

Columbus, OH, August 2, 2017 -- Clarivoy, the auto industry’s most trusted source of truth for optimizing the performance of marketing campaigns, today announced the results of an industry-wide study to better understand the current state and usage of marketing measurement in the retail automotive industry.  

“Things have changed considerably with the state of marketing measurement and we wanted to know how dealers are adapting to new measurement tools like Multi-Touch Attribution. So, in April 2017, we decided to ask and surveyed approximately 120 dealers for our State of Automotive Attribution study,” said Steve White, Clarivoy CEO. 

In general, the survey found most dealers feel accurate measurement of their marketing campaigns is important. Most rely on in-house reporting (68%) and/or vendor reporting (64%). However, a key point in this survey is that only 30 percent of dealers report being satisfied with how they currently measure their data.  

“Out of the many reports dealers use, each puts emphasis on different metrics and different attribution models. This leads to a confusing mess of data forcing dealers to, in a way, compare apples to oranges,” said White. 

In response to the question, “Which vendor categories need the most blind faith as to if they are working?” 40 percent of dealers stated display ads, followed by third-party listing sites at 38 percent. 

“The display ad answer is a little curious as, set up properly, they should be easy to measure,” said White. “However, the third-party listing site answer is not that surprising. The actions a consumer takes following a visit to a third-party listing site and viewing a vehicle of interest can vary over an entire spectrum of possibilities: they could submit a lead on the third-party listing site; call a phone number; bounce to the dealership’s website and convert there; call the dealership; or simply show up. The effectiveness of a third-party listing site can be far from black and white in terms of measurement. And, more often than not, attribution depends on proper sourcing by the salesperson or last-click attribution models – both of which have huge gaps in accuracy,” White explained. 

As far as what dealers want from an attribution tool, 46 percent would like a multi-touch attribution solution. They believe last-click is unreliable for reporting accurate sources and what really influenced the sale.

When asked what their ideal attribution solution should include, 59 percent stated the ROI contribution of each marketing channel, 57 percent replied that they want analytics that deliver actionable insights; 48 percent want a transparent view of a customer’s full purchase path and 41 percent desire reporting accountability and accuracy.  

In response to the question, “How knowledgeable are you about marketing attribution?” 30 percent think attribution and analytics are important, but don’t know where to begin, and 20 percent do not know anything about marketing attribution. 

Overall, 68 percent of dealers aren’t effectively using, or are failing to use any type of marketing attribution to measure the results of their advertising. “This is a glaring hole and effectively makes measuring marketing efforts and spending a guessing game,” said White. 

First and last-click attribution is the most commonly used attribution model, used by a full 77 percent of respondents. This is largely due to the fact that these attribution models are used by most vendors, as well as Google Analytics. However, according to White, while widely used, these models give poor results and a skewed picture of what sources truly influence customers in their decision to buy at the dealership. 

If dealers can’t – or aren’t – getting the data they need to make intelligent decisions, what are their biggest challenges? According to the survey, 57 percent replied proving ROI for marketing spend, followed by targeting marketing to the best audience, at 41 percent, and evaluating vendor performance, at 35 percent. 

“These challenges, of course, lead full circle back to the same question asked since dealerships first came into existence ‘Did it sell cars and, if so, how many?’” said White. “The survey results show that dealers certainly know the importance of attribution. Vendors increasingly recognize that dealers need and want this data. So, slowly but surely, the back end of marketing is becoming more transparent as vendors are more open to new attribution models and are starting to integrate with attribution solutions. This is a great trend that will see dealers and vendors creating stronger partnerships while bringing confidence and true accountability to both,” White continued. 

For more information visit: http://www.clarivoy.com, or to view study results click here.  

# # # # # 

About Clarivoy 

Clarivoy is the auto industry’s most trusted source of truth for optimizing the performance of marketing campaigns. Their Multi-Touch Attribution solutions reveal more about their clients’ customers, their advertising and their path to success so they can drive more sales. The company’s proprietary TV Analytics solution was named the winner of the 2016 DrivingSales Innovation Cup Award for the Most Innovative Dealership Solution of 2016. Clarivoy’s proprietary technology grants marketers incomparable visibility into their customers and campaigns – across all channels, all devices – online and offline. Armed with this new information, marketers can stop guessing and start knowing what is working and what is not. http://www.clarivoy.com.

Creating an Attribution Infrastructure 

I’ve talked a lot in the past about the importance of using a multi-touch attribution model with data weighted and reported by an unbiased third party. In this blog, I wanted to take this conversation to the next level by explaining the infrastructure you’ll need in order to accurately measure and track your customer’s journey towards a purchase so you can identify which of your vendors are performing – or underperforming. 

Don’t misunderstand me. This takes a lot of work. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it already. With that being said, here are 12 key things you need to set-up and the data points you need to truly get accurate multi-touch attribution results. If you are missing any of these, your multi-touch attribution model is flawed.  

1. Advanced Tracking Code beyond Google Analytics – If you want to be able to attribute to sales, you need to use a third-party provider that has their own proprietary tracking code that can de-anonymize website traffic and link to sales. 

2. Call Tracking Logs – It’s imperative to have your call tracking set-up properly so that you can really know what generated that phone call, not just have it labeled “website.” The tracking logs should be able to tell you whether that phone call was generated from paid search, a click from Facebook, or another specific source. This weighs heavily since many consumers call in rather than convert.  

3. Dynamic Call Tracking – This level of call tracking enables you to further drill down on the influences that triggered that phone call. Rather than simply knowing that the phone call was generated through paid search, dynamic call tracking tells you that it came from a specific keyword which triggered the ad, allowing you to attribute and monitor specific campaign results.   

4. CRM – CRM data is important as one of your data sources for obvious reasons, but mainly for the ability to do what we call leads-based attribution.  

5. DMS – DMS data is also key for the sales data it contains, which is necessary to then credit vendors with weighted sales numbers. Then you are able to measure actual ROI in dollar figures against actual sales and profit. If you only rely on leads, you’ll be missing a large piece of your marketing ecosystem in terms of what’s working and what’s not.   

6. AdWords & Bing – The most important thing is that you have admin access to your account and data. This will enable ingestion of important data that you can’t get any other way. 

7. View-Based Tracking – View-based tracking is one of the most important pieces of data to capture as roughly 90% of consumers don’t click, call or chat from a third-party site -- they simply come in and buy a vehicle. In addition, you must take into account all of the display ads and retargeting campaigns that consumers are exposed to. The consumer may see the ads, not click through at that moment – or ever – but still buy a vehicle. If you’re evaluating your display ad vendors based on clicks, you’re missing a big gap in their true performance.  

8. Third-Party Auto – As I mentioned above, in order to measure the full impact with third party auto sites, it is imperative to work with a provider that can place tracking code on third party websites across all your dealer pages on the site. This will enable you to effectively measure VDPs where no action was taken immediately, or directly, by the consumer who ends up purchasing a vehicle from you after viewing your VDPs on third party auto sites.  

9. Chat – Of course chat logs are important for several reasons – not only can you track the data that initiated the chat, but oftentimes consumers will reveal the source within the chat.   

10. E-Mail – Don’t simply rely on attributing a sale to an email campaign just because the email was sent. Install tracking pixels within the e-mail campaigns so that you know whether a particular person opened the email, was exposed to it and you can then attribute it back to that view or click. 

11. Direct Mail – Direct mail requires a little more scientific measurement, but you need to make sure that you’re not simply matching to whom a direct mail piece was sent against which of those people bought a car. Utilizing more advanced approaches like tracking numbers or trackable URLs in your direct mail should be used at a minimum. There are some more advanced approaches but I will save that for another blog post. 

12. TV Spot Logs – If you want to measure TV, it’s imperative to get the TV spot logs so you can overlay that data with spikes in website traffic. However, it’s more than just comparing the two pieces of data as there may be cases where you have overlapping TV spots. There needs to be a way to fractionalize that influence between overlapping TV spots. 

13. Anonymous Attribution -- According to a Polk Automotive Influence Study, approximately 2 out of 3 car buyers do not contact a dealership via form submission or a phone call prior to their first visit. This data gap leaves a huge blind spot in a marketer’s ability to accurately attribute sales to sources like paid search and third party sites. Identifying anonymous shoppers requires the development of proprietary identification and tracking technology.  

14. Data Scientist -- Once you have connected all of the marketing touchpoint data, you need to figure out a way to assign credit to each of those touch points. You can leverage rules-based attribution models or data driven models (click here to watch a video blog that outlines the different types of attribution models). You’ll also need the expertise to visualize and analyze the data in order to for it to be really useful.  

That’s it! Easy…. right?? Developing a comprehensive multi-touch attribution model, having the ability to access the data needed and making sense of it all is complicated. A lot of it relies on the cooperation of your vendor partners.  

 If who want to truly measure the real influence your marketing sources are having on sales, you can start by partnering with attribution-friendly vendors. Without their assistance, you will find that properly building your attribution infrastructure is frustrating, inaccurate and, ultimately, near impossible.

Columbus, OH (July 11, 2017) – Auto dealers using Google Analytics are now able to accurately attribute the value of third-party sites such as Cars.com, according to the initial findings from a trial use of Clarivoy’s Multi-Touch Attribution solution.   

In an April trial with Cars.com, more than 100 Cars.com dealer customers upgraded their Google Analytics platform with Clarivoy’s Multi-Touch Attribution solution. The Clarivoy solution is designed to help dealers understand how all their digital marketing investment efforts -- not just the last click or interaction -- influence the car buying journey. 

The initial use of Clarivoy’s solution revealed that Google Analytics misses the cost-effective conversion value of sites such as Cars.com. For instance, on average, dealers who implemented the multi-touch attribution solution saw conversions on their sites attributed to Cars.com increase by 37 percent with a 20 percent decrease in cost after two months in the trial.    

The results were even more dramatic when dealers considered the conversions that occurred directly on Cars.com. The addition of Cars.com data -- Cars.com leads, vehicle description pages (VDPs), and trackable walk-ins -- to this multi-touch attribution model allowed one dealer to identify 11,390 conversion events that happened on the Cars.com site in addition to the original 103 reported by Google Analytics.  

According to Clarivoy CEO Steve White, auto dealers typically rely on Google Analytics to help them understand the impact of their advertising. However, the true value of a third party auto site doesn’t show up in Google Analytics as it is by default set up to give all of the credit to the last click.  

“Typically, what we see is a lot of third-party websites do not get the credit they deserve because in most cases the last engagement that occurs with the dealer’s website is either branded search, organic or direct traffic,” said White. “As a result, sites such as Cars.com become invisible to Google Analytics when trying to evaluate performance. Dealers needed a solution that helps them see the actual impact a partner like Cars.com really brings and the ability to compare that to their other marketing channels in one dashboard.” 

“Time and time again, we see dealer customers overspending on paid search, because they are only measuring marketing impact based on the last click,” said John Clavadetscher, Chief Revenue Officer, Cars.com. “By understanding the full customer journey leading up to the last click, dealers are able to better understand the influence that Cars.com has on the path to purchase and make more informed decisions about how to allocate their marketing spend.” 

When shopping online, many customers view a dealer’s VDPs or submit an inquiry right on the Cars.com website, and this data is never reflected in Google Analytics. Clarivoy’s native integration offers several benefits including: 

• Clarivoy’s Attribution Channels classify data more logically and accurately specifically for auto dealers 

• Dealers can apply cost data from all digital marketing investments to evaluate the true cost per engagement and cost per lead using Clarivoy's proprietary multi-touch attribution model 

• Insight into Cars.com conversion activity including VDPs, lead submissions and Lot Insights data 

“The biggest differentiator of our solution for dealers is our independent, unbiased approach for analyzing and reporting data. We don’t have a stake in the game,” White commented.  

Clarivoy’s Multi-Touch Sales Attribution platform focuses on user-level attribution, allowing dealers to transparently view a consumer’s full purchase path, sorting and ranking the influence of each channel’s contribution – paid search, display ads, TV, email, third party websites, organic search, social, and brand website -- to understand what is really driving sales. 

For a copy of the Clarivoy/Cars.com case study click here: http://content.clarivoy.com/carscasestudy 

For more information, or to sign up for a product demonstration, visit: http://www.clarivoy.com 

About Cars.com 

Cars.com (NYSE: CARS) is a leading online destination that helps car shoppers and owners navigate every turn of car ownership. A pioneer in automotive classified, the company has evolved into one of the largest digital automotive platforms, connecting consumers with local dealers across the country anytime, anywhere. Through trusted expert content, on-the-lot mobile app features, millions of new and used vehicle listings, a comprehensive set of research tools and the largest database of consumer reviews in the industry, Cars.com helps shoppers buy, sell and service their vehicles. Cars.com companies include DealerRater®, Auto.com, PickupTrucks.com™ and NewCars.com®.  The company was founded in 1998 and is headquartered in Chicago. For more information, visit www.Cars.com. 

About Clarivoy 

Clarivoy is the auto industry’s most trusted source of truth for optimizing the performance of marketing campaigns. Their Multi-Touch Attribution solutions reveal more about their clients’ customers, their advertising and their path to success so they can drive more sales. The company’s proprietary TV Analytics solution was named the winner of the 2016 DrivingSales Innovation Cup Award for the Most Innovative Dealership Solution of 2016. Clarivoy’s proprietary technology grants marketers incomparable visibility into their customers and campaigns – across all channels, all devices – online and offline.  Armed with this new information, marketers can stop guessing and start knowing what is working and what is not. http://www.clarivoy.com 

Cutting Measurement Clutter: An Interview with Cars.com's Brian Archey from Clarivoy on Vimeo.

Clarivoy's CEO & Founder Steve White sits down with Brian Archey, Sr. Director of Data Strategy at Cars.com to discuss how dealers can cut through clutter when it comes to making their marketing spend go further.

I’m sure many of you have heard about Google’s new attribution offering as there has been much buzz about it lately – but don’t be fooled as this is not a silver bullet for auto dealers – in fact, FAR from it. Let me explain:

Last Tuesday, Google announced an integrated reporting feature named Google Attribution. According to Google, this feature will integrate Google Analytics, AdWords and DoubleClick reporting, shifting from their past attribution model of last-click, to a multi-touch attribution model called, “data-driven attribution.”

The announcement stated that this feature will be free. As Google Attribution is still in beta, and not yet rolled out to all users, it’s difficult to say exactly what features and data will be available. However, there is one thing I can say – this feature is not designed to bring better transparency, but rather to reinforce that advertisers should be spending more with Google!

While I applaud Google’s desire to improve, and to report using a multi-touch attribution model, it appears to be another walled garden move that will over-attribute results to them. It’s also a massive stiff arm to third-party auto sites. And, it’s of little benefit to those dealers who realize the value of data which a truly unbiased multi-touch attribution brings.

Why do I say that?

First, Google’s attribution channels still won't organize traffic in a way that's actionable for auto dealers. The data will still be organized in a way that highlights conversions made by Google properties. Second, they will still only include spend data for Google properties. This means you won't be able to assess the efficiencies of advertising made through third party auto. And lastly, it won’t include view-through data, which is vital for dealers in understanding if their marketing efforts are working.

These days, many consumers simply don’t click or convert, they just go into the dealership. Without view-through data, you wouldn’t know that the customer visited a third-party auto site, discovered the vehicle and then came into your dealership. You could then draw the conclusion that the third-party solution isn’t producing and cut a marketing partner that, in fact, has substantial influence in the buyer’s journey.

Please realize that Google is just another vendor in the auto industry. That’s why they have an entire automotive team, speak at automotive conferences and cater to other automotive vendors. It all boils down to the fact that the automotive industry is very lucrative to them.

I believe the reason most dealers don’t consider Google a vendor is a simple one: many of them don’t write checks to Google! In essence, however, dealers are writing those checks to Google - albeit through their ad agency, SEM provider, or other automotive vendor.

When you look at it this way, Google Attribution is simply a vendor reporting to a dealer (or agency) how well their ads performed, while slipping in other touchpoints along the buyer’s journey so as to bring the illusion of transparency.

Google Attribution doesn’t solve any problems for dealers. It’s simply a mirage meant to enhance a false sense of security with their marketing dollars. Once again, dealers lose as they rely on the digital blind spot that Google’s tempting them with.

Google Attribution was not made for the automotive industry. It’s a step backwards in transparency and will essentially return third-party automotive sites to a click-based attribution model which, in the end, hurts dealers and denies them accurate data with which to make decisions.

At the end of the day, Google’s message to dealers is: “Trust Us!”

But, Google Attribution is simply Google grading their own homework and, even though we don’t have all the specifics as of yet, I’m willing to bet that at the end of the day Google will give themselves straight “A’s.”

In the great wide world of online, display ads are everywhere. Top of the page, right, left, bottom – and, sometimes even popping up and floating in your face. Many consumers find these ads intrusive, especially when they are irrelevant. So, they simply ignore them – or, stop visiting the sites on which they appear

In fact, consumers have become so annoyed with these ads that some entrepreneurs created a whole industry around getting rid of them – ad blockers. And these software companies have caught on fire -- as of the end of 2016 there were an estimated 615 million devices using ad blocking software to help consumers avoid seeing ads, according to an article in Business Insider.

While this is all well and good, it presents a huge problem for display advertisers. How do you know when your ad is being displayed or blocked? Well, Google, the world’s biggest web advertising company, has the answer. The company just announced plans to integrate a native ad blocker into its Chrome browser.

Wait! What?

Why would Google do that? Wouldn’t that hurt their advertising revenue? Actually… probably not.

Ad blocker software companies earn money in just a couple of ways. Most are free for consumers to download and install onto their browser of choice. Some also have a premium version that allows for increased functionality. However, most revenue comes via “extorting” or charging companies fees in exchange for white-listing their ads, which then allows them to be shown to users of their ad blocking software. Large companies, including the likes of Google, Microsoft and others, have paid money to ad blocking companies to do just that.

With their own internal set of ad standards, Google, on the other hand already controls which ads Chrome users see through their networks. By creating their own native ad blocker, not only do they eliminate the need to pay these ad blocker software companies to show these ads, but they also gain even more control of which ads are seen. It’s even possible (although not without a lot of legal battles) that Google could block all ads which don’t come from its display network -- essentially forcing other companies to pay them in an epic 360 transfer of revenue and power over which advertisers and ads can be displayed to users.

What does this mean for display advertisers?

It means they’re in an epic battle -- caught between websites hungry for revenue and the agencies that sell advertising. Metrics get skewed when the agencies SAY the ads are being served but in fact consumers don’t see them due to ad blocking software. Websites are fighting back by refusing to allow users to see their website AT ALL unless they disable ad blocking software. But, in many cases, consumers simply bounce from that website and head to another for the information they seek.
The battle continues between which display ads are, and are not seen, along with who is in control. This is something advertisers should pay close attention to. Depending on how the ad is being requested, and the method the particular ad blocking software is using, impressions can be recorded which were never seen by the consumer.

Only time will tell how this all plays out. With valuable real estate up for grabs, this type of trend typically yields higher prices and more competition for eyeballs. Buyer beware.

A question I often get asked is, “When is the right time to cut a marketing source if it does not seem to be working?”

Almost every vendor and/or marketing source requires time to perform – whether that’s PPC, SEM, SEO, TV, radio, newspaper, email, lead providers or third-party listing sites – it’s all the same. Give any source a mere 30-day judgement call before cutting them and you’ll never know whether they are performing. You could easily cut a vendor or marketing source from your budget that is actually driving sales.

Everything takes time to work. For example, lead providers. The majority of consumers don’t buy a car in the same month they submit a lead. In fact, at the point they chose to remove their anonymity and request information, many are still in the research stage of their buying journey.

My advice is to allow 3-4 months and sometimes up to 6 months to adequately and accurately measure whether that particular source is performing. Of course, to do that properly, your need to have proper measurement tools in place to judge that marketing source’s influence on a buyer.

Just like Rome wasn’t built in a day, neither is an effective marketing strategy. Give your marketing sources time to perform. Have measurement tools in place. Only after time, with these things in place, will you be able to effectively and confidently make decisions that are in the best interest of your marketing budget and, more importantly, your dealership. 

Dealers have leveraged paid search for years – and some spend significant budgets on it. However, whether they do it by themselves, or work with a vendor, I find many misunderstand some of the strategies, analytics and the method to the madness that is paid search.

I’d like to explain a few things and share some best practices I have learned over the years about how to really maximize your ROI in paid search:

Branded Search:

Let’s start with branded search. Historically, branded search has been the highest performing search type because marketers spent more on branding activities such as TV, radio and newspaper. These mediums provided customers with a familiarity as to where begin their online search. Then along came Google, which began, in essence, as a glorified phone book. Now consumers rely on Google to tell them what to buy and where to go.  

I am pretty sure that when setting up Google AdWords, like most dealers, you bid on your dealership’s name. There are several reasons for this. First, organic results keep getting pushed further down in search results, so this helps with visibility.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, if you do not bid on your dealership’s name you risk having competitors, third-party listing sites, manufacturers and lead providers jumping in and gaining exposure to a customer searching YOUR dealership’s name. If their ad text is compelling enough, this customer could easily be lured away from your website to a competitor’s. As a result, if you wish to be “in the game,” so to speak, and never lose a click to a competitor, you are pretty much forced to bid on your dealership’s name. This is what I like to refer to as the “Google tax.”

Non-Branded Search:

Non-branded search is what should be front and center when analyzing the effectiveness of your paid search campaigns. When bidding on multiple keywords, the results are typically analyzed utilizing the paid search campaigns as a whole – branded and non-branded – and this is where the true effectiveness of your paid search campaigns gets skewed.

Often, due to necessity, branded search performance is a large part of the overall paid search budget. Those searches are going to happen. However, when looking at the overall outcome, paid search results can look rosier than they are actually are if branded search results are included.

Yes, bidding on branded search should be part of your overall paid search strategy. However, to truly evaluate the effectiveness and performance of your paid search campaigns you would be wise to stop including branded search campaigns from your ROI analysis. Instead, isolate branded search from your overall results and optimize for non-branded terms.

How can you effectively do that analysis yourself? Ask your vendors to run a report that shows attributed leads and engagements isolated by brand and non-brand. You can also look at VDP’s. But, that will not give you the full picture. For example, a customer looks at VDP’s from a non-branded search, they are retargeted and then come back with a branded search. What gets the credit? You would need to adopt a Multi-Touch Attribution model to tell you this.

Paid search campaigns are not as efficient as everyone thinks they are. When you truly do the analysis and segment it in AdWords, or Google Analytics, our data shows that branded search over-compensates for the lack of results that non-branded search terms generate. It’s become more expensive and is less productive.

And that’s why the party is over...at least for those that rely on branded search to mask the true ROI of their paid search campaigns.