The Importance of Tracking the Right Event

July 01, 2022

As Google shifts more and more into automation and allowing its algorithm to take over almost full control of a campaign (Performance Max) it’s becoming increasingly more important to give Google the right signals to optimize for.

We’ve seen time and time again that Google is able to hit its tCPA or tROAS goals if it has enough of the right data. Here’s an example of Google maintaining the same cost per conversion across various match types for one of our clients.

We introduced broad match keywords during this time frame and Google was able to maintain a consistent cost / conversion in comparison to Phrase and Exact.

With that said, if you’re optimizing to an event that has little to no value to the business you are missing out on a lot! Yes, you need enough conversion volume to make the algorithm truly work, but you need to find a conversion event farthest down the funnel that would allow for this. 

For example, instead of optimizing to webinar registrations can you create a conversion event that fires after someone watches the first 90 seconds of the webinar? We’ve all signed up for a webinar and then not attended! The likelihood of a user making a purchase grows tenfold if they’ve actually watched 90+ seconds of the webinar, so can we get that data to Google and use its billion dollar algorithm to make appropriate bidding decisions in real time to get more 90+ second webinar watchers?

This is by no means a make or break thing, but can help you scale at a more efficient rate. Google also offers ‘Offline Line’ imports to help B2B companies pass in SQOs, Opportunities, and other sales funnel events that come from all the form fills you’ve driven. Is there enough volume to optimize to SQOs? This could be a big win for you account!

As data privacy becomes more relevant across the paid media industry it’s going to make this a bit more difficult, but also, I think, will really help you maintain and scale.