Google Adwords: How the Conversion Optimizer works
Some topics that have interested me a lot lately are Data Mining, heuristics, Information Retrieval and statistics in general. Seeing how, thanks to past data, the future behavior of basically anything can be predicted is something that I am passionate about.
If there is a company that handles these concepts better than anyone and applies them to practical things, that company is Google and Adwords is an excellent example of this with its conversion optimizer.
What is the Conversion Optimizer?
It is an option that is enabled in a campaign once it meets certain history requirements, what this option does is that we can define a target price for each conversion (registration, sale, etc.) and the Adwords system takes care of adjust our bids per click, ad positions, etc. to have greater visibility in the searches or locations that you determine have a greater chance of being a conversion.
It basically allows us to say: Hey Google! This is useless if each sale I get more than $X! », then the system makes an "effort" to achieve the goal we set.
This sounds great, but what do I need to enable the Conversion Optimizer?
First of all, have conversion tracking activated, otherwise there is no conversion to optimize, quite logical ... right? This is the first thing I ask my new clients to install the conversion code provided by Google Adwords on the target pages of the campaign, that way we can control what is really past.
We also need a minimum amount of data so that the system is able to predict the possible future behavior of the campaign, Google suggests at least 15 conversions in the last 30 days and a stable conversion rate during the last days.
I comply with all this and tear of emotion, where do I enable it?
The Conversion Optimizer can be enabled in the "Settings" tab of the campaign and then going to "Offers and Budget", click on "Offer Option", we choose "Prioritize Conversions", we choose the CPA we want to pay and voila.
Does this work by magic?
No, it works on something a little more incredible than making an elephant disappear, advanced statistic. It is for this very reason and because of the dynamic nature of the system that it cannot be guaranteed that the Conversion Optimizer will always meet our objective.
Among the different variables we have our competition, changes we may have made to our ads, the effectiveness of our landing page, etc. So the actual CPA could be higher or lower than our proposed goal, this can change from one day to the next, hence also the importance of analyzing the campaigns periodically.
In my own experience, the Conversion Optimizer is a tool that, well used, can totally change the course of a campaign, getting us more conversions at a lower cost.
