Choosing The Right Google Ads Attribution Settings And Reporting

A biologist, Bret Weinstein coined the word “Metaphorical Truth”, a belief that may not be accurate, but may produce a positive output to the believer. It might not be scientifically true, but accepting it as a truth in practice gives an advantage due to the actions endowed by the believer.

Deciding on the best attribution model is like finding the metaphorical truth of a customer’s buying journey. There is no accurate way to describe the actual influence of a customer’s buying decisions, instead, we can analyze the multiple touchpoints of our customers and arrive at our own metaphorical truth.

Customer Touchpoints. Adapted from The Traffic Company

Choosing the Right Attribution Model

This problem has been solved 50 years ago by soccer coaches — the credit should be to the player who gave the final shot causing the goal to be scored. In Google Ads, it is the last-click attribution — which means giving credit for the conversion to the last touchpoint.

By choosing the last-click attribution, you have the tendency to oversee the prior activity of the ball, how it arrived on the scorer.

If your soccer team is young and you want to encourage and reward every player who can get the ball, set the momentum of the team, and hit a score, then you might want to consider rewarding the player who seized the ball. In advertising, you may want to use first-click attribution.

The remaining attribution models gives a credit to every soccer player who touches the ball. This model is called the multi-touch attribution model — time decay, linear and position-based attribution. You can use this model if you want to:

• Assess each player of your team (optimize landing pages / CTAs)
• Review how your team naturally interact with each other during the game ( Organic SEO)

The multi-touch attribution model helps you understand the customer journey. It recognizes customer touchpoints and analyses how they are converted from a mere visitor to your page to customers. These attributions are time decay, linear and position-based attribution. When you choose this attribution, expect a fraction value in your conversions because it gives credits and calculates every customer touchpoint. Understanding each touchpoint provides you with a better understanding of your customer and your client.

Insights from google universal analytics multi-channel funnel show how your customers search for your products and what they do before they make a purchase. In soccer, this will show how the ball is being played by your key players.

If your company has at least 3,000 ad interactions and a conversion action of at least 300 conversions within 30 days. then they are eligible for a “Data-driven” attribution model. This is the recommended model by google. It allows advertisers to assign the right credit to every customer touchpoint.

Michelle Spagnoli made a story on how the single-touch and multi-touch attribution relates to a soccer game.

Conversion Cycle — How Long it will take for your customers to convert?

Conversion Cycle is the te length of time (in days) that it takes for a customer to convert. To pull reports from your campaign conversion cycle

From this report, you can see how conversions took place each day of your 30-day campaign.

It will make sense to set your Click-through conversion window to 30-days. If you see any changes in your data, then you might want to consider making some adjustments.

Reporting

Aside from the Google Ads dashboard, you can see your campaign performance in Google Analytics. You may want to exclude google shopping to see the actual result of your paid ads.

You can set your Google Ads attribution to last-click if you want to use both platforms in decision making.

Here are some of the caveats when using it:

• Google Analytics uses the last non-direct click model by default while Google Ads is user-configurable. This will cause a mismatch especially if you are using the non-last-click attribution model in Google Ads.
• In changing conversion window: If you set your Google Ads campaign in a 30-day conversion window and you change it to 10 days, the 10-day window will only apply to conversions recorded from that day forward.
• If you are using a multi-touchpoint attribution model, fraction values in your conversion will show because it gives credits to every customer touchpoint.
• Make sure you read the Google Ads and Google Analytics configuration checklist.
• Never mistake Google Analytics “Transaction” as Google Ads “Conversion Value”. The same with “All Conversion Value” and “Revenue” metrics since they are derivative metrics of conversion and transaction. Though apparently these metrics are pulled by the same data source, they are collected in different methods.

Adapted from At a glance: Tracking differences between Goals, Transactions, and Google Ads Conversions

Summary

Setting your attribution model, conversion window, and understanding the reporting platform is an integral part of creating a strategic plan in advertising.

The attribution model determines how much credit each ad interaction gets for your conversions. The attribution model in Google Ads is configurable. If you are the soccer coach, would you like to attribute the points to the last player or consider the other players who seized the ball?

Conversion Value in Google Ads is the soccer score. The score depends on how you set your attribution model. If you are the soccer coach, is all you care about is the final score, or do you want to record the contribution of other players?

Conversion Window is the maximum time of recording your conversion cycle. In soccer, you need to consider the extra time and intervals of the game.

We can make use of these stories to create a functional plan. The best story is the story that invites action and provides value. The best truths are all metaphoric stories that allow us to understand, even if we cannot fully grasp them as long as it offers meaning and satisfaction.

This is an extension of my previous story on understanding the attribution model in Google Ads.