adCenter Announces New Conversion Tracking Options

Tracking conversions is one of the most important things that you can do as a marketer.

This allows you to track ROI, gain insight into what kind of customers are buying your product, and see which keywords to promote to generate more sales or leads. Although conversion tracking seems simple – add a script to your page and suddenly you have useful reports - it actually takes some forethought to get the best results.

What do you regard as a conversion? For instance, if exactly the same user converts again on the following day, should this be considered a second conversion, or just a re-visit of the first conversion? It actually could be either, depending upon your site design – some users save, bookmark, or email their conversion pages, or return to them at a later date to check the status of orders.

In order to achieve the most meaningful conversion counts possible, adCenter is releasing a package of new Conversion counting controls which allows you to specify how you want your events counted. We are offering three options from which you can pick what works best for you:

Conversion Counting Options

Option 1: Count One Conversion Per Click: adCenter will only count the first conversion to occur after the click. Any subsequent conversions will not be counted unless they originate from a new click.

This method is simple and there’s very little work that you have to do. Just switch it on and it will prevent double-counts from the same user revisiting the page. However, more sophisticated advertisers may want the ability to count multiple conversion events, and this is possible using the methods below.

Option 2: Count One Conversion Per Unique URL: Under this mode, your site will “tell” us when a new conversion event has taken place. This allows you to synchronize adCenter’s conversion counts very closely to your own system. To take advantage of this method, you will need to be able to update your site to generate a unique transaction code to represent the conversion. This is a more complicated option for some advertisers, but it can deliver better results.

adCenter will de-duplicate the conversion event based on the URL+QueryString in the referrer of the conversion page and originating click. For instance, an advertiser might use the following http://www.site.com/conversionpage.html/?transactionid=1234&otherparams where transactionid=1234 is meant to be unique for new conversions. It does not matter what this conversion page is, what the transaction is, etc. It only matters that the page is unique, so that we can then count it uniquely and not count duplicates.

This technique allows you to lock-in the adCenter conversion counting system to your internal definition of the conversion.

Option 3: Count All: Some advertisers want all of the events to be reported, and they already have sites that are designed to eliminate repeat-visit problems. This option ensures that all conversion events are reported.

Option 1 is the easiest method, as it does not require you to make any major changes apart from the conversion script. It does, however, mean that you won’t see repeated conversions, and so if this is desirable you should consider option 2 and note the additional set-up required.

How to Change the Counting Method

All that you need to do is to embed a few extra parameters in the JavaScript. We would emphasize again that the use of this functionality is optional. It is made available to you as an option for getting more accurate counts.

To Retrieve Your Conversion Tracking Code Snippet

1. In Microsoft adCenter, navigate to the Change campaign settings screen. 

2. Ensure that conversion-tracking is enabled. 

3. Select the protocol (web address prefix) that your site will be using on the page the code will go on (confirmation page). If your page is secure, leave the protocol set to https://. If your page is not secure, change the dropdown to http://. This example will use the secure version throughout. 

4. Click the Copy code button.

5. Paste the code into your text /web page editor. 

 

To Update Your Conversion Tracking Code Snippet

1. Add the following JavaScript lines to the code in the place indicated in the image to the right 

var microsoft_adcenterconversionparams = new Array(); 

microsoft_adcenterconversionparams[0] = "dedup=[METHOD]”;

<SCRIPT>

microsoft_adcenterconversion_domainid = 94466;

microsoft_adcenterconversion_cp = 5050;

microsoft_adcenterconversionparams = new Array();

microsoft_adcenterconversionparams[0] = "dedup=[METHOD]”;

</script>

<SCRIPT SRC="https://0.r.msn.com/scripts/microsoft_adcenterconversion.js"></SCRIPT>

<NOSCRIPT><IMG width=1 height=1 SRC=https://94466.r.msn.com/?type=1&cp=1/></NOSCRIPT><a href="http://advertising.msn.com/MSNadCenter/LearningCenter/adtracker.asp" target="_blank">::adCenter::</a> 

 

2. Replace “[METHOD]” with the number value that represents how you want your conversions filtered. The example to the right uses per click filtering.

a. Use “dedup=1” if you want to use one conversion per click counting.

b. Use “dedup=2” if you want to use URL counting.

c. Use "dedup=3" if you want to count all conversions.

<SCRIPT>

microsoft_adcenterconversion_domainid = 94466;

microsoft_adcenterconversion_cp = 5050;

microsoft_adcenterconversionparams = new Array();

microsoft_adcenterconversionparams[0] = "dedup=1”;

</script>

<SCRIPT SRC="https://0.r.msn.com/scripts/microsoft_adcenterconversion.js"></SCRIPT>

<NOSCRIPT><IMG width=1 height=1 SRC="https://94466.r.msn.com/?type=1&cp=1&dedup=1"/></NOSCRIPT><a href="http://advertising.msn.com/MSNadCenter/LearningCenter/adtracker.asp" target="_blank">::adCenter::</a> 

3. Edit the <IMG> call to the pixel that is within the <NOSCRIPT> tag by appending “&dedup=[METHOD]”

after “&cp=1”.

Note: The value that is entered for [METHOD] in this step matches the value used in step 7. These values must match to ensure proper counting.

<SCRIPT>

microsoft_adcenterconversion_domainid = 94466;

microsoft_adcenterconversion_cp = 5050;

microsoft_adcenterconversionparams = new Array();

microsoft_adcenterconversionparams[0] = "dedup=1”;

</script>

<SCRIPT SRC="https://0.r.msn.com/scripts/microsoft_adcenterconversion.js"></SCRIPT>

<NOSCRIPT><IMG width=1 height=1 SRC="https://94466.r.msn.com/?type=1&cp=1&dedup=1"/></NOSCRIPT><a href="http://advertising.msn.com/MSNadCenter/LearningCenter/adtracker.asp" target="_blank">::adCenter::</a> 

 

4. Copy all of the new code.

5. Replace your current conversion-tracking code with the all information just copied. If this is the first time you’re placing the conversion tracking script on your page, place the code just before the </body> tag.

adCenter is committed to helping you maximize your value and achieve excellent results with our system. We hope that this feature will help you to improve the quality of your ROI numbers.

Check out the adCenter Conversion Tracking Guide for more information.

Thanks

Brendan