Introducing Multi-Metric Trend Graphs in Microsoft Advertising adCenter

We heard from you that it was hard to understand how your adCenter campaigns were performing because performance history data wasn’t easy to access or use. So as part of our recent upgrades to adCenter, we delivered a new feature to help you quickly and easily understand your campaign performance. The New multi-metric trend chart that now appears on the Home and Campaign tabs within our web interface is a rich visual snapshot of your campaign performance.

Conventionally, trend charts are able to support two metrics (one on each axis), but we wanted to provide you with more control and access to all the metrics which are important to you. This multi-metric trend chart presents up to 5 performance metrics at once enabling you to compare all your important performance metrics simultaneously within a single interface.  Plus, we provide you with ability to hover over any of the charts to zero in on the details for the selected time across all 5 charts.

Let’s take a look at a few examples of how the multi-metric graph allows you to see the big picture about how your campaigns are doing:

Example 1: Doing Really Well

 
The 4 small graphs on the right hand side tell the story, while the large graph on the left is the zoomed-in view of a selected small one on the right. Start by looking at the impressions graph, then clicks, conversions and finally CPA. You’ll notice that while impressions remained relatively flat and the number of clicks went up slightly, your conversions went up significantly while your CPA went down significantly. You know you did well, and you know why: you got more conversions out of the clicks. You might have just revised your ad landing page in the last 7 days and now you can easily see that it’s driving increased conversions!

Example 2: Peace of Mind

 
In this example,  you see impressions had a peak, so did clicks, while CPC and Average position remained stable. No immediate concern here; you have peace of mind.

Example 3: Troubleshooting Scenario 1

In this example, you will find during the second half of the time period on the graphs, as impressions remained flat, clicks slightly trended down, but your spend had a peak, and avg CPC had a peak too. You see the problem right away: you got less clicks but you paid more. And you see why: you paid more because the avg CPC went up. You realize that your next action is to minimize the CPC peaks in future, for example, by improving your ad copy relevance and reducing keywords that have low quality-scores.

 
Example 4: Troubleshooting Scenario 2

    
In this example, as clicks were flat, avg CPC were flat too, but conversions had a dip while CPA had a peak. You see the problem and why it happened: you received the same clicks but less conversions and that’s why you are paying more for each conversion. You need more conversions to turn it around. So instantly you realize that you may need to improve the conversion rate in the next period by optimizing the landing page URLs.

Flexibility

You can choose one of the 8 metrics for any of the large and the small graphs to make the graphs tell stories on your campaigns in your own way. If you'd like, you could share your multi-metric stories with us (see the email address at the end of the post), with the adCenter Community through the comments field below, in our forums, or via Twitter.

Where to Find the Graph

You can find this graph in two different places: under the Campaigns tab and under the Home tab.  Under the Campaigns tab, simply click the “Account performance trend” bar near the top of the page to display the multi-metric graph, as shown below (by default, the graph is hidden).

Under the Home tab, click “Simple” near the top right of the page, as seen below, to see the multi-trend graph.

        
In order to fit into the overall page space, the Home page version has a different layout than the Campaigns tab version. The Home page version screenshot is seen below. Which layout do you prefer?

This is a brand new feature from adCenter and we are excited to make this available for your use as part of our recent release. 

As I am a program manager at adCenter working with many others to make the multi-metric trend graph useful to advertisers, I would love to hear feedback from you. Please feel free to post your comments on this thread or you send them directly to adsfbk@microsoft.com.