Remember the story of the blindfolded men and an elephant? As a quick recap for those that don’t:  A group of men were blindfolded and led to an elephant. Each man was allowed to only touch a small part of the animal and then asked to describe what they were standing next to.  One man, after feeling the leg, says he was next to a pillar. Another, who felt the tail, thought he had been led to a rope.  A third man said that his companions were crazy, he was most definitely feeling a spear (he had been led to the tusk). And so it goes with several others in the group as well. Of course none were correct because each man was missing the context.

Monitoring your ad campaigns requires context as well. Take your quality score for example: Let’s say you look at your quality score and see that it’s a 7. You think “Very good, I’m above the 6 that is recommended as a minimum, so I’m in good shape.” 

Now what if I told you your historical quality scores over the last week were 10, 10, 8, 7, 7?  Starting to see the whole elephant? This historical data provides the broader context showing you that your score is heading the wrong way. Obviously, it’s time to take action!

On the other hand, let’s say you recently did some things to improve your campaign and you see that the historical scores were 4, 5, 6, 7, 7. Congratulations! You can go show the boss that your hard work has paid off; your scores are headed up!

Until recently, it would have been difficult to see this context. Tracking your historical quality score data took personal diligence, a lot of time and a big spreadsheet. Not anymore! adCenter now offers historical quality score data in its daily reports. Better yet, the data is not limited to just the aggregate quality score; you can also get the historical data for each element of the score. You can track:

  • Historic Quality Score
  • Historic Keyword Relevance
  • Historic Landing Page Relevance
  • Historic Landing Page User Experience

With this data you can more easily see these key factors impacting your ad performance.

Thanks, but I really don’t need to watch my scores

No doubt there are some of you who have looked at your score and seen that nice bright, shiny, perfect 10 sitting there. You’re probably thinking, “I don’t need to monitor my score, it’s already perfect!”, but you’d be surprised how quickly your quality score can change, even if you don’t do a thing with your campaign. The reason is that your competitors are optimizing their campaigns to beat out your ads: tuning their keywords, spiffing up their landing page and more. Their score has jumped at the expense of yours. So don’t rest on the laurels of your perfect score. You should monitor your score on a regular basis, watch the historical data to assess the market dynamic, and stay ahead of your competitors.

How to view your historical scores

Getting this data is easy. Step-by-step directions for creating adCenter reports and checking your scores can be found in the adCenter help.

A couple tricks to remember in order to get your historical data.

1. You must create a Day report:

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2. You must customize the columns in your report to include the historical data:

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It takes just a few moments to create these reports. You can then save them and use as often as necessary.

So, make sure you are seeing the whole elephant; keep watch on your quality score and use the new historical data to identify trends will help you see your data in the right context and allow you to take action quickly when needed.

Stay tuned for our next blog post with tips for improving your campaign. We’ll discuss the other new quality score feature: The Aggregated Quality Score. Until then, happy advertising!

Thanks for reading,

Joe Holliday, adCenter User Assistance Team