New Insights on Estimated Total Conversions in A Multi-Screen World

Smartphones and tablets along with laptops and desktops have changed the way we work, shop, and have fun. It is a common feature to see consumers switch between multiple devices during the course of the day to shop or communicate. This has made the life of marketers a bit difficult as they have to figure out how their online advertising is driving conversions. With consumers adopting complex pathways before completing purchases it is imperative that marketers have fair knowledge of these pathways so that they can optimize their advertising spends.

Estimated total conversion is a system which gives such insight. It tells advertisers how AdWords is driving a business forward by providing data on online sales as well as providing data on estimated conversions that will happen from multiple devices. Experts hope to add phone calls and store visits to this list to give a comprehensive picture.

With Estimated total conversion, marketers will know exactly how their Google search advertising is affecting their business. Earlier individual advertisers used in-house techniques and analysis to get such insights. However, Google has now decided to give this insight to all advertisers across the board.

A cross device conversion is one where a customer researches a product or service on a tablet and then goes to another device like a laptop to make the purchase. Google will now calculate cross device conversion with the help of data from users that have signed-in on multiple devices.

This service is being launched globally for all AdWords advertisers. If you are an AdWords advertiser all you need is ‘conversion tracking’ and enough volume of conversions on which Google can base its estimate.

According to Google people involved in the travel business were able to track 8% more conversions than before and they could also measure 33% more conversions that basically originated on a smartphone, but eventually converted on totally different device like a laptop or a tablet. This ability is giving fresh insight to advertisers on the effectiveness of their ad campaign.

Most other verticals like entertainment, retail, etc are seeing a similar trend. Advertising investment is perhaps the single biggest overhead a business has, and the ability to accurately measure and calculate the value you are getting is most essential.

With this new system in place you no longer have to worry about multi-screen users before deciding your advertising budgets. In the near future Google intends to incorporate phone calls and store visits also to this data. This was inevitable given the fact that an approximately 40 million calls were initiated due to Google ads.

Google hopes to get feedback from advertisers so that they can further fine tune the estimated cross device conversion system.