Google’s Cross Device Conversions and Pay Per Call Marketing

Google recently announced a change in AdWords that is designed to help marketers better identify the source of conversions and the success of specific campaigns. The premise behind the change is that since users switch back and forth between devices and real world channels continuously, the actual source of a conversion may not be the channel in which the conversion finally occurred, and therefore be categorized as cross device conversions.

The new analytics start with a concept called Estimated Total Conversions. AdWords subscribers with sufficient conversion volumes will soon see the new column on their campaign dashboards. The Estimated Total Conversions consists of the hard number of conversions directly attributable to the campaign, and an estimate of conversions that may have been completed after consumer interactions on two or more devices or browsers.

In its early stages, Estimated Total Conversions will only appear for search ad traffic on Google.com. At first, the estimates won’t include traffic from AdSense, other Google properties or phone calls, although Google says they are working on ways to include all of this information in the short term.

Google estimates that people make about 40 Million calls each month directly from Google ads, so the impact of click to call measurement on conversion rates will be substantial. Companies with heavy click to call advertising may find that the results show that reallocating the budget to favor more click to call ads makes sense. We already know that 70 percent of mobile searchers call a business directly from mobile search results.

Google’s research also showed that regardless of the industry, the majority of users felt that click to call availability was an important feature of mobile search. For example:

  • 76 percent of users searching for local services would use click to call to schedule an appointment
  • 62 percent searching for auto parts and services would be very likely to use click to call
  • 61 percent of people searching for financial services information use click to call to access their bank accounts

Given the ubiquity and acceptance of click to call, including call results in campaign measurement is an important change in the way campaigns and advertising are measured, and this change will help to eliminate the distinctions between online and offline conversions, since it will be proven that each channel clearly influences the other.

The benefits of estimated Total Conversions to Pay Per Call marketers can be significant, and include:

  • Optimize your mobile bids by device.
  • Have better data on the true conversion rate so you can make better bids
  • Allocate budget and resources to accurately reflect results by channel
  • Gain a deeper understanding of the AdWords campaigns that influence conversions across devices and browsers.

Click to call marketers should keep a close watch on the progression of Google’s cross device conversion measurements since estimated conversions are likely to have a major impact on their budgets and the return they can expect on bids.