The New AdWords Report That Will Change Your PPC Plans

October 31, 2017

AdWords Search once openly offered a report that showed the volume of users you interacted with as well as how many interactions you conducted prior to a click or conversion. Much to my chagrin, this feature was rescinded back in 2015 and hasn’t been its old self since.

Following these changes, many of us have adapted to what we can’t see, to the fact that frequency caps are a bit of a trial and error process, or something obtained from Google Analytics reporting (which may or may not be consistent with your Search data):

But like manna from the Google heavens, we are beginning to see resurgence in this type of reporting. While we’ve been busy complaining about adapting to the new AdWords UI, they’ve been sneaking in all sorts of useful tools and features.

The new Days Until Conversion metric has appeared in the new AdWords UI and is bringing more context to our day to day PPC efforts.

1. Where To Find This Feature

As mentioned, this is something you can find in the new AdWords UI (yes yes, technically you can find it in the old one, but that’s so 2017).

New AdWords UI:

Good Ol’ 2017 Adwords :

2. Initial Gains From This Report

Keywords, Ad Groups, Campaigns

Each of these dimensions can be segmented by Days to Conversion. This allows you to look more closely at the content you’re targeting and where it falls in the proverbial Sales Funnel.

Frequency Cap Insights

Upon reviewing your most successful days to conversion, this allows for a clearer picture of the window to purchase. If you know the 7^th day is a strong day for folks to finally convert, how are you interacting with them up to that point?

Remarketing Window Suggestions

My personal favorite, the remarketing window takes a nice clean shape (by keyword, ad group or campaign!) by showing you when your customers are at the prime to convert. Does your remarketing strategy address this timing? Well maybe it should!

3.Initial Losses

Segmentation Opportunities

This report is not in the ad or ad extension level, nor can we see metrics for any of the other delightful dimensions such as landing page, video, audience.

Level Of Detail

Additionally, there are no segment-level data beyond conversion numbers. Yes, this includes conversions, value/cost, and conversion rate, but specific click and cost estimates aren’t provided in detail.

Previous Metrics Removed

Where we previously had CTR and Conv Rate data in the reach & frequency report, we don’t have it now. This blurs the clear connection between impressions and final conversions, but because of Google’s priority of attribution and anonymity, I suspect this will forever remain a bit of a mystery.

4. Next Steps

Applying insights to your remarketing strategy and frequency capping. Stay tuned for more in-depth analysis of this data. From a simply look in the interface all the way to a chart as glorious as this:

Just glancing over this list shows me who is potentially occupying my sales funnel and where I’m ultimately getting the most value. Improved remarketing, here I come!

The new Days to Conversions feature stands to open our eyes to in-AdWords data we’ve sure been missing.