Conversion Lift for GDN

Google's Conversion Lift measures the incrementality of GDN campaign.

How Conversion Lift for GDN works

Conversion Lift measures causal differences in conversion behavior and site visit behavior

Test group: Those who saw your ad

Control group: Those who would have seen your ad, but didn't

Why Conversion Lift's methodology is better:

1. Cheaper: 

- only pay for the ads that users see during the test

- 70 / 30 test vs control

2. Fast: Depending on conversion volume, can see initial results as quickly as 2 weeks: avg test lasts ~3 weeks.

3. More sensitive: 

- Cross-device enabled for a truly user-based view

- Imp-tracking of control group users allows us to compare behavior only of those users who received the control ad imp. instead of those who would have

- Eliminates noise in the data, providing the most sensitive and accurate measurement possible

Keep in mind: Measured uplifts are conservative

- within the time period of our experiment - often impact continues beyond

- Users in the control group could have been inadvertently exposed to your ads run on other network

- Users clear their cookies (cookie churn)

- Users reject cookies or opt out of tracking

- Some purchase channels might not be tracked

Keep in mind: Incrementality is a function of much more than just the media channel itself

- Make sure that your campaigns are setup to maximize incremental impact

- Ensure that the creative is impactful

- Other factors like seasonality or running the same ads on other channels concurrently can affect/dilute test results

How to get started:

1. Current Technical Requirements:

- through GDN

- Using unconditional AdWords conversion tracking

- AdWords remarketing pixel placed across site for measuring site visits

- Not concurrently running additional Brand Lift or Brand interest on the same campaigns

2. Current Test Requirements:

- Account needs 125 conversions (Click/View through) during past 7 days, 500 conversions during study

- Sufficient budget in first 14days of test (1.5M impressions) - check with your Google contact for budget requirements for your region

- 28 days test duration

Methodology Definitions

PSAs, Public service announcements (aka placeholder campaigns) are not used by Google's Conversion Lift. In PSA tests, typically the control group is formed by users who have been exposed to a "neutral" placeholder instead of the ad. However, because of the way in which display campaigns and ad servers work, the group exposed to the ad to test and to PSA are likely different kinds of audiences, so andy estimate of uplifts based on a comparison of the conversion behavior between the 2 groups is likely to be inaccurate.