CJ SmartRewards to track AdWords conversion rates

Does this make any sense?

[skunkmark]

Can Commission Junction's SmartRewards Shopper ID (SID) program be used to track ad conversion rates by manually assigning a unique SID to each ad in your campaign? That's not really what it was designed to do (it allows you to tag individual sales for incentive programs, etc). Seems like this might be a (free) way to go beyond G's individual ad CTR tracking to see actual conversion rates (to measure which ads/keywords are converting). Does any of that even make sense? I'm just starting all this stuff...

[jeremy goodrich]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

First, let me say I know next to nothing about CJ's systems. However for the purposes you are envisioning, there are a number of commercial products that will give you ROI on a per keyword / per referrer basis.

If you try searching for things like PPC management, or roi tracking software, etc in your favorite engine, I'm sure you can find a few commercial products that will fit your needs.

The basics of ROI tracking aren't that difficult, at the 'root level' all you need to do is set a unique cookie based on referrer & keyword, and then start logging the user behavior on your site after that.

[jeremy goodrich]

You can get started at AdWords just as soon as you input your ad campaigns and set them up (there is no editorial review before they go live on Google.com).

However, they won't be syndicated to their partners (AOL etc) until after they have been reviewed by the Google Editorial team.

If you are doing affiliate stuff, there are a few options -> use your own redirect *before* the user gets to the merchant redirect, so you know what keyword(s) motivated the click through to the merchant (yes, incomplete cause you don't have a sale, but "closer" to getting what you want). Between the keyword data that can be gained this way & a time stamp, you can correlate some of the sales to keywords, but not all, certainly.

Then, some affiliate programs offer their members the ability to insert a tracking gif on the 'thanks' page, which when used with a product (like those you mentioned) can give you the 'ROI' part of the equation you are looking for.

[quotations]

>Incidentally, I signed up with AdWords about 40 hours ago and haven't heard anything since. I expected an autoresponder asking for my credit card info within minutes.

>I had the "see your ad in 15 minutes" hype in my head and wasn't expecting to have to wait 2 or 3 days just to get started...

I don't remember waiting at all after signing up.

I thought it was live right away.

[fliks]

> Incidentally, I signed up with AdWords about 40 hours ago and haven't
> heard anything since. I expected an autoresponder asking for my
> credit card info within minutes.

Uhm... Did you fill out all the forms on [adwords.google.com...] already? The term 'autoresponder' in your post puzzles me and you have to enter your creditcard-details during signup. Did you sent any email to google and expected to see your login-details being sent back to you?

Just go to their website and signup. You will really see your ads going live a few minutes later.

[skunkmark]

ok, here's the problem: "email confirmation not received for this address" when I try to log in. I think my crappy ISP bounced back their "confirm address is valid" email. responding to that activates your account and than you can login and enter payment info. (this is what i was referring to when i mentioned autoresponder). sent an email to G support, but that was almost 14 hours ago. this is ridiculous, should i just sign up all over again? i know that officially you're not supposed to have two different accounts, so i was a little wary of that.

i did read that G editors don't work weekends and that if you make a change to your ad copy on a friday night, it won't appear on the partner network 'til monday. can anyone confirm this? thanks.

[Travel]

Yes, I have used SIDs from cj successfully with AdWords