Tracking AdWords Content Network Conversion

How to do it properly

[smallcompany]

I've always turned my back to content network because I have never been able to turn it work for me properly.
Then it happened I got the campaign that seemed to work, so I let it go for some time, but never analyzed it thoroughly (until today).
Now I see that I've been loosing money, but also see that with proper tune up I could turn it around.

The problem is about tracking the source of conversion.

I use my own PHP based coding which simply extracts domain names and variables which I turn into reporting system.
That works fine for things like Paid Search and Organic, but not with Content.

When I run Google's placement report, I see a bunch of domains, while in my own reporting I see some, while the rest is something like "sedoparking", "doubleclick", "ndparking", and so on.

There is obviously a big discrepancy between where the traffic has originated from physically (like HTTP address) vs. how Google reports it in own reports which I consider fine as they tell you the real domain name, not where it was parked.

How you deal with this? How to get a PROPER source so I can tune this up?

Thanks

[LucidSW]

That's another reason to use only site targeting, what Google now calls managed placement, instead of them using my keywords (automatic placement) to find sites to show my ads. You have control over the sites you want your ads on. Your CTR will go up and so will your conversions. Just an example, one client so far this month is getting a 2% CTR and 7% conversion rate on the content campaign I manage for him.

[smallcompany]

site targeting

I have a campaign within the same account that targets sites I believe would bring conversion and, from time to time, I see sales originating from there. The problem is that the traffic is so tiny compared to the other "regular" content campaign.

Originally, I have setup targeted first, and seeing no traffic I then setup the other one. To be honest, when I put all data together, for all few months since I've been running this, I'm still on positive side, it is just that I had some months off, and that I see sites that solely took around or over 10k in just one month.

So, the next natural step is to find out where the sale has originated from in a regular campaign, target the site in other campaign, and go forward.

How the heck to do that if Google keeps it hidden? I don't say something is hidden on sole purpose by Google, it can easily be hidden by companies that manage ads on those sites (like SEDO).

By simply extracting URI, I should be able to get right information.

Urghhh...

[LucidSW]

> The problem is that the traffic is so tiny compared to the other "regular" content campaign.

So what? It's higher quality traffic. But if you don't like the quantity, then stop that campaign and do one where you'd get lots of impressions but likely much lower click rate and lesser quality traffic.

You can find out where traffic comes from if that's what you're after. Just look in your site's log files.