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Contextual advertising indicators. Analysis of the effectiveness of contextual advertising

In this article, we want to talk about how to properly analyze the effectiveness of contextual advertising. The context is working, the ad is running, the statistics graphs are inexorably going up and you are celebrating victory to yourself, but everything is cut off when the customer calls and says that everything is just awful and he no longer wants to work with you. How to avoid this situation? Patience, my young friend! Now you know everything.

Another important aspect is that contextual advertising is too overrated and often problems can lie outside of it: an outdated product, a site that does not convert traffic, poor processing of applications, and so on. Therefore, even if the analysis of the effectiveness of the context in all respects showed a failure, before drawing conclusions, analyze all the other stages of working with the client.

Criteria for evaluating contextual advertising

Let's talk sensibly. What do you think the evaluation criteria contextual advertising can and should be used in reporting and further planning? Contextual advertising, like any other type of advertising, has a specific goal - to sell. This is the main and main criterion in the analysis of the effectiveness of contextual advertising. Not CTR or conversion, but the number of new customers. Let you have a cosmic CTR and a stunning conversion, but all this fades if zero stubbornly looms in the purchase graph.

The importance of online advertising performance metrics in descending order:

  • net profit;
  • the number of concluded contracts;
  • the number of applications (leads) and calls received;
  • site conversion from a visitor to an application;
  • average cost per click and number of clicks (traffic);
  • the number of keywords in advertising campaign.

Make a table, enter the above items there and put down a value for each indicator. Moreover, it is not necessary to evaluate the effectiveness of some separate platform (for example, Yandex Direct or Google AdWords), but individual campaigns, ad groups, and even single ads.

When drawing up a promotion strategy, immediately set yourself a specific goal, either the number of applications from the site, or, even better, sales. And voice your plan and goals to the customer. After all, there may be a reverse situation, when everything works in the best way. Traffic goes to the site, it converts, requests are constantly received, goods are sold, but at the same time the customer is not satisfied, because at some training he was inspired with the idea that the conversion should not be lower than 4%, and for example, you have it 2 .5%, but at the same time cheap traffic and still low cost of leads.

How to calculate the main indicators?

But in order for you to have those numbers and something to talk about, you must first enter your performance metrics and start tracking them.

Target actions:

1. Web analytics and conversions. Set up goals in Yandex Metrics and Google Analytics. This can be a subscription, downloading material, visiting a specific page or performing a targeted action on the site.

2. Phone calls. For each advertising source, it is better to use a separate phone number so that you can then determine what works effectively and gives the best qualitative and quantitative indicators. You can also use call tracking.

3. Offline. If the mechanisms of business in your area are arranged in such a way that the client finds information on the site, does not call, but immediately comes to the store to buy, and the seller does not always ask where the buyer came from, then it is reasonable to use promotional codes that give the right to purchase at a discount.

1. CTR. The simplest indicator. We take the number of clicks and divide by the number of ad impressions. With good CTR rates, the cost per click will decrease, and ads will be shown higher and more often.

2. Conversion. Everything here is also painfully familiar - the number of hits from the site must be divided by the number of visitors for a certain time period. To increase this indicator, it is necessary that the landing page contains the same information that is written in the advertisement. If you write in contextual advertising that your product costs 1000 rubles, and entering the site the user sees a figure 3 times more, then the conversion will tend to zero.

3. Client cost. By analogy with the previous paragraph, only now we divide all traffic costs by the number of new customers.

4. ROI- return on investment in advertising. A pure classic of economics. ROI = (Income - cost) / Investment * 100% or Net profit / Investment * 100%. those. how much the money that you invest in advertising pays off.

An example of analyzing the effectiveness of contextual advertising

Given. Construction company "My house". Monthly advertising costs: Yandex Direct - 20,000 rubles, Google AdWords - 22,000 rubles. Plus 10,000 for escort. Promotion period 3 months.

Thus total cost for 3 months\u003d 20000 * 3 + 22000 * 3 + 10000 * 3 \u003d 156,000 rubles.

During this time, Moi Dom concluded 9 contracts with a total value of 21 million rubles and a planned net profit of 3,150,000 rubles.

ROI= 3,150,000 / 156,000 * 100% ~ 2019%. That is, from each invested ruble, the company earns on average 2019 rubles. Such a high rate of profitability is due to the high marginality of the construction business. In other areas, achieving such ROI is much more difficult.

Using this knowledge, you can increase the effectiveness of any advertising campaign. The main thing is to take the context seriously. Good luck!

Analyzing the effectiveness of an advertising campaign is an important task facing the advertising industry. In contextual advertising, which we have been dealing with since 2002, there are tools for measuring any data. The results of contextual advertising can be tracked by the following indicators:

  • By advertising campaign - CTR, average cost per click, number of clicks
  • According to the performance indicators of the client's site - the number of visitors who came from an advertisement and made a purchase.

To measure these indicators, special counters are used, the codes of which are installed on all pages of the advertiser's website. We can offer setting up several web analysis systems at once:

Determine the goals of the advertising campaign

If the goal is set incorrectly or not at all, then the effectiveness of the advertising campaign cannot be measured and will put the agency in an unpleasant situation where the client will be dissatisfied, despite the money and time spent.

“We want to get 100 registrations per month, and each registration should cost no more than 400 rubles.”

Bad example:

"We want to increase the number of customers." In the case of setting such a goal, when evaluating the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, the advertiser and the agency will have to go into philological disputes.

Goals that can be measured quantitatively or numerically are called KPI(key performance indicators - Key Performance Indicators). Effective contextual advertising, as well as how well the keywords are chosen, can be seen from the KPI. It is by key performance indicators that you need to judge the results of an advertising campaign.

When analyzing an advertising campaign, it is important to compare KPI data with similar indicators before the campaign was launched. Which means tracking the effectiveness of advertising should begin even before it starts. How to do it? Let's talk about it below.

Learn more about efficiency counters

In order to analyze the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, web analysis systems are used. There are a huge number of them, the counters are divided into server and html counters. Google Analytics, Yandex.Metrika and LiveInternet are best suited for solving the problems of advertising campaigns.

These counters are related to the type of html counters and are installed directly on the site pages (unlike server options). This means that to install them, it is enough to have access to the content management system of the site. They are a short html code that works when you open the web page where it is installed.

The main convenience of using Google Analytics and Yandex.Metrica is that they are closely integrated with Google AdWords and Yandex.Direct contextual advertising campaign management systems. It is easier to get reports of interest to the advertiser in them than when using other counters, and to analyze the advertising campaign.

Using these tools, you can track and analyze the effectiveness of contextual advertising, as well as any other advertising campaigns conducted on the Internet. You can track banner ads, mailings, campaigns in Google AdWords, Direct , in Magna, MediaTarget and any other systems.



To start tracking the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, in the counters to be determined Landing pages(or simply " Goals”), the achievement of which will mean the “transformation” of an ordinary site visitor into a target action on the site. The process of such a transformation is called the term "conversion ».

However, at the moment when a visitor who is interested in our services gets to the Landing Page, for example, a contact form with the sales department, he instantly turns into an individual useful to us, and the counter writes a “conversion” to his account - a useful action displayed in the corresponding reports of the counter.

Conversion rate - this is the ratio of the number of useful actions to the total number of visits to the site - this is one of the most important parameters that shows effective contextual advertising at the moment or not. It shows how “quality” the audience was attracted to the site with the help of an advertising campaign.

A huge responsibility for the effectiveness of the campaign lies with the site owners - if the site is inconvenient for the user, no advertising can turn interested visitors into useful ones.

The above example is worth clarifying: The landing page for the completed form will not be the form itself, but the page that is shown after clicking on the “submit form” button. So we will know that the visitor accurately filled out and sent it. This is how tracking on the iConText site works - take a look at our sales contact form.


We calculate the limit values ​​​​of target indicators

Once we know our conversion rate, we can do some fun arithmetic: calculate how many of those who came through advertising become useful visitors, and how much each of them cost. Further, by analyzing the advertising campaign, you can calculate how many of the "useful" ones become customers and what is the average transaction size. And knowing the margin from each transaction, you can Calculate the maximum click value you can afford to pay per ad visitor. Consider an example:

1. Let's assume that the site conversion is 5% (that is, 5% of the visitors who came buy our service or perform another targeted action on the site). This means that out of 20 attracted visitors, only 1 will become a client.

2. Suppose that the average sale through the site is 2,000 rubles. If the margin is 20%, then the profit from each sale will be 400 rubles.

3. Accordingly, the maximum amount of money that can be spent on attracting one client is these same 400 rubles (provided that we are ready to work “to zero” and not receive any profit at all).

4. Therefore, we are ready to pay 400 rubles for every 20 visitors (after all, the conversion is 5%). It turns out that the marginal cost of a click is 400 rubles / 20 visitors = 20 rubles.

5. We check: If a click costs 20 rubles, then attracting 20 visitors costs 20 × 20 = 400 rubles, of these twenty, only one will buy a product that will bring us a profit of the same 400 rubles.

6. These simple calculations can be adjusted taking into account how much of the profit of 400 rubles you are willing to spend on attracting new customers. Accordingly, the lower this figure, the lower the marginal cost per click.

7. Once you've settled on your marginal cost per click, it's time to take a look at the competitive landscape for the topic—is it even possible to buy clicks for that price?

We measureROI – cthe most important performance indicator

After we measured our KPI we are ready to calculate the most important parameter of any advertising campaign - ROI (return on investment - return on investment). ROI of an advertising campaign is expressed as a percentage and shows the effectiveness of advertising investments.

For calculationROIthe following indicators are used:

  • Product cost - all costs for the purchase of parts for products, delivery to the warehouse, production of goods, wages to employees, etc.
  • Income- profit from the sale of a product or service.
  • Amount of investment - the total amount of investments in advertising.

In general, the formula for calculating the ROI of an advertising campaign looks like this:



If a ROI = 100%, it means you got twice as much money than invested in advertising. ROI can also be negative. Only with its help you can understand whether the advertising campaign was successful or failed.

Such an ROI analysis It is recommended to conduct at least once a month to keep track of current performance.

What does tracking provide? ROI?

You get a significant advantage over competitors who do not keep such detailed statistics. Realizing the return on your investment, you have the opportunity to increase the return on invested funds through their competent distribution.


Case for increasing the ROI of cybermarket Ulmart

Our tasks before launching the campaign:

Show all content

I remember the times when it was possible to launch contextual advertising on the site and get customers.

Following the increase in competition, investments increased, while efficiency, on the contrary, began to decline rapidly.

Therefore, now you can’t just hope for a chance, you need to be able to measure the effectiveness of contextual advertising and punish the performer for his mistakes in time.

But let's decide right away. Specialists in setting up contextual advertising will hardly be able to calculate the effectiveness of the provided models. Why so, you will soon understand.

Therefore, the article will be primarily useful to business leaders who receive reports with a huge number of figures that are impossible to understand. If this is about you, then sit down, we are on the way.

one by one

To start an article about the effectiveness of contextual advertising with a story about what contextual advertising is, in my opinion, this is bad manners. If you do not know what it is, then you are welcome to read the article

It describes everything in great detail and with examples (as in all our articles).

I’ll start by saying that for a specialist who makes contextual advertising (director), and for a business owner to whom a directologist brings these reports, efficiency is completely different things, and the criteria for evaluating it are also completely different.

In the director's head

For a typical director, the effectiveness of contextual advertising is measured in 4 dimensions. Rarely do we meet a specialist who looks further and deeper:

  1. Transitions. How many customers clicked on the ad after launching the ad.
  2. Company CTR. The ratio of ad impressions to the number of people who clicked on the ad.
  3. Click price. In contextual advertising, you pay only for clicks.
  4. Failures. Displaying the number of people who were on the site for less than 15 seconds (in Yandex.Metrica).

Healthy. You can easily see the first two indicators of the effectiveness of contextual advertising in any.

From the most intuitive, choose either Google.Analytics. To see the rest, you need access to your contextual advertising account.

It is by these indicators that directors evaluate their work. “CTR high? CPC going down? So what else do you want from me? I'm doing great!"

This is where the fun begins. Because the employer sees everything in completely different colors.

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In the head of the leader

For a business leader, the effectiveness of contextual advertising is measured as follows.

And ... In theory, there should be clear criteria by which each manager evaluates the "effectiveness of online advertising."

But they are not. For some, this is traffic on the site, and for others, calls and orders. For the third - the advertising budget that is being spent. For the fourth - the money in the box office at the end of the month.

But if the owner has been married to contextual advertising for more than a day, then, discarding imaginary criteria, he begins to come to logical goals, which, depending on the business, can have one of three forms of result:

  1. New (form on the site);
  2. calls;
  3. Purchases.

The third goal is the best. The first two are also not a bad option, although in the end they will still lead to the last one.

Each manager takes as a basis one of the listed results. And they are fundamentally different from what the director measures. Where is the truth now let's figure it out.

Three Approaches

- I spend 200 thousand rubles a month on advertising on the Internet. Where are my clients?
– You have a very high CTR.
– To hell with your C-T… how is it? Where is the efficiency?
- What do you think about efficiency? By what formula?
- What is the formula? I see few sales.
- Clearly.


This will not work

Do not do it this way. We are all serious businessmen, which means we must measure the results of contextual advertising with a serious approach.

Ideally, you should be able to understand the indicators of a directologist, but if you don’t like them, then you need to count everything in the money received.

Therefore, especially for you, dear reader, I have prepared 4 approaches for deciding whether your campaign is effective or not.

These are ready-made formulas according to the level of your knowledge and desire to know everything to the atom in your advertising.

ROMI: Beginner Level

The easiest way to evaluate the effectiveness of contextual advertising is to calculate the ROI.

It is a measure of return on investment that is used in almost every line of business.

If the ROI is more than 100%, then this is good news, so you most likely do not have a loss.

I say “probably not a loss” because you still need to remove the cost and other expenses. That is why this model is for beginners.

If you want to learn more about this approach and see how to calculate ROMI with examples, then I highly recommend reading our article.

CPL: Experience level

CPL is the cost of one call or, as it is now fashionable to say, the cost of a lead / application.

This indicator is calculated by the formula for a certain period of time. The typical period is a month, since once a month the company pays a salary to a director.

Since sometimes it is not possible to get through to all applications and talk about your product. Therefore, be sure to remove low-quality leads.

It remains only to combine the number of calls with applications for the final result.

By the way.If you want to connect call tracking, then I have a gift for you - a selection of TOP services. – 1,000 bonuses to the account (by code 99129), Roistat - 5,000 rubles. to the account (to the INSCALE code), Callibri (code 76C6IMERUQ), mango-office .

CPS: Very advanced level

CPS is the cost per sale. Only we call it customer value.

For example plastic windows, this is the one who left a request on the site, arranged a meeting with the manager and came to the office to make an advance payment. It is also calculated according to the formula:

To understand how adequate the cost of a client from the context you have now, you need to know the maximum allowable value, taking into account all expenses and income.

In addition, the cost of the client will be a great conversation starter with any director.

After all, after you tell him that you need sales (in the worst case, applications) for 2000 rubles, then he will not think to justify himself to you with a huge CTR.

But directologists are not stupid either, they will ask you for conversions on each . Therefore, be prepared for this.

LTV: Master Level

If you do this, then, firstly, you will be very surprised by the numbers received, and secondly, you will greatly change your outlook on attracting customers.

And thirdly, you will be head and shoulders above the 90% of Russian entrepreneurs who are still guided by the eye. And this means that the increase in work efficiency is not far off.

But trust me, it's worth it. This analysis of the effectiveness of contextual advertising is the most reliable. And looking ahead, it is not necessary to say that you do not have repeat sales.

They are in any business, you just have not implemented them yet. I can bet anything

By the way. If you are interested in analytics, I recommend testing the following services: Roistat (using the promo code “INSCALE” +5,000 rubles for testing), Comagic or Callibri (using the promo code “76C6IMERUQ” + 500 rubles).

BRIEFLY ABOUT THE MAIN

Business is not only luck and flair, but also calculation. In business, everything must be measured in numbers.

They may be beautiful on paper (high CTR and low CTR), but the quality of applications leaves much to be desired and in the end you will spend more on attracting a client than earning from him.

Therefore, the time for general calculations has passed. Read everything in detail. Moreover, now you know what you need to ask a directologist: ROMI, CPL or CPS adjusted for LTV.

The directologist will provide you with the first two indicators easily, but to get the second he will have to work hard, and, as you know, no one likes to do this. But stand your ground.

P.S. Most business leaders do not like advertising on Google.Adwords, believing that since I'm not sitting there, it will be effective for me.

And I want to disappoint you with fresh statistics on the cost of advertising in Google relative to Yandex:

  1. For the center of Russia, the cost of attraction was lower by 11.2%;
  2. For cities with a population over a million, the cost fell by 14.6%;
  3. For cities under a million, the result was up to 25.3% in favor of Google.

Advertising in Yandex.Direct or Google AdWords should solve specific business problems. To determine if you are moving in the right direction, you need to monitor each ad, optimizing its settings and gradually increasing the flow of targeted traffic. Customizing your ads target audience and budget, after a certain time after its launch, evaluate the results and increase ROI through a comparative analysis of several campaigns.

3 questions before starting work

What are the goals of your advertising campaign?

All goals should be expressed in measurable terms:

  • number of target actions;
  • CPA — cost of action in rubles;
  • campaign conversion percentage.

Let's say if you invite to a webinar, then your optimization goal might be to get 200 registrations. Sell ​​flower arrangements - increase the number of orders from the site by 4-5 times. Success in achieving results is determined by KPI. This is exactly the indicator that determines the whole. You need to make comparisons on it even before making all the settings.

What tools to use for analytics?

Best suited for this type of problem.

  • Google Analytics.
  • Yandex.Metrica.
  • liveinternet.

Why consider the effectiveness of contextual advertising?

Without evaluating conversion rates, you cannot make adjustments to the course of an advertising campaign. Ultimately, the results can be extremely unexpected, quite possibly unpleasant. Without conversion assessment, it is impossible to determine ROI - an indicator of your investment effectiveness. Moreover, it is important to calculate the conversion for individual advertising campaigns. This is the only way to understand what brings the desired result, make the maximum list of negative keywords, set up the necessary extensions, and then launch effective retargeting.

Analysis and conversion calculation

First of all, we fix the initial conversion rates. Then we determine the campaign budget and the average cost per click. Start from Yandex.Metrica data obtained during the previous optimization period. You can take information for all time and for the last week. So your audit will be deeper, and your expectations will be more justified.

Once you have decided on the time frame, move on to cleaning the campaign from non-targeted clicks. What should be removed first?

  • Inefficient keywords (everything that brought no more than 3 clicks).
  • Garbage words (what was skipped from Wordstat).
  • Ineffective display regions (characterized by low conversion).
  • Inefficient platforms in YAN.

For cleaning you will need statistics:

  • by keywords for the period of interest;
  • according to the phrases of YAN;
  • GEO for campaigns covering several regions or the whole of Russia.

Reports are summarized in an Excel spreadsheet. Now your task is to eliminate everything inefficient. After cleaning, we proceed to the analysis. It is carried out 1-2 weeks after the optimization. The number of clicks, CTR, cost per click and conversion rates are compared - before and after optimization.

Upon completion of determining the conversion values, we display the KPI. We use for this the conversion indicators obtained after cleaning. For example, your conversion rate is 5%. This means that out of 20 attracted visitors, only 1 will leave an application. Let's say the average check is 2000 rubles, and the profit from the sale with this number of visitors will be equal to 400 rubles. Accordingly, you can spend a maximum of 400 rubles to attract 1 client (or 20 visitors at the current conversion level).

Let's assume that the marginal cost of a click will be equal to 20 rubles (400/20). If a click costs $20, attracting 20 visitors will cost $400 (20X20), and the revenue at the end of the advertising campaign will be $1,600 (2000-400).

Conclusion: the maximum cost per click depends on the amount of net profit per client, conversion and how many times you want to increase investments. A click price of 20 rubles will allow you to return the money spent on advertising, but nothing more. An increase in profit from investments by 2 times is possible if the maximum cost per click does not exceed the amount of 10 rubles.

Measuring ROI

After measuring KPI, we will be able to determine the most important parameter of any advertising campaign - ROI. This is how we know the true value of our investments. The following formula is used to determine ROI:

The calculation will look like this:

((2000-1600)-400)/400 = 0.

The advertising campaign was not successful, because the ROI is zero. The investment paid off, but it was not possible to make a profit. To achieve a positive result, the cost of a click should not exceed 10 rubles. Only then the ROI will be 100%, and you will earn 2 times more than you invest:

((2000-1600)- 200)/200 = 1, or 100%.


Rules to follow when calculating the effectiveness of contextual advertising:

  1. Your investment should pay off. And advertising is to make a profit, and not just cover investments.
  2. In your measurements, you must be accurate and consistent. Cleaning and performance analysis first, not defining KPIs.
  3. The figures must be converted into real sales. Otherwise, there is no point in starting calculations.
  4. Analyze both your successes and failures. Take into account the worst and best campaigns, compare them by all indicators.
  5. Any analysis must be honest and objective. Don't sugarcoat the results. Only in this way can you achieve a truly excellent result.