On their own, ad platforms only see how many people saw an ad and how many clicked it. What happened after the click, whether someone bought or filled in the form, is reported back to them by a tracking code installed on the website. At Meta this is called a pixel, at Google a tag or conversion tracking.
We usually install the tracking code through a tag manager, for example Google Tag Manager, so the website's code only has to be touched once, and new measurements can later be set up without involving the developer.
In conversion tracking we define which steps count as important. For a webshop these are adding to the basket and the purchase, for a service company the quote request or a click on the phone number. We record these as events and set them up as conversions in the ad account.
What measurement is good for
- You can see which campaign and which ad brings real enquiries, and which only brings clicks
- The algorithm starts showing the ad to people who are more likely to act
- Remarketing campaigns can be launched for visitors who abandoned the basket or read the site
- You can move the budget to the channel where it brings the most results
The measured data appears both in the ad account and in the analytics. The two rarely show exactly the same numbers, because they count by different methods, so in decisions we watch the direction and proportion of the change.
The reliability of the measurement depends on the setup. A common mistake is for an event to be counted twice, for example because the thank-you page sends it again when refreshed, or for an important step not to be measured at all. That is why we test before the campaign launches that every event fires in the right place and only once.
Browsers and phones restrict more and more tracking, so next to the traditional pixel, server-side tracking is often needed as well, which sends the events from the website's server. It complements the pixel and gives a fuller picture of what the campaigns bring.
Setting up measurement is the first step of our ad management, because without it fine-tuning the campaigns would rest on guesswork. We also check the setup in the first days of the campaign.
