The following is part of a series of tips and tricks on using DoubleClick Search V3 (DS3) more effectively. Stay tuned for more suggestions on using DS3 in future blog posts!
DS3 can report on all actions equally. However, what if you’re an advertiser whose complex website includes a variety of user interactions, where every interaction is not the same value? For example, a website can have free and premium downloads. While premium downloads are the primary action that you care about, a free download may be worth a fraction of a premium download. How can the advertiser account for these various actions in DS3 reporting?
After the Floodlight instructions are configured, you can select any of the following columns to see the weighted performance in DoubleClick Search V3 (DS3) reporting:
DS3 can report on all actions equally. However, what if you’re an advertiser whose complex website includes a variety of user interactions, where every interaction is not the same value? For example, a website can have free and premium downloads. While premium downloads are the primary action that you care about, a free download may be worth a fraction of a premium download. How can the advertiser account for these various actions in DS3 reporting?
With the Weighted Actions feature, you can change the importance of certain actions by applying a priority, or weight, to them. A numerical weight can be applied to actions that originate from a specific webpage based on its Floodlight tag. In the example above, if a free download is worth 10% of a premium download, you can set the following weights:
The Weighted actions column would then record each free download as 0.1 action. The other weighted columns (such as Clicks/wt action and Wt action conv %) would also treat it as 0.1 action when calculating their values.
- Premium downloads: 1.0
- Free downloads: 0.1
The Weighted actions column would then record each free download as 0.1 action. The other weighted columns (such as Clicks/wt action and Wt action conv %) would also treat it as 0.1 action when calculating their values.
Apply weighted actions
First, contact your Technical Account Manager or email ds-support@google.com to set up the Floodlight instructions for the desired weighted actions. Note that you can only set weighted actions on action (counter) tags.After the Floodlight instructions are configured, you can select any of the following columns to see the weighted performance in DoubleClick Search V3 (DS3) reporting:
- Weighted actions: The number of actions that are included in the Floodlight instructions for weighting.
- Clicks/wt action: The average amount of clicks it takes to result in a weighted action.
- Cost/wt action: The average amount you're spending per weighted action that a consumer performs.
- Wt action conv %: Weighted actions divided by clicks. This percentage gives you an indication of how frequently customers are completing actions based on the number of clicks. For example, if 10 users click on an ad, four of them sign up for catalog subscriptions, and the weight is 2.0, the Weighted Action Conversion Percentage will be 80%, calculated by (4 x 2) / 10.
- Wt actions/cost: The number of weighted actions for each dollar you spend.
A few things to keep in mind:
- Weighted actions do not affect automated bid strategies in DS3. It is solely a reporting feature.
- Setting up Floodlight instructions for weighted actions does not affect the Actions column and other actions-related columns. If no instructions are set for weighted actions, the Actions and Weighted actions columns will have the same value.
- DS3 will calculate weighted actions starting on the day you enter the weights. For example, if you enter weights today, the stats up through yesterday will not be weighted.
For more information on weighted actions and other reporting features in DS3, please visit the Help Center.
Posted by the DoubleClick Search team
