With the recent launch of Microsoft’s new paid advertising (PPC) service in the UK, we wanted to highlight how the online marketing tracking features in Google Analytics can be integrated with the new service.

The basic principle is the same for tracking other non-AdWords campaigns, i.e. adding the Google tracking variables to your destination URLs, so the first step is to identify your campaign variables:

Then you append these variables to your existing Destination URL – e.g. http://www.mysite.com/landing_page.htm becomes:
http://www.mysite.com/landing_page.htm?utm_source=MS_UK&
utm_medium=ppc&utm_term=keyword&utm_content=content1&
utm_campaign=campaign_name

Google provides a helpful URL Builder tool to facilitate the building of Campaign Tracking URLs.

There are also a few important issues with Microsoft adCenter in particular:

1) Use Internet Explorer. Even though MS have updated adCenter to support other browsers, our experience would indicate that the most reliable results are obtained from Explorer.

2) Dynamic Keyword Insertion. It is possible to use dynamic variables to insert your exact keywords as the utm_term value by using the adCenter value of {param1}, but you will still need to upload the list of {param1} values manually. This can be a complex process and is recommended only for experienced PPC users managing large campaigns.

3) Uploading your Campaign Tracking URLs. You can either add each URL manually, or if you have large numbers of keyword-specific URLs then you can upload this data from a pre-configured spreadsheet. The latter course of action is, again, complex and not readily understood from the on-screen instructions. Basically, in Step 2. – Ads, select ‘Keyword Destination URL‘ from the Destination URL dropdown. Then in Step 3. – Keywords, select ‘Import or Export Keywords‘ and upload the completed spreadsheet with the Campaign Tracking URLs in column F (Keyword Destination URL {param1})

4) Cost Data – As with other non-AdWords online marketing campaigns, you cannot import cost data into Google Analytics.

Overall, Microsoft’s adCenter looks like a valuable addition to the armoury of the online marketer. There still seem to be a few kinks to work out in the management console itself, but as long as you are tagging your links using the technique described above then Google Analytics can analyse how successful adCenter is at bringing traffic and creating conversions for your website. For more information on how to interpret the data in your reports, we recommend the Top 10 Google Analytics Reports for Search Engine Marketers whitepaper.

If you require assistance setting up an adCenter campaign or migrating an existing PPC campaign to adCenter, then GA Experts’ parent company, Omega Digital Media, has a range of PPC management services that can help.