Tracking Conversions From Two Or More Monetization Models Through MSN adCenter Pay Per Click

Writing by Brick Marketing on Thursday, 28 of February , 2008 at 10:29 am

If you are using MSN adCenter to drive traffic to your landing pages on which you have more than one monetization model then you’ll need to do some testing to see if your ads are making you any money. The reason why is quite simple - MSN adCenter will track your conversions, but if you have more than one monetization model then it will be difficult to tell precisely what is converting and what isn’t.

Here’s the scenario:

You have a landing page with Google AdSense and Amazon.com affiliate links on it. But that landing page also links to other pages of your website. With MSN adCenter, you can drive pay per click traffic to that landing page with very inexpensive click prices. But if you are paying for clicks at or above the amount that you make per click on your Google AdSense ads then you may not be making any money on your Pay Per Click efforts. How would you know?

To further complicate issues, you cannot track individual users on your website and know whether a particular user clicked on an AdSense ad, an Amazon.com affiliate link, or a link to another page on your website, unless you have the right software. Some of that software is pretty expensive and could be cost prohibitive for a newbie or if you are selling low-cost items.

If you are tracking your traffic through Google Analytics then all you’ll see are generalizations about your traffic patterns. How do you know whether you are making money from your MSN adCenter ads or if the money you are making on your AdSense and Amazon.com affiliate links are from organic search? Without being able to track individual users and knowing what they are purchasing after they land on your site, or leave it, you can’t.

Amazon.com’s tracking allows you to see which types of links are performing for you, but you can’t see which specific links are performing you. You can know what products people are purchasing, but you don’t know which specific link they clicked to get to Amazon.com because neither Google Analytics nor Amazon.com will tell you that. The best thing you can do is use Google Analytics to get a site overlay that will show you which links are clicked on and which ones are not. That’s useful information, but you don’t know if that 5% click through rate on the special link at the bottom of your landing page is resulting in sales at Amazon.com. You need more information.

It is complicated to know what both of your monetization sources are producing simultaneously. I recommend taking the AdSense off of your landing page for one month to test how your Amazon, or other affiliate program, is performing on its own. Don’t change what you are doing with your MSN adCenter Pay Per Click ads. Keep those exactly the same. You are isolating your monetization sources. After testing the affiliate program for one month to see how it performs with your MSN adCenter ads, put the Google AdSense code back into your web pages and see what that does to your revenue stream. You will know right away whether or not your Pay Per Click ads are making you any money. If you see your conversions go up after adding your AdSense back onto your landing page then you are probably losing money on your adCenter ads (subject to your MSN adCenter click prices vs. your earnings at AdSense). The important things to look at is your affiliate program revenue. If your revenue without Google AdSense is more than what you are spending on your advertising then you are making money. If it is less after putting the AdSense back in then you’ll need to make a decision about whether to keep the AdSense off of that page or lower your MSN adCenter bid amounts.

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Category: Microsoft Ad Center, PPC Management

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