The Online Advertising Playbook: Proven Strategies and Tested Tactics from The Advertising Research Foundation

Measuring Search Engine Marketing Campaigns

There is a need for better measurement and measurement practices. Within those firms that do measure, only 28% of them circulate reports (Eisenberg and Novo 2002). Even in e-commerce, where one expects paid text ad ROI to be diligently and closely managed by green eyeshade types, the metrics picture is equally dim. Jupiter analyst Nate Elliot believes that pay-per-click costs and trends toward campaign complexity underscore the need for better use of metrics by marketers for campaign evaluation and smarter bidding. “In that environment,” he says, “it is even more important they become sophisticated” (quoted in Morrissey 2004).

Our discussion of metrics is organized into three parts: (1) advertising performance, where we review the pulling power of text ads and listing; (2) the application of survey and website metrics to gauge branding; and (3) business measures.

Advertising Performance

• Keywords are analyzed for their abilities to generate traffic and website conversions.

• Rankings refer to positions for organic search listings or search text ad position. Not all advertisers seek the top rank, but want to appear within a targeted range. Advertisers focus on managing rank for their best-performing keywords.

• Click-throughs count the number of times consumers click on text ads or organic links that drive traffic to brand websites during the campaign or within a defined period of time. Click-throughs have become less important over time as marketers ...