The Different Value Columns in AdWords
Unless you’re focused on brand awareness, conversions are the lifeblood to any campaign success. To understand the true ROI your campaigns are achieving, it helps to associate a dollar amount to your conversions to be able to compare those numbers with your costs. Ecommerce accounts have it easier since all you have to do is make sure you’re revenue tracking is set up properly. In lead gen or B2B, you can associate estimated values to your goals in Google Analytics.
There are two ways you can add value data in AdWords. First is to add the value amount yourself to certain conversion types such as this phone call conversion.
The second way, and my preferred way, to import your value numbers into AdWords is to just take the information from Google Analytics. Before going deep into any campaign, whether PPC or not, you should always make sure your Google Analytics data is correct and clean. If that’s not a problem, then let AdWords use your Analytics data and save you some time.
After you have value numbers set up in AdWords, you can then start reviewing those numbers alongside your campaign, ad group or keyword views. Let’s now go through the four value columns you can add to your reporting in AdWords.
Impr. Assisted Conv. Value
The first value column we’re going to talk about can be found under Attribution when adding columns.
Impression Assisted Conversion Value is the value number associated to your metrics when a user sees your ad but does never clicks on it. I find this column to be very valuable in Display or other brand awareness campaigns. The reason is that I can get a better understanding if my initial impression from PPC is helping drive traffic and conversions to other channels.
Click Assisted Conv. Value
The second assisted conversion value column you can add is also found under Attribution.
This column will show the conversion value number from all the clicks your ads have gotten except for the last click. All last click value data will be attributed to the metric of the final conversion point. Whenever I review campaigns that have higher cost/conversion numbers than I’d like, I like to look at the Click Assisted Conversion Value along with assisted conversion data in Google Analytics. Doing so will give me some insight on if my campaigns are still helping my client grow. If the campaign is still valuable I won’t pause the campaign, but look at other ways to improve its performance.
All Conv. Value
All Conversion Value is the total value of all of your conversions, including advanced sources like cross-device conversions and conversion actions. For instance, if someone were to search on their cell phone for a product, click on and ad, and then make a purchase on the site on a desktop, the associated value would be counted here.
This is, however, not a direct science. Google has admitted that sometimes this value metric does not capture every cross-device conversion based on various factors. Most likely the column you’ll want to use is…
Total Conv. Value
The final column is also found in the Conversions, column section.
Total Conversion Value includes only data from conversion actions that you’ve chosen to include. This relates to what I said in the intro about adding dollar amounts to your goal values. If you don’t attribute any value to your conversions than you will never see any data in this column.
Whether you’re ecommerce and can track revenue value or B2B and need to assign a value of your own, put in a little extra effort to find out how valuable your campaigns really are.