Google Eliminates AdWords’ Converted Clicks, What Now?
In late September, Google retired AdWords’ converted clicks and conversions will now be taking their place. This change is a result of Google now considering converted clicks an outdated metric.
Conversions are a desired action made after clicking on AdWords, they represent how valuable your online ads are to your business. The conversions data column is now the default way to measure actions taken on a website following an AdWords click.
Advertisers who are still using converted clicks as a metric in reports or target CPA bidding must start migrating to the conversions metrics instead.
The Effects of Retiring Converted Clicks
Retiring converted clicks will effect advertisers who aren’t using automated bidding, namely Target CPA bidding, for their PPC campaigns. They will notice changes in reports where the converted clicks column will be retired.
If you are already aligned to conversions, then you are set, the only change will be in report metrics. If you are still using converted clicks, you need to migrate to conversions to avoid any problems in your campaign.
Steps to Migrate
1. Change the conversion bid metric from converted clicks to conversions.
- From the tool bar menu, select conversions
- On the right side, select Settings and switch the conversion bid metric from converted clicks to conversions.
AdWords will apply this automatically across your devices. You may see a noticeable difference between the number of conversions and the number of converted clicks in your account at this point, you may also notice a change in performance or bids, or both. To fix these challenges, follow the next steps.
2. Set your conversion action count to one, so bid strategy won’t be affected.
In the Tools tab, change every conversion count to one under conversion actions, to avoid counting every conversion you have. You can also do this automatically through a tool Google offers: migration tool.
Unchanged count settings may lead to destabilize the behavior of AdWords bidding strategies.
3. Include/exclude conversions from conversion column (optional).
If you have a lot of conversion actions, you can let Adwords tally up certain types of conversions to remove certain actions that are less relevant to your bidding strategy. If there is a particular conversion action that you don’t want to influence the behavior of a bid strategy, just uncheck the “Include in Conversions” setting.
4. It is not necessary to change your bid strategy, but AdWords may change your CPA Targets automatically.
AdWords has expressed that it “may also adjust your CPA targets to avoid significant fluctuations in your campaign spending”. So, it is important to ensure the above steps have been followed accurately so there is as little fluctuation in CPA focuses as could be expected under the circumstances.
Summary
While you roll out these improvements, the time you spend in AdWords to adjust for these changes will be worth it and help enhance the outcome of your paid advertisements.
