Digital Marketing

What is Ad Tracking and Why Should You Use It?

Author
Lola Connelly
Published
5th April 2022
Length
4 minute read

Ad tracking is an excellent way to find out how your users are interacting with your campaigns, and in particular what grabs their interest the most.

If you are looking to create a more profitable campaign, then ad tracking is an effective way to measure performance across multiple platforms such as Google and social media. Through this, you can collect data on everything from views and clicks to impressions and behaviour.

What is ad tracking

Have you ever had an ad that looks a little too personalised? Or an ad pops up to something you have just researched? This is due to tracking software, such as Google ad tracker to access your online habits and produce a personalised and relevant service to you. Ad tracking is a brilliant tool for measuring ad performance and conversions, and it will grant you the opportunity to advertise products more effectively.

 

What Ad Tracking can Help You With

Ad tracking does not only help the advertiser, but the online experience for the individual is more personalised and tailored. With ad tracking you can obtain multiple metrics on the behaviour of your audience and answer many different questions, for instance:

  • How much time did the user spend on the ad?
  • Did they click on the CTA to gather more information?
  • Did the user interact any further with the ad?
  • How many individuals viewed the ad?

How Do You Track Ad Data?

In total there are three ways, performance, clicks and conversions can be measured:

 

URL Tracking

URL tracking is an efficient way to track your audience’s behaviour on your site, as it lets you track how well your links are performing in terms of impressions, number of clicks and click-through rate (CTR). A lot of the time URL tracking also includes demographic analytics, so you can determine the best group to aim your ads at. URL tracking is the best option for when you are running a PPC campaign, sending an email or putting ads on other websites.

 

Tracking Pixels

Another popular way to obtain data is through tracking pixels. These are small, often 1 x 1 transparent images that are placed over ads, emails, or web pages. This will help you gain a comprehensive view on your audience, track how many people have viewed your ad, as well as how many people have clicked on it. This can be particularly helpful when you are trying to determine the effectiveness of an ad, and communicate whether the targeting or platform is successful.

 

Cookies

The last type of tracking is cookies. And in many ways the driving force behind most retargeted ads. Most of us have been in the situation of agreeing to the ‘cookie’ policy when going on a new website, and this is because companies need consent before tracking activity and creating a customised user experience. It also allows businesses to retarget ads, track all the information about your audience’s browsing behaviour and potentially build a user profile on an individual’s habits online.

 

 

Why it is Great for your Business

Understand your audience better

Knowing your audience is the single most important thing you can do to ensure an edge over your competitors. You can provide a deep and meaningful experience for your audience, with a tailor made experience to their buying habits. It will help you answer the questions:

  • What does your audience respond to?
  • Where are they coming from?
  • What is the most popular demographic?

 

Answering these questions will provide an abundance of valuable information, and provide the best experience for potential customers.

 

Personalise your content

After finding out what works best for your audience, you are able to personalise and make better budgetary decisions. The more tracking you use, the more data you can collect and learn more about your audience. Did you know that ad relevance is one of the biggest struggles when it comes to engagement with advertising. So, by knowing your audience, you can receive more clicks and higher CPC.

 

Better Return On Investment

Anyone who invests in digital marketing is looking to make a good return on investment (ROI). And with ad tracking allowing you to create personalised and tailored ads, you are more likely to earn conversions. Furthermore, incorporated data found from ad tracking helps businesses improve their click-through rates and reduce bounce rates.

 

The Wrap Up

In conclusion, ad tracking is a fantastic way to gather a closer insight into your audience and benefit potential customers. Want to know how the predictive search function helps you win clients? Click here to find out.

 

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