Google Brings Estimated Cross-Device Conversions To Display Ads

With users engaging on multiple devices throughout their day, marketers face attribution challenges in understanding how (or if) their media is working. Google is one of the players trying to solve this problem for advertisers running campaigns across its platforms.

Today, Google started rolling out estimated cross-device conversions for display ads across the Google Display Network. This is an extension of estimated cross-device conversions for search ads, which Google introduced a year ago as a piece of Estimated Total Conversions Estimated Total Conversions also includes call conversions and the promise off in-store conversions.

Google’s gives this example of how this works:

. . . say someone’s browsing bicycle reviews on her phone, and clicks on a Display Network ad that takes her to a bike shop’s website. Later, when she gets home, she pulls up the shop’s site on her computer to buy the red cruiser she’s been eyeing. This is an example of a cross-device conversion from a display ad that advertisers can now measure.

Cross-device conversions rely on aggregated, anonymized data from users who have previously signed in to Google. That data is then used to estimate the number of cross-device conversions attributed to AdWords campaigns.

A few things for practitioners to note:

• The reliability of cross-device conversions, of course, depends on the volume of data available. Advertisers without sufficient data will not receive cross-device estimates. Google says the number of conversions need varies because of how estimated conversions are calculated.
• Another limitation is AdWords is not able to provide cross-device conversion estimates for conversion data imported from Google Analytics Goals.

Taking estimated cross-device conversions into consideration — even knowing this is at a proxy level –can influence the way advertisers value and bid on mobile advertising. Not coincidentally, Google also just debuted new mobile display ad formats and tools that automatically convert existing assets to rich media ads to fit all devices and screens.

Estimated cross-device conversions are reported in AdWords at the campaign level.