Understanding Keyword Attribution

Our data scientists at Bing Ads recently tackled an interesting question: How close to Kevin Bacon are you? Or in other words, which keywords are assisting in conversions?

When a user clicks on more than one ad before converting, the closest ad click is said to have caused the conversion, and the previous ad clicks are said to have assisted the conversion. Attributing the credit of one or more conversions to advertiser`s ad campaigns, ad groups and keywords is referred to as conversion attribution.

If you know which keywords are closest to the conversion you can bid up for these to increase your conversions.

The closer your assisting keyword is to the converting keyword, the more valuable it is.

New insights show that "assist" keywords get lower impressions but they do their job very well

Use this keyword data to:

• Identify new keyword opportunities or rethink previously deleted keywords
• Optimisation to drive competitiveness for auctions in which you’re already present

Attribution starts with conversion tracking

Tracking set up:

• Enable Universal Event Tracking (UET)
• Create conversion goals
• UET must be installed and conversions enabled in order to access the assist keywords data

How to find keyword assist data in your account

Get the report

1. Log into your Bing Ads account, navigate to Reports

2. Select Report Type Keyword

3. Specify the necessary General Settings, and lastly, move Assists from Available Columns to Selected Columns within the Choose Your Columns dropdown

Design your own keyword assist experiment

Campaign set up for experimentation

1. Take your Assist Keywords and sort by assists
2. Pause these keywords on any existing campaigns
3. Set up a new campaign(s) with these keywords in ad groups that make sense to your business
4. Run, collect data, analyse

Set up your t-test to start your assist keyword experiment. A t-test helps determine if there is a statistically significant difference between two data sets.

Assist keywords experiment

1. Identify pairs of metro areas with similar customer profiles for your business
2. Pause these keywords on any existing campaigns
3. Set up a new campaign(s) with these keywords in ad groups that make sense to your business
4. Take your Assist Keywords and sort by assists
5. Create and enable geo targeted assist keywords campaigns for the treatment DMAs
6. Measure conversions by metro area during experiment

Conclusion

The Art of Advertiser Science series from Bing Ads brings you deep insights, creative methodol- ogies, and powerful tools that you can put to use right away.

So join us on a journey filled with insightful data, complex concepts, tough questions and new discoveries that empower you and your business to grow.