John Horton Posted December 6 Posted December 6 I sell banners directly to my advertisers and use System >Site Promotion> Advertisements > Website advertisements. Looking closely at the data provided on the “Website advertisements” page the number of impressions per banner is impossible. Based on the number of banners in rotation and the number of page views I see in Google Analytics it looks like the banner impression number count data is off by more than a factor of 10. I do not see ( or can not find) total pages served in the IPS analytics. If my Google Analytics was for some reason under reporting it would be a happy problem but I doubt it. If the impressions data is off by a factor of 10 can I trust the clicks data? I need to get a client some data and at this point do not trust any of the numbers.
Jim M Posted December 6 Posted December 6 Keep in mind that comparing views in the software and Google Analytics will not be equal. They measure 2 different things. The software measures anything and everything which renders the advertisement. Whereas, a page view in Google Analytics operates at the JavaScript level and only can measure those running JavaScript plus Google eliminates the best it can any automated/bot views. Also don’t know how you have your ads setup but you could display the same ad on 1 page multiple times so that would count as multiple ad views. Clicks are indeed accurate to those passing through.
Fast Lane! Posted December 6 Posted December 6 Just out of curiosity on feature focus and deprecation. Why does IPB support a built in advertising solution when Google Adsense and AdManager are free? They are the gold standard. IPBs ad section could simply be downsized to focus on allowing insertion of ad units at specific locations for specific users and rulesets instead. The actual adserving and tracking could be shifted back to Google. Thoughts?
John Horton Posted December 6 Author Posted December 6 @Jim M I sort of understand what you are saying... What the value if the IPS impressions data I can extrapolate the banner views from GA page views. Is that what you suggest I do?
Jim M Posted December 6 Posted December 6 4 minutes ago, Fast Lane! said: Just out of curiosity on feature focus and deprecation. Why does IPB support a built in advertising solution when Google Adsense and AdManager are free? They are the gold standard. IPBs ad section could simply be downsized to focus on allowing insertion of ad units at specific locations for specific users and rulesets instead. The actual adserving and tracking could be shifted back to Google. Thoughts? The advantage of our ad system would be the member system and Commerce integrations. I personally use this heavily myself 🙂 . 1 minute ago, John Horton said: @Jim M I sort of understand what you are saying... What the value if the IPS impressions data I can extrapolate the banner views from GA page views. Is that what you suggest I do? We provide all views of the advertisement. What you choose to do with that information is up to you 🙂 . Think it’s always nice to understand the full exposure of the ad. As Google Analytics misses a chunk of people but fully understand, you also pick up bots/automated traffic.
John Horton Posted December 6 Author Posted December 6 @Jim M 1 hour ago, Jim M said: The software measures anything and everything which renders the advertisement. Whereas, a page view in Google Analytics operates at the JavaScript level and only can measure those running JavaScript plus Google eliminates the best it can any automated/bot views. Are you telling me that the GA is significantly undercounting page views? Does it make sense to you that the difference between the two measurements could be a factor of 10? Does IPS provide total page views per month somewhere? The difference between the data sets is so large that I do not see how I can present the IPS banner views without looking like a liar.
Jim M Posted December 6 Posted December 6 15 minutes ago, John Horton said: Are you telling me that the GA is significantly undercounting page views? I am telling you they are counting two different things, as mentioned here: 1 hour ago, Jim M said: The software measures anything and everything which renders the advertisement. Whereas, a page view in Google Analytics operates at the JavaScript level and only can measure those running JavaScript plus Google eliminates the best it can any automated/bot views. 17 minutes ago, John Horton said: Does IPS provide total page views per month somewhere? We do not measure page views.
John Horton Posted December 6 Author Posted December 6 @Jim M I know you are trying to be helpful. I hear you that it is 2 different methods. I still don't understand the value of the IPS number. Whatever but have a nice weekend.
Solution Jim M Posted December 6 Solution Posted December 6 12 minutes ago, John Horton said: I still don't understand the value of the IPS number. As a software provider, we are stating "these are the number of impressions which your ad was served." This is not limited in any manner; this is a raw number of your ad was requested, and it was served. Think of it like raw server statistics. This request was made, it was delivered. We do not persecute between bots, automated traffic, humans who don't opt out of analytics, cookies, or JavaScript like Google Analytics does. You also are getting pure impressions so if you have 10 ads on 1 page, the ad impressions will be 10x higher than your Google Analytics Pageviews. That is really what we try and provide currently. I am just stating these are different because stating ours is incorrect would be false, we are just measuring it differently than Google Analytics.
Fast Lane! Posted December 7 Posted December 7 11 hours ago, John Horton said: @Jim M I know you are trying to be helpful. I hear you that it is 2 different methods. I still don't understand the value of the IPS number. Whatever but have a nice weekend. You could use a direct sale banner created in Google Ad Manager and serve it via IPB. Compare the two. GAM should be a gold standard in terms of measurement, as I mentioned. This will give you some confidence.
John Horton Posted December 7 Author Posted December 7 @Fast Lane! Last time I looked at Google Ad systems I saw that more ads were blocked by browsers than with 3rd party banner tools or tools like the IPS system. For me every banner served is important.
Fast Lane! Posted December 8 Posted December 8 Sure. Whatever works for your use case. For me the incredible level of microtargeting and backfill inventory from AdX and Adsense when you don’t have 100% direct sales of your inventory, more than makes up for this.
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