Part 1 of 2: Use dynamic tracking to improve campaign results

This week, we're going to take a look at a strategy you can use to improve the effectiveness of your online campaigns.  It's called exploiting the long tail and it is often used by professional search engine marketers to improve their clients' results. 

By "long tail" we are referring to the idea that there are a relatively small number of search words that a lot of people use (the so-called "head" of the list) and a very long list of search words (the "long tail") that are used less frequently.  That long list of infrequently used search terms adds up to a lot of opportunity for savvy advertisers.

We'll show you how to exploit the long tail with your own campaigns.

Broad Match and the Long Tail

When you create a new advertising campaign on the LookSmart Network, your keywords are set up as Broad Match by default.  A Broad Match keyword will cause your advertisement to be shown to any user that includes your term in any part of their search.  So, if you bid on "car", you're ad will show up for "car insurance", "used car", "car movie" and probably thousands of other searches.

Using Broad Match terms allows you to get access to a lot of searchers quickly.  And while a large number of people may be searching using just the word "car", many others are typing in many more words than just that.  If you knew exactly what they were typing in, you might refine your campaign to exclude the searches that you don't care about and possibly bid higher on the searches that better link you to your target audience.

Use Dynamic Tracking to Discover the Long Tail

What is dynamic tracking?  When you create an ad, you have to tell the Ad Server which web site to send your visitor to when they click on your ad.  You do this by specifying this web site in your Destination URL.

The Destination URL can include not just your web site address, but also extra information that the Ad Server provides that is unique for each click.  That extra information will help you discover the "long tail" -- all of those ways that visitors search to get to your site.  You get this information using dynamic tracking parameters:

• {keyword: alternate text} - this parameter instructs the Ad Server to insert the keyword you bid on into your Destination URL (I'll explain alternate text in a moment)
• {keyword_id} - this parameter tells the Ad Server to insert the unique record ID for your keyword into the Destination URL
• {ad_id} - by using this dynamic tracking parameter in your Destination URL, the Ad Server will tell you the unique record ID for the ad your visitor saw when they clicked through to your site
• {query: alternate text} - this parameter instructs the Ad Server to insert the users search term into your Destination URL

Your Destination URL can have up to 1000 characters in it, so the Ad Server will insert your alternate text into the URL when the actual text is too long to fit.  alternate text can be anything you like, so long as it is short.  And, the unique record ID's for your ads and keywords can be viewed in the AdCenter by downloading your campaigns using the Bulk Tools feature.

So, how would you use these in your Destination URL?  Let's take a look at an example.  Let's assume this is your Destination URL now:

http://www.example.com/my_special_offer.html

Using all of the dynamic tracking parameters, your Destination URL would look like this:

http://www.example.com/my_special_offer.html?keyword={keyword: too_long}&query={query: too_long}&ad_id={ad_id}&keyword_id={keyword_id}

When someone clicks on your ad with this Destination URL, your web logs will show a URL that looks something like this:

http://www.example.com/my_special_offer.html?keyword=cars&query=i+want+to+buy+a+used+car&ad_id=12345&keyword_id=67890

The bolded terms show you the use of the dynamic tracking.  The Ad Server will replace the bolded parts of your Destination URL with the actual values for your keyword, ad, and the user's search term.  The rest of the URL can be formatted any way you choose.  If you're using a 3rd-party web tracking system, the LookSmart AdCenter Online Help guide shows you how to format your Destination URL for several popular systems.

Next Time

In our next blog post, we'll take a look at what you can do once you've been collecting this data from your web server logs or your web tracking system.  We'll talk about mining query words from your data to create Negative and Smart Match terms in your campaign that will help you focus your spending on just those terms that give you the right kind of visitors to your site.

If you need help figuring out how to use the these dynamic tracking features, LookSmart can help. Please feel free to contact us by e-mail or call 877-512-LOOK (5665) for assistance.

Allen Hammock
Product Marketing Manager
allen.hammock@looksmart.net