Microsoft adCenter Conversion Tracking

Now that Microsoft adCenter is powering ads for both Bing.com and Yahoo.com, it is extremely important to make sure you are tracking your campaigns properly. Here is a quick guide on how to set up revenue and conversion tracking for Microsoft adCenter.

Step 1 – Turn On Conversion Tracking

In adCenter, conversion tracking must be turned on for each individual campaign. You can do this by navigation to your campaign and clicking on the “Change Settings” link. In the top right corner of this page you will find a check box to Track Conversions. Check this box.

If you just want to track the number of conversions, you can click the link to “show code” and paste it into your order confirmation page. If you want to track revenue too, then you’ll want to follow the next steps.

Step 2 – Revenue Tracking

In order to track the revenue generated from orders originating from adCenter, we will need to set up custom code. Start by clicking on the “Open Campaign Analytics Tool”. This will bring you to the Campaign Analytics section of adCenter. The next step will be to set up a goal by clicking “Create Goal”.

It will bring you to a simple form that you will need to fill out. Most of the form is self-explanatory. Just make sure you select “Variable” under the “Revenue to track” option.

Once you fill out the form, click “Save and generate code”. Copy and past the code and…

Step 3 – Inserting Revenue Variable

At this point you should have code that looks kind of like this:

<script type="text/javascript">if (!window.mstag) mstag = {loadTag : function(){},time : (new Date()).getTime()};</script>
<script id="mstag_tops" type="text/javascript" src="//flex.atdmt.com/mstag/site/dexe4973-10a0-2abe-823e-5b2123f42eb0/mstag.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript"> mstag.loadTag("analytics", {dedup:"1",domainId:"XXXXXX",type:"1",revenue:"",actionid:"XXXXX"})</script> <noscript> <iframe src="//flex.atdmt.com/mstag/tag/dexe4973-10a0-2abe-823e-5b2123f42eb0/analytics.html?dedup=1&domainId=XXXXXX&type=1&revenue=&actionid=XXXXX" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="1" height="1" style="visibility:hidden; display:none"> </iframe> </noscript>

At this point you need to generate the order total from your eCommerce system and pass the variable in the two places it says revenue. Here is an example, look at the word revenue on lines 3 and 4.

<script type="text/javascript">if (!window.mstag) mstag = {loadTag : function(){},time : (new Date()).getTime()};</script>
<script id="mstag_tops" type="text/javascript" src="//flex.atdmt.com/mstag/site/dexe4973-10a0-2abe-823e-5b2123f42eb0/mstag.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript"> mstag.loadTag("analytics", {dedup:"1",domainId:"XXXXXX",type:"1",revenue:"1234.56",actionid:"XXXXX"})</script> <noscript> <iframe src="//flex.atdmt.com/mstag/tag/dexe4973-10a0-2abe-823e-5b2123f42eb0/analytics.html?dedup=1&domainId=XXXXXX&type=1&revenue=1234.56&actionid=XXXXX" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" width="1" height="1" style="visibility:hidden; display:none"> </iframe> </noscript>

Your final code should look something like the code directly above. You can paste this code into your order confirmation page.

NOTE: Don’t copy and paste this as it won’t work, because I removed all the IDs that adCenter uses to identify which account this is for.

Magento Commerce has the ability to track eCommerce sale with Google Analytics out of the box (more on that in a future post). Something that a lot of merchants struggle with is how to set up conversion tracking for other tracking software or comparison shopping engines.

How To

Here is an easy hack to track conversions for Shopzilla, PriceGrabber and the likes:

Open the file: app\design\frontend\XXXX\XXXX\template\checkout\success.phtml

At the end of the file, add the following code, this will create two variables with the order number and the order total:

<?php
	//Get Order Number & Order Total
	$order = Mage::getModel('sales/order')->loadByIncrementId(Mage::getSingleton('checkout/session')->getLastRealOrderId());
	$amount = number_format($order->getGrandTotal(),2);
?>

After the above code snippet, copy and paste the tracking code from the third party analytics software of comparison shopping engine. Insert the following variable where they suggest placing the order ID and the order total:

<?php echo $amount; ?> // Order Total
<?php echo $this->getOrderId() ?> // Order Number

Here is a code example for the Shopzilla conversion tracking tool:

<script language="javascript">
	var mid            = 'XXXXX'; // Your Shopzilla Merchant ID
	var cust_type      = '';
	var order_value    = '<?php echo $amount; ?>'; // Order Amount
	var order_id       = '<?php echo $this->getOrderId() ?>'; //Order Number
	var units_ordered  = '';
</script>
<script language="javascript" src="https://www.shopzilla.com/css/roi_tracker.js"></script>
<script language="JavaScript" src="https://eval.bizrate.com/js/pos_193511.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Image Credit: Search Engine Journal

What I did not know, until now, was that you can link your Google Analytics Goals to Google AdWords. What this means is that you don’t need to have two tracking pixels on your order confirmation page. Just install the Google Analytics tracking pixel and it will feed Google AdWords the ecommerce and conversion data from Analytics.

Link Google Analytics & Google AdWords Goal Conversions

Did you know you can do this?