A national chain of hotels came to us asking for advice on how to improve their PPC program. When we took a look, we almost immediately discovered a serious flaw: they had poured a significant amount of money into their PPC campaign without ever stopping to seriously consider where most of their visitors were coming from. Had they been utilizing Advanced Segments, a tool that was added to Google Analytics within the last several years, they would have found this information extremely easy to obtain and could have targeted their advertising to the areas with the highest chance of success. (more…)

I would consider that question analogous to “Why is a ruler so important to a carpenter?” You might be able to eyeball four chair legs to within a centimeter without measuring them, and the chair will function. It may even temporarily hold you while it wobbles a little. However, after repeated use one of the legs is sure to come loose (Don’t you wish you took the extra time to measure what you were doing in the first place?). (more…)

For years, MSN adCenter tracking has been a bane to my existence. A large portion of that has been due to the gross inaccuracy of the numbers (somewhat improved with their spring update).  And a larger portion has been due to the fact that, even when we ignore the inaccuracy, we still have to deal with the fact that a very key metric is missing. Really MSN, you want us to run an eComm campaign without being able to report revenue? (more…)