Overview

Conversion Tracking

Summary

Conversion tracking enables you to measure the number of Twitter users that perform a desired action after viewing and engaging with your ads on Twitter. It will provide you the capability to measure which of your campaigns drive actions such as site visits, sign ups, and purchases. This provides advertisers with the off-Twitter measurement capabilities to understand the performance of their direct-response ads so that they can cost-effectively acquire customers.

Using a conversion tag, advertisers can track user conversions and tie them back to ad campaigns on Twitter. This gives them the visibility to optimize their campaigns to meet their cost-per-acquisition (CPA) goals.

There are a variety of website actions that an advertiser can measure with conversion tracking. They can select one or more, in accordance with the action(s) they are looking to drive with their ad campaign:

  • Site visit: User visits a landing page on an advertiser’s site
  • Purchase: User completes a purchase of a product or service on the advertiser’s site
  • Download: User downloads a file, such as a white paper or software package, from the advertiser’s site
  • Sign up: User signs up for the advertiser’s service, newsletter, or email communication
  • Custom: This is a catch-all category for a custom action that does not fall into one of the categories above

Twitter’s conversion tracking gives advertisers a full view of conversion attribution. Compared with third-party measurement systems that clients may have been using in lieu of Twitter’s own conversion tracking capability, such as unique click-URLs paired with third party tracking tags, Twitter’s conversion tag offers the ability for advertiser to track conversions attributed to mid and upper funnel engagements such as Tweet expands, Retweets, favorites, replies, and follows, as well as impressions.

FAQ

How does the conversion tracking tag work?

First, an advertiser creates a conversion tag, which is a snippet of code provided by Twitter, and places it on their website. The tag is now ready to measure the conversion when a user completes the given action.

Users are then exposed to the advertiser’s ad on the Twitter client, which leads them to the advertiser’s website and action which they have tagged. If the user completes that action during the attribution window(s) specified by the advertisers during tag setup, the tag recognizes that the user has previously interacted with a Twitter ad. The tag then “fires,” or sends a notification to Twitter’s servers so that the conversion can be attributed to the ad which generated conversion.

Is there a way within the campaign setup process that allows the user to select which tracking pixels are relevant for that campaign?

No, our product is not set up to attach specific conversion tags to specific campaigns. Rather, once a tag is set up, the system automatically keeps track of which ad drove to conversions on a certain tag.

What are our default attribution window settings for conversion tags?

Default post-view attribution window: 1 day

Default post-engagement attribution: 14 days

These defaults can be changed during conversion tag setup or any time after the tag created. The options for post-engagement attribution windows are 1, 7, 14, 30, 60, and 90 days. The options for post-view attribution windows are none, 1, 7, 14, 30, 60, and 90 days.

What are some ideas for effective DR creatives and strategies that will effectively drive conversions?

While each client’s goals, situation, and strategies are different, here are some ideas that have worked for clients who participated in the conversion tracking alpha or beta:

Creative:

  • Offers: Pair a discount, promotion, or free shipping offer with the Promoted Tweet to garner more interest in the action
  • Sweepstakes and contests: Especially for well-known brands, sweepstakes and contests drove conversions
  • Tweet copy experimentation: Testing all caps vs lower case (FREE vs free or NOW vs now)
  • Deadlines: Offer a deadline to encourage people to take immediate action (Offer Expires December 12!)
  • Adding compelling photos: It is worthwhile to test whether visually compelling photos to Tweet creative are effective in driving conversions; results may vary or be specific to client offering.

Targeting:

  • @handle targeting and interest category targeting: Tight alignment of the Tweet copy and @handles to the intended audience of the Tweet drove conversions
  • Using niche but high volume keywords: In the concert space, using keywords related to the artist/musician (e.g. their name) proved effective.
  • Tailored audiences: Clients using TA web and conversion tracking together drove lower CPAs than control groups using other targeting

The more granular your campaign segmentation, the more actionable your reported conversion results will be. For example, it is much easier to optimize a campaign with 4 keywords than optimizing a campaign with 50.