New Change In Google AdWords Impacts Businesses – impacting view-through conversions (VTC)

A big recent change to Google AdWords will dramatically change the way you optimize your campaigns. Specifically, the change is impacting view-through conversions (VTC). This may seem like an overly technical thing that most Google advertisers may have never even heard of, but it is actually something useful for campaigns of all sizes. We all know what a conversion is. People buy something on your website or fill out a form — Google AdWords sees that as a conversion.

For the sake of making this simple, every conversion is a product purchase. View-through conversions are nearly the same as a regular conversion except that right before buying, people saw an ad, didn’t click on it but bought the product anyway. In other words, with VTC, people buy after seeing an ad but not clicking on it. That’s the main difference between a VTC and a regular conversion. In regular conversions, a click is a necessary for it to count.

VTCs have existed for a long time on Google. What has changed is the time window that Google uses to track between people viewing and people buying. Up until March 29, 2017, Google would tell you if there was a VTC for up to 30 days. It’s now been reduced to one day.

For example, let’s say you Google “fuzzy socks” and click on a www.fuzzysocks.com ad, but you don’t feel like buying anything. Then, you go to another website and see the remarketing campaign for fuzzy socks and decide you need them and can’t live without them. You go to www.fuzzysocks.com and purchase the socks. That counts as a conversion.

Then there is this scenerio. You Google “fuzzy socks” and click on a www.fuzzysocks.com ad, but you don’t feel like buying anything. You go to another website, see the remarketing campaign for fuzzy socks and ignore them. Two weeks later, you decide you need the socks and can’t live without them, so you go to www.fuzzysocks.com and make a purchase. That would count as a VTC up until March 29 because the purchase happened within 30 days of you originally viewing the ad. Now, it all has to happen in one day in order to count as a VTC. What does that mean for businesses? It makes a huge difference for businesses if people make a purchase or and fill out a contact form.

VTCs are essential to calculate the success of your campaigns. Here are the five reasons why every business should use VTCs as their main metric for all of their campaigns.

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