While not surprisingly,

Matching the custom conversion data between GCM and SA360 is ridiculous. It doesn’t tie.

So within this GCM floodlight report, conversions for search appear is ‘DART-Search’ which is essentially one line item. However, the reality is search (SA360) is made up of several different campaigns, ad groups, etc. Within SA360 they have their own unique IDs that differ from GCM. Additionally the conversions that are coming from the GCM report also differ from SA360 because of how it is calculated within each platform (annoying nuances).

When I look to match it with GCM, they all roll up into one campaign, so it’s not particularly that useful in understanding how the campaign performs. It derives from said nuances between platforms. GCM in this instance is looking at search as a many-to-1 relationship and can provide granularity only at the site level. Whereas SA360 is 1-to-1 but then we don’t have the nuances conversions with custom variables.

So we have three avenues that can be pursued;

  1. We can show all the custom variables etc. but it will be disconnected for search e.g it all rolls up under one line. and we cannot show conversions in the search section
  2. We can show the granularity of each campaign performance. But we’d lose out on the custom variable views
  3. We show everything both custom conv from floodlight AND SA360 knowing the values are going to be different for search

My opinion;

  1. makes sense if we want a better understanding what kinds tickets are being sold and quantity of each type of ticket for which events
  2. makes sense because we’re understanding which search campaigns are really driving the performance of ticket sales (internal teams can still reference platform so it’s not an issue for us but more so for the client. If they like to dig in that manner)
  3. requires everyone to understand the numbers are going to be slightly off for conversions in search to give visibility in both 1 and 2.