Piston boosts ROAS by 51%, conversions by 50% for retail client using inventory-aware campaigns

A few months ago, we announced improvements to our inventory-aware campaigns feature, which automatically creates and optimizes a retailer’s search campaigns, based on updates made to their Google Merchant Center product feed. Since then, we’ve seen some impressive results across the board, showing that inventory-managed keywords more than doubled return on ad spend for heavy users(1).

Today, we wanted to highlight one of our success stories around this feature. The following story comes from Piston -- a bicoastal digital agency in the US, who helped their retail client maintain a “stylish profile” by keeping their campaigns relevant using inventory-aware campaigns.

After working around the clock to keep up with ever-changing product descriptions, prices, and landing pages during a busy holiday season, Piston turned to inventory-aware campaigns to scale their campaign management across their retail client’s 8,000+ products.

“When we’re looking for a solution, the key questions we ask are: can this save us time, can this save us money, and does it have features that can really help us impact our bottom line? And with DoubleClick inventory-aware campaigns, the answer was always ‘Yes’.” says Jennifer Johnstone, Senior Performance Marketing Strategist at Piston. “Inventory-aware campaigns allow us to save time from manually managing product inventory, enable us to spend our dollars on more efficient product level keywords, and help us drive more revenue than manual campaign builds.”

One quarter after adopting inventory-aware campaigns, Piston saw a 51% rise in ROAS, a 26% jump in CTR, and a 50% boost in conversion rate, compared to manually-managed campaigns. Additionally, inventory-aware campaigns allowed them to expand keyword coverage on both products and SKUs by 49% -- all while saving an estimated 38 hours over one quarter since implementation.

To get the full scoop on Piston’s success with inventory-aware campaigns, download the full customer story here. Stay tuned to the DoubleClick Search blog and Google+ page for even more customer success stories.

1. Google internal data, 2013

Dialing up better measurement: Announcing integration with top call tracking services in DoubleClick Search

Today, we’re happy to announce new integrations that make it even easier for DoubleClick Search customers to track and report on conversions that happen via phone after interactions with search ads. Recent research shows that over half of smartphone users are taking advantage of click-to-call ad features from Google and others. In addition, around 7% of all mobile searches result in a phone call to a business, so understanding the impact of call data is important to analyzing and optimizing campaign ROI.

Ever since DoubleClick Search introduced the Conversions API, advertisers have been able to upload and report on the offline activities and conversions that make sense for their business, and take advantage of those insights in near real-time. Now we’re happy to announce official integrations with many of the major call tracking service providers in the US, EMEA and Australian/SEA markets.

Americas: CallCap, Infinity Tracking, Marchex, Mongoose Metrics, ResponseTap  

UK/Europe: Infinity Tracking, ResponseTap

Australia/SEA: AVANSER

We’re continuing to evaluate other providers for integration on an ongoing basis.

How advertisers and agencies benefit

Cramer Krasselt, an ad agency based out of Chicago, had historically used a number of tactics to measure offline conversions that resulted from their online campaigns. “We knew a lot of conversions were happening where the primary conversion occurs offline,” mentions Rocky Yost, Senior Analyst at Cramer Krasselt, “but we didn’t have an easy way of connecting it to our online campaigns.”

Yost continues, “Because of call tracking integration into DoubleClick Search technology, we now have one place to get reporting. And because it’s automatically uploaded into DoubleClick Search, conversions from customer calls are now also a part of DoubleClick Search bidding models. This integration has improved ROI by decreasing cost per click, giving us better positioning in search results, and in general, the bid management system is able to make a better choice because it has a more complete picture of completed transactions.”

Moreover, advertisers are able to see these conversions in near real-time, and can use the insights gained in both reporting and automated bid optimization immediately, instead of waiting 24 hours or more. As always, all reporting is aggregated and anonymous, and these conversions are not used to target advertising.

Continuing to invest for the future

We’re currently planning the next extensions of the Conversions API and offline conversion tracking. Stay tuned to the blog and our Google+ page for more.