Google Glitch On Hiding Cost Data From Placement Performance Reports?
Now, I am sure this is just a glitch and a few loyal readers confirmed for me that it might of been just a rare glitch (Thank You), but tell me why Google has has these "bugs" when making it difficult to see how much their placement/site targeting partners are costing us when we run a Placement Performance Report. It appears that when you utilize the new conversion tracking option and select "ACTION NAME" in your report, it deactivates all other metrics relating to costs and sales/leads values.
Obviously, we can get this costs data while in the campaign & Adgroup level management area of Adwords, but I must ask the following questions:
Why is this data not available to us in a report format?
- Is Google doing this on purpose?
- Are they waiting for their recent Yahoo Search Partnership to roll out something new and exciting?
- Are they simply trying to hide us from the "Macro-level" analysis that could hinder the continuous growth of ad spend on content and placement networks, since the Search Network CPCs are out of control and advertisers are migrating to these networks?
Here's a description of the report:
Placement Performance report
Create a report showing statistics (Cost is a statistic right?) for ads that appeared on specific
domains or URLs in the content network. Note that complete statistics
for the current day aren't available until the next day at 3:00 p.m. PT (Does Cost pertain to complete? You cannot even choose Cost as an option)
In conclusion
I know this post is rather short and it was intended that way because there's not much you can say about Google's continuous mind games with regard to data. In a blog post I wrote some months back, I talked about how Google makes it very difficult to identify the "actual" parked domains, for which they refer to as DOMAIN ADS. Reason for the importance, is because they base their assumption on what is working, instead of the advertisers "real"experiences. I just find it interesting that Google has a nifty way of hiding data when it comes to $$$ and their network partners for which your ads are being run on. Maybe with the recent Yahoo deal, they will shed some light on that.
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Are you sure about this? I've never had any trouble creating Placement Performance reports with any/all performance statistics.
Posted by: Chris | Monday, June 16, 2008 at 04:22 PM
Greg,
I just ran the report and I have the cost data? Maybe it was just a glitch?
Posted by: Tad Miller | Monday, June 16, 2008 at 08:39 PM
Just want to thank everyone who read this post and commented that they did not get the same "wierdness" as I did in the morning.
Thanks again!
Posted by: Greg Meyers | Monday, June 16, 2008 at 08:53 PM