

Perfect Audience (YC S11) outperforms Adroll in Retargeting Test - brandnewlow
http://www.pearanalytics.com/blog/2012/perfect-audience-outperforms-adroll-in-retargeting-test/

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tpiddy
I work for AdRoll. I left a comment on this blog post but it hasn't been
approved yet.

We’d really appreciate the opportunity to do a real comparison. In this post,
they are comparing a campaign without Facebook Exchange (AdRoll) to a campaign
with Facebook Exchange access and using two different definitions for
conversions.

It’s a little odd that FBX wasn't included with the AdRoll campaign since
unlike PerfectAudience, AdRoll is actually is one of few PMDs that have a seat
on FBX ( <http://www.facebook-pmdcenter.com/fbx> ) and has the most clients
running FBX campaigns of any FBX PMD.

PerfectAudience’s CPCs and CPMs are likely lower because Facebook retargeting
is cheaper in this regard, and if they ran an AdRoll FBX would likely be
comparable.

Also looking at your charts, they never setup conversion tracking in AdRoll.
Without this they are comparing (PerfectAudience) view through conversion CPA
to last touch Google analytics click through conversion CPA. To analytics and
online marketing expert, it should be obvious this is not a fair comparison.

A lot of the UI callouts are valid and AdRoll is working on new features and
launching a new dashboard very shortly. If anyone wants to setup a real test
and do real analysis of performance, we’d be happy to help.

-Tom

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bemmu
Can you go into a bit more detail on the difference between these two types of
conversion?

I suppose view-through conversion might be clicking on ad, user goes to site,
completes purchase and then some kind of callback gets fired. On the other
hand, Google analytics one would be user completes purchase, GA looks at which
referrer came last and registers that as the source of conversion?

~~~
tpiddy
View through conversions are conversions that take place after a visitor has
just viewed an ad and not necessarily clicked on the ad. In the case of
traditional display, the ad may not have even been visible on the screen it
was just served somewhere on the page.

Google Analytics conversions are last touch click through conversions, where
all marketing touches compete and the last that occured gets 100% of the
credit.

~~~
brandnewlow
Yep. And just going by Google analytics tracking is a rough way to assess
marketing channels, agreed.

The ubiquity of Google Analytics and thus, ubiquity of "last touch" conversion
tracking, has really helped Google make the case for Adwords. If someone sees
an ad from a display advertising company, retarteted or otherwise, it's not
uncommon for them to head to Google to look up more information about that
product or service. If they then sign up or convert, the advertiser will see
Google analytics listed as the sole source of the conversion. This is great
for Google and less great for everyone else higher up in the funnel.

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jamiequint
This article is so specious. I am actually _shocked_ that something this bad
would come out of a company that purports to understand internet marketing and
analytics.

First, its comparing two completely different types of retargeting. It
compares one campaign where Facebook retargeting makes up 3/4 of the
impressions to one that is just general retargeting on the ad exchanges. These
perform completely differently.

Second, the timeframes are different. This makes a big difference especially
if they have been running the same ads over a long period of time as ads
(especially retargeted ads) tend to get ignored after a while so the falloff
in performance can be quite rapid.

Third, comparing post-click conversion across retargeting partners doesn't
really make much sense. You're targeting the audience to begin with, you
should probably care mostly what percentage of your audience they are reaching
and what the CPM is more than the CPA. Unless these guys are doing fancy stuff
(e.g. more aggressively retargeting people who have clicked but then did not
convert) it actually does not make any sense that CPA would be any different
at scale.

Fourth, if you're running two different retargeting platforms on the same
audience its possible that you're bidding up your own retargeting cost as the
two platforms are bidding against each other. e.g. this shows a CTR of around
0.13% which is actually pretty good for FB retargeting, but they're paying ~$1
CPC which is really bad for FB retargeting.

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savories
They got 18% conversion on their clicks from Perfect Audience? Seems dubious.

With such a small sample of data 109 sessions vs 68 sessions... I wouldn't
call this a clear winner.

This could actually just be a case of misattribution of sales.

For example, if the customer clicks on a Perfect Audience ad, they could be
tagging that customer as "theirs" for the next 30 days, or forever. So imagine
someone clicks on this ad, browses the site again, and leaves. Then they come
back 5 days later of their own accord and make a purchase. Perfect Audience
may be (incorrectly) attributing that sale as their own.

I'd like to see the Ecommerce breakdown that GA is reporting. (this data:
[http://www.pearanalytics.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/12/2012...](http://www.pearanalytics.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/12/2012-12-13_1513.png))

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ryankelly
Hi Tom, Ryan from Pear here. AdRoll did not have the Facebook Exchange option
when it was available, and we saw Perfect Audience had it first. Also, I do
have the same conversion goals set up in AdRoll as I do in PA.
(/checkout_thankyou.asp), and they are not firing properly, even though in
Analytics I do see some conversions.

I'm happy to devise a better experiment with you and run our next customer on
both platforms with the exact same criteria. Email me if you're interested
ryan at pearanalytics dot com.

~~~
tpiddy
Hey Ryan. We're happy to help you get setup and use the AdRoll platform with
all of its features. I'll email you and have someone on our account and
support team follow up with you.

