Need help? Now you can get it right inside the DFA UI

We've made it easier to get right from DFA to the help you need. In fact, you don't even have to leave DFA at all: now you can access a help pane from within the DFA UI. Use it to find and read articles, as well as contact the support team with questions or comments.

To open in-product help, click the Help link in the upper right of the DFA interface. This brings up a search bar you can use to find popular Help Center articles.

If you need more help, try the full Help Center by clicking Explore Help in the lower right of the product help page. Or click Contact Support to send questions to the support team.

In-product help even offers tools to accompany your question or comment with a screenshot of your page. You can highlight areas of the screenshot that are especially relevant to your issue.

Plus, your question or comment will automatically include the URL you’re on, along with key trafficking details and information about your browser type. You can review all this data before you send your message by just clicking on the Included system information link.

Help content may be a route, but we know the product is your destination. That's why we developed in-product help with this in mind: the quickest way back to DFA is never leaving in the first place. So try it out and let us know what you think.

Posted by Jeremy Axelrod, Technical Writer, DFA

Setting lookback windows in Path to Conversion reports

Have you ever changed your Floodlight lookback window and then waited a few days in order to see how conversion numbers would change? Have you ever misconfigured your lookback windows in the trafficking UI and wished you could regenerate your conversion numbers with the correct lookback windows?

The new Path to Conversion report (P2C) available in DFA Reporting offers greater flexibility around setting and managing lookback windows when you run a report.

Example 1: I’m interested in seeing the impact on conversions if I shorten the lookback window from its original 30-day Floodlight configuration.

Select “Custom” from the new Lookback Window drop-down under Report Properties.

The “From Floodlight” option simply uses the pre-calculated lookback window value that is already applied.

Unlike Floodlight lookback windows, which are based on calendar days, custom lookback windows use a simple 24-hour calculation. A 2-day value for clicks means that the clicks will need to be within 48 hours of the conversion to count. A 0 value will effectively remove clicks or impressions from attribution eligibility.

For this report, I want to allow a 7-day window for clicks and only a 3-day window for impressions.

Once I have changed the lookback window, to understand its effects I can add any of the following dimensions to my query:

Conversion Dimensions

• Floodlight Attribution Type indicates if the conversion is a click-through or a view-through conversion using the Floodlight lookback windows.


• Recalculated Attribution Type tells me if the conversion is a click-through or view-through conversion using the 7- and 3-day lookback windows I configured under Report Properties.

Per Interaction Dimensions

• Similarly, I can compare Floodlight Attributed Interaction to Recalculated Attributed Interaction to see how attribution changed using my new lookback windows.


• Within Floodlight lookback window indicates if the interaction was already in the Floodlight lookback window or if the new lookback window brought the interaction into this conversion path.

Example 2: I am seeing a number of conversion paths with large periods of inactivity for many users. I would like to evaluate the impact on conversions using only more recent activity without changing my original lookback window.

To do this, I can select the “Max gap between interactions” option under Report Properties.

Setting a limit on the number of days will end a conversion path if the distance between two elements in the path is greater than or equal to that number of days. This is good for tidying up longer paths to focus on more recent events.

This is just one simple demonstration of the power of the Path to Conversion report. The new lookback window tools in the Path to Conversion report provide a way to analyze your conversion data with greater flexibility.

Try it today and let us know how it helps you out!

Posted by Jason Gessner, Software Engineer, DFA

See a preview of the bids for a bid strategy

We recently announced the launch of the Target bid column in DoubleClick Search (DS) reporting, which shows you the bid that DS would have used if there were no secondary constraints in the keyword’s bid strategy. Here’s a way you can use the column to get a preview of the bids in a bid strategy, so you can feel confident that it will result in a solid return on your investment.

You’ve heard about all the great things DS has been doing to improve the Performance Bidding Suite, both in the UI and behind the scenes with improved algorithms. You’re ready to try a bid strategy, but you’d love to have some idea as to what DS is going to bid before giving over full control. Based on your bid strategy settings, how is DS going to bid on your keywords?

To get an idea, just follow these steps:

1. Create your bid strategy and apply it to some keywords.


2. When applying the min and max bids for the selected keywords, set a tight bid range that you’re comfortable with. For example, you could set the bids so they match the range of max CPCs, as shown in the following example:
   


3. Let the bid strategy run.
   The bid strategy won’t be able to update the bid beyond the tight min and max bid limits, but it will update the Target bid column.


4. Navigate to a Keywords page that contains the keywords in the bid strategy.


5. Filter to the keywords in the bid strategy.


6. Above the performance summary graph, click Columns and then select the Target bid column.
   


7. Review the target bids. If they look reasonable, relax the bid limits to give more control to the bid strategy. In the following example, you may want to set your min bid to $5.00 and max bid to $60.00 for the keywords, to ensure that the Performance Bidding Suite has the room to set the target bids.
   

After you give the bid strategy control, remember that you can use Change History to gain insights into bid strategy changes with a summary of the bid rationale. In addition to the target bid, this feature lets you know how often bids are evaluated and provides details on why a change was made to a target position strategy. You also receive guidance on how to improve bid strategy performance by discovering where settings like max bid inhibit the bid changes. Learn more.

Posted by the DoubleClick Search team

New AdWords labels: unrelated to DS3 labels

As you may have heard, Google AdWords recently launched a new labels feature. We just wanted to let you know that this is separate functionality from DoubleClick Search V3 (DS3) labels. DS3 labels are set at the advertiser level and can span several engine accounts. AdWords labels are not currently supported in DS3, and they will not be imported into DS3 when you run a sync.


As a reminder, DS3 labels are a great way to categorize and report on keywords. Because multiple labels can be applied to a keyword, you can track many different attributes, such as whether it’s a brand keyword or if it’s in a particular category. You can also note keywords where your site doesn’t feature well in the organic search results.


To create a DS3 label:

1. Click the Labels tab in the left nav, click the New button above the table, and name your label. 


2. Navigate to a list of keywords and select some of them.


3. Click the Labels button above the table to apply labels to those keywords.

Coming soon, you’ll also be able to see reporting stats for DS3 labels.





As an example of the power of DS3 labels combined with reporting, an advertiser may manage brand and generic keywords separately. Using keyword labels, the advertiser will be able to easily compare the performance of these sets of keywords and take action accordingly, such as raising/lowering bids.


Learn more about creating and applying DS3 labels on the Help Center. And keep an eye on the blog for news of the release of reporting stats for labels.


Posted by DoubleClick Search team