So Microsoft adCenter is the only one of the 3 major paid search platforms that does NOT report on revenue. Google AdWords will break it down nicely for you with conversion types, being leads, sales, sign-ups, and other, complete with revenue dollars generated from paid search ads in AdWords. It's quite a beautiful thing, but for the money it can now cost to run ads on AdWords with the competition these days, its good that there are such details to be accountable to. It looks pretty much like this:
As you can see in the AdWords Account Report, Sales count and Sales Value are both there. As well, there options to capture Leads Count, Leads Value, Sign-ups Count, Sign-ups Value, Other Count, Other Value. REALLY REALLY Great Key Performance Metrics.
Yahoo! Search Marketing also captures revenue generated from Paid Search and reports it in the Panama Reports Dashboard. Here is what the Yahoo! Revenue reporting looks like:
Again, as you can see, the revenue column is happily there, and there is also a column which displays the ROAS.
Here is where I would LOVE to place the screenshot of a Microsoft adCenter report with revenue, however at best, I can only place a screenshot without revenue. This is not to say that adCenter is not a performer! It really is! In fact, I can happily place a screenshot of a sales-based account where the click through rate is through the roof, but wouldn't it be OUTSTANDING if I could tell the client how much revenue these ads generated?
My request is in to Microsoft, of course, to have this extremely key metric made to be a part of adCenter, and independent of using an analytics package. Both Google and Yahoo! do have analytics packages, however, these revenue amounts in their reports are gathered directly from their platforms and the conversion codes placed on thank you or confirmation pages of websites with shopping carts...Google revenue reporting gathered from AdWords, and Yahoo! revenue reporting gathered from Panama, and I submit that Microsoft revenue reporting needs to be gathered from adCenter conversion coding in the same way. ESPECIALLY with their desire to go toe-to-toe with Google on the search front.
My extremely capable and wonderful contacts from Microsoft are doing everything they can for me based on my requests, but I have such difficulty believing that there aren't hoards of you out there requiring this metric as well and trying to have it implemented.
I do believe in Microsoft adCenter. Maybe like in Peter Pan if we all yell it out at our computers as loud as we can, and from our hearts, they will exist better and stronger (by including revenue as a reporting option in adCenter)!
Let me know what you think!
The Doug
aka Doug Gebhardt