Tracking clicks from mobile devices
July 23rd, 2010 | Published in Google Adwords
The ValueTrack parameter has long allowed you to track the clicks that you get via search and the Google Display Network separately. We know that many of you would like to be able to see the clicks you get from mobile ads separately as well. That’s why we’re pleased to introduce Mobile ValueTrack, a new way for you to do just that.
Mobile ValueTrack works the same way it does for search and content: by automatically adding a tag to your website URL. To use this feature, you just need to add the Mobile ValueTrack parameter: {ifmobile:NewTagName} to the “Destination URL” field when you create a text ad.
There are two ways to take advantage of this feature:
Automatic re-directs to mobile optimized sites
By adding the MobileTrack parameter to your landing page URL, you can automatically redirect people using mobile devices to a mobile-optimized version of your site. In the example below, you can create a mobile site at www.travelingdog.net/mobile and ensure that mobile clicks get re-directed to this site by adding the Mobile ValueTrack parameter, {ifmobile:mobile}. Note that non-Google-ads traffic to your site won’t have the ValueTrack parameter, so it’s still a good idea to send all users to your mobile-optimized site.
Mobile ValueTrack works the same way it does for search and content: by automatically adding a tag to your website URL. To use this feature, you just need to add the Mobile ValueTrack parameter: {ifmobile:NewTagName} to the “Destination URL” field when you create a text ad.
There are two ways to take advantage of this feature:
Automatic re-directs to mobile optimized sites
By adding the MobileTrack parameter to your landing page URL, you can automatically redirect people using mobile devices to a mobile-optimized version of your site. In the example below, you can create a mobile site at www.travelingdog.net/mobile and ensure that mobile clicks get re-directed to this site by adding the Mobile ValueTrack parameter, {ifmobile:mobile}. Note that non-Google-ads traffic to your site won’t have the ValueTrack parameter, so it’s still a good idea to send all users to your mobile-optimized site.
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Third party tracking tags
Additionally, If you use third party tracking to identify how many of your visitors clicked through to your site from your AdWords ads, you can use Mobile ValueTrack to track clicks coming from mobile devices. Just insert a tag into your destination URL. Let’s say that you’re Travel Dog Company and want to distinguish clicks coming from mobile devices. By adding the Mobile ValueTrack parameter to your landing page URL, www.travelingdog.net?type={ifmobile:hello}, the tag “hello” will be inserted into the destination URL allowing you to see which clicks are coming from mobile devices.
Mobile ValueTrack works for both WAP mobile ads and regular text and image ads on iPhones and other mobile devices with full Internet browsers. Keep in mind that any change that you make to your URLs will need to be reviewed and approved before they go live. You can also get more stats for mobile devices with full browsers by selecting “Segment By: Device” within Campaign Management.
We hope that this feature will allow you to better track your mobile performance and ensure that users get the best experience on mobile.
Posted by Miles Johnson, Inside AdWords crew