A Trainer’s Perspective: Handy Answers to Common Platform Questions

A Trainer's Perspective

At Adswerve, we offer dozens of training courses covering topics across the Google Marketing Platform. Trainings are very interactive and available in a variety of formats (including Virtual, Remote, On-Site, Online Live, and E-Learning) where we always welcome questions. Sometimes we see a lot of the same type of questions, sometimes they’re completely unique to the audience. The questions we receive help remind us of what’s top of mind for our clients, and often lead our discussions into new areas that can be handled with additional training materials.

Take, for instance, our newest training offer around Learner Boosts, which are more personalized deep dives on topics like automation and bidding, optimizations, campaign trafficking efficiencies and more. Each Learner Boost comes with a goals discovery session, an assessment to determine the tactical areas of focus for your team, and a dedicated consultant who will guide you through formal training. In other words, more support to guide you into the discussions and learnings you are truly needing to uncover.

So what type of questions do we commonly get at our trainings? They typically come in all shapes and sizes, but here are some of the most common ones we’ve received in the past from three of our most popular training modules. I've even included the answers here for you, just in case you were about to ask. 

Campaign Manager 360 Fundamentals

Our introductory CM360 course takes participants through an overview of ad serving and how CM360 fits into the picture. We cover the Advertiser and Campaign sections of the tool with an in-product demo and thorough explanation of key features and settings. 

What are the most common other products to integrate with CM360?

Most often we see clients using the Google Tag Manager (GTM) integration which allows you to deploy and manage floodlight activities with ease. This native integration alleviates the possibility for human error while making it simpler to implement your Floodlight Tags in conjunction with any other tracking pixels that should be firing.

Many CM360 users are also looking to serve and track their ads programmatically, which leads us to another very common integration; Display & Video 360 (DV360). The CM360 to DV360 connection allows Advertisers to traffic Creative assets directly to the DV360 platform with a few simple steps in order to better capture cross-channel attribution and make your reporting data more impactful.

What types of pages should I be implementing Floodlight tags?

When answering this question, we recommend considering the following:

• How will I be using my Floodlight tags to measure the success of my Advertising?

• How will my Floodlight tags help with optimizations to my media?

To do this, you will need to determine what are your Campaign KPIs, and which of your KPIs can be tracked with a Floodlight Tag. This will allow you to determine if your User is completing your intended call to action. For example, are you looking to drive User Sign ups? Place a Floodlight Tag on the Sign-Up Submission Button. Are you looking to drive purchases? Place a Floodlight Tag on the Checkout button and attribute any purchases to the exact media the user had seen.

Additionally, if you are also using an analytics platform, the combined data will help you to further understand your user’s journey, and where they may be halted in the conversion funnel.

It is also important to consider how you may be intending to use Automation and Bid Strategies within the platforms. Are you looking to optimize based on users who have added a product to the Cart but have not made a purchase? In this case, you would want to ensure that a Floodlight Tag is placed on the Cart URL.

Finally, retargeting is always a great tactic. Use your Floodlight tags to create 1st party audience lists for more effective advertising.

What are some of the benefits of using Audience lists?

Audiences are essentially groups of users who share common characteristics or behaviors. You can define those lists in CM360 and once a hundred users fit the definition of the Audience, data will begin to populate. You can then use that Audience to remarket to users in your campaigns and the Audience can be shared with other advertisers in your account.

Google Analytics Foundations

This course is geared toward people who are brand new to Google Analytics or need a refresher. We cover data flow from your website into Google Analytics, navigation around the user interface, define some of the most common metrics and then review some of the key out-of-the-box reports in Google Analytics. Our participants often ask us these questions:

My user count seems to be higher than the number of people I would expect to be visiting my site. Why is this?

This is related to the way users are defined in Google Analytics. Users are not necessarily individual people, but rather cookies unique to a browser and device. For example, if you navigated to a website from a computer, then a phone and then a tablet, those are three different devices so you would register as three separate users in Google Analytics. There are some other considerations such as if a user is logging into a website, but generally, users are unique to individual devices and browsers. 

Where do I find ____ report? 

The key out-of-the-box reports in Google Analytics are organized into several categories:

• Real-Time Reports - A live look at what is going on your website right now
• Audience Reports - Everything to know about the people coming to your website (demographics, location, etc.)
• Acquisition Reports - Where are your users coming from? Where were they immediately before visiting your website?
• Behavior Reports - What are users doing on your website? What content is popular?
• Conversion Reports - Are users converting on your website? Are they completing Goals or completing transactions (e-commerce)?

How does data get from my website into Google Analytics?

If you’re using Google Analytics, your website is embedded with javascript tags that contain a Google Analytics Property ID. This Property ID is basically a unique identifier for your Google Analytics instance and tells the website where to send data. When a user interacts with your website, those javascript tags fire "hits" that send data into Google Analytics at the property level. 

Does closing my browser window or closing a tab end my session?

No, it does not. The three things that end a session are:

• A 30-minute idle timeout
• When the clock strikes midnight
• If new attribution data is received

Google Analytics does not know if you have the website open and in front of you on your device, all it knows is if you are interacting with the site. So if you close a tab or browser window, it's likely that your session will end due to 30 minutes of inactivity. 

Data Studio Introduction

This course is an introduction to data visualization using Google's Data Studio. We cover the types of data sources you can port into Data Studio and go through an interactive exercise to help you build a new dashboard from scratch. We answer several questions, including: 

How much does it cost to use Data Studio?

Data Studio is a free-to-use tool, but some of the Data Sources that you can connect to have an associated fee. All of the Google-connected types of sources are free, but some of the third-party source definitions have a cost. You need to click into the Data Source that you want to connect to determine if it’s free or not. 

How can I tell metrics and dimensions apart? 

When editing a chart (or a data source), the metrics are always colored blue and the dimensions are always colored green. There’s another field type called parameters, which are always colored purple.

Can I share my Data Studio report with other people?

Yes! The primary way to achieve this is to use the Share button in the top-right corner of the Data Studio user interface. You enter the email address of the person you want to share with, and then grant them either Edit or View access. Note that the person you’re sharing the dashboard with will also need access to the underlying data source that’s populating the dashboard. 

Looking for More?

I know that some answers only lead to more questions! As mentioned, we offer several live and on-demand training courses, (plus Learner boosts!) for our clients. If you're interested in learning more about our suite of training options, please contact us. Our training options are growing all the time!