15 June 2023

An introduction to Floodlights

In summary

• Floodlights are a tracking feature in Campaign Manager 360 (CM360) used to monitor conversion and event activities
• There are two types of Floodlights in CM360: counter and sales
• Floodlights can be used to create basic audience lists for remarketing

What are Floodlights?

Floodlights are a piece of code generated in CM360 that when placed on a web page tracks, measures and reports on user activity.

For every digital marketing campaign, there’s always an action that you want a user to take after they see your ad. Floodlights can record if an action is taken and can report on the performance and effectiveness of marketing campaigns. When the desired action is taken, this is considered a conversion.

Example
A beauty business is undertaking some digital advertising to get more clients. A successful ad would result in a user booking an appointment after seeing an online ad.

The conversion action is when the ‘Book now’ button on the website is clicked.

Types of Floodlights

When creating Floodlights in CM360, there are two options to choose from. These options tell CM360 how a conversion action should be counted or measured.

1. Counter: keeps count of the number of times an event occurs on the site. The counter method is typically used to track awareness and engagement based metrics.
2. Sales: keep track of the number of items purchased and value of those purchases. The sale method is useful for tracking revenue metrics related to actual sales.

Example
In our beauty business there are two additional elements that can be tracked on site to determine the effectiveness of a campaign. After clicking on an ad, the user is taken to the beauty site.

• The user downloads an ‘Effective Skincare Guide’ document. In this case, you would use the counter floodlight to track the total number of downloads that occurred after the ad was clicked. This gives you an indication of a users’ engagement on the site.
• The user purchases a ‘Rejuvenation Beauty Package’. In this case, you would use the sales floodlights to track the total value of the sales. This will attribute the ad to a direct product sale, giving you an idea of your return on investment.

Benefits of utilising Floodlights

Some of the key benefits include:

• Floodlights can be used on any platform within the GMP at no additional cost
• You can create audiences lists for retargeting based on the user activity that your floodlight is tracking. These audience lists can be utilised to push niche retargeting strategies on users who are more likely to convert due to showing past intent or past engagement.
• You can track conversions accurately and attribute them to appropriate campaigns, ad groups, or keywords. You can then use this data to optimise bidding and budget allocation in Search Ads 360 to achieve better return on investment.

Need help with Floodlights?

Get in touch with the team at Louder to see how we can help you with Campaign Manager and setting up your Floodlights.

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