See performance by OS and browser with Platform reports

Today, we’ve released new reports to help you better understand the impact of desktop and mobile platforms in your affiliate program. With Platform reports, you can have full visibility into performance associated with desktop and mobile operating systems and browsers, right from within our interface.

You can review Platform reports to see OS and browser activity associated with clicks, actions, transactions, sales, fees, and more -- all based on the timeframe you specify. The Activity report provides a breakdown of performance based on the OS used. The Activity detail report drills deeper, breaking out performance by OS like Windows, Mac, Android, or iOS and browser type, such as Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.

Publisher benefits
Publishers can use Platform reports to efficiently identify top performing advertisers by OS, helping them make more informed decisions as to which advertisers to promote through different platforms. Want to see which advertisers perform well in different operating systems? Review the Advertiser report to access performance metrics for advertisers based on platform. 

Advertiser benefits
Advertisers can see conversion performance by browser and operating system through Platform reports, making it easy to gain new insights – like whether or not visitors from mobile browsers convert at a higher rate than desktop browsers, or if the average order value associated with mobile is higher than conversions from desktop. Advertisers can also access Publisher and link reports with platform data, helping them identify the best publishers to partner with and the types of links to make available.

For example, let’s say an advertiser finds that traffic from smartphone or tablet browsers converts at a higher rate or is associated with a higher average order value compared to desktop browsers. In this case, platform data may be useful in helping the advertiser decide whether or not to work with more mobile-focused publishers.

As with all our reports, Platform reports can be easily exported to .txt or .csv for further analysis.

By breaking out visitors by OS and browser, Platform reporting may help provide direction on your mobile strategy. For example, you can use insights from Platform reports to consider whether or not to design a website to accommodate both mobile and desktop traffic, or to design a separate, mobile-friendly website.

If you have feedback or suggestions on these new reporting features, let us know what you think by submitting feedback in the interface or through our Product forum.

Posted by:
Kurt Spoerer, Senior Product Manager

Interpreting Your Data: How To Understand Calculated Metrics

Welcome to the second post in our "Interpreting Your Data" series for affiliate advertisers, brought to you by Google Affiliate Network analysts. View all posts in the series here. 

Calculated metrics provide great insight into how specific variables are performing. A few of these commonly used metrics are conversion rate, click through rate, and average order value.
In this post, we will use examples to discuss how you can use calculated metrics to interpret your affiliate program data. 

Reviewing performance data using calculated metrics:
You’re in the Google Affiliate Network interface, reviewing performance reports and notice your conversion rate has increased. You may think -- “That’s great news!” Or, is it?

Before celebrating, you’ll need to ask a few more questions and take a deeper look to determine whether an increase in conversion rate is really a positive indicator for your overall program.

This is because conversion rate is a calculated metric that is generated by combining two other metrics -- in this case, conversions divided by clicks. Whenever you use a calculated metric, you should understand what’s happening to both of the underlying metrics to to determine an overall trend.

Example 1:

• In period 1, you have 33 conversions and 100 clicks, so your conversion rate is 33%.
• In period 2, you have 25 conversions and 50 clicks, so your conversion rate is 50%.

As you can see, the conversion rate goes up in period 2. Is that good? There are fewer conversions in period 2 and fewer clicks. You should investigate why clicks went down before you can determine if this is a positive or negative indicator.

Understanding metric composition:
With an affiliate program, you should also consider the composition of each metric. That is, the composition of all of the publishers that are driving clicks and conversions. Each individual publisher composes one part of each metric.If you see conversion rates go down, you may think that this is negative indicator. To determine the significance, you should check if the conversion rate is down for every publisher and if you added any new publishers. 

Example 2:

• Publisher X had 33 conversions from 100 clicks totaling a 33% conversion rate. 
• Then you add publisher Y, who generates 200 clicks, 20 conversions totaling 10% conversion rate.
• These two publisher combined generate 53 conversions on 300 clicks, for a conversion rate of 26.5%. 
• The combined conversion rate is down, but that’s only because you added a publisher that drives more clicks at a lower than average conversion rate. 
• You still have 33% conversion from publisher Y that drove 100 clicks.

In this example, it’s important to look more closely at the new publisher. It’s possible they have a lower conversion rate due to their business model. Adding this publisher to the program changes your overall number.

In summary, when you’re looking at the movement of a calculated metric (such as conversion rate and average order value) you shouldn’t stop there. To understand the shift, you should do a bit more investigating to find out why that metric moved.

For additional resources on analyzing your program, please see this analysis checklist help center article. 

Posted by Dan Filowitz, Manager of Affiliate Operations

Interpreting Your Data: Where do I start?

Welcome to the first post in our new "Interpreting Your Data" series for affiliate advertisers, brought to you by Google Affiliate Network analysts. View all posts in the series here.
Affiliate program success can be evaluated in different ways, so you’ll need to clearly define performance requirements and metrics early. Questions you should seek to answer include:

- What is happening?
- Why it is happening?
- What actions can I take?

In this post, we’ll cover time periods and getting started with performance analysis.

Time Periods
The first thing you'll want to decide is what time periods are important to you. Do you want a broad,  monthly view or do you need to get more granular with a weekly view? Next, decide how you want to compare your time periods.  Year over year will help take seasonality into account.  If you are a new affiliate advertiser, week over week and/or month over month will help show how your program is growing.

Performance analysis
After the time period comparisons are determined, start by looking at your main metrics and see if they’re up or down.  It's important to look at more than just transactions.  An increase in transactions is valuable but you'll also want to see if your clicks increased to really understand the reason behind your increase.  Did your opportunities just convert better or did you have a larger base of clicks?

Now, it's time to dig deeper into your program and examine changes in publisher performance. Take a look at your publishers using the same time comparisons. This will help you identify and sort by publisher activity to find the biggest increases or decreases. If only a few of your publishers saw large gains, review any actions you took with them. Did you purchase an ad placement? Did you increase their commission rate or run an exclusive affiliate offer with them? If you saw increases across many or most of your publishers, this could be a result of a sale, or might be tied to publishers implementing creatives or offers that better appealed to your customers.  Once you're able to make conclusions about the cause and impacts of program changes, you can take the appropriate steps to optimize publisher performance and drive more conversions.

It's important to understand when gains or losses are due to seasonality and when they’re due to actions taken by you and/or your publishers.  For instance, if December is your top month, January sales are going to be down when comparing month over month.  This is why it's helpful to use year over year comparisons and understand the seasonality of your business.

For additional resources on analyzing your program, please see this help center article.
Posted by Elliott Chapman, Account Strategist