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 About Tejal

Tejal is an MBA with a specialization in Marketing domain and extensive experience in analytics consulting and customer delivery.

Billing & Payments 101 - Display and Video 360

With the rise of businesses that envision building their online presence, digital marketing becomes inevitable for them to stand out among the fierce competition fighting for the attention of their audience. Display and Video 360 is one of the many DSPs that enable advertisers to do that.

When N-Number of Advertisers is competing using over 50 DSPs, the fight for the desired spot on the desired website/app is something that happens at an unimaginable pace. In this situation, it is beyond question that advertisers will demand value for each buck that they have spent through the Demand Side Platform with a clear bifurcation of the charges paid to - Publisher, Supply Side Platforms, Exchanges, Demand Side Platform, Agencies, and other involved entities. Therefore, it is important that they have complete visibility of what they are billed for.

But how can this be ensured? How can the advertiser have maximum visibility of what is their Budget Spent? What is their Media Cost? What are the Fees that are levied on them by advertisers by Display Video 360 or other Partners?

Here are some details that will help answer these questions and understand the Billing Part of Display Video 360 more:

The first level of Top to Bottom Hierarchy is a Billing Profile which is created when a Partner is created in the Google Marketing Platform. It includes the following details:

Item Details
Profile Name Name that the Partner wants to be displayed on the Invoice
Purchase Order Number Number of PO in case the usage is limited
Billing Country The Country in which the invoices will be billed
Billing Currency Currency of the Invoices
Invoice Level Whether the invoices are generated at Partner, Advertiser, Campaign Insertion Order or Line Item level
Invoice Detail Level Whether to group fees at Partner, Advertiser, Campaign Insertion Order or Line Item level
Invoice Split Level Whether to Segregate the Invoices according to Platform Spends or Media Spends
Itemization Level Whether to include Media and Platform Lines, Media or Platform Lines, All fees in Single Line or Separate Lines

Partners can check which advertisers use the billing profile from the Assignment Section and the Invoices can be checked from the Billing Summary Section.

All of these settings are prerequisites, but what might actually interest the advertisers is where can they keep a tab of their Costs and Fees once their Campaigns have started churning out the Monies, i.e. WHERE CAN THEY CHECK THE INVOICES?

Answer to this Billing Summary. It can be accessed from Advertiser>Advertiser Settings>Basic Details>Billing Profile>Billing Summary.

THIS IS THE KEY which can unlock all the information for the relevant Advertiser Stakeholders.

The billing Summary consists of the details of Transactions, Invoices, and Other Settings.

In the Transactions tab, the advertiser can see details of all the transactions that have been conducted through the Billing Profile. It is available in Summary View and Detailed View that can be adjusted according to the date range.

The Detailed View resembles the Bank Statement containing the Date, Details of the Transactions, and Amount of the Transaction.

Summary View bifurcates the Particulars into Costs, Payments, Adjustments, and Taxes.

A question that might arise here about what do Adjustments refer to?

Adjustments refer to the amount that is credited to the Payment Account by the exchanges  in case of one of the below reasons:

Credit Adjustment or Memo Invalid Traffic Adjustment Budget Adjustment
Reason of Credit that was applied to the account in form of a memo with the details of the reduction to the due amount from the specific invoice or a payment account. Adjustment against invalid clicks and impressions that might have been generated through Robots, Clicking Tools and other Software Adjustment for when your account spends more than the allocated budget.

 In the Invoices tab, the advertiser gets a dump of all the invoices that have been raised and processed in the past. Besides the Document Number, the Advertiser can get visibility of the following details of the Invoices in a tabular format - Status, Due Date, Issue Date, Document Type, Client/Payer, Invoice Amount, Amount Paid, Outstanding Balance, Advertiser ID, Advertiser Name, Campaign ID, Campaign Name, Insertion Order ID, Insertion Order Name, Partner ID, Partner Name, Purchase Order - and use the same as filters to find the Invoice they are looking for.

Here, Campaign ID, Campaign Name, Insertion Order ID, and Insertion Order Name are available only when the Invoice is detailed at the said levels.

In the Payments Setting Tab, the Advertiser gets visibility of

Details Editable once Set? Viewable?
Payment Accounts ID No Yes
Payment Account Name Yes Yes
Payment Methods No Yes
Email Invoice Delivery Yes Yes
Billing Address Yes Yes
Payment Profile ID No Yes
Billing Country No Yes
Account Type No Yes
Billing Address No Yes
Tax Information No Yes
Business Name and Address No Yes
Document Language Preference No Yes
Payment User No Yes

Now that the Advertisers know from where the invoices can be accessed, it is natural that they are going to compare the same with the actual cost incurred in the campaigns. This happens because there are multiple components that form a part of the invoice which might not be split into different particulars.

So here is how a comparison can be drawn between the numbers available in DV360 and the Invoices generated in Billing Summary:

Go to Insights>Offline Reporting>Standard>Billing report Template and generate the report for the same duration as that of the invoice using the following:

Dimension: Partner/Advertiser

Metrics: Media Cost, Billable Cost (Media Cost + Additional Fees), Media Fee 1, Media Fee 2, Media Fee 3, Media Fee 4, Media Fee 5, Media Cost Data Fee, and Platform Fee

Once this report is extracted, the same can be compared with the Amount in the Invoice minus the Refund & Adjustments, and Taxes.

Please note that the Platform Fees, Ad Serving Fees, and other Partner Fees are not disclosed on Open Resources. They are determined to post a discussion with the Agency and Sales Team from GMP.

Leverage on customTask API to achieve to your desired tracking goals

Leverage customTask to achieve to your desired tracking goals

Are you facing hurdles in accessing hit payloads that are sent to Google Analytics ? Are you having any curiosity to understand the mechanism of Google Analytics hit payload creation/modification?

Regardless to whether you have Google Analytics Standard or get Google Analytics 360, we are going to discuss about the customTask API and how we can use it efficiently. Google has provided varieties of tasks which are executed based on queue algorithm. Before hit is being sent to Google Analytics, customTask is the first among all the other tasks and functions.

Previously, we were not able to modify any hit payload parameters before the hit is sent to Google analytics. Anything that passes on as an extra value with the very first hit was not possible earlier. For example ClientID with first page pageview tag. But customTask makes all these things possible for us.

In this blog, We will discuss use cases to leverage customTask API. Let us see how you can modify the hit. For example, I want to change event category value before sending it to GA.

Follow the below steps to do so.

Step 1: Create variable of type Custom JavaScript named tvc_customtask_js in Google Tag Manager and write the following code.

This is the code which changes event category value before hitpayload is sent to Google Analytics

 

Step 2 : Now you need to use that variable in your Universal Analytics tag. Select Track Type as Event. Inside Fields to Set section select customTask from dropdown and assign the tvc_customtask_js variable inside Value.

Step 3: Create a trigger type of Custom Event.

Above is the standard use case that you can follow for changing other parameters as well. Once it is done, test it and make it live.

We have other advanced use cases as well which will give you better understanding of customTask API.

USECASE 1: Update the session level cookie to align your session cookies with Google Analytics session

To align session level browser cookie with GA session,, modify the cookie that maintains your session timing and align it with your Google Analytics session timings.It can be best solution for one page site.

USECASE 2: Send users’ variant information with first pageview hit to Google Analytics

Now a days to improve user experience and user engagement websites are performing A/B test. Now suppose you have 2 different experiences as A/B test variants, variant 1 can be original and variant 2 can be experimented version of original. Here, variant value would be stored into cookie. Get the variant’s value which user falls into variant 2 or original. And pass it to any hit using customTask API.

USECASE 3: Collecting the Client ID in a custom dimension

Capturing the clientID is very helpful to measure users’ behaviour in GA with very first hit. After fetching it successfully pass it to custom dimension.

USECASE 4: Leverage subsequent tasks

As customTask is the first task that is executed from all the other subsequent tasks, we may change/modify any parameters to other subsequent tasks. Those changes can be added to any custom javascript variable or write function in custom HTML tag in Google Tag Manager.

USECASE 5: Modify hit payload parameters before sending it to Google Analytics:

Send hit to multiple properties at same time. Is it possible? Of Course by creating multiple tags or by using lookup table variable. But what if all my hits are sent without creating any extra tag, It is possible using customTask.

USECASE 6: Aborting a hit

To abort the specific hit before it sent to GA. Such as we can set exception in trigger for that particular, tag will not be fired so we can set it in customTask.

To gather more information about above four use cases please refer Google’s standard doc.

Disclaimer: Google has introduced new feature gtag.js which is currently not supporting any tasks API. In future it might be support.

3-Steps to setup Google Analytics Enhanced E-commerce Tracking

Enhanced Ecommerce

Editor’s Note: This blog post has been updated on Sept. 14, 2017 based on the updated versions of Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager

How about we give you a granular level of user journey reports to you in Google Analytics. Let’s take real life example here. Now, I want buy a t-shirt and I am going to the mall. I will perform following actions in a sequence while shopping:

  1. Land into the store
  2. Search for particular brand or color or see through all the brands’ t-shirt
  3. Pick one/many of the t-shirt
  4. Check for more details
  5. Add one/many of them in my shopping basket
  6. Go to billing line and give my information
  7. Pay for the t-shirt

Or

  1. I may enter into one of the promotions zone
  2. Pick product and follow the process

What if I were to tell you that you can successfully track all these steps with your online store. Yes, that’s the magic of Enhanced Ecommerce feature of Google Analytics. Enhanced Ecommerce, allows you to track the user’s journey across the Ecommerce store that now become easy to understand the user behavior.

Enhanced Ecommerce is an extremely powerful feature that will help you:

  • Understand Exactly Where Your Users Are Leaving You
  • Create Customizable Funnel for Check out Process
  • Improvise Your Product Management
  • Improvise Your Merchandising Effectiveness
  • Better Remarketing
Steps To Implement Enhanced Ecommerce

Prerequisite: Your web property must be Migrated to the new version (Universal Analytics) of Google Analytics or best if you get Google Analytics 360.

Step 1: Enable Enhanced Ecommerce

Follow these steps to enable Enhanced Ecommerce:

  • Go to Admin section of your Google Analytics Account
  • In the view section, click on Ecommerce Settings
  • Switch on the Enhanced Ecommerce Settings button

ee_settings

Note: If you do not see the above setting, it means that you are still on the waiting list and you may have to wait till Google rolls out this for your web property

Step 2: Naming Your Check-out Funnel

Check out funnel report gives you great insight into where your customers are dropping off in the checkout process. Studying the exact drop off step in the funnel will help you improve your conversions. Using Enhanced Ecommerce WooCommerce Plugin can simplify you task.

Naming a checkout funnel is optional but we highly recommend it as it will add more meaning to your report. Different Ecommerce stores have different steps across the checkout.

The most common check out step funnel would be

  1. Checkout
  2. Shipping info
  3. Place Order

checkout_lable

Note: If you won’t name your funnel steps, it will by default appear as Step 1, Step 2, Step 3, etc.

Step 3: Add the tracking code

To enable Enhanced Ecommerce on your online store, you will have to implement the following codes:

  • Measuring product Impressions - View Code - GA - GTM
  • Measuring product clicks - View Code - GA - GTM
  • Measuring product detail - View Code - GA - GTM
  • Measuring Addition or Removal of cart - View Code - GA - GTM
  • Measuring checkout steps - View Code - GA - GTM
  • Measuring transactions - View Code - GA - GTM
  • Measuring Refunds - View Code - GA - GTM
  • Here is the Google documentation of GA and GTM you can refer to while adding the code.
A Quick Walkthrough of 10 New Powerful Enhanced Ecommerce Reports
1. Ecommerce Overview

ecommerce_overview

The Ecommerce overview reports will help you see the overall picture of what is going on in the revenue side. It shows the total revenue and Ecommerce conversion rate for any date range and gives you the total number of transactions, average order value and average quantity. This also shows the marketing report which provides insight about how overall the promotions or the campaigns are performing for the store.

2. Shopping Behavior

ee_tracking

This report provides great insight into understanding to check where the customers are exactly dropping off in the funnel. Each step contains the number of visitors at the top and the number of visitors who abandonment drop off at the bottom of the step. You can also use Enhanced Ecommerce extension for Magento to generate this sort of shopping behavior report. If you see the above image closely you will see drop off at Product Add to cart stage. This depicts that a large number of visitors add the products but does not go ahead with the checkout process. 

3. Checkout Behavior

universal_analytics

The checkout funnel will help you learn the exact funnel step where you users are dropping off in the checkout process. Insights from this report will enable you to increase the conversion rate.

4. Product performance

enhanced ecommerce

The product performance report is upgraded and now includes additional data points like product refund amount, cart-to-detail Rate (number of products added per number of product-detail views), buy-to-detail Rate (number of products purchased per number of products-detail views) etc.

To get the product refund data in the report, the refund data should be imported to GA using dimension widening for Refund data.

5. Sales performance

sales report

The sales performance report is improved and now includes the information like refund amount for any transaction, Tax, Shipping cost and Quantity.

6. Product list performance

The product list performance report will help you to identify which set of products are performing and which are not. One can create product lists for on-site merchandising rules and product landing pages to see which lists and products are best at driving customer engagement. Product lists can be used to represent related product pages, search pages, upsell pages, cross sell pages.

Following Metrics will be available in the report:

  • Product list view (number of time the product was viewed when it was in the list)
  • Product list click (number of time the product was clicked when it was in the list)
  • Product list CTR  (number of clicks/number of views)
7. Marketing: Internal promotions

If you are using internal promotions, for example internal banners that promote sales on internal pages of your site, then you can track their views, clicks, and the click-through rate. To enable internal promotions reports you will have to add the code mentioned in this post.

8. Marketing: Order Coupon

You can track the same metrics in order-level coupons with the help of Order Coupon report. The Order Coupon report lets you see how effective order-level coupons are in terms of revenue, unique purchases, and product revenue per purchase. To track the order coupon for any purchase, pass the order coupon value with the transaction data:

Using Google Analytics :

coupan tracking

Using Google Tag Manager :

coupan tracking gtm
9. Marketing: Product Coupon

The Product Coupon report lets you see how effective product-level coupons are in terms of revenue, unique purchases, and product revenue per purchase. To track the product coupon for any purchase, pass the coupon value with the transaction product data:

Using Google Analytics :

product tracking

Using Google Tag Manager :

product tracking gtm
10. Marketing: Affiliate Code

The Affiliate Code report lets you track revenue, transactions, and average order value associated with affiliate sites that drive customers to your site. To track the affiliate sites for any purchase, pass the store name in the transaction purchase data using the following example code:

Using Google Analytics :

affiliate code

Using Google Tag Manager :

affiliate code gtm
Concluding Thoughts

Data Analysis is an integral part of Ecommerce and it is a very useful tool that will help increasing your business by getting the facts, but then the data should be relevant and analysis should be done in a proper manner.

Enhanced Ecommerce gives you the reports and helps in analysis of the factors that matter the most and hence help the eCommerce flourish and progress. It also helps in knowing what the best suited medium is and hence where you should make most efforts and where you should invest more resources.

Interested in learning more about Enhanced Ecommerce? Check out our Post on 32 Resources to Help You Become an Expert at Enhanced Ecommerce

We hope that the blogpost helps you in understanding Enhanced Ecommerce & its features, if you have any query or need more information feel free to get in touch with us. Also, are there any other interesting Enhanced Ecommerce Reports that you use? Please do share it with us, we’d love to know.

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