A new level of evaluating the effectiveness of branding and direct placements on third sites became possible thanks to the system for tracking users who did not click on banners, but went to the advertiser's site later.

What is the know-how? #

Usually, if companies do branding on third-party sites (for example, in the media or niche site for their product), or post native articles, they evaluate the effectiveness of reach and traffic immediately after posting.

However, our long-term practice shows that often people remember branding, communication or integration, but visit the advertiser's website later. But how can we track them?

A bit of history #

In 2021, we carried out several campaigns to attract new users to EVE Online. In particular, we did branding on the major Polish gaming portal https://www.gry-online.pl/ and on their sister site https://www.gamepressure.com/. We performed optimization of registration, but quickly realized that we were more interested in in-game events that better correlate with the future profitability of users.

What problem was being solved? #

One of the first solutions was to use in-game events such as First Login, Second Login, and time spent in the game. Later we added these factors to the prediction of future income.

In cases where we take events from a game (which is located on the user's computer or laptop and is not connected to the browser) we can only use the User ID to determine conversions.

We were able to link this data to clicks, using pixels in ads. This made it possible to optimize campaigns on different sites for in-game events, but only for those users who clicked on the ad right away. However, lately we have seen a trend: many users do not click on ads right away, but visit the site (in our case, games) later. We used to lose such users in our analytics, but we wanted to count them as well.

We created a technology that allowed us to take into account post-view conversions and automatically optimize campaigns based on this data.

So what about third-party sites? #

We have created a new user ID architecture that captures all users who have viewed ads. Including those users who watch ads, do not click immediately and register in the game (or do other targeted actions) later. We have already tested the system on a number of sites and advertising systems, including Yahoo Japan, Reddit Ads, Bing and GRYonline.pl / https://www.gamepressure.com/.

What are the results? #

It turned out that the number of people who remembered the integration and then found the site is exactly the same as those who clicked and went to the site immediately. At the same time, the number of first logins in the game (one of our target actions) is higher for post-view users than for post-click audiences.

And, most importantly, the number of second logins for the post-view audience is 5 times higher than for the post-click audience.

It turns out that those who remember the integration and visit the site later are much more motivated — and it's good that we have learned to take them into account.

Potential for use #

• So, users who see advertising integrations on third-party sites go to the target site and perform targeted actions.
• Often they are even more motivated for targeted actions (registrations, purchases, etc.) than those who respond to advertising or PR right away.
• Thanks to GMP, we can see the effectiveness of an integration within 90 days after the integration has been made.
• We can evaluate the effectiveness of communications and integrations on third party sites, even when they are embedded in complex marketing chains.

We comply with GDPR rules and use only user-authorized data.