And The Survey Says . . .
Using Reporting categories to test and target
Reporting Categories allow you to gauge the performance of ads in different areas of your site or sites as well as ads in different layouts. You can assign Reporting Categories to different pages corresponding to, for example, different lines of business. If the content on your site deals with consumer electronics and computer gaming software, you can assign each its own Reporting Category, measure the success of your campaign in each line of business and adjust your Ad Targeting and content strategies accordingly.
You can also use Reporting Categories assess how well one ad layout placement performs against another.
You can create a Reporting Category from the Reporting Categories page, under the Reporting Tab. All you need to do enter your Category name into the input field and hit Create. Then, hit the “Update Your Ad Code” link, which takes you back to the Ad Layout page.
You’ll need to choose your Ad Layout Options and color palette and, under “Step 2, Reporting Category” use the drop down to apply your category. Then you’ll need to cut and paste (or re-paste) the ad code into your site.
It’s important to use Reporting Categories to analyze your performance on a granular level. And you’ll want to analyze your Reporting Category data against your knowledge of your users. You might find that a careful study of your users’ desires and behavior combined with granular testing of Categories leads to some unexpected but profitable results.
– Michael Mattis, Blog Editor
| Post Comment | categories:: How-to's
May 31st, 2006 at 1:31 pm
[…] The YPN Blog has a post about using reporting categories to test ads on your site. The post doesn’t contain anything new and is very basic. Must be targeting the newbies to YPN. I’m also a little confused about the title, “And The Survey Says . . .” I thought YPN was going to release the results of a survey or something. Maybe that’s the point — to make me click on that darn link. That’s why I titled this post, The Secret to Increasing Your Blog Income. Ha-ha. […]
May 31st, 2006 at 1:41 pm
Would be a lot better to allow real-time category analysis. Waiting until the next day to see the stats is a little frustrating if we want to see results right away.
June 8th, 2006 at 8:57 am
[…] Here at the Yahoo! Publisher Network, we take Reporting URLs just a wee bit more seriously. Like Reporting Categories—which we talked about last week—you use Reporting URLs to help gauge ad performance. But where Reporting Categories let you gauge performance by categories that you assign (such as for different lines of business or ad layout format), Reporting URLs track performance by URL—whether by domain, by pages in a directory, by a single, specific page, or by a combination of these options. […]