An additional feature I'd love to have would be the ability to set traffic goals for a given campaign or account.  I work with a number of clients who measure online advertising success not in terms of online contacts or sales, but in offline phone calls and appointments, which I track externally.  This being said, I know I generate a call for these clients for every 'x' number of clicks received.  Having the ability to use the Clickable software to max impressions or max clicks within a determined CPC range would really help me maximize results within my clients budget.  Without this functionality, Clickable is a great campaign management tool for this set of clients, but not necesarily a great 24/7 bid optimization tool...

I realize Google and Yahoo have similiar optimization tools in their interfaces, but I'd prefer it if Clickable had their own 3rd party tool to monitor this.  Not only do I think Clickable could build a more robust (effective) traffic optimization tool, it would prevent me from having to log back into my Google and Yahoo accounts to make bid changes in these accounts.  :)

Matt  

Matt,

Thank you for your post.  You raise some interesting product ideas around goal setting and offline conversion tracking, which we will be able to investigate more fully in the second half of this year.

In the mean time, here are some ideas from some of our Clickable Gurus that might help:

• Our ActEngine already contains some recommendations that relate to increasing traffic, so look out for those. (e.g. we alert you when you are close to your daily budget limits and when click-through rates are low)
• To maximize the number of clicks and impressions at or under a certain CPC, you could increase your daily budget to well above your current limits and set an acceptable/affordable max CPC. Google will not exceed this CPC and your campaigns will be active as long as budget is available.
• By maximizing clicks for certain campaigns you may be able to achieve and maintain a (call/click) ratio that is within an acceptable CPA/ROI.  To achieve this, you will likely have to increase your CPCs to gain traffic, which may have a negative impact for your account long-term.
• Rather than ‘calls-per-click’ as a focus, calculating ‘cost-per-call’ may provide a more granular performance indicator. Your current analysis method assumes that all clicks are equal both in value (probability for conversion) and costs (CPC), which is likely not the case.

Our Assist team helps marketers achieve their goals, and could create a custom program for you in this regard.

Regards,

Vernon Steward
Vice-President, Product Management