If you are debating whether or not to adopt the parallel tracking feature, we urge you to do it now before it’s required. The change is even more advantageous if you’re working with mobile landing pages. This should not be an opportunity that is casually ignored, specifically when you are deploying faster landing pages using AMP.
The process of tracking and measuring traffic from ads is critical. The tradeoff – it could slow down page-load time. With Google’s new parallel tracking announcement, a down factor for AdWords advertisers may longer take effect.
If your AdWords account is using the “Tracking URL” field in AdWords, this new feature delivers a method to lower the amount of time needed for an ad click to reach your landing page thus improving your user’s experience. You will note an uptick in your Quality Score which affects your ad rank and CPCs.
The update will best be received by advertisers focusing on traffic for mobile devices and utilizing mobile landing pages – speed factor. Because of parallel tracking, the final technical barrier to fully implementing AMP has fallen.
AdWords has already said this opt-in feature will be a requirement at the end of October…so better start now.
How Ad Click Measures Up
Using a click measurement of your own or from a third-party tech provider directs a person who clicks your ad to bounce through one or more redirect servers before their browser is able to request the ad’s landing page. How this is accomplished determines how many seconds is added to the user’s experience and how page load-time latency negatively impacts your Quality Score.
Parallel tracking appears to add value to advertisers and users by taking the user immediately to the landing page while the click measurements happen quietly in the background.
This is significant for advertisers because it will be very important that AdWords has a clear understanding of which URL parameters are required to acquire the landing page after an ad click. Make all necessary updates to Final URLs and Tracking URLs required to ensure that proper parameters reach your landing pages. Also, all click measurement URLs/requests will need to leverage encryption via HTTPS. So you should also update tracking URLs to replace “HTTP” with “HTTPS.”
Lastly, it’s a win for web surfers because of the added layer of extra data protection provided to them as well as being well aligned with the HTTPS Everywhere movement that Google heavily supports.
So, while adopting parallel tracking may require some extra work, the benefits may well be worth the effort.
Next Up?
Many AdWords accounts will need to do some URL tweaking and it’s smart to get a head start with your click measurement providers now before you wind up scrambling at the last minute to meet the October deadline.
Early adopters of parallel tracking – obviously- will benefit from the relative speed enhancement over those who elect to become late adopters. It’s your added incentive to jump on this now.
A line in the sand has been drawn by AdWords declaring that all click measurements be managed asynchronously. You can probably bet that other major ad platforms follow suit very soon.