You shouldn't expect an ad to have the same number of clicks and click-through conversions. We'll help you understand why the number of click-through conversions might be greater or less than the number of clicks on a given ad.
More click-through conversions than clicks
Because multiple conversions can be attributed to a single click on an ad, you can expect to find in some cases that you have more click-through conversions than clicks.
For example, your conversion window for clicks is 30 days, and you count a conversion whenever a user visits a particular landing page. A user clicks on your ad once. Then she visits that landing page once a day for the next 30 days. Campaign Manager 360 counts one click and 30 conversions.
More clicks than click-through conversions
Let's assume that you've set up a Floodlight activity to count conversions on the landing page for an ad. In that case, you'd expect that for each click on the ad, there should be at least one conversion.
The first thing to check is your Floodlight implementation. It's possible that some implementation issue is preventing your Floodlight activity from counting conversions some of the time:
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Your Floodlight activity could be set up to count each user only once per 24-hour period (midnight to midnight), resulting in fewer recorded conversions.
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The advertiser's website administrator did not implement the random number generator (the
ord=key-value) correctly in the Campaign Manager 360 ad tag, causing Campaign Manager 360 to undercount conversions. -
Ads are linking to incorrect click-through URLs.
- The Floodlight tag is not placed at the top of the page, so some users move away from the page before the Floodlight tag can load.
However, it's also possible that everything is working correctly in Campaign Manager 360. There are many normal scenarios where Campaign Manager 360 records a click but not a Floodlight conversion:
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Some users have slow Internet connections, so they never make it to the landing page.
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The site is slow, so users leave the site before Floodlight records a conversion.
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Some users click on your ad by mistake, then press the back button before Floodlight can register a conversion.
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Some users click the stop button in their browsers before Floodlight records a conversion.
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Some users double-click on an ad to load its landing page, resulting in two clicks, but only one conversion.
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Some users visited the site before it contained a Floodlight tag.
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A certain percentage of clicks reflect bot or spider activity on your site. (Bots and spiders follow links on pages in order to gather information about their content and structure.)
