The Silent Impact Meta Ads Have On Google Searches
One of the most debated topics amongst Meta Ads advertisers is whether an ad can be valuable if a user viewed an ad, but did not directly click on it. Marketers often speculate that "not everybody clicks on ads!" which is certainly true, to some extent. We like to think that our Meta Ads are creating a positive halo effect around the rest of our advertising, even if a user did not click. "What about all the people who see our ads, but then search for us on Google?" Unfortunately, this has always been speculative.... Until now. Thanks to a helpful tip from Bram Vanderhallen of bramsocial, marketers can now track the number of times a user viewed one of their Meta Ads, then performed a Google Search for their brand. While Google Analytics attributes traffic to search engine queries, it doesn’t account for users who see a Meta ad and later search for the brand or related keywords on Google. It’s a subtle, yet powerful, ripple effect that shows just how much Meta is quietly driving performance.
What is the Silent Impact of Meta Ads?
When you run a Meta ad, someone might see your ad but choose not to click on it. Later, they might go to Google to search for your brand or products and end up on your website. The problem here is that, by default, attribution tools don’t capture this interaction. Google Analytics will attribute the conversion to Google Search since it’s the source of the traffic, but it won’t acknowledge that the person was influenced by the Meta ad. Similarly, Meta will not track this Google search traffic in its reporting. This is where the “Go To Search” Metric comes into play—a tool to help uncover this otherwise lost data. It tracks how many people viewed your Meta ad, didn’t click, but later searched for your brand or product on Google and visited your website.
Introducing the 'Go To Search' Metric (GTS)
We all know that every media plan needs a healthy investment in new audience prospecting, otherwise, you will eventually run out of short-term customers whom you can profitably acquire. Many marketers struggle to maintain prospecting investments because they are inherently focused on the long term and are difficult to measure. Now, the GTS metric can be your first step to bridging the gap between short term performance and long term growth. GTS helps report, in real time, which prospecting initiatives are driving the most amount of interest and engagement. Remember: today's engaged visitor is tomorrow's customer! Therefore, we can think of GTS as a leading indicator for Share of Search (SoS) (which is, of course, a leading indicator for market share). By tracking GTS and SoS, performance marketers can begin to bridge the gap from being hyper-focused on short term results, to advanced marketing strategies that help build profitable growth engine over the long term.