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We had one of those problems that most SEM agencies dream of having. We have clients who are running display ads on the Google Content Network whose view through conversions are in the hundreds a month. We love to report on this number, but have to add the caveat that a certain % of those conversions are actually counted elsewhere in their other search campaigns. Faces turn from happy to puzzled in a manner of seconds.

So when our Google reps were in town visiting us last week, we mentioned this problem. They looked over their shoulders to see if anybody was watching before saying, in a whisper: "This doesn’t leave this room, but we are looking into a feature that de-duplicates view-through conversions."

And sure enough, the next week we ran across this blog post on Google that talks about this exact feature.

Many of you know that view-through conversions result when users see but don’t click on a display ad. They may come back later and convert through a search ad, which would count the conversion twice. Which makes reporting nearly impossible and leads to puzzled faces.

By enabling the de-duplication feature, you exclude view-through conversions that are found in both the Search and Content networks!

Do note that the feature isn’t retroactive, and that going forward, the number of view-through conversions will drop. In the first few days of testing, we saw a 35% decrease in the number of reported view-through conversions. But what we are left with is basically 65% more conversions that we can accurately report back to our clients.

We can’t wait to see their faces.