Within the past couple months Google has offered up a slew of new reporting features via Custom Reports. One new feature segments Google AdWords activities by time of day. I have been griping about not being able to track hourly traffic for some time. The feature is finally available, albeit it not within Google AdWords as I would have liked, but within Google Analytics.

This Custom Reporting feature within Google Analytics allows you to segment marketing campaigns by time of day, allowing you to assess your AdWords budget (or any other campaign for that matter) by conversions, spend and hour of day. This makes the day parting (ad scheduling) feature from AdWords that much better. Not only can you pick what time of day and set costs by time of day, but you can now analyze your conversion by time of day! This custom report can also be setup to analyze your PPC campaigns for Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN AdCenter and any other online advertising tool that lets you use day parting.

Below is a screenshot of one way to set up this custom report, allowing you to see conversion by time of day.


How will this help my search marketing program?

Since Google AdWords hourly reports are not available for conversion tracking, this new Analytics custom report allows you to refine your budget based on actual measurable ROI.

For example, if you are converting more during a certain time period then you could utilize advanced ad scheduling to raise bids during only this time period. The opposite is also true, performing poorly during a certain time period, then lower your bids with advanced ad scheduling. You can use advanced ad scheduling to set up to six separate bids throughout the day.

Labels: Google Analytics, PPC Advertising