Pay Per Click - What's the best way to to measure conversions ?

Hi "The Cypher",
Thanks!
GCLID is mainly used for tracking off-line conversions, right?
How about tracking online conversions?

Hi Stefan,

Employees at a top tier PPC platform aren't likely to steal your campaigns. That just seems like paranoia at an unhealthy level. I've been doing PPC for more than 13 years and never had an issue with an employee from a top tier ad platform stealing anything, nor have I ever heard of such a thing happening to anyone else. And I belong to several communities of professional advertisers.

PPC platforms do not "raise the PPC-pricing for certain keywords", that's not how PPC platforms work. Each advertiser sets his own bid, and the ad slots are auctioned off to the highest bidder. You, as an advertiser, are the only person that can raise the PPC pricing.

At worst, an employee of a an ad platform could see your data, decide to become a competitor, and copy some of your ideas. However, you don't have to be an employee of a PPC platform to find millions of profitable niches, that information is rather easy to find using the AdWords Keyword Planner, and running a few tests within the ad network itself.

Anytime you launch an advertising campaign, you are broadcasting to the public all your advertising efforts, it is publicly available for all the world to discover, else it wouldn't be effective.You can bet that your competitors are analyzing what you are doing, and if you are having success, some of your competitors are going to copy you. You cannot expect to keep that information a secret.

Having said that, you can have secret strategies that are not apparent to your competitors, nor to PPC employees. Your specific strategies are what you need to conceal as much as you can from direct competitors.

From my experience it is almost always better to use the Conversion tracking tool provided by the ad platform because you need to include conversion data to automate bidding and to perform optimization. Using 3rd party tracking is not always as reliable and you need to somehow marry the 2 separate sets of data to properly manage your campaigns. What you lose in accuracy and delayed adjustments is not likely to ever make up for some perceived security.

There are some situations where 3rd party tracking apps do fill a need, in particular with affiliate marketing platforms that have issues with transparency. It is within the affiliate marketing arena that you need to be concerned with theft of your marketing, and I would be more worried about the 3rd party tracking providers than the PPC providers., because there have been serious issues over the years with providers of 3rd party conversion tracking scripts stealing from customers within the affiliate marketing arena. You may actually be increasing the likeliness of theft, rather than reducing it by bringing in 3rd parties.