Tracking Calls from Ads

Overview

Fullpath tracks leads from calls that can be attributed to paid ads in two ways:

1. Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI)
2. Call extensions on Ads.

Ad Extensions

Extensions expand your ad with additional information—giving people more reasons to choose your business. One type of Ad extension - the Call extension - lets you add phone numbers to your ads. When your call extensions show, people can tap or click a button to call your dealership directly from an ad link before even arriving at your website. Read more about ad extensions here.

Dynamic Number Insertion (DNI)

Dynamic phone number insertion (DNI) is a Google tool to enable marketers to measure the impact of their digital efforts on inbound phone calls. DNI helps to bridge the online-offline attribution gap between your website traffic acquisition, and your phone conversions by creating unique phone numbers that appear on your dealership website according to a particular traffic source. Essentially, a DNI call is when someone clicks on an ad, goes to your website, and then clicks on a phone number listed on your site that is unique to that visitor or traffic source. Read more about DNI here.

At Fullpath, we leverage a combination of both Google's DNI as well as Call extensions to calculate the total call leads from Ads. 

How is DNI enabled?

**The Fullpath DNI function will need custom implementation from Professional Services if the Dealership is already using another 3rd party DNI vendor to track their inbound calls. These calls will then be tracked and included in the same numbers and reporting in the Fullpath Dashboard as well as an event fired (Event Type > Conversion > Call)  and visible from within Google Analytics**

If the dealership is NOT currently using another vendor for DNI, we suggest you utilize the Fullpath DNI setup so that calls from ads can be tracked and attributed within your CDXP. The following steps should be completed in the Dashboard:

1. Make sure the Fullpath code snippet is installed on your website. Read about how this can be done.
2. Dashboard set up:
   
   1. Click the symbol at the bottom lefthand corner of your screen.
   2. In the following screen, make sure you have the correct dealership selected in the "Dealership" dropdown, and "Digital Advertising" selected in the "Product" dropdown:
      
      
   3. Underneath "Digital Advertising," click on "DNI."
   4. Insert the relevant phone numbers listed on your website (typically Main, Sales, Service, or Parts). See the GIF below for a step-by-step guide.
      
      **The phone number you add in the dashboard should be typed exactly as it appears on your website, including parenthesis, dashes, etc. **

• After adding a phone number, you can edit or delete it by clicking on the icon on the right of three vertical dots.
  
  
• The feature can be turned off any time by turning the switch back to the off position.

DNI - Where does the data come from?

Fullpath pulls in tracking data directly from Google Ads when displaying Call Reporting data in your Dashboard. We take this data directly from your call report inside Google Ads (Reports > Predefined Report > Call Details). 

For more on call reporting or potential discrepancies between Google Ads and Fullpath, scroll down to the bottom of this article.

Call Extensions

How do the Call Extensions Work?

Call extensions let you add phone numbers to your ads, which can significantly increase click through rates. When your call extensions show, people can tap or click a button to call your dealership directly. 

Where does the data come from?

The number that is added to your ads using this extension is the Dealership number listed in the Dealership settings page of your Dashboard (taken from the Dealership's Google My Business page). If the Dealership does not have a GMB page, a number may be input manually at the time of account setup or if at a later time the Dealer would like to replace the main dealership number with another, you may go to Settings > Dealership Settings and manually input the desired phone number. 

How are Call Extensions enabled?

Ad extensions, including Call extensions are automatically added to all ads. No action is required.

Call Reporting

Those inbound calls will be counted towards the Phone Call Conversions in the Digital Advertising dashboard as shown below. When you see leads from Calls listed in the Dashboard or any reporting - this is a combination of calls tracked from ads (via the call extensions) and DNI.

More detailed reporting about leads by source which specifically list DNI tracked calls is available via the Leads report, found on the "Reports" page nested under Digital Advertising.

Seeing different numbers between Google and Fullpath?

It is important to note that not every call is counted as a conversion. The main 2 criteria for a call to count as a conversion and be listed as a Lead are:

• Call duration: we define the minimum duration for a conversion as 30 seconds (which is the default and the standard and can be adjusted via the Conversion Action)
  
  
• Real or Robo: Google will sometimes verify the calls so even if the call was long enough to be considered genuine, it may not be counted as a conversion because Google believes it was a machine or robot or some other automated response or interaction.
  

When reviewing your call report inside Google Ads (Reports > Predefined Report > Call Details) you will be able to see the call source (where Website = DNI) as well as duration. If it's been excluded by Google or does not meet our minimum call duration requirement, you may see a discrepancy between your total calls and what we report inside your Fullpath Dashboard.