• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, September 28, 2011

Optimizing campaigns against flawed metrics has prompted a few companies in the ad industry to design recommendation dashboards, based on combining data from search, display and social signals. Adometry became the latest to roll out cross-channel automated ad campaign optimization tools for display and search advertisers.

The features available in the Adometry Ad Analytics SaaS Solution Suite identify how specific interactions between display and search channels impact conversions. Marin Software, earlier this week, launched a similar dashboard.

Recommendations, which became the foundation for social marketing, recently moved into search and display advertising through automated tools, databases and data calculated by algorithms. They determine a marketer's best options for improving conversions, maximizing budgets and improving return on ad spend (ROAS).

The platform automates analysis and optimization for the campaign on thousands of different attribution and variables to drive higher overall conversions and boost campaign performance for both search and display campaigns. Along with features launched earlier this year, Adometry CEO Paul Pellman estimates on average the platform helps companies improve campaign ROI between 20% and 50%.

Data provides the insight to improve ROAS. "We have a couple of clients buying more than 1 billion display impressions monthly, and they spend a similar amount on the search side," Pellman said. "To use the last ad clicked to judge what's working and what's not really misrepresents how media drives performance."

Attribution is critial, otherwise marketers run blindly through a maze of online media. If advertisers can clearly understand the media type that introduces consumers to the brand before leading them to the Web site to transact business, they can shift spend accordingly.

The campaign optimization features range from automated cross-channel optimization and media mix allocation, to campaign customization and easy-to-use interface dashboard. The data does include some from social sites, mainly Facebook.

For Pellman, the vision of social depends on how Facebook allows marketers to gain insights on ad serving and conversions. While companies supporting online advertising through platforms can typically collect clicks and conversions from Facebook ads, limitations prevent ad platforms from collecting display impressions.

Adometry typically collects data through ad tags and combines it with information collected from tags on landing and confirmation pages across an advertiser's site. These tags allow Adometry to see every impression, click and conversion. The data gets combined, which doesn't happen on Facebook.