{"id":165,"date":"2008-09-16T10:59:26","date_gmt":"2008-09-16T17:59:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/?p=165"},"modified":"2019-09-18T12:07:11","modified_gmt":"2019-09-18T19:07:11","slug":"do-ads-driving-firefox-downloads-affect-firefox-downloads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/2008\/09\/16\/do-ads-driving-firefox-downloads-affect-firefox-downloads\/","title":{"rendered":"Do Ads Driving Firefox Downloads Affect Firefox Downloads?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> Normal   0               false   false   false      EN-US   X-NONE   X-NONE                                                     MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 <\/xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <\/xml><![endif]--><!--  --><!--[if gte mso 10]> <mce:style><!   \/* Style Definitions *\/  table.MsoNormalTable \t{mso-style-name:\"Table Normal\"; \tmso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; \tmso-tstyle-colband-size:0; \tmso-style-noshow:yes; \tmso-style-priority:99; \tmso-style-qformat:yes; \tmso-style-parent:\"\"; \tmso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; \tmso-para-margin:0in; \tmso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; \tmso-pagination:widow-orphan; \tfont-size:10.0pt; \tfont-family:\"Times New Roman\",\"serif\";} --> <!--[endif]--><\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/2007\/12\/27\/what-did-our-advertising-experiment-really-tell-us\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">previously<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/2008\/02\/08\/another-mozilla-advertising-experiment-bidding-on-keywords\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">talked<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/2008\/09\/04\/advertising-firefox-on-wednesdays\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">extensively<\/a> about one of Mozilla&#8217;s core marketing tactics &#8211; search engine marketing.\u00a0 One of the questions we always come back to is: &#8220;what macro level effect does this activity have?&#8221;\u00a0 In other words, we know this channel is driving clicks and Firefox downloads every day, but is this effort actually aiding Firefox adoption in some way?<\/p>\n<p>This thought might seem anti-intuitive.\u00a0 If these marketing campaigns are driving a mass number of clicks and downloads, of course it *seems* as though we&#8217;re having some small impact on Firefox adoption.<\/p>\n<p>To test these questions, we recently set-up an experiment much like an <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/2007\/12\/20\/mozilla-online-advertising-part-2-experiment-findings-and-marginal-cost\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">experiment we conducted last fall<\/a>.\u00a0 Here&#8217;s what we did:<\/p>\n<ul type=\"disc\">\n<li>Starting      in July, we alternated our bidding on alternate days on a major search      engine over a five week period<\/li>\n<li>Some      weeks we turned off our branded search campaigns on Mondays and Wednesdays      (to compare with Tues\/Thurs during those weeks), and during some weeks we      turned off our branded search campaigns on Tuesdays and Thursdays (to      compare with Mon\/Wed within those weeks)<\/li>\n<li>For the      latter example, a Monday\/Wednesday combination with our campaigns left      active would have benefited from about 80,000 ad clicks that the      Tuesday\/Thursday period within that week did not benefit from<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Below are the findings when looking at Firefox download numbers on a macro-level, i.e., across all channels, locales, etc.\u00a0 This is a very large macro-level number, and the traffic seen each day via search engines is only a small part of the overall story, so as one would expect, it&#8217;s difficult to see an effect.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/files\/2008\/09\/macro_download_effect.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-167\" title=\"macro_download_effect\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/files\/2008\/09\/macro_download_effect.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"580\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Fortunately, we can drill down into the data a little further.\u00a0 Below are the findings when looking at Firefox download numbers solely through Google.\u00a0 The numbers represent all downloads through that single channel, i.e., via both organic search results and paid advertisements.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/files\/2008\/09\/download_effect_withing.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-168\" title=\"download_effect_withing\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/files\/2008\/09\/download_effect_withing.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"539\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Are these results surprising?<\/p>\n<p>Sort of.<\/p>\n<p>Our previous experiment (with a more limited scale), showed us two things:<\/p>\n<ul type=\"disc\">\n<li>The vast majority of      people &#8211; who would normally click on our advertisements &#8211; will either      click on our organic search result or find Firefox via some other method      when we turn off our ads<\/li>\n<li>Having our search      campaigns turned on increased the overall pie of daily downloads by      approximately 1%<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This latest experiment suggests that that initial finding could hold true, but it also makes clear the fact that the answer to our original question (&#8220;do search campaigns aid Firefox adoption in any way?&#8221;) remains somewhat inconclusive.<\/p>\n<p>We want to make sure we&#8217;ve done a fully rigorous job here, so please comment with your thoughts if you have a different take on these numbers and analysis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve previously talked extensively about one of Mozilla&#8217;s core marketing tactics &#8211; search engine marketing.\u00a0 One of the questions we always come back to is: &#8220;what macro level effect does this activity have?&#8221;\u00a0 In other words, we know this channel &hellip; <a class=\"go\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/2008\/09\/16\/do-ads-driving-firefox-downloads-affect-firefox-downloads\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[103,101],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/60"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.mozilla.org\/metrics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}