Trends tab
The Trends view shows your key performance metrics over time. You’ll see bookings & impression share change in response to market changes or changes in your Sponsored results set-up.
We’ve added impression share as a reporting metric. Impression share tells you how often you appear as a Sponsored listing in eligible searches. Impression share is a measure of your bid strength - it tells you if your bid is high enough to beat your competition for Sponsored Results spots. To grow your impression share, increase your bid.
We’ve added a change log to contextualize performance. It captures all the changes made in the selected date range that might affect your Sponsored Results performance. This includes changes to your bid, budget, and provider groups.
When you filter to a specific provider group, we’ll mark the most influential changes on the chart. These changes are bid, budget, & provider count changes, as well as pausing or unpausing a provider group. They will be marked by vertical dotted lines.
You can hover on the vertical dotted line to see a snapshot of performance and inputs at that point in time.
If you have made many changes in the filtered date range, you may not see these changes marked on the graph. All changes will be captured in the change log.
How should I use this reporting to get more bookings?
To understand which changes can help you increase bookings, we recommend starting with the Trends tab and reacting to at least 30 days of data. This will give you the clearest view of performance trends.
When impression share is down, consider increasing your bid. This means you are not beating your competitors as often as you were. You need a higher bid to be more competitive.
When bookings are down, but impression share is not, consider actions to grow your eligible searches, such as adding more providers to Sponsored Results, adding more availability, or adding more budget.
If bookings & impression share are not down, that means performance is stable or improving. Look at individual provider group performance to find opportunities for improvement.
If you want to make changes to your bid and budget, you can do so from a filtered provider group view. If you do not have a budget, you will not see the budget tile.
Provider Groups tab
Use the Trends tab to view your performance over time. View a snapshot of key performance metrics (max potential spend, bookings, and impression share) as well, for the filtered date range.
Use the Provider Groups tab to compare provider group-level performance. Continue to make changes to provider groups (add providers, create new groups, etc.) from this tab.
Metrics in the provider group tab:
Current bid: Your current bid input. This value always reflects your current input, regardless of the selected date range.
Provider count: How many providers are in this provider group
Max potential spend: The maximum amount you could be billed in the selected date range, if the date range is not a complete billing period (ie. one full month). This is the number of Sponsored Results bookings you've received multiplied by what your bid was when you got the booking.
Spend: What you pay for Sponsored Results bookings. You will see ‘Spend’ instead of ‘max potential spend’ if you have for complete billing period (ex. one full month)
Bookings: The number of bookings attributed to Sponsored Results in the selected date range
Impressions: The number of Sponsored results impressions this provider group received in the selected date range
Best Practices to review Sponsored Results reporting
View at least 30 days of data to understand performance trends. Shorter time windows capture anomalies in the data.
Make changes once a month, then wait 30 days to see the effect on performance trends. The algorithm takes time to adjust to new inputs, so any performance changes won’t be immediate.
Frequently Asked Questions
I increased my bid, why didn’t my impression share or bookings change?
I increased my bid, why didn’t my impression share or bookings change?
Sponsored Results is a dynamic marketplace. While you make changes, many other practices in your market are making changes as well. As a result, you may not see the performance changes you expected. We recommend that you continue to adjust your bid to understand what leads to improved performance.
Why do I see max potential spend instead of spend?
Why do I see max potential spend instead of spend?
If you are filtered to a date range that is not a full billing period (ie. one full month), you will see max potential spend in your dashboard. This is the number of Sponsored Results bookings you've received multiplied by what your bid was when you got the booking. You will not be billed more than this amount. In some cases, your actual monthly bill could be lower if our algorithm was able to get you Sponsored Results bookings for lower than your bid.
We show max potential spend if a date range is not a full billing period. Sponsored Results guarantees that your cost per booking will be at or below your bid, and that guarantee is applied at the end of the billing period.
Your spend might fluctuate through the billing period as the algorithm optimizes to get you as many bookings as possible. If at the end of the month, your cost per booking is higher than your bid, Zocdoc will cover any overages. Until the guarantee is applied, this spend might not reflect what you will be charged. Thus, we don't display your actual spend until the end of the billing period.