How Do You Determine Whether Your Paid Ads Work?

Just curious about this having just been speaking to one of our mainstream advertising clients who tell us they didnt want to renew their ad campaign because they didnt get many signups.

Im fine with that, especially after seeing the amount of traffic we sent them however, after speaking to them about their results elsewhere and the amount of traffic they were actually receiving i began to realize that the problem was actually on their side of things.

They used a pretty decent button for the ad campaign and, actually have a reasonably good product however, upon further inspection, it appears that their site isnt working thus, they are receiving traffic but, when someone joins it, their information isnt being passed back to their scripting to register the sale.

At what point would you reasonably think, a company should determine whether the fault lies with their system or, the media broker? Isnt there only so much that the broker can do to ensure their campaign has the desired effect, from swapping out ad creatives, running test signups / clicks and making sure that the campaigns being run are fully optimized to deliver the maximum amount of traffic possible?

Also, say you spent money on a paid campaign and received the traffic levels you expected but not the 'figures' how do you determine whether or not the campaign actually worked for you?

Regards,

Lee

See that is an interesting point.

For me, when something isn't performing as I expected the first place I tend to look is at my own site. Are the links pointing to the right place? Are the join or buy buttons visible or not clear enough? Is the design confusing to the traffic? Are my ads making sense or did I spell weekly wrong? (sorry Lee, couldn't resist that) but spelling does count in advertising, so I do check it.

In short I make damn sure the problem isn't of my creation first, however it seems to me that many always look outwards first, rarely looking at their own part of the equation. :cry:

From another point of view... we as site owners, designers, operators, look at a site differently than our customers do. We can see a site that is clean, using what we think are the right colors, photos, graphics, good concept, easy navigation, great sales pitch...etc....

but what do we use to measure the users (the buyer) pshychology? We often times do not have the ability to know why their traffic isn't converting unless they give us feedback. And then on that feedback, is it just that one customer...or many? Enough to justify changes?