Introducing Bing’s Universal Event Tracking

Andrea Hamilton - December 16, 2014

In October 2014, Bing announced their latest and greatest advancement – Universal Event Tracking (UET) – a simple, one-pixel solution for tracking events and measuring campaign performance and conversions. UET is now available and ready for implementation with advertisers. The beauty of the UET is that it allows you to track multiple interactions and can be easily associated with your Bing ads by defining goals in Bing’s Campaign Analytics. While site analytics and conversion tracking are available now, remarketing will be added in the coming months.

How Does It Work?

UET is a small snippet of code to be placed on all pages of the website. Data is then collected and aggregated based on the goals set-up in Bing’s Campaign Analytics. Goals will allow you to track just about anything on the site: transactions, email sign-ups, completed contact forms, live chat, user engagement, and more. UET supports four different types of goals that help you in tracking and measuring your business objectives.

• Destination: this goal is achieved when a user loads a particular page, for example, the thank you page after purchase.
• Duration: this goal is achieved when a user session lasts a specific period of time, for example, if a user spends more than five minutes watching a video.
• Page/visit: this goal is achieved when a user views a specific number of pages in the visit/session.
• Event: this goal is achieved when a specific action is triggered, for example, a user downloaded a brochure or signed up for an email mailing list.

Below is an example goal set-up in Campaign Analytics

When a goal is achieved, Bing Ads will report on it following the last click attribution model for attribution conversions to specific keyword clicks. Any previous click during the conversion window will be counted as an assist.

Why Implement Universal Event Tracking?

There are a few good reasons for taking a moment to implement Bing’s Universal Event Tracking pixel.

1. Uncomplicated: The UET saves time and effort allowing one pixel to link all your accounts to track and measure onsite performance, conversions, and (coming soon) remarketing – without the implementation of additional pixels.
2. Dynamic: UET allows you to track any kind of business objectives via four different goal types.
3. Cross campaigns, cross accounts attribution: Goal attribution allows you to better understand which campaigns drive conversions and how they work together.
4. Track conversion across devices: We exist in a multiple-device type of world and many people may begin a task on their mobile device and convert on their desktop. UET tracks conversions across devices when we know what devices belong to the same user.
5. Enhanced Campaign Insights: Since UET collects data across the site and not just on one specific conversion page, you are able to attribute traffic on your site to your campaigns and report on engagement statistics such as average duration/visit, bounce rates, average pages/visit, etc.
6. Works with Tag Management Systems: Bing has tested UET in the major tag management systems like Google Tag Manager, Adobe Tag Manager, Tealium, QuBit, Signal Digital, and Ensighten, and the tag has worked smoothly.

One additional thing to keep in mind, for those who are currently active in Bing, pixels created prior to July 2013 will stop being supported in April 2015. Existing tags will continue to work, but they will be read only in Campaign Analytics and any new tags will have to be created with the new tool.

To learn more about implementing UET, check out Bing’s Universal Event Tracking Implementation Guide.