Free Excel Spreadsheet for PPC Text Ad Testing for Statistical Significance

by on August 9, 2010 in testing, text ads, Videos

In this video I explain how to use an excel spreadsheet for determining statistical significance for PPC ad testing. I have included a free download of the spreadsheet as well as links to the resources used to create the spreadsheet.

I used the ClickEquations blog for some inspiration and the Marketing Experiments blog, a Data Mining book, and statistically-inclined friend for some help.

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19 Responses to “Free Excel Spreadsheet for PPC Text Ad Testing for Statistical Significance”

  1. Craig Danuloff August 10, 2010 at 12:25 pm #

    Great work Chadd – this is extremely useful. There are far too many paid search text ad decisions made on incomplete data. I’m sure your tool will help people to make smarter decisions.

    Reply
    • Chad Summerhill August 11, 2010 at 11:00 am #

      Thanks Craig, I’m glad you find it useful.

      Reply
  2. Natasha August 17, 2010 at 2:56 pm #

    Hi Chad: Thanks for posting this. Just a quick question. I am trying to understand the formula for calculating “Needed difference”. Can you kindly explain how have you calculated that and what is the significance of this. I am trying to build a model to perform ad copy testing and finding out the statistically significant ad copies and their text. Thanks and I look forward for your reply.

    Reply
    • Chad Summerhill August 17, 2010 at 3:34 pm #

      Sorry Natasha, but I had a friend help me understand the math–I just built the spreadsheet.

      I would recommend using the resources that I link to in the blog post, they do explain the math involved much better than I could.

      Reply
  3. Natasha August 17, 2010 at 3:41 pm #

    Thanks Chad. But could you help me in understanding the significance of “Needed difference”? Does it mean that for the challenger ad to reach close to winner, it need to increase its CTR by the difference percentage? And if actual difference is greater than needed difference, it means we have a clear winner?
    Thanks again

    Reply
    • Chad Summerhill August 17, 2010 at 3:50 pm #

      Yes, if the actual difference is greater than the needed difference you have a winner for the chosen confidence level.

      Hope this helps.

      Reply
      • Natasha August 31, 2010 at 2:03 pm #

        Hi Chad:
        I am still working with your excel and is quite helpful but 1 problem I am getting is, that the SEDP cell returns an error if the number os negative. Do you have any resoltuion for that?

        Reply
        • Chad Summerhill August 31, 2010 at 2:47 pm #

          What number is negative?

          Reply
  4. Mike September 2, 2010 at 4:56 pm #

    This is exactly what I was looking for thanks! Do you think it would work for display advertising in addition to PPC?

    Reply
    • Chad Summerhill September 2, 2010 at 5:03 pm #

      Hi Mike, thanks for stopping by. Yes it will work for testing display ads as well.

      Reply
  5. Wouter de Jong November 14, 2010 at 1:26 pm #

    Thanks! This is very usefull.

    Reply

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