WHY DO DPV’S EXCEED CLICKS?
If you place an advertisement through Amazon Marketing Services (which authors can now do through KDP Select, for example), you may notice something odd.
You might see many more detail page views (DPV) than clicks.
What’s the difference between a detail page view and a click?
- CLICK: A customer clicks on your ad.
- DETAIL PAGE VIEW (DPV): A customer views your product page after clicking on your ad, without closing the browser.
How can the number of DPV’s exceed the number of clicks?
Suppose that a customer clicks on your ad, visits your product page, checks out another book, and then returns to your product page (all without closing the browser). This will result in 1 click and 2 DPV’s. If the customer leaves your product page and returns again (without closing the browser), there will be a third DPV. And so on.
This is actually pretty common. Here are a few examples.
- A customer checking out your book may click on one of the books on the customers-also-bought list, then return to your book later.
- A customer checking out your book may click on one of your other books on your Author Central page, then return to the advertised book later.
- A customer may click on the back button on the browser to finish checking out the previous page, then go forward to return to your product page.
Is this good or bad?
If you have 2-3 times as many DPV’s as clicks, I think this is a good sign.
It shows a lot of activity on your product page.
Customers are showing their interest.
So if you have a high DPV-to-click ratio, but not a high sales-to-click ratio, it’s worth studying your product page closely and thinking of how to improve it. Those DPV’s suggest that customers are interested, but something isn’t quite closing the deal. Your product page is close, but not quite.
If your DPV-to-click ratio is about 1 to 1, customers aren’t thinking much about it. If your sales-to-clicks ratio is also low, something is making customers want to check out your book, but then they’re giving up on it right away. Maybe the ad isn’t sending the right message. Reconsider your thumbnail and title.
Clicks can exceed DPV’s.
It’s also possible to have more clicks than detail page views:
- If a customer clicks on your ad, but closes the browser or goes elsewhere before the page fully loads, you’ll get a click, but no DPV. (This click still costs you money.)
- If a customer clicks on your ad, goes elsewhere before the page fully loads, and revisits your page after 30 minutes, you’ll get a click but not a DPV. (DPV isn’t tracked in this case because the page didn’t fully load initially.) (This click still costs you money.
Repeated clicks don’t count.
It’s nice to know that if a customer repeatedly clicks on your ad, those repeated clicks don’t count as clicks.
So you don’t have to pay extra for them.
So you don’t have to worry about a single customer seeing your ad several times, clicking on your ad each time, and racking up a nice bill for you.
How do I know this?
I emailed KDP support and hit the JACKPOT.
That’s right: the jackpot.
I’ve emailed KDP support dozens of times over the past six years, and this is by far the most thorough, thoughtful, researched, and even enthusiastic response I have ever received.
Yes, I said researched. KDP spent an extra few days researching my question to get it right.
The response included several examples clearly illustrating cases when there could be more DPV’s than clicks, and vice-versa.
Chris McMullen
Copyright © 2015
Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers
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- Volume 2 on marketability and marketing
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Comments
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chrismcmullen 
Interesting. I haven’t seen either of those yet. Trying to figure out what ‘impressions’ are.
Those are how many times your ad has been seen. It can take 1000 impressions to get 1 click, or so, on average. Good luck.
Thanks. I don’t even know where the ad has been. I’m getting the sense that I won’t get much from this.
It probably won’t be immediate, but hopefully it will work out. (Remember, you can always pause or terminate if you’re not happy with how it’s going.)
Didn’t actually know that second part. Right now it hasn’t cost me anything.
That’s cool when you’re getting free impressions on Amazon. 🙂
Not seeing any sales though.
It seems to take many clicks to get one sale..
Thanks, Chris, for all your research, feedback and advice regarding KDP Select Amazon ad campaigns on your website. Much appreciated and really helpful. Great that we have people like you, motivated and diligent enough to do all the hard graft for us authors!
Though I am aware it may not be a desirable venture for those already selling books regularly, but this new ad opportunity has been truly wonderful for me… With the risk of sounding cocky, I’m pretty sure I have a good product (great feedback from folk in the literary world, 42 reviews in UK, 40 of which are 5* etc), but it’s been proving impossible to be ‘discovered’ in the tsunami of self-published books flooding the market. Until now…
I’ve been reading that you can expect, on average, 1 click per 1000 ‘impressions’, as you reiterate above (have also read that an impression does not at all mean that your ad has been seen or, more importantly, noticed! Many people will not scroll down the whole page, for instance). One can also expect, it seems, an average of 1 sale per 100 clicks (Kboards forum etc).
I have been massively lucky and have received more like 10 sales per 100 clicks. I’ve been so excited as I’m finally getting eyeballs and precious new readers on my .com page…! From zero kindle sales in the US for a debut UK novel, I’ve made over 100 in a matter of days. Of course, that’s nothing to authors who have a following, but for me, it has triggered much jubilation.
The icing on the cake is that I also reached #1 in 3 categories and even spotted the #1 best seller tag Amazon kindly put on for me when doing a search (screen shot eagerly taken in case it vanished before my eyes)! The tag only remains as long as the book is actually at number one, which mine still is at present. I’m starting to grasp the whole concept of Amazon promoting you more when you start to do well… I can now call myself a #1 bestselling author, which is weird and staggering since last week I had sold next to no kindle copies of my books in America.
I would highly recommend using KDP Select ad campaigns, especially combined with other promotions (hard to tell which sales have come from which marketing endeavour, but I’m not complaining).
Yes, I bid high for a while. Yes I lost money. Yes I combined the ad with a Countdown promotion (99c/99p). Yes I advertised my Countdown promotion on other sites… And yes I’ve gained utterly invaluable and otherwise non-existent visibility. Oh and READERS!
It remains to be seen if this will have a long-term effect, especially when the book goes back to $2.99 tomorrow… I fully intend to play around with targets/products, click bid etc. I put several hundreds of book titles in my products list which seems to have worked. And for me, targeting only one ‘interest’ e.g. YA, worked much better than listing several.
Sorry this is so long, but I hope it’s useful for fellow authors. Good luck to everyone!
Thank you for sharing your experience with your ad campaign. Your results are impressive. I’ve heard from one other author who had a sales-to-click ratio of (over) 10%. This shows that it can be done. I think this is the number everyone should strive for (but, unfortunately, closer to 1% may be more typical). To me, it shows that your cover, blurb, and Look Inside are quite marketable.
It sounds like you’re seeing great short-term results. I hope it keeps up and produces long-term, too. Good luck with your book.
Excellent post, Chris…I had no idea! Will have to look closely at the detail page.
Thank you. 🙂