Customer Lifetime Value ist laut Wikipedia “… der Deckungsbeitrag, den ein Kunde während seines gesamten Kundenlebens realisiert, diskontiert auf den heutigen Tag.” Übertragen auf SEM-Maßnahmen sind dies alle Sales eines Kunden (abzüglich variable Kosten), der initial über SEM gewonnen wurde.

Anforderung aus der Praxis

Als Beispiel nehmen wir einen Onlineshop. Interessenten, die über SEM auf dessen Webseiten gelangen, lassen sich wie folgt kategorisieren:

• Nutzer, die auf das Werbemittel klicken, aber anschließend die Website ohne zählbare Aktion verlassen.
• Nutzer die einen Account anlegen oder Newsletter abonnieren, aber nichts kaufen.
• Nutzer die einen Kauf tätigen.

Letztlich möchte der Anbieter des Onlineshops zum einen wissen, wieviel Profit er bezogen auf die Gesamtlaufzeit der Kundenbeziehung erwirtschaften kann und zum anderen, welche Keywords gerade laufzeitstarke Kunden konvertieren.

Den Ansatz zur Ermittlung des Customer Lifetime Value bietet der Account oder ein Newsletter-Abo. Wann immer der nun registrierte Nutzer wieder kommt und über seinen Account eine Bestellung aufgibt, sollte diese Bestellung den ursprünglichen SEM-Spendings zugeordnet werden, über die der Kunde zum ersten mal gewonnen wurde. Das kann zum einen ein Erstsale sein, der auf ein initiales Newsletter-Abo folgt, oder jede Wiederbestellung über einen bereits betehenden Accont. So lässt sich eine treffsichere Aussage zur Rentabilität der Werbeausgaben treffen.

So geht´s mit Refined Ads

Letztlich geht es aus technischer Sicht darum, spätere Sales einem früheren Lead oder Sale zuzuordnen. Ganz egal wann und wo dieser stattfindet, auch wenn sich der Nutzer an einem anderen Computer befindet, ohne den von uns beim Klick platzierten Cookie, oder der Erstsale erst mehrere Wochen später stattfindet. Dies lässt sich problemlos realisieren, wenn der Shopanbieter, also unser Kunde, und wir eine gemeinsame eindeutige ID für den Webseitenbesucher im System hinterlegt haben und bei jeder Wiederbestellung diese ID mit dem zugehörigen Warenkorbwert an uns übertragen wird. Wir können mit dieser ID den Wert des erneuten Sales dem ursprünglichen Click zuordnen und so in Refined Ads den Customer Lifetime Value ausweisen.

Zur praktischen Umsetzung muss der Kunde in Refined Ads den Redirector-Type “Custom Redirect mit SubID” wählen und die von uns im Rahmen des Redirecting an ihn übergebene SubID in seinem System mit dem Kundenkonto zusammen hinterlegen. Bei jedem neuen Sale übergibt uns der Kunde einen Trackingaufruf mit dieser SubID. Das ist schon alles, um den Rest kümmern wir uns.

Customer Lifetime Value – here I come.

Das ganze beschrieben im Guide: https://guide.refinedads.com/index.php/Subid. Bei Fragen hilft Ihnen unser Kundensupport gerne weiter.

A new Refined Ads release has gone live last week with many practical and useful features. Here is a quick summary of what has changed to keep you up-to-date. For further information and instructions have a look in our Guide.

Placements

Refined Ads now fully supports the use of placements. You can set up a placement campaign just like a keyword campaign. This makes the handling of placements very easy. And it gets even better. We provide you with many features you won’t find anywhere else, like matched placements. You can also use Traffic Control with placements.

Guide: https://guide.refinedads.com/en/index.php/Placement

Custom Columns

The Custom Columns got greatly extended with lots of new functions. You are now able to apply advanced formulas, like Minimum, Maximum and more… Just check it out!

Guide: https://guide.refinedads.com/en/index.php/Custom_Columns

Funnel Exports via GUI

You are now able to export a funnel report directly via the GUI. The report can be aggregated by Keyword or by Funnel for a custom time period.

Guide: https://guide.refinedads.com/en/index.php/Funnel#Funnel_Export

New Account Reports

There are a couple of new Account Reports on Adgroup and Campaign Level which can be scheduled via the GUI. You can choose between Reports for Keywords, Placements, Adtexts, Adgroups and Campaigns.

Guide: https://guide.refinedads.com/en/index.php/Report

Omniture Data Import

Another great extension is the possibility to import and display Omniture Transaction Data in Refined Ads. Just let us know and we will set up for you.

Guide: https://guide.refinedads.com/en/index.php/Trafficprovider

Duplicate Keyword Tool

The Duplicate Keyword Tool just got even more handy. You can filter your results in different ways to get just the duplicate Keywords you are looking for you.

Guide: https://guide.refinedads.com/en/index.php/Duplicate_Keywords

Check out those new features right away in your Refined Ads Account! You will find additional information on the new features in the Refined Ads Guide.

We were launching a small release for Refined Ads two days ago. This release is not a major one, but one that brings along some really interesting options for finetuning your campaigns

Transaction Export

First, we are providing an export functionality for all transactions recorded via Refined Ads. Use this tsv-file to find out about tracking issues, compare with other company internal tracking systems and do special sales reportings.

Restrict rights of subusers

Second, we are providing more ways to work with subusers. From now on you can limit each subuser to certain Client Accounts in Refined Ads.  These users can only see and work on Client Accounts you have chosen for them. For example provide a login for your customers to certain areas of your Refined Ads account to make reporting easier. You can even go further and give them read-only access.  Or split up the whole Refined Ads account in portions for each account manager.

Find duplicate keywords in your account

Using the same keyword in different campaigns oder adroups can have serious impact on your traffic and profit. As the search engine will only publish one ad for this keyword, you no longer can control which campaign is currently delivered.

This is even worse if you have duplicates in different accounts because of a very large set of products or keywords. So you would actually bid against you as only one ad from your domain will show up.

By finding these duplicates you can decide which one to pause and which one to continue. Our new tool in Refined Ads makes finding them just one click away! Very easy, very handy, very very useful! Try out.

Choose between two Transaction Recording Modes

The last feature in this release is a very tricky one. It is about the time when to track a transaction. There are two ways to do so. One is to use the timestamp when the ad was clicked. The other one is to use the timestamp when the transaction actually happened.  As many transactions don’t happen right after the click on the ad but after up to 30 days or sometimes even more, both ways can vary a lot. Using the timestamp of the transaction has the advantage that historic transaction data is not changed every day and the data is reliable for the future. Using the timestamp of the click on the ad allows better comparison between actual costs and income regarding for each day, but comes along with the disadvantage of changing historic transaction data.

Per default Refined Ads ist using the timestamp of the transaction to make sure historical data is constant. If you wish to choose the other option, feel free to. There is no good or bad, it is more what you personally prefer for your business. By the way, Google Conversion Tracking is using the timestamp of the click. So if you want to compare both tracking numbers, this might be the better option for you.

As always, we hope that you enjoy these new features. If you should have any questions about how to use them, have a look in our guide under http://guide.refinedads.com or give us a call.

Last week again new features have gone live. We would therefore like to give you a quick explanation on what is new and how to use it.

Traffic Controller on Strategic Groups

Maybe you are asking yourself: What´s with Stategic Groups, why does Refined Labs keep fussing over them?
The answer is simple: Because it gives you the opportunity to break with the strict rules of account structures. Even more so now:
Traffic Control can now be implemented on strategic groups. If two or more rules apply to one keyword, an average value is calculated. This might be the case if traffic control is already implemented on a keyword via Projects or if there is an overlapping of two strategic groups. This makes handling your account even more convenient as you may now use the traffic controller on elements from e.g. different campaigns just by adding them to one strategic group.

Fast edit in Strategic Groups

We want you to get the best out of your account in the minimum amount of time. Clicking from one tab to the other just to change the status of a keyword takes a lot of time. So we figured it is better if our IT works long hours than if our customers do.
And here is what they came up with: Fast edit functionality. Now you might think: Not exactly groundbreaking, they already have this. We did, but we never had it in Strategic groups before. You can hereby change the status of your Keywords, AdGroups and even Campaigns quick and simple.

Bulk Export for Keywords and Adtexts

The Bulk Export makes it possible to export Keywords or Text Ads as a tsv. file, work on them on your local workstation and afterwards upload the file to Refined Ads.

New Traffic Controller Rules

The Traffic Controller analyzes the data and provides you with recommendations to help you reach your goals. But first of all you have to be able to define what you want out of your Campaigns, Adgroups or Keywords. Maybe you have done this indirectly by defining a custom column, e.g. set a max CPC for your custom column? You can now define this Max CPC as a traffic controller rule.
Maybe your goal is not to have a certain MaxCPC but to reach a certain position or a specific cost/earnings ratio. Now you can do that? Define your own goal via “Optimize for the following value”. Just as you already know it from the custom columns you can define a formula and the Traffic Controller tells you the best way to reach your goals.

We hope that you enjoy these new features. If you have any questions about how to use the new features, have a look in our guide under http://guide.refinedads.com.

As already announced we successfully performed a Refined Ads release . To keep you up to date on the new features, please read below:

Traffic Control for Custom Columns:

As you already know, Refined Ads supports custom columns. For those of you who are not familiar with this brand new feature from our last release, a little repetition: Define your own metrics, just like you would do in Excel. Use any columns in Refined Ads to combine with others, multiply them, add constants and many more possibilities.

From now on you can use your Custom Columns for Traffic Control. How cool is that! No longer just CPC or CPL, from now on it´s CPYou. You define the metrics and Refined Ads controls your success. Instead of using Costs or Leads and so on, choose the corresponding Custom Column in the Traffic Control tab.

Guidelinks:

Mainly focusing on the newbies but also very useful for professionals being in doubt on a certain detail: We provide little links in the application bringing you to the corresponding article in the Refined Ads Guide. Whenever you see a little “RFA-?” just click it and we show you how to use the requested functionality.

Account Reports:

Schedule a report for your whole Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing account on a keyword or adtext level. Meaning you get all performance data not just per adgroup or per campaign but also for the whole account. Go to Statistics and “Schedule Report”.

With the recent release of Refined Ads, which we performed at the beginning of March 2009, interesting new features have gone live.

Custom Columns: Definitely my favorite. Define your own metrics, just like you would do in Excel! Use any columns in Refined Ads to combine with other, multiply them, add constants and many more possibilities.

To give you an example: If you are optimizing on ROAS, just define the column yourself by combining cost and revenue data.Another one: If you would like to know which keywords have a maxCPC that is set much higher than the First Page Bid. Just subtract the maxCPC column from the First Page Bid column and order the grid along this new column. A little outlook: These columns will also be available for Traffic Controller very soon. You could define a column that says First Page Bid + 10% and use Trafic Control to set the maxCPC to this Custom Column. This settings allows you to make sure you definitely show up on the first page.

Minor improvements: Full support for all languages and character sets. If you decide to run campaigns in Korea, Japan, Poland, … Go ahead. Refined Ads now supports all languages and character sets. Furthermore we provide you a history of certain processes that were running between Google AdWords or Yahoo! Search Marketing and Refined Ads.

Have a look in your Refined Ads account and get a different view and more out of your data! Customers find additional information in the Refined Ads Guide (https://guide.refinedads.com/index.php/Customizable_columns).

As already hinted we are very happy to announce a unique event in Europe: Refined Ads Adwords Seminar which will be held by PPC expert Brad Geddes from bgtheory. The event will take place on March 19/20th in Munich. The second day is more advanced and reserved for existing clients, but even the first day brings a huge amount of knowledge that it’s well worth attending.

In order to participate in this event which will also feature speakers from Google and Refined Ads it is necessary to apply for one of the few seats as we want to keep it below 50 people to ensure that everybody can ask questions and get the best results out of it.

Apply for free AdWords Seminar now

Another two new features in Refined Ads that went live in Q4 2008 were the By Time Report and the Keyword/Adtext Statistics.

The By Time Report allows not only a structural but also a time-discrete view of traffic data. You can compare every level of your account, such as the whole account, any campaign, AdGroup or just a single keyword, by day, by week, by month or even by year. By using the Strategic Groups you can also group the elements corresponding to your needs and get a time-discrete view on your individual grouping.

This feature allows you to compare the performance of the respective element in the course of time. Data you don´t get anywhere else. Very useful, i would say!

Second new view are the Keyword/Adtext Statistics, showing the clicked ads of keywords and the adequate keywords of ads.

This view allows you to analyze which Adtext performs best with which keyword and therefore set up a corresponding new Adgroup structure. You will be surprised how the individual per-Keywords-per-Adtext performance differs from the overall Adgroup-to-Adtext performance! Use this information to lower your ad-spendings. Also data you don´t get anywhere else.

You can view the Keyword/Adtext Statistics by clicking on the corresponding keywords. Just the same as you get the Matched Keywords.

Have a look in your Refined Ads account and get a different view and more out of your data! Customers find additional information on that feature in the Refined Ads Guide (https://guide.refinedads.com/en/index.php/By_Time_Report and https://guide.refinedads.com/en/index.php/Mapped_Elements).

Lately we did a lot of product centered posts, sort of forgetting about the people behind and around Refined Ads. After being active in the search industry for about 8 years it feels like time just flies by, but one thing that amazes us every single time is how great the search community really is.

During last weekend a great friend of the company, Shakil Khan, made it down to Munich to talk with some of us about Online Marketing, running a business and being more successful. Together with him we managed to hang out with Lukasz and Kolja as well as some other bright people from the German Online space. A second good reason for this to happen was DLD, which took place earlier this week and once again proved to be a great conference. Meeting new people that were interested in sharing stories as well as meeting business partners and friends from all over the world made it really worthwhile. One of the better coincidences was walking by Marissa Mayer and her greeting, even though we met the last time in Zurich back in 2005.

After DLD the week went on with a big BVDW meeting where I had the chance to show more people how great Refined Ads is.

Unfortunately during the course of the evening it also became public that a friend, one of the first people parts of our team met, died in a tragic plane accident. Martin Schaedel was one of the brightest people that I ever met, his networking skills were unbelievable and the way he lived was as most people would love to if they had the chance. I guess it’s safe to say that Martin inspired thousands of people around the world and I have to admit that Martin always seemed like a hero with his talent and seeing that go is one of the saddest moments in my professional and personal life.

If you are interested in improving your PPC skills and based in Europe, you should consider blocking March 19th in your calendar. We’re currently working on a nice, free(!) event that day in Munich for PPC Managers. If you’re already a client and using Refined Ads, make sure to also block March 20th for a second day of Advanced PPC knowledge. More details will follow within the next month, but rest assured it will be worth coming to Munich. Also make sure to check back frequently as we have a maximum number of seats and expect them to fill up quickly.