First look at AdCommerce ROI metrics
6/10/2009 at 19:04
eBay are trialling ROI (Return On Investment) metrics for AdCommerce which should be rolled out to all users in the near future. Currently the trail is available to a limited number of AdCommerce users. With the ROI data sellers will be able to see the number of bids, number of items sold, total sales in £s and Sales vs Cost.
The ROI data appears as additional columns under the AdCommerce reports tab. There are a couple of important points to note when interpreting the data. Firstly ROI metrics have only been measured since the 1st of September, so clicks before then aren’t included in the ROI data. Secondly sales are recorded on the date of the click, not the date of the sale. If a potential buyer clicked on an AdCommerce ad today and placed a bid, but the auction doesn’t finish until 10 days time, then the sale won’t show on the current figures. When the auction ends the sales data will be backdated and count as today’s sale.
The ROI data highlights which campaigns are successful and which are less profitable. For instance the fourth line shows sales vs cost ratio of 52.34 – a sale for £205.00 cost just £3.24 to attract. On the other hand on the third line with sales vs cost of 1.82 it cost £159.17 to attract sales of £290.11, which for most sellers isn’t an attractive ROI.
ROI metrics will enable sellers to see what’s working and what’s not profitable and to increase successful campaigns whilst ending or adjusting those which aren’t providing value. Don’t be too hasty in ending less successful campaigns – when you first see the data it will be for a limited number of sales. For a true picture you need a large volume of clicks and sales for the data to be meaningful.
There are some other new features being added to AdCommerce such as an Ad Wizard with an integrated keyword recommender and an Ad Strength Meter to measure the quality of your ad copy.
If you want to find out more about AdCommerce I’d recommend reviewing the recent AdCommerce webinar that eBay held.
Many thanks to Karl of Wholesale Clearance for the screen grab of AdCommerce ROI Metrics
Disclosure – Wholesale Clearance advertise with TameBay
JP says
2:12 pm on 07/10/2009
I might start using it for my stuff now. eBay lost alot of confidence by not having this at launch. Google adcom is probably a wiser investment at the moment
Steve says
7:22 pm on 07/10/2009
Looking at line on that report – over 16m impressions, nearly 25,000 click throughs that cost £524, but it only generated 12 sales for a total of £1034 revenue?
Not only is the cost per sale concerning, but that is a pretty abysmal click through and lead generation rate.
Or am I reading that wrong?
Also, do we know how deep the tracking goes? In the line example, if that ad was only displaying a link to one specific product (the one with 12 sales), is there any tracking to show if the non-sale clicks went on to purchase anything from the seller?
Chris Dawson says
10:18 pm on October 7th, 2009
Couple of things there. Firstly ROI tracking only started on 1st September and 2nd sales are backdated so more may come in.
Next the overall ROI is dragged down significantly by line 3, but at least now sellers can identify poorly converting ads and do something about it.
Personally I think the impressions/clickthrough ratio will always be abysmal – after all if I do a search on eBay I expect to find the product in a listing and the impression will count even if I never scroll to the bottom of the page and see the ad which is way below the fold.
Haven’t a clue how deep the tracking goes, but good question! I’ll try find out
Cheers
Chris
Chris Dawson says
7:31 pm on October 9th, 2009
Have an answer for you – eBay say that they will report on any sales post click from 30 days after the click date. Therefore sellers should start to see sales trickle in each day from a click that may have happened up to 30days back.