What’s the absolute best way to analyze the performance of a marketing campaign? A lot of people will tell you that EPC is what matters most—Earnings Per Click.
There’s a couple of good reasons for that. It’s simple and very useful if you want to make comparisons: you take the total income in $ that you earned over a particular period of time for a particular offer, and you divide that amount by the number of clicks that were registered for the same offer over the same period of time.
The result you get tells you how much money you made for each visitor that clicked on an offer. For example; if 1000 people clicked on your link to a particular offer and you made $150 in total with that offer, that means you got paid $0.15 per click.
Then, you can compare. If you made more per click with an offer, that means it’s more efficient, more performant. Pretty simple, right?
Not so fast.
Although EPC is a great indicator, there are a lot of factors that can influence your campaign’s performance. You should always look at the big picture and make sure you take all variables into account.
Back to the Basics: CTR
One of the most important variables to look at is the CTR (click-through rate).
To calculate the click-through rate, you divide the number of hits that an offer (or a banner) receives by the number of impressions. This tells you what proportion of your website’s visitors actually click on your ad and go to the offer’s landing page. This has a huge effect on your campaign, because it tells you what percentage of your traffic is interested by the product you’re promoting.
How Can EPC Be Misleading?
On Which “Click” Is It Based?
First of all, you have to take into account the click itself.
By that we mean, what is considered a “click”?
What counts as a “click” on the platform you’re assessing this information on? Some platforms handle this information differently.
Here’s some information to help!
| A “click” in CrakRevenue 2.0 | A click in CrakRevenue 2.0 is equal to a unique. Indeed, regardless of the number of clicks the user makes on various offers, the user will always be considered unique. Therefore, the EPC calculation in CR 2.0 tends to be a little higher since less clicks are interpreted when compared to other platforms. |
| A “click” in CrakRevenue Legacy | In CrakRevenue Legacy, more variables were taken into account as to what counted as a click. Among them, the most important variables were the tracker and the IP address of the visitor. Therefore, more clicks would be registered for the exact same traffic compared to the previous example. |
| Gross Click in CrakRevenue 2.0 | This CrakRevenue 2.0 filter allows you to see all the clicks that were made by the user. In other words, if the same users click 5 times on the same offer/banner, it will show 5 clicks in this column. Even if it’s considered as only one click in the default settings of CrakRevenue 2.0. This tends to dilute the EPC value. |
In a nutshell, this means you may end up with different results depending on the definition of a click on which you base your EPC calculation.
Does a “Better” EPC Mean More Money?
The number one goal for an affiliate is to maximize profits with his or her site’s traffic. For a webmaster, EPC is not necessarily the best metric to analyze one’s campaign with. In order to maximize profits, it’s important to analyze the performance of an offer, or any other component (banners, pops), with E-CPM (Earnings per 1000 impressions). That way the webmaster seeks to make the most out of his or her traffic.
Here’s an example of 3 different Offer comparisons for a Webmaster:
Front page spot 300×250 = 900,000 impressions / day
| Offer #1 |
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| Offer #2* |
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| Offer #3* |
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* Offer #2 clearly has the best EPC, but you would make only 0.20$ per 1000 impressions generated by your website.
*On the other hand, Offer #3 has the worst EPC but you will make $0.50 per 1000 impressions. If you only look at the EPC you will miss out on bigger profits. In this case, you’re better off promoting a product that has a lower EPC but attracts a bigger proportion of your traffic.
Many things can affect the performance of a campaign. The banners you use, the traffic you obtain, the location of your banners, your overall marketing strategy, etc.
EPC is an interesting tool if you want to make comparisons and do an in depth analysis of your campaign -- but by no means is it an absolute metric that you should rely on to assess the performance of your campaign.
So what’s the absolute BEST WAY to analyze your campaign’s performance??
There isn’t one... You have to look at the big picture.
That’s why we test our offers, landing pages, and banners thoroughly before we make them available to our affiliates.
And that’s also why our affiliate managers are available to offer free optimization advice to help you get the most out of your traffic without having to spend countless hours running tests!
