C3 Terminology

When first using C3 Metrics, you will notice new terminology representing sections of your sales funnel and how C3 translates your current 'last click' language of ROAS (return on ad spend) and CPA (cost per acquisition) into fully fractionalized and attributed values.

It All Starts With A Funnel

1898 was an underestimated year. The Spanish-American war gave us Teddy Roosevelt. Travelers issued the first auto insurance policy. “Brad’s Drink” was renamed “Pepsi-Cola.” And a business writer named Elias St. Elmo Lewis created a new definition for the progression that occurs when a consumer engages with an advertisement, today known as the marketing funnel.

“AIDA,” an acronym for Awareness, Interest, Desire, then Action, was the definition that appeared in the February 9th, 1898 issue of Printers’ Ink with the following commentary:

The mission of an advertisement is to sell goods. To do this, it must attract attention, of course; but attracting attention is only an auxiliary detail. The announcement should contain matter, which will interest and convince after the attention has been attracted.

Since 1898, AIDA has been taught in every college marketing course, utilized by every major sales and marketing organization, and even quoted by the iconic brass ball-carrying Alec Baldwin in David Mamet’s Glengarry Glenn Ross:

“A-i-D-A. Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action. Awareness - Do I have your atten- tion? Interest - Are you interested?”

AIDA Becomes ORAC

ORAC

In marketing today, the funnel is broken, and AIDA is at risk of being forgotten. To keep AIDA alive and create a language of attribution, C3 has introduced ORAC (Originator, Roster, Assist, Converter), which is directly correlated to AIDA.

Originator (AKA 'Awareness') is the top of the attribution funnel – this marketing stimulus is the Originator of the final conversion event. Think of this as the seed—what started it all for the conversion event.

Roster is all subsequent activity after the Originator, e.g. the subsequent activity to the very first view or click of an ad (AKA 'Interest'). Think of this as players on a team which played in the game, but didn’t necessarily score a point or an assist themselves. Those who suit up for the game get Roster credit.

Assist is the activity that took place before Conversion, the 'Desire' in the AIDA funnel.

Converter (AKA 'Action') is the bottom of the funnel, as this is the touch point that converted/closed the deal.

PATH2
For every path captured, there will always be one Originator, one Assist and one Converter.

There is no maximum on the number of touch points in the Roster position.

For example, in the data selection shown, there is one converter; one assist and over 80 touch points in the Roster.

ROAS Becomes AVSR & CPA Becomes ACPA

Full funnel attributed data requires a new lens for ROI, as its a completely different view.

Let’s assume yesterday you spent $5000 on Facebook and the 'last action' view shows zero conversions. That's a horrible ROAS (return on ad spend). It's unlikely that you will spend $5000 again on Facebook.

With Full Funnel Attribution from C3 Metrics, you will realize that Facebook was actually the Originator for $27,500 worth of Conversion and will receive a percentage of the conversion value based on the algorithmic model. Using 40% as an example, C3 would allocate 40% of the $27,500, thereby assigning $11,000 in ‘Attributed Value’.

avsr

Bringing in the cost, 11,000/5,000 provides a ROAS of 2.20.

avsr1

But is it really ROAS?

No.

This is a new lens called Attributed Value to Spend Ratio or AVSR as your are looking at your return based on full funnel data vs. last action.

AVSR is simply the attributed value of each partner divided by the media cost. Cost is the cost of the respective advertising.

Similar to ROAS,

High is good. Low is bad.
Use AVSR to compare relative options.

For example, if one network has a 2.5 AVSR and another network has a 5.0 AVSR, the second network is getting twice the return on ad dollar spent…and reallocating spend from the first to the second network will get you double the return on ad dollar spent.

Total Attributed Value is the value which a particular channel , network, keyword, etc contributed in the funnel. This is the rolled up sum of all the fractional value for every conversion event for a given time period selected. For example, if a keyword “Top Rated SUV” was involved in 1,000 conversion events on a website, and they all happened to be Originators, and the Originator setting is 50%, and the value of a conversion event is $10…that keyword would have delivered $5,000 in Total Attributed Value: 50% x 1000 events x $10 per event.