Calculated Custom Variables

[#1]

Using a custom variable, we currently capture both the impressions and clicks for a particular feature.  To calculate the CTR conversion is has to be done manually.  It would be nice to be able to calculate the conversion from these two separate custom variables within SiteCatalyst by offering a calculated custom variable.

Robert

[#2]

Can you expound on this a bit? The tool offers calculated metrics, so you could build a CTR metric which would be defined as [clicks] / [impressions], and then pull that into a report showing Ad ID, Campaign, etc. as the dimension. Can you describe how what you need is different?

[#3]

So on our pages, feature impression count may differ greatly.  For example, listing profile pages that have menus, reviews, photos, etc.  Currently we use a custom variable using the list prop.  We have another custom variable to capture the feature clicks (i.e. menus, reviews, photos, etc.  It would be nice to be able to calculate the click through conversion by individual feature counts.

[#4]

Ah, so to be able to say something like [menu clicks] / [menu impressions]? Something like that?

[#5]

Yes

[#6]

Very cool suggestion. Thanks--I think I get now.

[#7]

WebMD is using the product variable to get around the serious string length limitations of a list prop. In this case, we pass the link impressions in a concatenated string and an event. We pass clicks for that link in connection with another event. Thus, we can calculate CTR of the link.

Our issue is that we pass the click event with the destination page (which gives us the links that drove to the page using a correlation) while the impressions are passed with the origination page. This means you can't sub-relate, to a site area for example, and still get an accurate CTR.