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Understanding EPN and the new PPC model

August 21, 2009

Since the announcement of the new PPC model at EPN  I’ve been keeping up with the posts on the EPN forum in an effort to get some further clarity on how this change will impact earnings for affiliates. Right now there seems to be some confusion on how the new system will operate.

When I first read the announcement, I right away looked up my stats on EPN for campaigns that were sending a lot of clicks but with a low EPC – if you target big ticket items this situation is common - thinking those campaigns have to go, do I dump those sites? etc.  But from what I now gather,  apparently the quantity of clicks you send dosen’t count.  See

http://forums.ebay.com/db2/topic/Ebay-Partner-Network/Does-Number-Of/520144967

and a response from Chris of EPN : “You’re right – number of clicks does not impact on your total earnings. The thing that impacts the total amount of money you will make is the incremental revenue your traffic drives for eBay, in the form of transactions, ACRU lifetime value, advertising revenue and PayPal revenue.”

So, the key point for me is:

 Number of clicks does not impact  total earnings.

It;s the Quality of traffic that matters - including  the lifetime value of  ACRUS  (new eBay sign up’s you send to eBay).

There also seems to be confusion about  the lifetime value of new registered users you send to eBay and what lifetime value means. Apparently (please correct me if have this wrong)  Lifetime value refers not to the lifetime of the person you send to eBay but to the lifetime of the cookie that tracks them when they leave your site . i.e. 7 days for the 7-day cookie

The  value of your traffic is calulated by EPN (see ref below) and then that amout is used to calulate your EPC.

Check out the following  for the EPN responses re  how  the per click amount is calculated:

http://forums.ebay.com/db2/topic/Ebay-Partner-Network/Quality-Click-Pricing/520144740&#msg512721223

Chris of EPN states:

” To clarify, here is how it will work:

For campaigns where the algorithm has enough data to accurately calculate an EPC, it will do so. For all campaigns where we do not have enough data to make this calculation, we will pool your earnings and clicks across these campaigns to give you an average.

To give an example – a publisher has 3 campaigns:

Campaign 1 has 1000 clicks and drives $100 in short and long term revenue. We have enough data on this campaign to give it its own EPC. The publisher will therefore receive an EPC of $0.10 for each of the1000 clicks in this campaign.

Campaign 2 has 5 clicks and drives $0.75 in short and long term revenue.

Campaign 3 has 10 clicks and drives $1.00 in short and long term revenue.

Since 5 or 10 clicks is not enough to accurately value Campaigns 2 and 3, we will pool the revenue ($1.75) and clicks (15) from these campaigns to calculate a weighted average EPC across these two campaigns of $0.1167. This EPC will be applied to all 5 clicks in Campaign 2 and all 10 clicks in Campaign 3. “

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