# CNStats STD/PRO 3.2 / User manual

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# "Cost"

## Purpose of the report

The report is intended for evaluation of commercial advertising effectiveness.

You should set a list of advertising sites as incoming data, and define advertising costs for these sites. Prices may be set for 1 jump (CPC - "Cost Per Click") or for a certain period (a week or a month).

Incoming data will be used for calculation of the following parameters:

Name in the table | Meaning | Description
Jumps | Number of jumps | Total number of jumps from the current advertising site is displayed in this column. The additional options allow filtering data both for all pageviews and unique visitors or hosts.
Purchases | Number of purchases(*) | Number of purchases accomplished by visitors, who came from the current advertising site. Only jumps from advertizing site are counted.
SCPC | Summary Cost Per Click | Total cost for one jump (click). It is calculated by adding the cost of one jump to the cost for advertising for the selected period. The formula is as follows: (CPC*"Number of jumps"+"Price for period")/"Number of jumps"
APC (%) | Action Per Click | Relation of jumps (clicks) quantity to the number of purchases. 100% means every visitor from the advertising site makes a purchase. 1% means that one of 100 visitors makes a purchase. The formula is as follows: 100*"Number of purchases"/"Number of jumps";
Cost | Total advertising cost | Total advertising cost for the current advertising site. The formula is as follows: CPC*"Number of jumps"+"Price for a period";
CPA | Cost Per Action | Cost of one customer. The formula is as follows: "Total advertising cost"/"Number of purchases"

## Requirements for the report

- Signal strings should be set for the customers;
- Prices and mode of advertising sites identification should be set;
- The following types of graphical counters should be used: "GIF 1x1", "PNG 88x31" or "Mixed".

## Functioning

Identification tokens(*) are chosen for users, who fulfilled a purchase**, with the help of signal strings. Then an efficient referrer is found for every customer — the referring page, by which he came to the site for the first time.

All jumps from advertising sites are selected(***). Calculation for every jump is performed. Cost of each customer from the current advertising site is calculated from the list of efficient referrers.

Finally, average and total values are calculated for all advertising sites.

> (*)CNStats assigns a unique ID token to every visitor at his first visit. This information is stored in Cookies in the course of one year beginning from the last access to your web-site.

> Therefore, if no request is performed during one year period, the ID token will be lost and this user will be counted as a new one in case of visit (if any). In case a user has not visited the site for a period less than a year, then he will be considered as a repeated visitor of your site

> Users with disabled Cookies are not displayed in this report.

> (**) Terms "customer" and "purchase" are used in a very broad sense. These may be users registered on your forum. Any user, who performed a certain action, is called "customer" for short.

> (***) To identify advertising sites you should set their attributes in "Tracing goals" settings

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