Note: Adtriba Core is a legacy feature that we continue to support but no longer sell. The latest version of this feature is available as Funnel Measurement.
If you are already using Funnel Measurement, find more information here. To upgrade, contact us.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is a metric that describes how much revenue a customer generates over their customer lifetime. CLV plays an important role in new customer acquisition. Companies want to acquire customers with a high CLV because new customer acquisition is costly. New customers often do not cover their acquisition costs until their third or fourth order.
From a business perspective, it makes sense to steer marketing toward high-value customers over the long term.
You can calculate CLV from a customer's incoming orders, or with a predictive modeling approach that includes various customer data points. With predictive modeling, you get a prediction of lifetime revenue at the moment the order is placed.
How does CLV attribution work in Adtriba?
A common Customer Journey at Adtriba starts with the user's first marketing touchpoint and ends with a successful conversion. If the user does not convert within a 60-day lookback window, the customer journey ends automatically. Multi-touch attribution allocates channel weights based on individual conversions and their shopping cart values. In CLV attribution, all conversions a user completes within a defined lookback window are included in the weighting and value distribution. Initial acquisition channels are credited over the entire CLV, not only for the initial order.
Evaluation of channels according to regular attribution (focus on a customer journey)
The diagram above shows the conversion value attributed to each channel that participated in a successful customer journey and its conversion events. For the first customer journey, only SEA non-brand and direct receive a value, as they were the only effective touchpoints. In general, for all three customer journeys, only channels involved in the respective customer journey receive credit.
In CLV attribution, value shifts differently per channel:
All channels involved in the entire 60-day customer lifetime cycle receive credit that changes as the customer lifetime value increases. SEA non-brand shows a strong increase in attributed value, even though it was most efficient in the first sequence.
Where can you use CLV instead of default MTA?
By default, Adtriba calculates CLV continuously over time. You can select CLV results in the Customer Journey dashboard with the toggle above.
We also provide a comparison between regular and CLV attribution models in the performance report in a dedicated table:
You can also activate the CLV attribution view for Adtriba's Google Ads export to optimize Google Ads bid management based on CLV MTA.
The "sum of revenues" is a suitable proxy for CLV. For a complete CLV analysis, you must also account for costs and operating margins per customer. Combine the Customer Journey Export, including CLV attribution weightings, with your backend or CRM data.
First insights: more conversions in the upper funnel through CLV attribution
From a theoretical perspective, you might assume that lower-funnel channels (for example, SEA Brand, Retargeting, and Direct) would lose conversion rate compared to upper-funnel channels (for example, Non-Brand Paid Search, Display, and Social).
The following statistics are based on a selection of Adtriba users only:
Reduction of conversions that are attributed to
Direct (-17%)
and Paid Search - Brand (-19%)
Raise of conversions that are attributed to the following channels:
Paid Search - Brand (8%),
Display (10%)
and Social (3%)
These statistics confirm the assumption that upper-funnel marketing campaigns are likely to increase performance, while lower-funnel campaigns tend to lose conversions through CLV attribution.
Clients use these analytics to gain actionable insights through CLV Attribution. If findings do not lead to concrete marketing measures, even the most advanced CLV attribution analysis has limited value.