ROI of action vs. Lifetime value of customer

ROI based on sale or other action is shortsighted

[Chicago]

When one determines ROI on ad spend and it is based on an identifyable action such as a sale, a form being filled out, a down-load, et al., it fails to take into consideration the lifetime value of the customer from a repeat buyer and viral marketing standpoint.

Q:How do others take this into consideration when reporting what may be a negative ROI to a client on particular keyword, link, or creative based upon an intial action?

Although the real answer is industry and client specific, I am still curious if there is an equation that one may use to better equate ROI beyond an initial action.

[jeremy goodrich]

Only workable solution I have seen is to set a cookie that lasts & lasts.

Then you can also try correlations between the browser string & the IP address.

Some browsers configured by corps for example, have proprietary strings in the User Agent variable.

If the cookie is lost, but the referrer is blank & etc, but there is a match to an IP & a UA then you can go with a match up to those given a unique enough user agent.

Consider also what data other than that which is obtained from a visitor to a site - an email address for a newsletter, perhaps. If you get one later - from a consistant IP & User Agent combination, even if the cookie is gone - then you can backtrack from there once you have the email address.

Personalization of content can also help with this - if there is an incentive for them to sign up (the visitor) for some 'personalized stuff' then you will have that extra piece of data which may enable you to backtrack over the log files & create a 'lifetime value picture' of the visitor to the site.

Of course, the cookie solution till 2038 seems to work well enough for Google. :) If it were me designing something, I'd cookie the client till then, at the very least.