Unit 4: Digital metrics and analytics
Search Engine and Performance Marketing notes · PTU syllabus (MBA 972-26)
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Unit summary
What gets measured gets improved — if the measurement is honest. This unit covers CTR, CPC, CPA, CPM and ROI, Google Analytics and Search Console, dashboard interpretation and reporting, campaign monitoring tools, audience insights, advertising fraud and ad blockers, and predictive analytics in campaign management.
After this unit you can
- Compute and interpret core digital metrics
- Use Google Analytics and Search Console
- Build and interpret dashboards and monitor campaigns
- Address ad fraud and ad blockers and apply predictive analytics
PTU syllabus topics
- CTR/CPC/CPA/CPM/ROI
- Google Analytics and Search Console
- dashboard interpretation and reporting
- campaign monitoring tools
- audience insights
- advertising fraud and ad blockers
- predictive analytics in campaign management
CTR
Clicks / impressions × 100
CPC
Cost / clicks
CPM
Cost / impressions × 1,000
CPA
Cost / conversions
ROAS
Revenue from ads / ad spend
Topic 1
Core digital metrics
CTR
Clicks ÷ impressions × 100
CPC
Cost ÷ clicks
CPM
Cost ÷ impressions × 1,000
CPA
Cost ÷ conversions
Conversion rate
Conversions ÷ clicks × 100
ROAS
Revenue ÷ ad spend
ROI
(Revenue − cost) ÷ cost × 100
Example
A campaign spends ₹50,000 for 5,00,000 impressions, 10,000 clicks and 250 sales worth ₹2,00,000. CTR 2%, CPC ₹5, CPM ₹100, conversion rate 2.5%, CPA ₹200, ROAS 4×.
- Interpretation: a high CTR with low conversion points to landing page or offer problems; low CTR points to targeting or creative issues.
Topic 2
Google Analytics
- GA4 is event-based: every interaction (page view, scroll, click, purchase) is an event.
- Reports: acquisition (traffic sources and campaigns via UTM parameters), engagement (pages, events, engaged sessions), monetisation (revenue, purchases), retention (returning users), demographics and technology.
- Key concepts: users, sessions, engagement rate, conversions (key events), funnels and path exploration, audiences for remarketing, integration with Google Ads and BigQuery.
- UTM tagging: source, medium, campaign, term, content — to attribute traffic correctly.
Topic 3
Google Search Console
- Shows organic search performance: queries, impressions, clicks, CTR, average position.
- Index coverage and page indexing issues, sitemaps, Core Web Vitals, mobile usability, manual actions and security issues, links report.
- Use with GA4: Search Console explains how people find the site; GA4 explains what they do after arriving.
Topic 4
Dashboard interpretation and reporting
- Dashboard principles: align with objectives, few key KPIs, trends vs targets, segment by channel and campaign, clear visuals, date comparisons, annotations for key events.
- Tools: Looker Studio, Power BI, Tableau, platform dashboards.
- Reporting: what happened, why, what we will do next — with insights, not only numbers.
Topic 5
Campaign monitoring tools and audience insights
- Monitoring: Google Ads and Meta Ads Manager (pacing, bids, alerts), tag managers (Google Tag Manager), conversion APIs, social listening, competitor ad libraries, rank trackers.
- Audience insights: demographics, interests, devices, locations, time of day, new vs returning, high-value segments — used to refine targeting and creative.
Topic 6
Advertising fraud and ad blockers
Bot traffic
Automated fake clicks and impressions
Click farms
Humans paid to click ads
Domain spoofing
Low-quality sites pose as premium publishers
Ad stacking and pixel stuffing
Hidden ads counted as impressions
Install and attribution fraud
Fake app installs, click injection
Affiliate fraud
Cookie stuffing, fake leads
- Countermeasures: invalid-traffic filters, verification tools (IAS, DoubleVerify), ads.txt and sellers.json, placement exclusions, monitoring anomalies in CTR and conversions.
- Ad blockers: reduce reach and revenue for publishers; respond with non-intrusive ads (Better Ads Standards), native and sponsored content, first-party channels, value exchange (ad-free subscriptions).
Topic 7
Predictive analytics in campaign management
- Applications: predicting conversion probability and customer lifetime value, churn and purchase propensity scores, demand forecasting for budget pacing, bid optimisation (smart bidding), creative performance prediction, lookalike modelling, budget allocation through marketing mix models.
- Process: collect first-party and campaign data, build and validate models, feed predictions into bidding and audience platforms, monitor and retrain.
Example
An ed-tech firm scores leads by predicted enrolment probability and raises bids only for audiences resembling high-score leads, cutting CPA by a third.
Key terms
- CTR
- Clicks as a percentage of impressions
- ROAS
- Revenue earned per rupee of ad spend
- UTM parameters
- Tags in URLs identifying traffic source and campaign
- Search Console
- Google tool for organic search performance and indexing
- Ad fraud
- Fake or invalid ad impressions, clicks or conversions
Quick revision
- CTR, CPC, CPM, CPA, conversion rate, ROAS, ROI; interpretation.
- GA4: events, reports, UTMs; Search Console: queries, indexing, CWV.
- Dashboards and reporting principles; monitoring tools; audience insights.
- Ad fraud types and countermeasures; ad blockers.
- Predictive analytics in bidding, audiences and budgets.
Important exam questions
Practice questions written to the PTU exam pattern for this unit's syllabus: short answers (Section A style) and long answers (Sections B and C style).
Short-answer questions
- Q1.Define CTR and CPA.
- Q2.Compute ROAS if revenue is ₹3 lakh and ad spend ₹75,000.
- Q3.What are UTM parameters?
- Q4.Distinguish Google Analytics and Search Console.
- Q5.Name three types of ad fraud.
- Q6.Give two uses of predictive analytics in campaigns.
Long-answer questions
- Q1.Explain the core metrics of digital campaigns with a numerical example.
- Q2.Explain the use of Google Analytics and Search Console.
- Q3.Discuss dashboard reporting, campaign monitoring and audience insights.
- Q4.Discuss ad fraud, ad blockers and predictive analytics in campaign management.
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