Alamy Measures primer: The individual Pseudonym and CTR % screen
Delving deeper into the meat and bones of the rather handy Alamy Measures tool PP explains the individual Pseudonym screen, what the columns on this screen mean and how to read them.
The individual Pseudonym screen
Now we understand the basis of what Alamy mean by Views, Zooms and CTR % (if you missed that post it can be found here), we can look at the very detailed data returned for each Pseudonym.
From the initial Pseudonym Summary screen, under the Pseudonym column, click any of your Pseudonyms.
You should see an individual Pseudonym screen like this (click to enlarge):
PP note: search terms and pseudonyms blurred!
Like the Summary screen, each column can be sorted in ascending or descending (or alphabetical for search term column) order by clicking on the column name itself. This screenshot shows I’ve sorted by most views.
So what do each of the columns mean?
Search Term
Each line shows the actual search term entered by the customer that resulted in one or more of your images being seen (or as Alamy calls it viewed).
You will find that the search term is very useful for seeing where loose keywording is returning your images to customers but not resulting in sales because your keywords are not accurately reflecting the content of your images.
Clicking the search term itself will show you all of your images that the customer saw when they used that search term.
Sometimes the Search Terms are followed by letters in brackets i.e. “red lorry [L]“. This shows you if the Search Term was modified (filtered) by the customer in an advanced search. The letters mean the following:
License type
Licensed – L
Royalty-Free – RF
Releases
Model Released – MR
Property Released – PR
Orientation
Landscape – Land
Portrait – Pt
Panoramic – Pan
Square – Sq
Your Views
The number of times your images as thumbnails were shown to a customer for that particular search term.
Your Zooms
The number of times your images as thumbnails were zoomed by a customer for that particular search term.
Your Sales**
The number of sales recorded for you with that particular search term.
**PP note: This is the weakest column in Alamy Measures. At present it does not accurately reflect all sales. It will only record a sale if the customer searched and bought in the same transaction at the same time and Alamy are certain that caused the sale. If your image was lightboxed or sold on another session by the customer or by Alamy sales staff it will not show. So don’t panic!!
Your CTR (%)
Shows your CTR % (zooms / views x 100) for that particular search term
Total Views
The total number of views for all contributors returned for that particular search term.
Total Zooms
The total number of zooms for all contributors returned for that particular search term.
Total CTR %
The total CTR % for all contributors including you returned for that particular search term.
EXAMPLES and some analysis from the screenshot:
Again, this is based on about 15 months worth of data as you can see, you could cut this down to one day, one week, a date range etc. if you wish.
Example 1) The customer searched on rome architecture which for me returned 162 Views and 2 Zooms giving me a CTR % of 1.23
The total views for all contributors was 4,720 Views resulting in 101 Zooms giving a Total CTR % of 2.14
Analysis for Example 1) I find it interesting to compare my CTR % with the Total CTR%. This shows me how my images are performing compared to the competition. In this case I had a CTR % of 1.23 compared to a Total CTR % of 2.14.
From this I would be happy that my CTR % was greater than 1. From what I can gather (and please remember this is by no means an exact science) a CTR of 2 is good and anything more is better (obviously). But for me the real comparator is if I’ve beaten the Total CTR % with my own CTR %. In this case I have not. So I will assume that my images have performed slightly worse for this Search Term than the rest of the competition. That, of course, may not be the case. One contributor couldhave 30 of those 101 Total Zooms thus skewing the figures. While we are working on Total CTR % and not Average CTR% this will always be the case.
Example 2) The customer searched on red tomatoes which for me returned 112 Views and 2 Zooms giving me a CTR % of 1.79
The total views for all contributors was 3,492 Views resulting in 28 Zooms giving a Total CTR % of 0.80
Analysis for Example 2) Very happy with a CTR of 1.79 as its more than double the Total CTR % of all the competition. But 28 images of a red tomato were zoomed and it’s likely the customer is only looking for one. So if I don’t sell then C’est La Vie! Which just goes to show that having a great CTR doesn’t guarantee you sales. It must help by the law of probability, because the more times you are zoomed, the better your chances of that image turning into a sale.
But this example (and others I have sold) shows that sometimes a sale can happen if you have the image a buyer wants, yet your CTR % for that Search Term might be 0.25 or even lower.
PP
Tags: Alamy, Alamy Measures, Photography Business, Statistics, Stock Photography
