Updating the Revenue Report for improved channel attribution

Over the last few years, we’ve introduced new ways to introduce your courses to prospective learners. From TV ads to reseller partnerships to rewards placements on PayPal and banking sites, there are more ways than ever for learners to discover your content.

 

As we keep adding channels, we know how important it is for you to have accurate, up-to-date information on course purchases. So, in mid December, we’ll make two updates to the revenue report to ensure we continue to provide this important information.

 

1. To bolster the accuracy of attribution across all channels, we’re extending the time window to assign attribution to Udemy-driven sales.

 

Today, we attribute and report sales using the information available at the time of purchase. In the case of instructor-driven sales, we can immediately identify when a coupon or referral link was used and attribute appropriately. But in cases where we receive more specific attribution data on a delay, assigning attribution right away can result in an inaccurate ruling. For example, with digital TV ads, attribution information can take 2-3 days to come in from our partner networks. So we may report an “organic” sale but later understand that it was driven by an advertisement.

 

With this update, we’ll begin waiting 72 hours to assign an attribution channel to Udemy-driven sales. Sales and earnings information will continue to display same-day, as it does now. On the all-time and monthly summary charts, you’ll see a placeholder classification of “Udemy-driven” for non-instructor-driven sales that took place within the last 72 hours, which will then resolve to a more specific channel such as “Affiliates” or “Organic.” 

 

To enhance student privacy, individual sales listed in the monthly summary view will stay marked “Your Promotion” or “Udemy-driven.” As always, you can learn more about the ways learners are discovering your courses on the Traffic & Conversion tab within your Performance dashboard.

 

2. To help you understand each course’s performance in different channels, we’re adding a course filter to the monthly channel breakdown.

 

Today, you have to download your itemized sales report and pivot the data in order to know a particular course’s sales performance by channel. We know that understanding how each course is performing in different channels is important in optimizing your landing page, choosing keywords for your title and subtitle, and targeting your content to different learners. 

 

To help you easily understand course performance by channel, we’re adding a filter to the monthly summary that will let you view an individual course’s performance by sales channel directly in your revenue report. 

 

This improvement will make it easier for you to see the ways your courses are trending in different channels, whether that’s getting organic traction with Udemy learners, spiking in refunds, getting picked up by affiliate partners, or more.

 

What’s next?

 

We expect to implement these changes in mid December. As we continue to diversify the channels we use to reach new learners, we’ll also keep revisiting the data we provide  instructors to help you plan your content and your marketing. 

If you have specific ideas or feedback about the reporting and analytics you can access on Udemy, we encourage you to share in the Instructor Community.