Since around the year before last, I have anticipated that longer-term marketing evaluation metrics would become more important than short-term metrics for our e-commerce site and marketplaces. In fact, in a press release this April, Hakuhodo DY Media Partners announced that they have started offering a feature within “Digital AaaS” that uses machine learning to predict the “lifetime value (LTV)”—the revenue a customer brings to a company over a certain period—and optimize digital advertising budget allocation. Additionally, Shirofune Inc., in a press release yesterday, announced that their automated advertising tool “Shirofune” now includes a data integration feature for e-commerce platforms and e-commerce construction services called ‘LTV Operations for EC,’ allowing for advertising operations based on LTV (customer lifetime value) and ROAS (return on advertising spend) for any given period. I believe this trend will likely strengthen and become the standard in the future.

The reasons for this include technological advancements, increasing competition in the e-commerce market, and the diversification of client needs. On the other hand, it seems there are still many advertisers and marketers who blindly pursue CPA and ROAS/ACOS target values without being able to evaluate long-term marketing outcomes at all.