Merge pull request #1017 from plausible/ad-cost-calculator

ad cost calculator

Author: metmarkosaric

_articles/ad-cost-calculator.md

@@ -4,6 +4,8 @@ title: "How much JavaScript does Google Analytics add to your site?"
 description: "Google Analytics adds 135KB of JavaScript for every new visitor. Add GTM and a cookie consent banner and you're past 285KB. Plausible adds 2.5KB and needs none of it."
 permalink: /google-analytics-script-size
 ---
+<p style="font-size: 0.8125rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><a href="/tools">← All tools</a></p>
+
 Google Analytics (GA4) is the most widely used analytics tool on the web and one of the heaviest scripts you can add to a site. The size of that script compounds into gigabytes of data transferred every month.
 
 [Plausible Analytics](https://plausible.io/) was built differently: to give you what you need without the weight of a platform designed for advertising and audience building.

_articles/analytics-script-size.md

@@ -4,6 +4,8 @@ title: "Conversion rate calculator"
 description: "Calculate your website conversion rate, the traffic you need to hit your goals, and the impact of small improvements."
 permalink: /conversion-rate-calculator
 ---
+<p style="font-size: 0.8125rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><a href="/tools">← All tools</a></p>
+
 Conversion rate is one of the most useful numbers you can track on a website. It tells you not just how many people visited, but how many did something that mattered.
 
 Two visitors who buy are worth more than a hundred who bounce. Understanding your conversion rate helps you decide where to focus: on getting more traffic, or on making better use of the traffic you already have.
@@ -259,3 +261,5 @@ Plausible lets you track goals without writing any code. You can define what cou
 Once a goal is set up, it appears in your dashboard alongside your traffic data, so you can see your conversion rate directly and filter by source, page or campaign to understand where conversions actually come from.
 
 You can also add revenue tracking to goals to see the monetary value of conversions and compare it across channels. See [ecommerce revenue tracking](https://plausible.io/docs/ecommerce-revenue-tracking) for details.
+
+If you are running paid campaigns, use the [ad cost calculator](/ad-cost-calculator) to calculate your cost per click, cost per mille and cost per acquisition alongside your conversion data.

_articles/conversion-rate-calculator.md

@@ -4,6 +4,8 @@ title: "Cookie banner traffic loss calculator"
 description: "Estimate how many website visitors are invisible to Google Analytics because of cookie consent banner declines."
 permalink: /cookie-banner-traffic-loss-calculator
 ---
+<p style="font-size: 0.8125rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><a href="/tools">← All tools</a></p>
+
 Most analytics tools use cookies and collect personal data to identify visitors. Both require consent. Consent requires a banner. And every visitor who declines or simply ignores the banner disappears from your data entirely.
 
 Google Analytics cannot track what it has no permission to touch. The result is a gap between the traffic you actually have and the traffic your dashboard shows you. This calculator estimates the size of that gap.
@@ -185,3 +187,5 @@ The consent acceptance rate stops being a variable in your analytics accuracy be
 Whether a consent banner is required depends on your specific setup, audience location and any other tools running on your site. If you are running Plausible alongside other tracking tools that use cookies, those tools may still require consent. For a detailed legal assessment of when consent is and is not required, see our [guide written by a data protection lawyer](/blog/legal-assessment-gdpr-eprivacy). Nothing on this page is legal advice.
 
 If your GA data shows 28,400 visitors per month with a 45% consent rate, your actual traffic is closer to 51,600. Switching to Plausible does not manufacture traffic. It makes the traffic you already have visible.
+
+If you are spending on paid acquisition, the same distortion affects your cost per acquisition directly. Fewer recorded conversions means a higher reported CPA, making campaigns look less efficient than they are. Use the [ad cost calculator](/ad-cost-calculator) to see what a more accurate conversion count does to your numbers.

_articles/cookie-banner-traffic-loss-calculator.md

@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+---
+layout: article
+title: "Free tools and calculators"
+description: "Free calculators and utilities to help you understand your analytics data, evaluate campaign performance and get more out of Plausible."
+permalink: /tools
+---
+
+Free tools for marketers and analysts. Calculate what your campaigns are actually costing, validate your UTM setup before it corrupts your data, and see what you are trading away by using a heavier analytics tool.
+
+No account required. Everything runs in your browser.
+
+## Calculators
+
+**[Conversion rate calculator](/conversion-rate-calculator)**: Calculate your conversion rate, the traffic you need to hit a goal, and what a small improvement is actually worth in extra conversions per month.
+
+**[Ad cost calculator](/ad-cost-calculator)**: Enter your campaign numbers once and calculate your CPC, CPM and CPA alongside derived metrics like click-through rate and conversion rate.
+
+**[Cookie banner traffic loss calculator](/cookie-banner-traffic-loss-calculator)**: Estimate how many visitors are invisible to Google Analytics because of consent banner declines, and what that does to your reported numbers.
+
+## URL tools
+
+**[UTM builder](/utm-builder)**: Generate correctly formatted UTM-tagged URLs for your campaigns without doing it by hand.
+
+**[UTM checker](/utm-checker)**: Paste a tagged URL to validate it, spot naming inconsistencies and get a clean corrected version ready to copy.
+
+## Comparisons
+
+**[Script size comparison](/google-analytics-script-size)**: Google Analytics loads {{ site.data.site.ga4_script_kb }}KB of JavaScript for every new visitor. Plausible loads {{ site.data.site.plausible_script_kb }}KB and needs no cookie banner on top.

_articles/tools.md

@@ -4,6 +4,8 @@ title: "UTM builder"
 description: Generate UTM tagged links for your campaigns. Fill in the details below and copy the tagged URL to use in your emails, social posts and ads.
 permalink: /utm-builder
 ---
+<p style="font-size: 0.8125rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><a href="/tools">← All tools</a></p>
+
 Campaign traffic is invisible without tagging. Clicks from emails, newsletters and social media often arrive with no referral data, showing up as "direct" in your analytics. UTM parameters fix that: small tags you append to links that tell your analytics tool exactly where a click came from.
 
 [Plausible Analytics](https://plausible.io/) reads UTM tags out-of-the-box, with no cookies, no consent prompts and no Google account required. Build your tagged links below.
@@ -196,3 +198,5 @@ Enter your URL and campaign details to generate a tagged link:
 - **Keep naming consistent in your UTM campaigns.** In Google Analytics, `facebook`, `Facebook` and `fb` appear as three separate sources with no grouping. Plausible automatically consolidates known platform variants in the Sources tab, so all traffic from the same platform shows together regardless of how links were tagged. The Campaigns tab preserves raw values exactly as tagged, so inconsistent naming will fragment your campaign-level analysis.
 
 For a full walkthrough including how UTM data appears in your Plausible dashboard, see [How to use UTM parameters to track your campaigns](/blog/utm-tracking-tags).
+
+If your campaigns use `cpc` as their medium, the [ad cost calculator](/ad-cost-calculator) lets you calculate your cost per click, cost per mille and cost per acquisition once your tagged campaigns are running.

_articles/utm-builder.md

@@ -4,6 +4,8 @@ title: "UTM checker"
 description: Paste a UTM-tagged URL to validate it, spot naming issues and get a clean corrected version ready to copy.
 permalink: /utm-checker
 ---
+<p style="font-size: 0.8125rem; margin-bottom: 1.5rem;"><a href="/tools">← All tools</a></p>
+
 UTM links accumulate mess. A teammate copies a URL and tweaks it by hand. Someone uses `Facebook` where everyone else uses `facebook`. Spaces sneak in. The result is fragmented campaign data that is hard to filter and impossible to compare.
 
 Paste a tagged URL below. The checker splits it into its parts, flags issues, and generates a clean suggested URL ready to copy.
@@ -266,3 +268,5 @@ In Google Analytics, the issues below create fragmented campaign data that is ha
 **Skipping utm_medium.** Source tells you where. Medium tells you what kind of channel. Without medium, you cannot distinguish a newsletter campaign from a banner ad on the same site. It takes one extra field and pays off every time you need to compare channels.
 
 For a full guide to UTM parameters including how they appear in your Plausible dashboard, see [How to use UTM parameters to track your campaigns](/blog/utm-tracking-tags).
+
+If your campaigns use `cpc` as their medium, the [ad cost calculator](/ad-cost-calculator) lets you calculate your cost per click, cost per mille and cost per acquisition once your tagged campaigns are running.

_articles/utm-checker.md

@@ -139,6 +139,11 @@ <h4 class="text-sm leading-5 font-semibold tracking-wider text-gray-400 uppercas
                   Blog
                 </a>
               </li>
+              <li class="mt-4">
+                <a href="/tools" class="text-base leading-6 text-gray-300 hover:text-white">
+                  Tools
+                </a>
+              </li>
               <li class="mt-4">
                 <a href="/changelog" class="text-base leading-6 text-gray-300 hover:text-white">
                   What's new

_includes/footer.html

@@ -29,8 +29,8 @@ Naturally, internet-users and governments are unhappy and this made Chrome take
 
 Let’s explore what we can do as digital advertisers to stay relevant, while respecting user-privacy and staying compliant with privacy-preserving regulatory bodies.
 
-1. Ordered list
-{:toc}
+1. Ordered list
+{:toc}
 
 ## What’s this babel about third-party cookies affecting advertisers?
 
@@ -271,6 +271,7 @@ These tools are good with providing metrics that are [sufficient](https://plausi
 * Keep active with the latest developments, since all the newer tech and tools are constantly evolving themselves. Stay flexible.
 * Stick to the basics. Even with evolving technologies and strategies, the fundamentals of advertising remain the same. Like, with search engine advertising, your ad position continues to be determined by a combination of quality score and CPC bids.
 * Stick to UTM tracking to track and attribute conversions to specific campaigns, channels, or ads. This is a transparent way to precisely monitor the performance of your paid campaigns.
+* Use the [ad cost calculator](https://plausible.io/ad-cost-calculator) to calculate your CPC, CPM and CPA from your campaign numbers.
 
 ### Spread your assets
 

_posts/2024-04-23-how-to-optimize-your-paid-ad-campaigns-after-joining-the-cookieless-analytics-world.md

@@ -147,6 +147,7 @@ This way, you can track anything you want to with Plausible. For example: 
 
 * If you’re a [SaaS](https://plausible.io/for-ecommerce-saas), you can track the product sign ups coming from your ads. 
 * If you’re an e-commerce, you can [track the revenue](https://plausible.io/blog/ecommerce-revenue-attribution) affected by your ads and calculate your ROI.
+* Use the [ad cost calculator](https://plausible.io/ad-cost-calculator) to work out your CPC, CPM and CPA from your campaign numbers.
 
 Having said that, if you are looking for a deeper integration of Google Ads with Plausible, we have the following limitations due to our privacy-first nature and out-of-the-box compliance with the different cookie laws and privacy regulations such as GDPR and PECR.