How do you guys actually track LTV properly? Feel like I'm miscalculating big time

[Jasminka]

So been running my operation for about 18 months now and honestly starting to think I've been calculating LTV completely wrong. I've been lumping all my traffic sources together and just averaging it out, but some of my PPC campaigns are bleeding money while organic seems solid. Does anyone segment their LTV by traffic source or am I overthinking this? My affiliate manager keeps telling me the numbers look fine but something feels off when I dig into individual channels.

 

[fisicx]

Separate and segment. The more granular you can get the better it is.

Ignore your affiliate manager, as long as they get their cut they don’t care about your costs.

 

[yahan]

oh man you need to segment that ASAP. Different traffic sources have completely different player behaviors. Your SEO traffic is probably way more valuable long-term than paid stuff - people searching for casinos are usually more committed than someone who clicked a banner ad. I learned this the hard way too, was spending like crazy on FB ads thinking all players were equal lol. Now I track everything in cohorts by source, geo, and even device type.

 

[Berndoy]

Agree with segmentation but it's more complex than just source tbh. You also need to look at retention rates month over month. I've seen operators with great acquisition costs but terrible retention - ends up being a leaky bucket situation where you're constantly filling it with new players. What's your retention looking like? And are you tracking cost per registration separately from cost per FTD? Those are two very different metrics that tell different stories about your funnel efficiency

 

[Asta-1987]

This is exactly why I ditched most of my paid traffic sources last year. Was paying €65-80 per depositor on Google Ads and calculated I needed at least €180 LTV to make it work with all the other costs factored in. Problem was those players had way lower retention than organic - like 30-40% lower. Ended up with actual LTV around €110-130 which meant I was losing money on every player. Shifted budget to SEO and content, took longer to scale but the unit economics actually work now.