Custom Value Use Cases

We know our customers will find infinite use cases for Custom Values. Below we've outlined the most common ones and code examples (where relevant). We'll continue expanding this as the list of use cases grows.

Offline Spend

Shape customers may advertise on ad platforms our solution doesn't currently integrate. For Shape members that want to track offline spend, Custom Values is a simple way to do so. 

For example, let's say you wanted to track spend on Quora Ads. You'd set up a static custom value on the Client level with a data format of Money. At regular intervals of your choosing, you'd update the static value for the client. Then at the end of the month, you could report on Shape-supported ad platforms and Quora altogether. 

Custom IDs for Clients and Budgets

Agencies often have multiple software solutions to help them manage Clients, including CRMs, billing solutions, and more. More than likely, each system assigns clients an identifier unique to their software solutions.

For agencies to be able to integrate data across platforms and even automate processes across systems, they need to be able to match the Client in Shape together with a Client in Salesforce (for example). By adding a Salesforce customer ID to Shape, Shape customers can more easily integrate and share data between the platforms. Custom Values allow for custom IDs to be implemented at the Client and Budget level. 

Depending on the type of custom ID, we would suggest using a static custom value with a data format of number (if the entire ID is numerical) or text (if the ID is alphanumeric).

Management Fees

Agencies may charge clients a static or percentage-based management fee in order to manage their advertising campaigns. We've had many requests to add a field for management fees into Shape, but agencies often have very different methodologies to charging those fees. 

Custom Values are the perfect way for agencies to add their management fees to Shape even if the way they charge those fees differs from client to client. Below we'll show a few different ways we've seen management fees be calculated. 

Static Flat Fee:

Static Percentage: 

Dynamic Percentage by Budget Amount:

Custom KPIs

Does your agency have KPIs that they use to manage customers' accounts that aren't available in Shape? While we regularly add new metrics to Shape, there may be times when you have custom KPIs that you want to add yourself. 

Custom Values can be a great way to implement new KPIs unique to your Clients or Budgets. 

For example, let's say that you wanted to add Conversion Rate at the Client level. Right now, the Conversion Rate metric is only available at the Budget level. You could create a dynamic Custom Value using the equation below. 

Conversion Rate (Client-Level)

ROAS (Client-Level)

*Note: In this example, $500 is the standard conversion value*