Glossary from A to Z

Every term from OTTO advertising and MargenOptimierer, explained in one sentence.

ACoS: ACoS is your ad spend as a share of your ad revenue.Say ads for the oak table cost 340 € in the period and bring in 1,000 € of ad revenue. That’s 34% ACoS.
Ad console: The ad console is the page in MargenOptimierer where you see and change your OTTO campaigns along with their numbers.Say the Kampagnen (Campaigns) tab shows “Manual – Garden furniture” with 1,000 € of ad spend and 4,000 € of ad revenue. That’s 25% ACoS, exactly the target ACoS of 25% shown next to it.
Ad revenue: Ad revenue is the amount customers spend with you after clicking your ad, including on other items of the same brand.Say a customer clicks the acacia chair’s ad and then buys 2 chairs at 119 € each and the oak table from the same brand for 100 €. That’s 338 € of ad revenue.
Ad share: The ad share is a fixed percentage of your monthly ad revenue that you pay MargenOptimierer on top of the base price.Say the ad share is 2% and the month’s ad revenue is 12,000 €. You then pay 240 € of ad share.
Ad spend: Ad spend is the money you pay OTTO for clicks on your ads.Say the acacia chair’s ad gets 200 clicks in the period and a click costs 0.25 € on average. You then have 50 € of ad spend for the chair.
Advertised item: The advertised item is the item whose ad a customer clicked.Say a customer clicks the ad for the acacia chair and buys 2 chairs at 119 € each plus the oak table from the same brand for 100 €. Of that, 238 € counts for the advertised item, and the campaign’s ad revenue is 338 €.
Authenticator app: An authenticator app is an app on your phone that shows you a six-digit code for signing in.Say you sign in with a password and MargenOptimierer asks for the code while the app is showing 418 207. You then type the six digits 418207.
Automatic campaign: In an automatic campaign, OTTO itself decides on which searches your items appear as ads.Say you create the automatic campaign “Automatic – Garden furniture” for garden furniture with a starting bid of 0.40 €. OTTO then picks the searches where the garden furniture appears, and a click costs you 0.40 € at most.
Base price: The base price is what you pay MargenOptimierer each month per OTTO account, and it depends on that account’s revenue at OTTO.Say a base price of 60 € a month applies to the revenue of one OTTO account. If you could use MargenOptimierer for the whole month after the free trial, you pay 60 € plus VAT.
Bid: A bid is the most you’re willing to pay OTTO for one click on your ad.Say you set the bid for the keyword “gartenstuhl holz” to 0.40 €. You then pay at most 0.40 € for a click on that ad.
Break-even ACoS: Break-even ACoS is the share of the gross price that ads can cost at most before you lose money on a sale.Say the oak table costs 100 € gross, and you have 35 € left after VAT, OTTO commission, purchase price and shipping costs. That’s 35% of the gross price, so a break-even ACoS of 35%.
Budget: A budget is the most a campaign may spend on clicks at OTTO per day, week or month, or over its whole run.Say “Automatic – Garden furniture” has a daily budget of 20 €. It can then spend up to 20 € on clicks every day, and at an average of 0.25 € per click that’s enough for 80 clicks a day.
Budget type: The Budgetart (Budget type) setting says whether a campaign’s budget covers one day, one week, one month or its whole run.Say the template “Seasonal” has Budgetart set to “täglich” (daily) and a budget of 20 €. Every campaign made from that template then has a daily budget of 20 €.
BuyBox: Whoever has the BuyBox is the seller whose offer OTTO puts up for sale on the product page when several sellers sell the same item.Say you sell the acacia chair for 50 €, and a second seller sells it too. If OTTO puts the offer from you up for sale on the product page, you have the BuyBox and the 0.40 € bid can win an auction; if OTTO puts up the other seller’s offer, the ad doesn’t enter any auction.
Campaign setup: Kampagnen-Setup (Campaign setup) is the page where you create new campaigns at OTTO, even for a whole product group at once.Say you pick the template Automatisch und manuell (Automatic and manual) for the garden furniture product group. The preview then shows the automatic campaign “Automatic – Garden furniture” and the manual campaign “Manual – Garden furniture” with the 25 keywords from the garden furniture keyword list.
Campaign template: A campaign template is a set of saved settings you use to create new campaigns, such as budget, starting bid and campaign type.Say a custom template “Seasonal” creates one automatic and one manual campaign, with a daily budget of 20 € and a 0.40 € starting bid. If you pick it in Kampagnen-Setup (Campaign setup) for the garden furniture, you get “Automatic – Garden furniture” and “Manual – Garden furniture” with those values.
Changelog: The Changelog is the list of your ad changes that are still waiting to go to OTTO or have already gone there.Say you lower the bid for “gartentisch eiche” from 0.50 € to 0.40 € and raise the bid for “gartenstuhl klappbar” from 0.40 € to 0.44 €, so 2 changes wait in the Changelog and the old bids still apply at OTTO. If you then lower the daily budget of 3 campaigns in one go, that’s one entry with 3 changes, and the list header reads “5 vorgemerkte Änderungen in 3 Einträgen” (5 queued changes in 3 entries).
Clicks without a sale: Clicks without a sale means a targeting or campaign reached at least your minimum clicks in the period but got neither ad revenue nor an order through the ad.Say the search term “gartenstuhl kinder” had 30 clicks and 12 € of ad spend in the period, but no sale. With minimum clicks at 10, those are clicks without a sale.
Commission group: A commission group is a set of items for which OTTO charges the same rate of OTTO commission.Say you sell a garden table and a swing seat. At OTTO the table is in the commission group Furniture, tiered from 19% to 17%, and the swing seat is in the commission group Garden at 15%.
Contribution margin: Contribution margin is the amount in euros left of your revenue after all costs per sale.Say 16 € of VAT, 19 € of OTTO commission, 36 € of own costs and 16 € of ad spend come off 100 € of garden furniture revenue. That leaves 13 € of contribution margin.
Conversion rate: Conversion rate tells you how many units of your advertised item customers buy per 100 clicks on your ad.Say the acacia chair’s ad for the keyword “gartenstuhl holz” gets 200 clicks in the period, and customers then buy 5 chairs. Its conversion rate is 2.5%.
Cooldown: The cooldown is the number of days after a bid is sent during which MargenOptimierer doesn’t offer you that bid for lowering or raising.Say the cooldown is at the default of 7 days and you send a new bid on 20 October 2026. MargenOptimierer then offers that bid for lowering or raising again from 27 October 2026.
Cost driver: A cost driver is an item that is losing money in the period, is below its target margin, or has an ACoS above its target ACoS.Say the oak table has 340 € of ad spend on 1,000 € of ad revenue in the period, and the garden furniture target ACoS of 25% allows 250 €. That’s 90 € over target, so the table is a cost driver.
CPC: CPC is the price you pay on average for one click on your ad.Say the acacia chair’s ad for the keyword “gartenstuhl holz” gets 200 clicks in the period and costs 50 € for them. Its CPC is 0.25 €.
CTR: CTR tells you how many clicks your ad gets for every 100 times OTTO shows it.Say OTTO shows the acacia chair’s ad for the keyword “gartenstuhl holz” 10,000 times in the period, and customers click it 200 times. Its CTR is 2%.
Free threshold: The free threshold is the monthly ad revenue below which you pay MargenOptimierer no share of your ad revenue.Say the free threshold is 1,000 € of ad revenue a month. If the ads bring in 600 € of ad revenue in a month, you pay no ad share.
Free trial: The free trial is the time at the start when you use MargenOptimierer at no cost.Say MargenOptimierer fetches orders from an OTTO account for the first time on 27 October 2026. That account’s free trial starts that day, and 27 October 2026 is the first of its 14 days.
Harvesting: Harvesting means taking search terms that customers have already bought through and adding them as keywords to a manual campaign.Say customers bought 3 times after 40 clicks through the search term “gartenstuhl klappbar” in “Automatic – Garden furniture”. You then add it as a keyword with the match type Exact and a 0.40 € bid in “Manual – Garden furniture”.
Impressions: Impressions count how often OTTO has shown your ad.Say OTTO shows the acacia chair’s ad for the keyword “gartenstuhl holz” 10,000 times in the period. It then has 10,000 impressions, even if there are only 200 clicks.
Item condition: Item condition tells you how good a returned item still is.Say 4 of the 6 returned acacia chairs come back “originalverpackt” (in original packaging) and 2 come back “stark gebraucht” (heavily used).
Keyword: A keyword is a word or phrase you book at OTTO so your ad can appear on matching searches.Say you book the keyword “gartenstuhl holz” with a 0.40 € bid in “Manual – Garden furniture”. If a customer searches for it, OTTO can show an item from that campaign as an ad, and a click costs you 0.40 € at most.
Keyword list: The keyword list is your own collection of keywords for a product group, and new campaigns take their keywords from it.Say the garden furniture product group has 25 keywords in its keyword list. If you use the Manuell (Manual) template to create a campaign for it, those 25 keywords are already in the new campaign “Manual – Garden furniture”.
Manual campaign: In a manual campaign, you choose yourself the keywords on which your items can appear as ads.Say “Manual – Garden furniture” has the 25 keywords from the garden furniture keyword list, including “gartenstuhl holz” and “gartentisch eiche”. Its ads can appear on searches that match those 25 keywords.
Margin: Margin is the share of your revenue left after all costs per sale.Say 13 € is left from 100 € of garden furniture revenue after all costs per sale. That’s a margin of 13%.
Markup: Markup is the percentage you add to the purchase price to reach the selling price without VAT.Say a cushion has a purchase price of 20 € and sells for 50 € without VAT. The 30 € markup is 150% on the purchase price.
Match type: Match type sets how closely a customer’s search term has to fit your keyword.Say the keyword is “gartenstuhl”. With Exact only the search “gartenstuhl” matches, with Phrase “gartenstuhl holz” matches too, and with Broad similar searches like “gartenstühle” can also match.
Minimum bid: The minimum bid is the smallest amount OTTO accepts as a bid for one click when you advertise on OTTO.Say OTTO accepts bids from 0.20 €. If you lower a 0.22 € bid by 20%, it would be 0.18 €, and MargenOptimierer sets 0.20 € instead.
Minimum clicks: Minimum clicks is the number of clicks from which MargenOptimierer says whether advertising a targeting or item is too expensive or doing well.Say minimum clicks are at the default of 10. If a targeting has 10 clicks and no sale in the period, MargenOptimierer counts it as clicks without a sale, but not at 9 clicks.
Negative keywords: Negative keywords are search terms on which OTTO shouldn’t show your ad.Say the search term “gartenstuhl kinder” had 30 clicks and 12 € of ad spend in “Automatic – Garden furniture”, but no sale. If you exclude it with the match type Exact on all 298 items in the campaign, that creates 298 negative keywords at OTTO.
Ohne Artikel: “Ohne Artikel” (Without item) is the row in the table on the Marge (Margin) page for amounts in your account that don’t belong to any single item.Say the OTTO base fee is 99.90 € a month and you pick September 2026 as the period. The “Ohne Artikel” row then shows a contribution margin of −99.90 €.
Other costs: Other costs are all the remaining costs of one sold unit, such as packaging, without VAT.Say every acacia chair gets packaging for 0.30 €. With 50 chairs sold, 15 € comes off the margin under other costs.
OTTO base fee: The OTTO base fee is the fixed amount OTTO charges you every month for your seller account, on top of the other OTTO fees.Say OTTO charges an OTTO base fee of 99.90 € a month. If you look at the margin for all of September, MargenOptimierer subtracts that 99.90 € from the account’s contribution margin.
OTTO commission: OTTO commission is the money OTTO keeps from every sale.Say a rate of 19% applies to the oak table. OTTO then keeps exactly 19 € of OTTO commission on a 100 € sale.
Own costs: Own costs are what one sold unit costs you yourself, meaning purchase price, shipping and other costs, all without VAT.Say the acacia chair has a purchase price of 12.40 € and costs you 4.90 € to ship. That’s 17.30 € of own costs per chair sold.
Owner: The owner is the member of your company who holds the MargenOptimierer subscription and is the only one who can cancel it.Say you created the company, so you’re the owner, and a colleague also has the Admin role. If you transfer ownership to her, only she can cancel the subscription, and you stay an admin.
Payment fee: The payment fee is what OTTO charges for processing your customer’s payment.Say you sell a garden table for 349 €. The payment fee is then 9.42 €, and it’s already included in the table’s 64.32 € OTTO commission.
Portfolio: A portfolio is a group of campaigns you put together yourself so you can see their numbers together.Say you group “Automatic – Garden furniture” and “Manual – Garden furniture” in the portfolio “Garden”. If together they have 1,600 € of ad spend and 6,400 € of ad revenue, the portfolio’s row shows 25% ACoS.
Product group: A product group brings items together so you can create campaigns for them in one go and see their numbers together.Say you sell 300 pieces of garden furniture and group them in the garden furniture product group. On the Marge (Margin) page the group then sits on one row, and one click on it opens its 300 items.
Purchase price: The purchase price is what one sold unit cost you to buy, without VAT.Say the acacia chair has a purchase price of 12.40 €. If you sell 50 chairs, 620 € comes off the margin for the purchase price.
Queued change: A queued change is a change you’ve entered but haven’t sent to OTTO yet.Say you lower the bid for the keyword “gartentisch eiche” from 0.50 € to 0.40 €. Until you send the queued change, 0.50 € still applies at OTTO.
Quick filter: A quick filter is a button above a table in the ad console that shows only certain rows with one click.Say the keyword “gartentisch eiche” has 680 clicks and 34% ACoS, and its target ACoS is 25%. One click on ACoS über Ziel (ACoS above target) in the Targeting tab shows it and hides the keywords below their target.
Recovery code: A recovery code is a backup code you sign in with when you don’t have your phone.Say you sign in 3 times without a phone. You then have 7 of the 10 codes left.
Refunds: Refunds are the money your customers get back for a purchase, usually after a return.Say a customer gets 119 € back for a returned acacia chair. Refunds then show 119 €, and that includes 19 € of VAT that you get back.
Retail margin: Retail margin is what’s left of the selling price without VAT after you subtract the purchase price.Say a cushion has a purchase price of 20 € and sells for 59.50 € with VAT, so 50 € without. The retail margin is 30 €, which is 60% of the selling price without VAT.
Return rate: Return rate tells you how many of every 100 units sold come back.Say you sell 50 acacia chairs in the period and 6 of them come back. That’s a return rate of 12%.
Revenue: Revenue is everything customers paid for your items at OTTO in the period.Say you sell 50 acacia chairs at 119 € each in the period, which is 5,950 € of revenue. The 6 that come back don’t change the revenue, and the 714 € appears as refunds in the margin.
ROAS: ROAS tells you how many euros of ad revenue one euro of ad spend brought in.Say ads for the acacia chair cost 50 € in the period and bring in 595 € of ad revenue from 5 chairs at 119 € each. ROAS is then 11.90×.
Search term: A search term is what a customer types into the OTTO search box, unlike the keyword you book.Say customers search OTTO for “gartenstuhl klappbar”, click 40 times on ads from “Automatic – Garden furniture”, and 3 of them buy. “gartenstuhl klappbar” then appears in the Suchbegriffe (Search terms) tab with 40 clicks and 3 sales.
Shipping costs: Shipping costs are what it costs you to send one sold unit, without VAT.Say a parcel with the acacia chair costs you 4.90 € in shipping costs. With 50 chairs sold, 245 € comes off the margin for shipping costs.
SKU: The SKU is the ID you give an item yourself, and OTTO lists the item under it.Say the 180 cm oak table has the SKU TISCH-EICHE-180 and the acacia chair has the SKU STUHL-AKAZIE-01.
Standard rate: The standard rate is the usual OTTO commission rate of a commission group, which MargenOptimierer calculates with when OTTO gives no clear rate for your item.Say a standard rate of 19% applies to the oak table. MargenOptimierer then subtracts 19 € of OTTO commission from a 100 € sale.
Starting bid: The starting bid is the bid that an item or keyword without a suggested bid begins with in a new campaign.Say you create an automatic campaign with a 0.40 € starting bid for 298 pieces of garden furniture that can be sold at OTTO. All 298 items then start with a 0.40 € bid.
Suggested bid: The suggested bid is the bid you set for a keyword in your keyword list, and the keyword starts with it in every new campaign.Say the garden furniture keyword list has “gartenstuhl holz” with a 0.40 € suggested bid. If you create a manual campaign for the garden furniture, the keyword starts at OTTO with that 0.40 €, whatever the campaign’s starting bid.
TACoS: TACoS is your ad spend as a share of your total revenue, including revenue without ads.Say garden furniture brings in 10,000 € of revenue in the period, 6,400 € of it ad revenue, and the ads cost 1,600 €. TACoS is then 16% and ACoS is 25%.
Target ACoS: Target ACoS is the highest share of your ad revenue that your ads are allowed to cost.Say the target ACoS is 20%. Ads can then cost at most 20 € per 100 € of ad revenue.
Target margin: Target margin is the share of your revenue that should at least be left after all costs per sale.Say the target margin is 15%. At least 15 € should then be left from 100 € of revenue.
Target return rate: Target return rate is the highest share of your sold units that should come back.Say the target return rate is 8%. At most 8 of 100 units sold should then come back.
Target ROAS: Target ROAS is the ad revenue that one euro of ad spend should bring in at least.Say the target ROAS is 4. Then 25 € of ad spend should bring in at least 100 € of ad revenue, just like a target ACoS of 25%.
Targeting: A targeting is a keyword or item you set a bid on in a campaign.Say “Manual – Garden furniture” has 25 keywords, which makes 25 targetings. “Automatic – Garden furniture” advertises 298 items, which makes 298 targetings.
Tiered commission: Tiered commission is an OTTO commission where each price band has its own rate.Say OTTO charges 19% on the part of a furniture price up to 150 € and 18% on the part from 150 to 500 €. For a garden table at 349 €, that’s 28.50 € plus 35.82 €, 64.32 € in total.
Two-factor sign-in: Two-factor sign-in means you enter a code from your phone as well as your password when you sign in.Say you enter the password and then the code 482 913 that the app on the phone is showing. If you leave Diesem Gerät 30 Tage vertrauen (Trust this device for 30 days) ticked below it, MargenOptimierer won’t ask for the code on this device for 30 days.
VAT: VAT is the part of your revenue that goes to the tax office.Say a customer buys the acacia chair for 119 €. Of that, 19 € is VAT and 100 € remains without tax.

Wird geladen …

Every term from OTTO advertising and MargenOptimierer, explained in one sentence.

ACoS

ACoS is your ad spend as a share of your ad revenue.Say ads for the oak table cost 340 € in the period and bring in 1,000 € of ad revenue. That’s 34% ACoS.

Ad console

The ad console is the page in MargenOptimierer where you see and change your OTTO campaigns along with their numbers.Say the Kampagnen (Campaigns) tab shows “Manual – Garden furniture” with 1,000 € of ad spend and 4,000 € of ad revenue. That’s 25% ACoS, exactly the target ACoS of 25% shown next to it.

Ad revenue

Ad revenue is the amount customers spend with you after clicking your ad, including on other items of the same brand.Say a customer clicks the acacia chair’s ad and then buys 2 chairs at 119 € each and the oak table from the same brand for 100 €. That’s 338 € of ad revenue.

Ad share

The ad share is a fixed percentage of your monthly ad revenue that you pay MargenOptimierer on top of the base price.Say the ad share is 2% and the month’s ad revenue is 12,000 €. You then pay 240 € of ad share.

Ad spend

Ad spend is the money you pay OTTO for clicks on your ads.Say the acacia chair’s ad gets 200 clicks in the period and a click costs 0.25 € on average. You then have 50 € of ad spend for the chair.

Advertised item

The advertised item is the item whose ad a customer clicked.Say a customer clicks the ad for the acacia chair and buys 2 chairs at 119 € each plus the oak table from the same brand for 100 €. Of that, 238 € counts for the advertised item, and the campaign’s ad revenue is 338 €.

Authenticator app

An authenticator app is an app on your phone that shows you a six-digit code for signing in.Say you sign in with a password and MargenOptimierer asks for the code while the app is showing 418 207. You then type the six digits 418207.

Automatic campaign

In an automatic campaign, OTTO itself decides on which searches your items appear as ads.Say you create the automatic campaign “Automatic – Garden furniture” for garden furniture with a starting bid of 0.40 €. OTTO then picks the searches where the garden furniture appears, and a click costs you 0.40 € at most.

Base price

The base price is what you pay MargenOptimierer each month per OTTO account, and it depends on that account’s revenue at OTTO.Say a base price of 60 € a month applies to the revenue of one OTTO account. If you could use MargenOptimierer for the whole month after the free trial, you pay 60 € plus VAT.

Bid

A bid is the most you’re willing to pay OTTO for one click on your ad.Say you set the bid for the keyword “gartenstuhl holz” to 0.40 €. You then pay at most 0.40 € for a click on that ad.

Break-even ACoS

Break-even ACoS is the share of the gross price that ads can cost at most before you lose money on a sale.Say the oak table costs 100 € gross, and you have 35 € left after VAT, OTTO commission, purchase price and shipping costs. That’s 35% of the gross price, so a break-even ACoS of 35%.

Budget

A budget is the most a campaign may spend on clicks at OTTO per day, week or month, or over its whole run.Say “Automatic – Garden furniture” has a daily budget of 20 €. It can then spend up to 20 € on clicks every day, and at an average of 0.25 € per click that’s enough for 80 clicks a day.

Budget type

The Budgetart (Budget type) setting says whether a campaign’s budget covers one day, one week, one month or its whole run.Say the template “Seasonal” has Budgetart set to “täglich” (daily) and a budget of 20 €. Every campaign made from that template then has a daily budget of 20 €.

BuyBox

Whoever has the BuyBox is the seller whose offer OTTO puts up for sale on the product page when several sellers sell the same item.Say you sell the acacia chair for 50 €, and a second seller sells it too. If OTTO puts the offer from you up for sale on the product page, you have the BuyBox and the 0.40 € bid can win an auction; if OTTO puts up the other seller’s offer, the ad doesn’t enter any auction.

Campaign setup

Kampagnen-Setup (Campaign setup) is the page where you create new campaigns at OTTO, even for a whole product group at once.Say you pick the template Automatisch und manuell (Automatic and manual) for the garden furniture product group. The preview then shows the automatic campaign “Automatic – Garden furniture” and the manual campaign “Manual – Garden furniture” with the 25 keywords from the garden furniture keyword list.

Campaign template

A campaign template is a set of saved settings you use to create new campaigns, such as budget, starting bid and campaign type.Say a custom template “Seasonal” creates one automatic and one manual campaign, with a daily budget of 20 € and a 0.40 € starting bid. If you pick it in Kampagnen-Setup (Campaign setup) for the garden furniture, you get “Automatic – Garden furniture” and “Manual – Garden furniture” with those values.

Changelog

The Changelog is the list of your ad changes that are still waiting to go to OTTO or have already gone there.Say you lower the bid for “gartentisch eiche” from 0.50 € to 0.40 € and raise the bid for “gartenstuhl klappbar” from 0.40 € to 0.44 €, so 2 changes wait in the Changelog and the old bids still apply at OTTO. If you then lower the daily budget of 3 campaigns in one go, that’s one entry with 3 changes, and the list header reads “5 vorgemerkte Änderungen in 3 Einträgen” (5 queued changes in 3 entries).

Clicks without a sale

Clicks without a sale means a targeting or campaign reached at least your minimum clicks in the period but got neither ad revenue nor an order through the ad.Say the search term “gartenstuhl kinder” had 30 clicks and 12 € of ad spend in the period, but no sale. With minimum clicks at 10, those are clicks without a sale.

Commission group

A commission group is a set of items for which OTTO charges the same rate of OTTO commission.Say you sell a garden table and a swing seat. At OTTO the table is in the commission group Furniture, tiered from 19% to 17%, and the swing seat is in the commission group Garden at 15%.

Contribution margin

Contribution margin is the amount in euros left of your revenue after all costs per sale.Say 16 € of VAT, 19 € of OTTO commission, 36 € of own costs and 16 € of ad spend come off 100 € of garden furniture revenue. That leaves 13 € of contribution margin.

Conversion rate

Conversion rate tells you how many units of your advertised item customers buy per 100 clicks on your ad.Say the acacia chair’s ad for the keyword “gartenstuhl holz” gets 200 clicks in the period, and customers then buy 5 chairs. Its conversion rate is 2.5%.

Cooldown

The cooldown is the number of days after a bid is sent during which MargenOptimierer doesn’t offer you that bid for lowering or raising.Say the cooldown is at the default of 7 days and you send a new bid on 20 October 2026. MargenOptimierer then offers that bid for lowering or raising again from 27 October 2026.

Cost driver

A cost driver is an item that is losing money in the period, is below its target margin, or has an ACoS above its target ACoS.Say the oak table has 340 € of ad spend on 1,000 € of ad revenue in the period, and the garden furniture target ACoS of 25% allows 250 €. That’s 90 € over target, so the table is a cost driver.

CPC

CPC is the price you pay on average for one click on your ad.Say the acacia chair’s ad for the keyword “gartenstuhl holz” gets 200 clicks in the period and costs 50 € for them. Its CPC is 0.25 €.

CTR

CTR tells you how many clicks your ad gets for every 100 times OTTO shows it.Say OTTO shows the acacia chair’s ad for the keyword “gartenstuhl holz” 10,000 times in the period, and customers click it 200 times. Its CTR is 2%.

Free threshold

The free threshold is the monthly ad revenue below which you pay MargenOptimierer no share of your ad revenue.Say the free threshold is 1,000 € of ad revenue a month. If the ads bring in 600 € of ad revenue in a month, you pay no ad share.

Free trial

The free trial is the time at the start when you use MargenOptimierer at no cost.Say MargenOptimierer fetches orders from an OTTO account for the first time on 27 October 2026. That account’s free trial starts that day, and 27 October 2026 is the first of its 14 days.

Harvesting

Harvesting means taking search terms that customers have already bought through and adding them as keywords to a manual campaign.Say customers bought 3 times after 40 clicks through the search term “gartenstuhl klappbar” in “Automatic – Garden furniture”. You then add it as a keyword with the match type Exact and a 0.40 € bid in “Manual – Garden furniture”.

Impressions

Impressions count how often OTTO has shown your ad.Say OTTO shows the acacia chair’s ad for the keyword “gartenstuhl holz” 10,000 times in the period. It then has 10,000 impressions, even if there are only 200 clicks.

Item condition

Item condition tells you how good a returned item still is.Say 4 of the 6 returned acacia chairs come back “originalverpackt” (in original packaging) and 2 come back “stark gebraucht” (heavily used).

Keyword

A keyword is a word or phrase you book at OTTO so your ad can appear on matching searches.Say you book the keyword “gartenstuhl holz” with a 0.40 € bid in “Manual – Garden furniture”. If a customer searches for it, OTTO can show an item from that campaign as an ad, and a click costs you 0.40 € at most.

Keyword list

The keyword list is your own collection of keywords for a product group, and new campaigns take their keywords from it.Say the garden furniture product group has 25 keywords in its keyword list. If you use the Manuell (Manual) template to create a campaign for it, those 25 keywords are already in the new campaign “Manual – Garden furniture”.

Manual campaign

In a manual campaign, you choose yourself the keywords on which your items can appear as ads.Say “Manual – Garden furniture” has the 25 keywords from the garden furniture keyword list, including “gartenstuhl holz” and “gartentisch eiche”. Its ads can appear on searches that match those 25 keywords.

Margin

Margin is the share of your revenue left after all costs per sale.Say 13 € is left from 100 € of garden furniture revenue after all costs per sale. That’s a margin of 13%.

Markup

Markup is the percentage you add to the purchase price to reach the selling price without VAT.Say a cushion has a purchase price of 20 € and sells for 50 € without VAT. The 30 € markup is 150% on the purchase price.

Match type

Match type sets how closely a customer’s search term has to fit your keyword.Say the keyword is “gartenstuhl”. With Exact only the search “gartenstuhl” matches, with Phrase “gartenstuhl holz” matches too, and with Broad similar searches like “gartenstühle” can also match.

Minimum bid

The minimum bid is the smallest amount OTTO accepts as a bid for one click when you advertise on OTTO.Say OTTO accepts bids from 0.20 €. If you lower a 0.22 € bid by 20%, it would be 0.18 €, and MargenOptimierer sets 0.20 € instead.

Minimum clicks

Minimum clicks is the number of clicks from which MargenOptimierer says whether advertising a targeting or item is too expensive or doing well.Say minimum clicks are at the default of 10. If a targeting has 10 clicks and no sale in the period, MargenOptimierer counts it as clicks without a sale, but not at 9 clicks.

Negative keywords

Negative keywords are search terms on which OTTO shouldn’t show your ad.Say the search term “gartenstuhl kinder” had 30 clicks and 12 € of ad spend in “Automatic – Garden furniture”, but no sale. If you exclude it with the match type Exact on all 298 items in the campaign, that creates 298 negative keywords at OTTO.

Ohne Artikel

“Ohne Artikel” (Without item) is the row in the table on the Marge (Margin) page for amounts in your account that don’t belong to any single item.Say the OTTO base fee is 99.90 € a month and you pick September 2026 as the period. The “Ohne Artikel” row then shows a contribution margin of −99.90 €.

Other costs

Other costs are all the remaining costs of one sold unit, such as packaging, without VAT.Say every acacia chair gets packaging for 0.30 €. With 50 chairs sold, 15 € comes off the margin under other costs.

OTTO base fee

The OTTO base fee is the fixed amount OTTO charges you every month for your seller account, on top of the other OTTO fees.Say OTTO charges an OTTO base fee of 99.90 € a month. If you look at the margin for all of September, MargenOptimierer subtracts that 99.90 € from the account’s contribution margin.

OTTO commission

OTTO commission is the money OTTO keeps from every sale.Say a rate of 19% applies to the oak table. OTTO then keeps exactly 19 € of OTTO commission on a 100 € sale.

Own costs

Own costs are what one sold unit costs you yourself, meaning purchase price, shipping and other costs, all without VAT.Say the acacia chair has a purchase price of 12.40 € and costs you 4.90 € to ship. That’s 17.30 € of own costs per chair sold.

Owner

The owner is the member of your company who holds the MargenOptimierer subscription and is the only one who can cancel it.Say you created the company, so you’re the owner, and a colleague also has the Admin role. If you transfer ownership to her, only she can cancel the subscription, and you stay an admin.

Payment fee

The payment fee is what OTTO charges for processing your customer’s payment.Say you sell a garden table for 349 €. The payment fee is then 9.42 €, and it’s already included in the table’s 64.32 € OTTO commission.

Portfolio

A portfolio is a group of campaigns you put together yourself so you can see their numbers together.Say you group “Automatic – Garden furniture” and “Manual – Garden furniture” in the portfolio “Garden”. If together they have 1,600 € of ad spend and 6,400 € of ad revenue, the portfolio’s row shows 25% ACoS.

Product group

A product group brings items together so you can create campaigns for them in one go and see their numbers together.Say you sell 300 pieces of garden furniture and group them in the garden furniture product group. On the Marge (Margin) page the group then sits on one row, and one click on it opens its 300 items.

Purchase price

The purchase price is what one sold unit cost you to buy, without VAT.Say the acacia chair has a purchase price of 12.40 €. If you sell 50 chairs, 620 € comes off the margin for the purchase price.

Queued change

A queued change is a change you’ve entered but haven’t sent to OTTO yet.Say you lower the bid for the keyword “gartentisch eiche” from 0.50 € to 0.40 €. Until you send the queued change, 0.50 € still applies at OTTO.

Quick filter

A quick filter is a button above a table in the ad console that shows only certain rows with one click.Say the keyword “gartentisch eiche” has 680 clicks and 34% ACoS, and its target ACoS is 25%. One click on ACoS über Ziel (ACoS above target) in the Targeting tab shows it and hides the keywords below their target.

Recovery code

A recovery code is a backup code you sign in with when you don’t have your phone.Say you sign in 3 times without a phone. You then have 7 of the 10 codes left.

Refunds

Refunds are the money your customers get back for a purchase, usually after a return.Say a customer gets 119 € back for a returned acacia chair. Refunds then show 119 €, and that includes 19 € of VAT that you get back.

Retail margin

Retail margin is what’s left of the selling price without VAT after you subtract the purchase price.Say a cushion has a purchase price of 20 € and sells for 59.50 € with VAT, so 50 € without. The retail margin is 30 €, which is 60% of the selling price without VAT.

Return rate

Return rate tells you how many of every 100 units sold come back.Say you sell 50 acacia chairs in the period and 6 of them come back. That’s a return rate of 12%.

Revenue

Revenue is everything customers paid for your items at OTTO in the period.Say you sell 50 acacia chairs at 119 € each in the period, which is 5,950 € of revenue. The 6 that come back don’t change the revenue, and the 714 € appears as refunds in the margin.

ROAS

ROAS tells you how many euros of ad revenue one euro of ad spend brought in.Say ads for the acacia chair cost 50 € in the period and bring in 595 € of ad revenue from 5 chairs at 119 € each. ROAS is then 11.90×.

Search term

A search term is what a customer types into the OTTO search box, unlike the keyword you book.Say customers search OTTO for “gartenstuhl klappbar”, click 40 times on ads from “Automatic – Garden furniture”, and 3 of them buy. “gartenstuhl klappbar” then appears in the Suchbegriffe (Search terms) tab with 40 clicks and 3 sales.

Shipping costs

Shipping costs are what it costs you to send one sold unit, without VAT.Say a parcel with the acacia chair costs you 4.90 € in shipping costs. With 50 chairs sold, 245 € comes off the margin for shipping costs.

SKU

The SKU is the ID you give an item yourself, and OTTO lists the item under it.Say the 180 cm oak table has the SKU TISCH-EICHE-180 and the acacia chair has the SKU STUHL-AKAZIE-01.

Standard rate

The standard rate is the usual OTTO commission rate of a commission group, which MargenOptimierer calculates with when OTTO gives no clear rate for your item.Say a standard rate of 19% applies to the oak table. MargenOptimierer then subtracts 19 € of OTTO commission from a 100 € sale.

Starting bid

The starting bid is the bid that an item or keyword without a suggested bid begins with in a new campaign.Say you create an automatic campaign with a 0.40 € starting bid for 298 pieces of garden furniture that can be sold at OTTO. All 298 items then start with a 0.40 € bid.

Suggested bid

The suggested bid is the bid you set for a keyword in your keyword list, and the keyword starts with it in every new campaign.Say the garden furniture keyword list has “gartenstuhl holz” with a 0.40 € suggested bid. If you create a manual campaign for the garden furniture, the keyword starts at OTTO with that 0.40 €, whatever the campaign’s starting bid.

TACoS

TACoS is your ad spend as a share of your total revenue, including revenue without ads.Say garden furniture brings in 10,000 € of revenue in the period, 6,400 € of it ad revenue, and the ads cost 1,600 €. TACoS is then 16% and ACoS is 25%.

Target ACoS

Target ACoS is the highest share of your ad revenue that your ads are allowed to cost.Say the target ACoS is 20%. Ads can then cost at most 20 € per 100 € of ad revenue.

Target margin

Target margin is the share of your revenue that should at least be left after all costs per sale.Say the target margin is 15%. At least 15 € should then be left from 100 € of revenue.

Target return rate

Target return rate is the highest share of your sold units that should come back.Say the target return rate is 8%. At most 8 of 100 units sold should then come back.

Target ROAS

Target ROAS is the ad revenue that one euro of ad spend should bring in at least.Say the target ROAS is 4. Then 25 € of ad spend should bring in at least 100 € of ad revenue, just like a target ACoS of 25%.

Targeting

A targeting is a keyword or item you set a bid on in a campaign.Say “Manual – Garden furniture” has 25 keywords, which makes 25 targetings. “Automatic – Garden furniture” advertises 298 items, which makes 298 targetings.

Tiered commission

Tiered commission is an OTTO commission where each price band has its own rate.Say OTTO charges 19% on the part of a furniture price up to 150 € and 18% on the part from 150 to 500 €. For a garden table at 349 €, that’s 28.50 € plus 35.82 €, 64.32 € in total.

Two-factor sign-in

Two-factor sign-in means you enter a code from your phone as well as your password when you sign in.Say you enter the password and then the code 482 913 that the app on the phone is showing. If you leave Diesem Gerät 30 Tage vertrauen (Trust this device for 30 days) ticked below it, MargenOptimierer won’t ask for the code on this device for 30 days.

VAT

VAT is the part of your revenue that goes to the tax office.Say a customer buys the acacia chair for 119 €. Of that, 19 € is VAT and 100 € remains without tax.