We’ve all seen it. Advertisers will share screenshots of their Ads Manager results with an insane Return On Ad Spend. They’re proud of it, and they should be.
But they should be skeptical of that number, and so should you. There’s a lot of “stuff” potentially holding up that number.
First, the reported ROAS is reliant on accurate values provided for your conversion events. It doesn’t mean that advertisers manipulate these, but mistakes happen.
Context is also necessary. Use the Compare Attribution Settings option to break down ROAS into columns.
I dug through my own results and found an example of a time I had a 16X ROAS, and every purchase was view-through. On the surface, it’s something to be excited about. Scratch below, and you see it’s nothing special.
If the bulk of your amazing Return On Ad Spend is due to view-through conversions, it’s not really anything to brag about. It doesn’t make it meaningless (necessarily), but it’s important to provide that context.
When it comes to your ad clearly contributing to purchases, prioritize 1-day click and the other click attribution settings. View-through can contribute, too, but it shouldn’t be doing the heavy lifting.
The next time you get an insane ROAS, break it down by Attribution Setting to confirm it’s legit. And if it is, feel free to share two screenshots with the world: One of your ROAS and one of the breakdown by Attribution Setting.
You’ll get my respect.
