Don’t Overvalue Attributed Results – Jon Loomer Digital

This isn’t a post about Meta inflating results or how you shouldn’t trust the reported conversions in Ads Manager. There’s a whole separate topic on your responsibility to properly interpret conversion results.

Instead, this is about the danger of overreacting when one ad is getting conversions while another isn’t. Let me explain…

Example

Let’s say you’re running a sales campaign. You see that two ads are taking up most of the budget. But one ad is generating conversions at a higher rate than the other.

The instinct may be to tinker. Maybe you can spend your budget more efficiently if you turn off the ad that isn’t getting credit for as many conversions.

While this seems like a reasonable approach, doing this may actually hurt your results. It’s quite possible that what appears to be a lower-performing ad has a key role.

Complicated Customer Journey

Understand that the customer journey often consists of seeing more than one ad. People may also see different versions of your ads in different placements. Your customers may be impacted by all of those impressions, but they only acted on one.

While the final ad inspired the eventual conversion and gets credit, the other ad or ads may still hold value. It’s very possible that those who converted saw the other ads first. They contributed to this eventual customer’s interest.

And, most importantly, maybe without that initial ad, they wouldn’t have eventually converted. This is why you may actually get worse results by “optimizing” your ads and turning some off.

It’s important to remember that the customer journey is a complicated one. The ad that gets credit is only part of the story.

Missing Data

Unfortunately, we don’t get data that would help highlight this. For example, it would be helpful to know how many different ads customers see, on average, and which ones they’re seeing (beyond just the one that gets credit). But we don’t have that information.

Unless Meta is wasting a high percentage of your budget on a low-performing ad, stay hands off. There’s usually a reason that ad is getting impressions.

If you need help with your ad strategy, book some time with me. Go to www.jonloomer.com/coach.