The skill in which Meta (Facebook & Instagram) takes credit for a sale is astounding.

Here is a 7 day lookback view (post-iOS14 context) of sales comparing Facebook's in-platform website ROAS that uses 7 day single-channel clicks and 1 day views vs Wicked Reports' ROAS that uses 7 day multi-channel click only.

Whoa!  Facebook is claiming over $10,000 in revenue from $1,500 in marketing spend.

Seems like this advertiser can scale to the moon and back!

However, this customer along with many others come to us because, unlike what Facebook reports, a large increase in budget based on these numbers does NOT turn into more dollars...they actually end up with less money.

Hmmm - so if the sales aren't coming from Facebook, where are they coming from?

Email, Google and SMS are leading the way.

So this advertiser can turn off Facebook and save that $, correct?

Well...not so fast.  We are looking at last click attribution here.  It helps us discover what offers make people pull the trigger on the sale - super vital.

But what it does NOT do is tell us how they first heard about us, before eventually becoming a customer.

For that, before we go slash ad spend on Facebook completely, let's re-evaluate Facebook using TOF attribution.

Wait a minute... 3.64 ROAS.

But the Prospecting campaigns I'm spending on are doing terrible, none of them are breaking even, should I turn them all off?

Noooooo.

2 key points jump out on this grid.

The 1st point, look at all the sales from campaigns that have $0 ad spend. There are actually over 100 sales in 7 days, that Facebook originally drove the click, and those customers are now converting on other channels.

And the low ROAS campaigns that are currently spending have only been live for a few days. TOF takes way longer to convert than BOF. (We can tell you exactly how long, but not in this post).

This advertiser has to fix their BOF campaigns and optimize better for conversion.

They need to keep the TOF budget as-is.

FAQ

Why is there a discrepancy between Facebook ROAS and Wicked Reports?

Facebook uses single-channel attribution, often claiming credit for a sale even if the user later clicked an email or Google Ad. Wicked Reports uses multi-channel attribution to de-duplicate sales and show which channel actually drove the click that converted.

If my Prospecting (TOF) campaigns show low ROAS, should I stop them?

No. Prospecting campaigns are designed to introduce new people to your brand. They rarely convert on the "Last Click." If you turn them off based on low immediate ROAS, you will stop feeding your funnel, and your retargeting campaigns will eventually dry up.

How does attribution help with budget allocation?

By viewing both First Click (Discovery) and Last Click (Conversion) data, you can see that Facebook might be great at starting the relationship (spend budget here to grow), while Email is great at closing it. This prevents you from "killing" the campaigns that are actually bringing you new customers.