Wicked Reports vs Northbeam: CRM-Verified Attribution

Q: How fast can we be running?

You can be live in days, running alongside your current stack. Validation and the reconciliation to your billing system happen during onboarding, so by the time you act on a number, it has already been checked against your own orders.

Q: Who should stay on Northbeam?

If your main job is macro planning across channels, TV and offline included, and you have the team to turn those models into budget calls, Northbeam may remain the right primary tool. Wicked is the better fit when the weekly question is which campaign to scale, chill or kill — and the answer has to hold up in front of finance.

Q: Do we have to give up MMM?

No. Wicked runs in parallel with what you already have — connect your data, let it be verified against your billing system, and compare the two views on your own campaigns. Many brands keep Northbeam for macro planning and run their weekly budget decisions in Wicked.

{ Credit Where Due }

Northbeam's measurement is genuinely strong

No games here. Independent reviews call Northbeam's attribution accuracy best-in-class.

The MTA and MMM blend is real, the cross-channel path analysis is deep, and Apex feeds signal back to the ad platforms. If you want enterprise-grade measurement and have the team to run it, Northbeam is a legitimate choice.

So the question on this page isn't whose data is good. It's what you have to add on top of the data before a budget decision comes out: headcount, hours, and interpretation. That's where the two platforms stop resembling each other.

{ The Gap }

Northbeam answers the question. Wicked makes the call.

Both platforms talk to you in plain English. Northbeam's MCP connector opens its data to Claude and ChatGPT; Ask Wicked does the same inside Wicked or through MCP. So the question isn't whether you can ask. It's what sits underneath the answer, and what the answer is for.

Three things sit underneath every answer Wicked gives you:

Ask Wicked

Answers drawn from data reconciled to your billing system at onboarding, to within ~97%.

Predicted Future

What nCAC and ROAS are pacing to, campaign by campaign, before the platforms finish grading day one.

5 Forces AI

Scale, Chill, or Kill — one call per campaign, with the reasoning shown.

Ask Wicked answering a question from verified data

“The decision, on a platter.”

{ The Signal }

What gets fed back to Meta matters more than how much

Northbeam reports new versus returning customers, so this isn't about what you can see. It's about what leaves the platform. Apex sends attributed performance back to the ad networks as blended purchase volume. A first-time buyer and a fifth-time buyer arrive as the same event.

Advanced Signal sends Meta a verified new-customer event, purchase_NC, so the algorithm optimizes for acquisition instead of for whoever is cheapest to convert.

What the blended signal costs, across the campaigns we analyzed:

55,661

campaigns analyzed

$257 → $528

Advantage+ nCAC, before and after

105%

more to acquire one new customer

Isolating new customers is the mechanism that reverses it.

Where the two platforms stop resembling each other

NORTHBEAM

Measurement

An order and a CRM record behind every number, with a ~97% match to your billing system verified at onboarding

MTA and MMM blend, rated best-in-class in independent reviews

AI analyst

Ask Wicked, inside Wicked or through MCP, answering from verified data

Northbeam MCP, read-only, answering from modeled data

Prediction

Predicted Future, campaign by campaign, from your verified conversion-lag curves

MMM forecasts at the channel level

Decision layer

Scale, Chill or Kill per campaign, with the reasoning attached

Reporting; your team reads the models and decides

Signal to the platforms

Advanced Signal, verified new-customer events (purchase_NC)

Apex, attributed performance as blended purchase volume

Published price

Public, with the decision stack included

$3,500/mo Professional on an annual contract, rising with data volume per their own FAQ

Risk

3x in verified decisions within 90 days, or free until it happens

Standard subscription

{ Proof }

What the decision layer is worth

$5B+ in attributed revenue tracked across Meta, Google, and email.

$116 → $69 nCAC

Joanna Vargas cut new customer acquisition cost roughly 40% in a single month, with Bullseye Sellers running the account.

$1M → $30M

Magic vs Machine scaled Huha from a million in revenue to thirty in three years, bootstrapped, with Wicked as the attribution engine they trust.

$193 → $128 nCAC

Tier 11 cut a pet brand's new customer acquisition cost 34 percent and grew new customers 25 percent on just 2.7 percent more spend.

{ Price }

Where the money goes

Northbeam

Published plans start at $1,500 a month for Starter, which is Shopify only and usage-based, and $3,500 a month for Professional, the tier that fits brands at serious ad spend.

Both numbers are floors, not prices: their own pricing FAQ says your actual monthly rate rises with your data volume.

Professional and Enterprise run on annual contracts.

All of that is before the team time that turns its reports into decisions.

Wicked Reports

The subscription covers the decision stack: verified measurement, Ask Wicked, Predicted Future and the 3x guarantee.

Every tier is published and priced by your annual revenue, so you can read your own number before you talk to anyone.

5 Forces AI and Advanced Signal come with the Maximize tier.

When you're ready to retrain the algorithms, Advanced Signal adds $199 a month on the lower tiers.

See the pricing

{ Support }

You're not buying software. You're buying trusted numbers.

Onboarding at Wicked is guided to a standard.

Set up with a person

Your data gets connected on a setup call with our team, not through a help-doc link and a wish of good luck.

Verified before it counts

Tracking is validated and your numbers are reconciled against your billing system, to within ~97%, before any budget decision rides on them.

A weekly rhythm, not a queue

A CSM builds your decision cadence with you, until your team runs it independently.

The 3x guarantee holds us to it: within your first 90 days, Wicked helps you make documented, verifiable budget decisions worth at least 3x your subscription cost, or your subscription is free until you do.

Not a ticket queue. A path to decision certainty, with a deadline on it.

You can be live in days, running alongside your current stack. Validation and the reconciliation to your billing system happen during onboarding, so by the time you act on a number, it has already been checked against your own orders.

If your main job is macro planning across channels, TV and offline included, and you have the team to turn those models into budget calls, Northbeam may remain the right primary tool. Wicked is the better fit when the weekly question is which campaign to scale, chill or kill — and the answer has to hold up in front of finance.

No. Wicked runs in parallel with what you already have — connect your data, let it be verified against your billing system, and compare the two views on your own campaigns. Many brands keep Northbeam for macro planning and run their weekly budget decisions in Wicked.

Northbeam hands you excellent data. Wicked Reports hands you the decision.