Proving the value of paid social is a topic that has been around for ages, but before we get into judging whether our investment is effective, it’s important to understand why this is a topic in the first place.
The most common client worry is that big difference between a paid social platform’s in-platform ROAS and their Google Analytics or ecomm platform data.
So, why does this difference exist?
Neither the social media platform or Google Analytics or, Shopify, is wrong - they just use different methods of attribution: For example, if we look at Meta vs Google Analytics:
- Meta campaigns are most commonly set up on a 7-day click, 1-day view attribution window. This means Meta will count a sale if someone clicked on an ad in the last 7 days or viewed an ad in the last day, and went on to convert.
The last touch point could have been any channel, it doesn’t have to be Facebook or an Instagram ad. The most significant difference between this and GA4 attribution is that GA4 works to a last non-direct session model by default. This means a channel must be the final touchpoint of the user's journey, or the second to last touchpoint if the last touchpoint is direct, to be attributed that sale.
The true value of paid social is hidden within GA4 attribution. We know our activity has a much more influential role than simply direct conversions.
So, how do I know what to invest and if I should trust the numbers?
Something we use daily is benchmarks, and we look at these from at a All Channel and a platform level.
From an all-channels perspective:
As the impact of paid social on holistic performance has become more widely recognised, budgets have grown. I’d hope that your paid social budget makes up upwards of 40% of your combined PPC and Paid Social budget.
With that in mind, for an established ecomm brand with a well-rounded digital channel mix, I’d expect paid social to make up around 20% of your GA4 sessions, but it might only make up 4% to 5% of your revenue.
And that last figure can often make people nervous, especially when they see different figures on Meta. It’s time to get comfortable with those numbers if you want to scale the channel.
At an account level:
A useful method to understand if your Meta pixel is over-reporting against to Google Analytics is to look at your pixel revenue as a % of those two attribution source’s revenue combined.
e.g. we’d expect the amount of pixel revenue reported to be between 15-20% of that total figure.
At a campaign level:
Across our client base, we’re always looking at how one client’s activity compares to the average and our top performers. We take in mind that different industries and markets have different costs associated, and performance can vary a lot with seasonality and levels of investment.
For an e-commerce retailer advertising in the UK spending north of £10k a month, for traffic-driving awareness campaigns we’d want to achieve:
- CPMs of below £4.5
- Clicks through rate above 1.8%
- Cost per click below £0.30
It’s also important that these users are qualified and engage with the website, so we’d be happy with average session durations of above 1 minute.
On Advantage+ Shopping campaigns, we’ll still measure ad engagement, but there’s a greater focus on return on ad spend. In an average month, a ROAS above 7 would be considered a good return.
What about harder-to-attribute activity that’s focused on reach and impressions?
This can be a little trickier but we have many tools that enable us to verify the impact:
1. Brand lift studies, geo-incrementality, demographic and product-specific tests - there are lots of in-platform options available to help.
2. Outside of the platforms themselves, there are also more third-party attribution solutions available than ever before to help inform your investment decisions.
If this is an area you’re struggling with or just want to learn more about, get in touch with us and we’ll be happy to help.
