Ad Performance

Most teams don't struggle with a lack of reporting. They struggle with conflicting truths.

Ad platforms tend to overclaim conversions. Web analytics often undercount due to cookies, consent, and setup complexity. Backend systems show what cleared, but not why it happened or where customers came from. The result is constant swings between "everything is broken" and "everything is working great," without a reliable number that marketing, finance, and leadership can all trust.

The Ad Performance report is designed to reconcile these views into one consistent picture – connecting ad spend to real customers, real orders, and long-term outcomes.

How it Works

The Ad Performance report combines three essential perspectives:

• Platform data such as ad spend, impressions, clicks, and platform-reported conversions

• Store reality including real orders, revenue, discounts, returns, and margin

• Complete customer journeys resolved via RX Identity across devices and sessions

By bringing these layers together, RetentionX allows you to evaluate paid channels based on actual revenue, customer acquisition cost, lifetime value, and payback — not on isolated views across different dashboards. Instead of debating whether a platform is “broken,” you can see how many customers each channel truly brings in, how valuable they are over time, and how that performance compares across your entire channel mix.

Before using the Ad Performance report, a few setup steps are required:

1. Set up RX Identity

RX Identity must be fully set up in order to use attribution-based metrics such as CAC, LTV, payback period, and assisted purchases.

2. Set up your Channels

In the report, click +Channel to define all marketing channels you want to analyze. This step is required so RetentionX can correctly map your customer journeys to the platform data. You can follow the full step-by-step guide here. 

After a channel is defined, its platform data is populated starting the next day. Once campaigns, ad groups, and ads are mapped to a channel, RetentionX starts importing and enriching this data automatically too.

Performance Metrics

The Ad Performance report combines platform-reported metrics with RX Identity-based metrics. Not all metrics are available for all data sources—for example, ad spend is reported by platforms, while LTV is calculated based on RX Identity and store data.

You can customize the data table by clicking +Columns and selecting the metrics most relevant to your analysis. These view settings are saved on a per-user basis.

In addition, two views are available to help you interpret your data. The Benchmarking View allows you to easily evaluate channel performance across all channels and attribution models, while the Trend View highlights growth rates over time, making it simple to spot shifts in performance for individual channels.
 

Platform-reported metrics

The following metrics are imported directly from your ad platforms:

• Revenue: The combined revenue of all purchases.

• Purchases: Total number of orders.

• Spend: Ad spend.

• CAC: Customer Acquisition Cost, reflecting the cost of acquiring one new customer.

• CPO: Cost per Order, reflecting the cost required to generate one attributed order.

• Impressions: Total number of times ads were displayed.

• Reach: Number of unique users who were shown the ad(s). Only available for daily views.

• Frequency: Average number of times each reached user saw an ad. Only available for daily views.

• Sessions: Number of sessions generated in the shop.

• Clicks: Total number of ad clicks.

• CTR: Click-Through Rate, indicating how often people who saw the ad clicked on it.

• CPC: Cost per Click, reflecting the average cost paid for each ad click.

• Add to Cart: Number of add-to-cart events recorded.

• Add Payment Info: Number of add-payment-info events recorded.

• Checkout Started: Number of checkout-started events recorded.

• CPM: Cost per 1,000 impressions, showing how much the platform charges to display the ad one thousand times.

• AOV: Average Order Value, reflecting revenue per order.

• ROAS: Return on Ad Spend, reflecting how much revenue is generated for every dollar invested.

RetentionX-reported metrics

The following metrics are tracked or calculated by RetentionX and are available per attribution model:

• Purchases: Total number of orders.

• Orders of New Customers: Number of orders attributed to first-time customers.

• Orders of Repeat Customers: Number of orders attributed to returning customers.

• Revenue: The combined gross revenue of all purchases.

• Assisted Purchases: Number of purchases where the channel contributed as at least one touchpoint.

• Sessions: Number of sessions generated in the shop – and attributed to the channel.

• Add to Cart: Number of add-to-cart events recorded.

• Add Payment Info: Number of add-payment-info events recorded.

• Checkout Started: Number of checkout-started events recorded.

• CAC: Calculated as Ad Spend ÷ New Customer Orders.

• CPO: Calculated as Ad Spend ÷ Total Orders under the selected attribution model.

• AOV: Calculated as Total Gross Revenue ÷ Orders under the selected attribution model.

• ROAS: Calculated as Revenue ÷ Ad Spend under the selected attribution model.

• LTV: Average Customer Lifetime Value, reflecting profit per customer based on Net Revenue - COGS over their full lifecycle.

• LTV 30 Days: Average lifetime value realized within the first 30 days from the customer's initial purchase, reflecting profit per customer based on Net Revenue - COGS.

• LTV 90 Days: Average lifetime value realized within the first 3 months from the customer's initial purchase, reflecting profit per customer based on Net Revenue - COGS.

• LTV 1 Year: Average lifetime value realized within the first 12 months from the customer's initial purchase, reflecting profit per customer based on Net Revenue - COGS.

• LTV 2 Years: Average lifetime value realized within the first 2 years from the customer's initial purchase, reflecting profit per customer based on Net Revenue - COGS.

• LTV 5 Years: Average lifetime value realized within the first 5 years from the customer's initial purchase, reflecting profit per customer based on Net Revenue - COGS.

• LROAS: Return on Ad Spend based on profit, calculated as LTV ÷ CAC, reflecting the long-term return for every dollar invested in acquiring new customers.

• Months to Payback: Time needed until the LTV of acquired customers exceeds the CAC. Predictions 

   

Attribution Models

Attribution models define how conversion credit is distributed across touchpoints in a customer journey. In RetentionX, they are used to understand impact and role, not to crown a single winner. By comparing models side by side, you can see how channel performance changes depending on where impact happens in the journey.

The following attribution models are available:

• First Click: Assigns all credit to the first touchpoint in a customer's journey.
  This model is especially useful for understanding which channels introduce new customers to your brand. Strong performance here often indicates channels that reliably bring in net-new users and drive discovery. When paired with high LTV metrics, it helps identify channels that acquire high-quality customers early.

• Last Click: Assigns all credit to the final touchpoint before purchase.
  This model highlights channels that are effective at driving the final conversion step. It focuses on what happens immediately before a purchase, but does not reflect interactions earlier in the customer journey. As a result, performance may appear stronger for channels that typically engage users late in the decision process. To fully understand a channel’s role, Last Click is best interpreted alongside journey-based attribution models.

• Linear: Distributes credit evenly across all touchpoints in the journey.
  This model provides a balanced view of overall contribution and is useful for understanding which channels consistently support conversions throughout the funnel. It helps surface channels with meaningful assist value, even if they rarely appear as first or last click.

• U-Shaped: Splits credit equally between the first and last touchpoint.
  This model helps highlight both how customers are first introduced to your brand and which touchpoint ultimately leads to conversion. Mid-journey interactions are not weighted, making U-Shaped especially useful for understanding the combined impact of awareness and final conversion steps within a customer journey.

Rather than relying on a single attribution view, RetentionX enables you to compare models side by side and interpret performance in context. Using multiple attribution models together helps answer key strategic questions:

• Which channels consistently acquire new customers with strong long-term value—and at what cost?

• Which channels play a key role in introducing your brand, and which are most effective at closing purchases?

• Which campaigns primarily perform at the end of the journey, rather than driving incremental demand?

• How much supporting (assist) value each channel contributes throughout the customer journey?

Monitor Performance Over Time

Click on a channel, campaign, ad group, or ad that RetentionX is importing data from to monitor its performance over time.

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