Meta and Google spend measured against contribution
The platforms report a return, the agency reports a return, and neither of them is the number that lands in your bank account. I run paid media against contribution, which is the difference between what the advertising made you and what it cost, and I have spent a decade on the client side of that conversation.
You are probably here because one of these is true.
- Reported return on ad spend is fine and the profit and loss is not.
- Spend has gone up every quarter and revenue has not kept pace with it.
- Nobody can tell you what would happen if you turned Meta off for a fortnight.
- Your agency's report and your finance director's spreadsheet describe two different businesses.
- Creative testing means a new advert every few weeks and no record of what was learned.
- You are paying a percentage of spend, and the recommendation is always more spend.
What I actually do.
Establish what the advertising is actually adding. Blended cost of acquisition, new customer contribution, and where the platforms are taking credit for sales that would have happened anyway. Holdout tests where the budget allows, and honest inference where it does not.
Fix the account structure. Campaign structure, audience overlap, budget allocation and bidding set up for how the platforms work now rather than how they worked three years ago. Most accounts I open are carrying structure they have outgrown.
Run creative testing that leaves a record. Hypotheses, not hunches. What is being tested, why, what winning looks like, and a written result whichever way it went, so the next round builds on the last rather than starting again.
Set the budget from the margin, not the platform. How much to spend is a question about contribution margin, stock position and the calendar, not about what Meta suggests. I set it with your numbers and I move it when the numbers change.
Read the reporting for you. If you have an agency, I sit on your side of the table. I have managed agencies for a decade and I know what a good report looks like and what a defensive one looks like. The brief gets clearer and so does the number they are working towards.
Join it to everything else. Paid does not work alone. Landing page conversion, email capture and repeat purchase decide whether the spend pays back, and I hold all of those in the same plan rather than optimising the advert and ignoring where it lands.
The first ninety days.
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Weeks one to four
Tracking and attribution made trustworthy, because everything after this depends on it. Account audit, blended numbers established, and the first structural fixes live.
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Weeks five to eight
Restructured campaigns running, the first creative tests in the field with sample sizes agreed in advance, and a budget set from margin rather than habit.
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Weeks nine to twelve
Incrementality read properly, winning creative scaled, losing spend cut, and a plan for the next quarter that finance and marketing can both sign.
300%
return from a paid channel at Smiffys that had been underperforming, rebuilt with the agency.
The channel was written off internally. Working with the agency rather than against them, I rebuilt the structure and the brief until it returned over three hundred percent. That sat inside a year of thirty percent revenue growth on forty-six percent more traffic. At inov-8 and Naturewall I ran paid as one part of a single growth plan alongside search, CRM and affiliates, with the budget set against the profit and loss I owned.
The full track recordTwo things I will not do.
I will not take a percentage of your spend. That model pays me more to spend more of your money, and it is why so many recommendations end in the word more. A fixed fee and a contribution number we both agreed is cleaner.
I will not report platform return as if it were profit. You will get the blended numbers, the incremental numbers where we can establish them, and a plain statement of what is known and what is inferred.
Questions.
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Do you replace my agency?
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Usually not. More often I brief them better, read their reporting properly and give them one number to work towards. If the account genuinely needs a change, the evidence will show it and I will say so, but that is the exception.
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How much should I be spending?
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The honest answer comes from your contribution margin, your stock and your calendar, and I will have it for you inside the first month. Anybody quoting a figure before seeing those is guessing.
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Can you run the accounts yourself?
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Yes, for brands without an agency. Everything runs in your own ad accounts, in your name, with media billed to your cards. If we stop, nothing leaves with me.
Other services
Tell me your blended cost of acquisition.
If you do not know it, that is the first thing we would fix, and twenty minutes is enough to work out how.