Performance Marketing
Total up what every platform claims and you have sold more than you delivered.
Budget allocated across channels by measured contribution, not by what each platform claims.
1.7x
Combined platform-reported conversions versus actual orders
Found during audit
The challenge
Every ad platform is measured by its own attribution model, its own view-through and click windows, and a strong commercial incentive to claim the conversion. Run four channels and you receive four confident reports that together describe a business bigger than yours. The real harm is not the reporting — it is that budgets are allocated on those numbers. Money flows to whichever platform claims credit most aggressively, which is not necessarily the one delivering customers.
Our process
Our approach
Start with one figure no one can manipulate
Total media spend against total new revenue over the same period. The marketing efficiency ratio is blunt, ignores time lag, and is the only metric no platform can inflate. We anchor planning to it, then use channel-level data to explain changes within it rather than to justify budgets.
Match platform claims against reality
We maintain an ongoing reconciliation: what each platform reported, what analytics recorded, what the order or CRM system captured, and where the gaps lie. Recurring gaps are revealing — they usually point to view-through inflation, de-duplication failures between paid social and affiliate, or conversion lag counted twice.
Test instead of model when the stakes are high
Multi-touch attribution rebuilt on incomplete post-consent data is modelling layered on modelling. For budget decisions above a threshold we agree together, we test instead: geo holdouts, matched-market pauses or scaled spend changes with the method agreed in advance. Slower, but far harder to dispute.
Rebuild the measurement foundations
Server-side tagging, Conversions API, Enhanced Conversions and consent-mode set-up are not growth hacks — they decide whether bidding algorithms see your conversions or guess at them. We audit and fix this early because everything else depends on it.
Deliverables
What you receive
A single cross-channel performance model showing blended spend, new-customer revenue and marketing efficiency ratio in one view
Reconciliation of platform-reported conversions against your order or CRM system on an agreed schedule, with differences explained rather than averaged out
Review of server-side tagging, Conversions API and Enhanced Conversions set-up, with fixes ranked by revenue impact
De-duplication rules set across paid search, paid social and affiliate so you never pay twice for the same order
Incrementality testing on the channel with the largest disputed budget, with method and success criteria agreed before it starts
Budget allocation recommendations stating what moves, by how much, and what outcome would lead us to reverse it
Channel-level contribution reporting that stands up in front of a finance team
Industries
Sectors where we deliver this
Ecommerce
Paid acquisition managed to contribution margin and breakeven efficiency, not the return platforms report.
SaaS
Demand capture and creation for B2B software, measured on payback time rather than lead volume.
Finance
Acquisition for regulated firms, where every advert is itself a regulated document.
Gaming
User acquisition for free-to-play games, judged on retention curves and payback periods.
B2B
Paid acquisition for high-consideration purchases with long sales cycles, narrow keyword pools and offline conversions.
Common questions
Is this simply marketing mix modelling?
No. A full MMM requires years of history, significant variation in spend and a dedicated specialist team — conditions most mid-sized advertisers cannot honestly meet. We apply the methods that do work at this size — geo experiments, holdout groups, blended efficiency tracking — and we are transparent about it rather than selling a model your data cannot support.
We treat GA4 as our source of truth. Is that an issue?
It is a sensible source of truth, provided everyone understands it is a last-non-direct model with consent gaps and will disagree with every ad platform by design. GA4 is not the problem. The problem is having three sources of truth and no agreed rule on which one drives budget decisions.
How many channels should we run for this to be worthwhile?
Two or more with meaningful spend, or one channel plus affiliate. With a single channel the reconciliation still adds value but the allocation work does not, and our single-channel service would suit you better.
Do you handle creative as well as media?
We handle creative strategy, testing schedules and briefs. For production we either work with your existing studio or bring in a partner. We do not pretend to be a creative agency, and we never mark up another company’s production without telling you.
Begin with an audit.
The audit has a clear scope and a clear output, and it stands on its own — no obligation to continue. If it shows your current setup is working well, that is a perfectly valid result and we will tell you so.