Why blended return is the number that counts
Each platform reports its own return, and each one claims the sale. A customer who saw an Instagram ad, searched your brand on Google and then bought shows up as a win in both dashboards. Add the two returns together and you have counted the order twice.
Blended return avoids the argument. Take all the revenue your store tracked in a month and divide it by everything you spent on ads that month. That is the number that tells you whether advertising is paying for itself.
Treat platform numbers as claims, not facts
The ad platforms attribute revenue with their own rules, and those rules favor the platform. Use their numbers to compare campaigns against each other inside one platform. Do not use them to decide whether the whole program works.
When we publish a result, we say whether it is platform attributed. Our case study for Prints & Clay does that next to every figure, and you should expect the same from anyone reporting to you.
Use the same window for spend and revenue
Return moves with the calendar. A gift store sees a different month in December than in February. Compare months to the same month last year, and compare campaigns over a window long enough to include a full purchase cycle for your product.
- Always-on campaigns: judge over a quarter.
- A seasonal push: judge over the season plus two weeks.
- A new product: wait for repeat purchases before deciding.
Know the return you need, not the one you want
A high return on a low-margin product can still lose money. Work out the return at which an order covers the product, the shipping, the ad cost and a profit. That is your floor. Everything above it is growth; everything below it is a subsidy.
Once you know the floor, you can let campaigns run that look modest in the dashboard but clear it every month.
Numbers to ignore
Impressions, reach and click-through rate describe what happened before the store, not in it. They are useful for fixing a creative that nobody clicks. They tell you nothing about whether the click bought anything.
If a report leads with those numbers, ask for the revenue and the spend instead.