Glossary
The metrics that actually decide performance.
Every number we report, defined in plain language — so you can check our maths instead of trusting a dashboard.
- Return on ad spend(ROAS)
- Revenue attributed to advertising divided by the ad spend that produced it. A 4x ROAS means €4 of tracked revenue for every €1 spent. ROAS is a revenue ratio, not a profit ratio — compare it to your break-even ROAS.
- Break-even ROAS
- The return on ad spend at which advertising contributes zero profit, calculated as 1 divided by gross margin. A 40% margin gives a break-even ROAS of 2.5x.
- Blended ROAS
- Total business revenue divided by total ad spend across all channels. It ignores attribution disputes and is the most honest scaling metric for eCommerce.
- Marketing efficiency ratio(MER)
- Total revenue divided by total marketing spend for a period. Effectively blended ROAS expressed as an efficiency measure at company level.
- Cost per acquisition(CPA)
- Ad spend divided by the number of purchases or customers acquired. The eCommerce mirror of cost per lead.
- Cost per lead(CPL)
- Ad spend divided by the number of leads generated. Only useful alongside lead quality — cost per qualified lead is the metric that maps to revenue.
- Customer lifetime value(LTV)
- The total contribution margin a customer produces over the whole relationship. Higher LTV allows a higher acceptable CPA.
- Average order value(AOV)
- Total revenue divided by number of orders. Raising AOV through bundles or thresholds improves ROAS without touching ad performance.
- Conversions API(CAPI)
- Meta's server-side event endpoint. It sends conversions directly from your server, surviving browser tracking restrictions, and is deduplicated against the browser pixel via a shared event ID.
- Consent Mode v2
- Google's framework for adjusting tag behaviour based on a visitor's cookie consent. Denied by default, it lets analytics and ads model conversions without setting cookies before consent.
- Enhanced conversions
- Google Ads feature that improves match rates by sending hashed first-party customer data alongside conversion events.
- Attribution window
- The period after an ad interaction during which a conversion is credited to it, for example 7-day click and 1-day view. Different windows produce different ROAS from identical performance.
- Incrementality
- The share of conversions that would not have happened without the ads. Measured with holdout tests or geo experiments rather than platform attribution.
- Creative testing
- Structured testing of ad concepts, hooks and formats to find winners. In most scaling accounts creative, not targeting, is the largest performance lever.
- Full-funnel advertising
- Running coordinated prospecting, consideration and retargeting campaigns so demand generation and conversion reinforce each other, rather than only harvesting existing intent.
- Signal quality
- How accurate and complete the conversion data sent to ad platforms is. Poor signal quality caps performance regardless of budget, which is why the Signal Loop starts there.