Marketing

Did your ad money come back this period, and which channel and country brought it?

90 second readAppears on: /marketing/summary

This is the only page that puts Shopify sales and every ad channel's spend in the same row.

The revenue in every ratio here comes from your own store's sales, not from what the ad platforms — Meta, Google, TikTok or AppLovin — claim they caused.

The cards

Total SalesTotal SalesTax and shipping are collected, not earned, so this sits above what you keep. Most ratios divide by it, so a move here shifts them all · MERMERUnlike platform numbers, this counts every sale, so ad platforms can't double-claim credit. Compare the trend against your gross margin to see if growth is affordableUnder 30% is healthy · ROASROASCounts only sales Amazon credits to these ads, not your whole Amazon business. Compare it against your product margin before deciding a campaign is paying4 or more is healthy · NCPANCPACounts only buyers new to you, so it prices growth rather than sales in general. Judge it against what a customer spends over repeat orders, not their first · AOVAOVLifting this grows revenue without more traffic. If it slips, look at discounts and at what you're paying to win each order · Ad SpendAd Spendother channels sit elsewhere. Rising spend is fine only if sales and the return keep pace. · MetaMetaUse alongside ROAS to tune Meta budgets. · GoogleGoogleUseful to compare against both Meta and total sales. · % Meta% MetaHow much of your marketing rides on one platform. When Meta's costs move, a high share here means your whole budget feels it60% or more is healthy · % Google% GoogleHow much of your ad budget sits with Google. Read it against what Google returns before the mix drifts on its own50% or more is healthy

Read this row in one pass and you know the next budget move: add, shift, or leave it alone.

Each card carries a small trend line and a change figure against the comparison period.

Read them in three moves

1. Did it come back? MER first. ROAS is the same division upside down, so read one, not both.
2. Where did it go? Ad Spend, then the Meta, Google, TikTok and AppLovin cards, then % Meta, % Google, % TikTok and % AppLovin for the mix.
3. What did it buy? Total Sales, then NCPA against AOV.

Three pairs worth checking

MER + Total Sales. MER climbing while Total Sales sits flat means ads got more expensive before the revenue shows it. That gap is your warning window.

NCPA + AOV. NCPA above AOV means a first order from a new customer loses money on the day. That is a decision about repeat buying, not a mistake — but it has to be a decision you made on purpose.

% Meta + MER. A budget sliding into one channel while MER worsens means you are scaling the channel that is getting worse.

The charts

The cards give you the period. These give you the day it turned, and which platform turned it.

Marketing Spend

Stacked bars per day: Meta spend and Google Ads spend. Hover a bar and the tooltip adds total ad spend for that day and each channel's share of it.

Marketing Spend, over the days in your range

Meta spend up

Meta spend down

Google spend up

Buying more of everything

Both channels grew. Fine if sales grew faster — the next chart down answers that.

→ Read MER before the next increase.

The mix moved to Google

Google took over the day-to-day spend. Ad accounts drift on their own when a campaign runs out of budget.

→ Check this was a decision, not a Meta budget that quietly stalled.

Google spend down

The mix moved to Meta

More of the budget now sits on one platform. One channel carrying the budget carries the risk too.

→ Check % Meta on the cards.

Both pulled back

You spent less. That is only a win if the revenue held up better than the budget.

→ Check Total Sales fell by less than spend did.

Sales & Marketing Spend

Bars are Total Sales, the line is Marketing Spend, day by day. The tooltip shows that day's spend as a share of that day's sales — daily MER without leaving the chart.

Sales and Marketing Spend, day by day

Sales up

Sales down

Spend up

Growth you paid for

Both lines rose together. Whether it was worth it is the share, not the shape.

→ Check the tooltip percentage held steady before adding budget.

Stop and look

You paid more and got less. This is the one corner that never waits.

→ Find the day it split, then check what changed in the ad account that day.

Spend down

Free money

Sales grew while spend fell. Usually organic, a repeat wave, or a promotion doing the work.

→ Find what carried the sales — it may be worth funding.

Shrinking

You bought less traffic and sold less. Normal after a cut — the question is the ratio.

→ Compare the two drops. Sales falling faster than spend means the cut went too deep.

Meta Ads

Daily CTR as a line and CPC as bars, straight from your Meta ad account.

Meta Ads, day by day

CTR up

CTR down

CPC up

Popular and pricey

People still click, the auction just costs more. Season, competitors, or a wider audience.

→ Check MER — a dearer click is fine while the sales cover it.

Worn out

Fewer people click and each one costs more. The clearest fatigue signal on this page.

→ New creative, not a new bid.

CPC down

The creative is working

More clicks for less money. Rare, and usually short — check it again in three days.

→ Add budget while it holds.

Cheap and ignored

Clicks got cheaper because fewer people wanted them. Cheap traffic nobody wanted is not a saving.

→ Check Link clicks held up before calling it a saving.

Google Ads

The same two lines from Google Ads: daily CTR and CPC. Read it against search intent rather than creative — on Google, a falling CTR usually means the keywords stopped matching what people typed.

Google Ads, day by day

CTR up

CTR down

CPC up

A busier auction

Your ads still match what people search for; someone else is bidding harder for the same words.

→ Check the Google card is still earning its share of the budget.

The keywords drifted

You are paying more to appear for searches that fit you less well.

→ Look at search terms and negatives before touching bids.

CPC down

Sharper matching

Better fit between what people search and what your ad says. Google charges less for that.

→ Look for more room in the same keyword set.

Quiet

Usually less competition or less demand, not a smarter account.

→ Check volume before you celebrate the cheaper click.

The tables

One of these names the country your other markets are paying for. The other tells you the hour of the day by which your ad money is already spent.

Both use the same set of measures. The difference is what one row means.

Country

One row = one country. Sales come from Shopify; the ad spend on that row comes from each platform's own country breakdown.

Columns: MERMERUnlike platform numbers, this counts every sale, so ad platforms can't double-claim credit. Compare the trend against your gross margin to see if growth is affordableUnder 30% is healthy · Total Sales · AOV · Meta · Google · TikTok · AppLovin · Ad Spend · NCPA — each with a % △ beside it against the comparison period.

Opens sorted by Total Sales, highest first.

How to scan it

1. Sort by Ad Spend, highest first.
2. Look across at MER, then at the total row at the bottom.
3. The row that matters: heavy spend with MER worse than the total row. That country is being funded by the rest of the business.

Second pass: read the per-channel spend columns — Meta, Google, TikTok, AppLovin — down the page. A country funded almost entirely by one platform is one policy change away from going quiet.

Hour

One row = one hour of the day, in your shop's timezone. Opens sorted by hour, earliest first.

It carries three columns the Country tab does not: Cum. Ad SpendCum. Ad SpendHelps you see how quickly spend is ramping during the day. · Cum. Total SalesCum. Total SalesShows how revenue builds through the day. · Cum. MERCum. MERShows overall efficiency up to this hour. Each is the running total from midnight up to that hour.

NCPA, % Meta and % Google are not on this tab.

How to scan it

1. Read down Cum. MER to the hour you are in now.
2. Look at the % △ beside it — that is the same hour of the comparison day.
3. The row that matters: the hour where Cum. MER crosses the number you would not accept for a whole day. Everything after it has to earn that back.

Filters

Only one filter here narrows sales and ad spend together. The others cut sales while the spend stays whole, which makes your MER read worse than the business did.

The date range drives every card, chart and tab, and it sets the comparison period behind every % △.

Country works here — it narrows Shopify sales and each platform's spend together. On the Hour tab it does not: the tab replaces the table with "Ads data by Hour does not support country filter."

Customer Type and Source of Order narrow sales only. Ad spend has no such split, so leave them off when you are reading MER, ROAS or NCPA.

Every table has a chart/table switch, an Export button and a Search box. Switch to a chart and you get a dimension picker, a metric picker of up to three measures at once, and a Compare tick box that draws the previous period behind the current one.

The insight cards above the numbers are generated for this page. Click one to open its detail.

Watch out for

MER and ROAS cannot disagree. They are the same two numbers divided the other way round. Two cards, one fact.

The Meta Ads chart is not the Meta pages. This chart uses Meta's all-clicks CTR and CPC. The Meta section shows CTR (Link) and CPC (Link), which count only clicks that went to your site. Both are right; they will never match.

Pick today as your date range and the cards compare today so far against the same hours of the comparison day. That only happens for a single day that is today — every other range compares whole days.

A customer type or source filter left on shrinks sales without shrinking ad spend, so MER and ROAS read worse than the business actually did.

Do this first

Sort the Country tab by Ad Spend, highest first, and read the MER column against the total row at the bottom.

The first country where those two disagree is the one budget conversation worth having this week.

See yoursYour MER, spend and sales by country and by hour, for the range you pick.

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