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Connect campaign spend, conversions and attributed revenue from supplied exports. Calculate acquisition cost, return on ad spend and contribution, then reconcile the results without mistaking attribution for incremental demand.
Advertising analytics compares campaign spend with conversions, attributed revenue and the costs behind those sales. The aim is to identify which campaigns deserve investigation or a measured budget change. A campaign can report a strong revenue return while leaving little contribution after fulfillment costs.
Choose one business outcome for the comparison: a qualified lead, an accepted order or a completed purchase. Do not put a newsletter signup and a paid order into one conversion denominator. For a company selling to other businesses, leads and closed orders often need separate reviews because sales cycles extend beyond the advertising period.
Advertising data analytics also needs an explicit attribution rule. Google Analytics defines attribution as assigning credit for important actions to ads, clicks and other factors along the customer's path. The allocation depends on the chosen rules and does not turn a campaign revenue column into an accounting sales ledger.
Use a shared allocation where each order receives no more than its full revenue across the compared campaigns. Preserve unallocated sales separately. If only separate platform totals are available, label them as overlapping claims and do not add them into a company revenue figure.
Bring campaign spend by campaign identifier and date, aggregate click counts, the chosen conversion records and business order revenue. For profitability, add the variable costs matched to those orders. Useful fields include currency, campaign ID, order ID, credit allocation, refund status and export cutoff.
Aggregate each file to a common level before combining it. Attaching daily campaign spend to every order repeats that spend and overstates the expense. Campaign names can change, so identifiers are safer matching keys. Keep unmatched campaigns visible until someone resolves them.
Online advertising analytics and digital advertising analytics use the same basic discipline: a stated event, consistent dates and reconciled amounts. Industry context changes the outcome being measured. Digital analytics in banking covers that sector's questions, while retail POS data analysis addresses the transaction records behind retail sales.
An illustrative US office-supplies company reviews September 2026. Spend is finalized for that month. Orders and net revenue use one agreed campaign-credit file, with refunds through the stated export cutoff included; the campaign groups below are mutually exclusive. The business outcome is a completed order, and revenue is in USD.
| Campaign group | Ad spend (USD) | Clicks | Completed orders | Attributed revenue (USD) | Matched variable costs (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search | 12,000 | 6,000 | 120 | 48,000 | 28,800 |
| Social | 8,000 | 8,000 | 80 | 24,000 | 15,600 |
| Retargeting | 4,000 | 2,000 | 100 | 20,000 | 12,000 |
| Total | 24,000 | 16,000 | 300 | 92,000 | 56,400 |
The variable costs here include product and variable fulfillment costs, using the same definition for every group. They exclude advertising, which is deducted separately, and exclude fixed overhead. They are business costs supplied with the order file, rather than assumed campaign benchmarks.
Cost per completed order = Ad spend / Completed orders
Click-to-order rate = Completed orders / Clicks
ROAS = Attributed revenue / Ad spend
Contribution after advertising = Attributed revenue - Matched variable costs - Ad spend
| Campaign group | Cost per order (USD) | Click-to-order rate | ROAS | Contribution after ads (USD) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search | 100.00 | 2.00% | 4.00x | 7,200 |
| Social | 100.00 | 1.00% | 3.00x | 400 |
| Retargeting | 40.00 | 5.00% | 5.00x | 4,000 |
| Total | 80.00 | 1.88% | 3.83x | 11,600 |
For Search, the steps are 12,000 / 120 = $100 per order; 120 / 6,000 = 2.00%; 48,000 / 12,000 = 4.00x; and 48,000 - 28,800 - 12,000 = $7,200. The same formulas produce the other rows. Ratios are rounded to two decimals after calculation; dollars in the contribution column are exact.
The combined campaign total must use the underlying sums. Cost per order is 24,000 / 300 = $80. The click-to-order rate is 300 / 16,000 = 1.88%, rounded, and ROAS is 92,000 / 24,000 = 3.83x. Averaging the campaign ratios would assign equal influence to differently sized campaigns.
The contribution check is $7,200 + $400 + $4,000 = $11,600. Rebuild it from totals: $92,000 - $56,400 - $24,000 = $11,600. Spend must tie to the agreed advertising expense records, and the credited revenue must tie to the selected business orders after the documented credit allocation and refunds.
Use gross margin versus contribution margin versus net margin for cost boundaries. This campaign contribution is an analytical allocation; fixed expenses and sales without campaign credit remain outside it.
Marketing should investigate Social's small contribution before increasing its budget. Finance should verify cost matching, and sales operations should confirm order quality and returns. Search contributes the most dollars in this table even though Retargeting leads on the displayed efficiency ratios.
Retargeting's higher return does not establish that expanding it will generate the same return. It may reach customers already close to purchasing. Google Ads describes incrementality experiments as measuring causal impact using treatment and control groups. Use an appropriate experiment when the decision requires an estimate of additional sales caused by advertising.
An advertising analysis should leave a named owner, a proposed action and a review date. Keep the allocation rule fixed during the comparison. The adjacent target ROAS page covers return targets; a historical ratio alone is insufficient to set one.
Covirage is not affiliated with Google.
Upload a sample of your own spend, conversion and order files, or a Google Sheet; Covirage maps the columns and its tools compute and check the campaign figures. The external AI model explains the results with every figure traced to its rows. Create a free Covirage account, which takes about a minute, then set up your business and bring your exports.
See revenue driver analysis for the supporting workflow.
ROAS divides attributed revenue by advertising spend. It does not deduct the cost of fulfilling those sales or other operating expenses. To assess contribution after advertising, subtract defined variable costs and ad spend from the associated revenue, then state which costs remain excluded.
A campaign export shows reported outcomes and attributed credit under its measurement rules. Establishing incremental sales requires evidence about what would have happened without the advertising, typically through an appropriately designed controlled experiment. A high attributed return alone cannot answer that causal question.
They can use different attribution windows, reporting dates, currencies and treatment of refunds. Multiple advertising sources may also claim the same order. Reconcile against unique business transactions, document the chosen credit allocation and retain a separate category for revenue without advertising credit.
Marketing owns campaign definitions and spend decisions. Sales operations confirms which leads became qualified opportunities or orders, and finance confirms revenue and cost treatment. Agree on the conversion event and cutoff together so a campaign ranking answers the business question being reviewed.