How to tell if your ad campaigns are actually working
Headline metrics often look great on the surface while hiding irrelevant search terms and low-quality conversions. Judging if a campaign is genuinely working requires looking past basic numbers like ROAS or click-through rates to evaluate actual lead quality and new customer revenue.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Digging into actual search terms and conversions manuallyDid this help you?
- 2Considering hiring outside help or a digital advertising agencyDid this help you?
- 3Using offline or browser-only analysis toolsDid this help you?
- 4Manually checking campaigns for throttlingDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“I've has campaigns where it looks great on the surface, but then when I dig into the actual search terns and conversions, I'm not always convinced the traffic is valuable as the headline numbers suggest”source ↗
“How are you guys judging whether pmax is genuinely working? Roas alone, new customer venue, lead quality, something else?”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
- 7How do you know if a marketing agency is actually working?
- 5Why does scaling ad spend stop working and burn money?
- 4Why is ROAS on alternative ad platforms lower than Meta?
- 2How to measure true profit on email campaigns
- 3Are social media marketing tools actually good enough for professional use?
- 5Why does posting daily on social media not bring in customers?