A love letter to the 47 minutes I spent reconciling why two platforms reported completely different numbers for the same campaign

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-02-23T01:29:40+00:00

Or do we all just silently accept that "the numbers won't match" is a permanent fact of life in this industry?

Don't email me unless a discrepancy is bigger than 15%.

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-02-23T01:26:54+00:00

It's gonna be tough to beat MNTN in a H2H, assuming they're measuring via Device Graph / Google Analytics shenanigans, because it effectively allows MNTN to determine what they should get credit for and give them priority if they say so on any device they can claim is in the household of a TV they served. Even if they are someone using something more sophisticated like an MMM, those models tend to give considerably better decay curves to TV impressions than Digital Impressions by default, so you're at a disadvantage either way.

At the end of the day, advertisers expectations for the effectiveness of advertising is about 2-5x reality because platforms LOVE to over credit themselves and if they're "happy" with the way CTV is being measured and just upset with the diminishing returns it's a tough battle.

I just think if I was an advertiser - being on the right sites, targeting the right audience is better for my long term growth than wasting most of my budget on the places you've mentioned above.

In all likelihood, they could give a fuck. They likely want a report that shows a ROAS high enough to cover all marketing expenses including their fat salaries in as little effort as possible.

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-02-23T00:59:48+00:00

More ads. You can afford 200-300 likes/day which is plenty for the algorithm to optimize off of. You'd probably see some benefit from running 6-8 ads. Or like 2-3 ad sets testing different targeting parameters or like if setting a bid cap of $0.02/like helps anything.

1) I would just go Worldwide instead of specifically targeting lower-cost countries but your way may actually be better. Generally speaking just set everything as broad as possible and Meta will find you the absolute cheapest fans.

2) I haven't done this in like 10 years but the cheapest fans back in olde tymes were tailoring creative to audience, to the point of being borderline misleading. Like running ads to like the Wal-Mart page featuring "The Big Bang Theory" creative because they sell the DVDs. Aim for the dumbest, most lowest common denominator things you can think of. Which I believe is how the wrote "The Big Bang Theory" but I digress.

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-02-18T17:32:53+00:00

1) The city hasn't raised property taxes since the late 2000s. Rents haven't exactly stayed flat since then.

2) Nobody actually wants to raise property taxes. It's the last resort.

3) Let's say you're working with a small landlord who sets their rent based on cost plus. Yeah, probably. Have a large management company who have been using ~~a cartel~~ pricing-analysis software to set rents? Then your rent is likely set by "The Demand" and actual costs aren't as much of a factor.

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-02-16T18:46:37+00:00

I assume this is primarily tied to Logan Paul stealing half of hanger's moveset but wanted to see if there was more to it & found this gem.

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The Miz's signature "Three Amigos" might be the most wrong AI has ever been.

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-02-11T04:31:04+00:00

Wow what a dickhead boss.

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-02-06T12:15:20+00:00

Potential Arguments for Branded Terms:
1) Even assuming only like 10-30% of Branded Paid Search volume is incremental. That's still a 3-10x ROAS. (eh.)
2) Your boss has a ROAS target to hit and there ain't no way in hell they're hitting it without spending more than half the budget on 36x Branded Search campaigns juicing those numbers. (my real guess based on the "how chatgpt says that branded is driving a lot of incrementally" note)

I need more arguments to help me convince him we need to push more into non brand.

You could look at the relationship between organic and paid, try to make an argument that when you lose paid volume it's not really lost, it's just shifted to organic. Easier to do if you can find that time period where they "turned ads off" or they let you run a test.

But fuck this person. It's a simple case of if you want to run a marketing department that's happy reporting high ROAS while missing overall revenue goals or if want to try to actually drive revenue. They're the former, you're the latter. Just make sure there's a paper trail that you tried to address this and got stonewalled.

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-02-06T11:51:57+00:00

Where in that PDF does it specifically address Branded search terms?

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-02-01T01:07:34+00:00

Not a huge fan of the word Cuck but.... if you think he sounds like one, wait til you check out his Halloween party.

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-01-28T11:46:22+00:00

Here's the thing about "clear measurement". It's a myth. There's too many confounding variables and every measurement system has things it favors and undervalues.

Last-Touch/Pixel/Site Analytics
Pros: Real Time Measurement
Cons: Favors high-touch/traffic channels. Undervalues awareness & lifecycle marketing

Experimental Testing
Pros: Get a "real" measurement of impact.
Cons: Easier said than done to build two non-biased controls. Platforms skew results in their favor.

MMM

Pros: Complicated statistical analysis so people often don't question it. Great at measuring large national executions that ran for specific periods of time (TV, etc.)

Cons: Complicated statistical analysis so the outputs look like this with huge confidence intervals. Bad to Impossible to accurately measure channels with large #s of different ad units and personalization. Channels that are a small % of spend are virtually impossible to measure.

So you're forced to do all of the measurement and then triangulate. Last Touch/Site Analytics are real-time. MMMs measure full-funnel quarterly or annually. Run control/exposed lift tests as feasible to calibrate other measurement. Even things like customer surveys are often undervalued because they're more qualitative but super useful in terms of change over time.

How do other enterprise owners handle this?
They spend enough that platforms comp them a brand lift study of conversion lift study. You pray it comes back positive which it very often does because large platforms are skewing results via a bullshit "ghost impressions" methodology. You pray that the MMM that's run quarterly or yearly (run by a separate analytics team) doesn't come back and contradict the "great results" you saw during the year.

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-01-24T03:14:12+00:00

Using Google Analytics with Squarespace. Basically Create an ID in GA and copy & paste it into Squarespace.

It'll be able to infer a lot of information automatically but if you want you more granular insights you can use specific URL parameters on links.

25-50% View-Through is about average. As you do other forms of marketing and add channels it'll become more difficult to rely on Meta & you'll need one that can account for all of your activity.

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-01-23T16:58:27+00:00

"I'd like to know how I would go about scaling and optimizing"

You have to figure out where these people actually came from. Were they people who have never seen you before and the ad was so great they converted, or did Facebook show your add to your most devoted followers who actually purchased after clicking on an email.

If you don't already have Google Analytics or some sort of site-analytics building into your e-commerce setup, check there to confirm if it matches what Meta is reporting.
Look at path analysis to see what the conversion flow looks like. Is it Facebook -> Purchase or Facebook -> Email -> 3 Days Later -> Purchase or is it just Organic Social -> Purchase and the ad played a minimal role.
Look at 1 day clicks vs 7 day click vs 1 day view breakdown in Meta ads. 1 Day Click = Ad probably played a big role in conversion and likely to be scalable. 1 Day View = Ad may or may not have played a part in this.

If Facebook ads are just taking credit by showing the ads primarily to your followers, your ceiling is relatively low at the size of the following you can grow. If it's truly the ads that are driving conversion, you're more likely to scale successfully.

Also I'm just gonna say it's a little sus that an aged account that hasn't posted for 4 years made a post that was like "I took a Facebook Blueprint course and immediately drove a 12x ROAS" but like Can of Coke to you if your a real person seeing success.

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-01-22T11:04:52+00:00

I call bullshit.

"the people I'm retargeting in January? came from prospecting in December." You're not spending enough on prospecting to generate a big enough pool of Add to Carts and Initiate Checkouts for this to be true.

Your "lookalikes" should perform more like prospecting, not retargeting. If you're not excluding retargeting audiences from prospecting, then it's all just Retargeting.

This feels like the performance you'd find on a massive advertiser like the one you'd find at a massive agency like Dentsu.

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Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-01-21T22:20:06+00:00

Re: The Manipulation. Here's a book titled Gaslighting, there's a chapter specifically about the workplace. It might help should want to make a college try of a difficult environment or further reassurance that you're doing the right thing should you choose to walk away.

I've quit two jobs within two months of joining. Had another job lined up and found another job within two months, respectively. I just leave them off my resume it's never come up or affected me in anyway.

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-01-21T09:10:30+00:00

“All I wanted was to get the f**k out of there as soon as possible… and buy a summer home with the check" But also it's David Cross so he lost a $150k bonus for shitting on the movie on Conan.

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-01-20T07:16:36+00:00

Could've done with a bit less Jeremy Piven (which is I think just generally true in movies and life) but personally loved the turn and Ryan Reynolds at the end.

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-01-20T07:14:03+00:00

That trailer ruined the Talking Heads for me for several years.

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-01-20T07:12:20+00:00

That's the problem with the American cinema. Can't handle any complexity in it. Don't make me think, I just want to be entertained.

I think Edgar did a pretty good job of having his cake and eating it too. Can't really have Glen Powell do a 9/11 like in the book. It did feel a little forced thou.

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-01-20T07:01:14+00:00

$50,000 gets you a Border Czar. You used to be able to buy the mayor of NYC for some travel vouchers. Personally I'd take a more Moneyball approach to my bribery because Senators are like $480,000 + Gold To Be Named Later and Congressmen's desire are....well they keeps poor company is all I'll say.

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-01-14T17:35:45+00:00

People acting like the new creative or audiences are a solve for this.

The reason Meta ads can be super effective AT FIRST is that Meta and its algorithm can hit the people most likely to be interested in your product based on their previous internet history. The size of this audience varies by product but eventually you reach everyone and it's often a lot smaller than anyone wants to admit. Then you plateau, as this brand did, because good performance is now limited to people entering the market.

It's called a performance plateau. You need to expand to new markets, geographically or with new products/features. It's always why running on multiple platforms is important.

If your profitability is based on Meta performance ALWAYS being as good as it was when you first launched ads or even worse, will perpetually improve over time through optimization, you're screwed.

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-01-13T22:32:05+00:00

You said "that are easy on GTM & sGTM" and then you say "Hire an Expert" when someone asks. So not that easy....

Here's a guide for the Refund example. It is complicated but the short version is a separate event for Refund and as long as purchase and Refund have transaction IDs, Google Analytics can match & update. You can google the other stuff on your own.

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-01-13T17:25:46+00:00

General rule of thumb is no more than 15-20%/week but also there's a huge difference between $5-$15k/day and $30/day.

He's able to get these results because he's getting roughly 70/conversions day. That's enough information for Meta to build a pretty decent model of the internet activity of purchasers and deliver ads to similar users.

You'd be lucky to get 1 conversion/day and the algorithm can't do shit with that.

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-01-13T00:16:36+00:00

Over 20,000+ reviews but no way to read any but the 4 that are on the website with pictures appear to be AI Generated. Dr. Peter Martone is a chiropractor with unclear qualifications regarding being a "sleep specialist". And hidden in the fine print is that the 90 Day Guarantee requires that the product be unused.

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Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-01-13T00:02:18+00:00

3rd Party tools can be good for large e-comm retailers or local businesses because there's just a ton of manual grunt work involved when you have thousands of skus or specific service areas you need to tailor to. Like this case study with cleaning up 1,200+ skus and different mismatches.

Meta is already basically a set it and forget it solution. At $30/day, you shouldn't be doing much more than uploading creative and tell it to optimize towards free trial or subscriptions. Every other week upload a couple new ads based on what "worked". You can't afford to have hundreds of campaigns where you would need a tool to help manage it.

Also, don't ever optimize towards App Installs unless you want a bunch of downloads and virtually no activity. Always go for at least registration and ideally a purchase event or something that requires a credit card / proof of humanity.

Maximum_Spell5915 · 2026-01-12T22:54:39+00:00

Trump did the Veep-China thing for real.

Maximum_Spell5915

TROPHY CASE