Finally caught why my retargeting campaigns were bleeding money for 8 months

Turns out I had my conversion window set to 30 days when my actual sales cycle is like 3 days tops, so the algo was serving ads to people who already bought. My buddy at a meetup last Tuesday asked me my attribution setup and I just froze.

2 comments

2 Comments

cora_scott7723h ago

30 days is pretty standard for most platforms as default but it honestly makes no sense for fast sales cycles like yours. I run a small ecommerce brand and we tested this exact thing last year, found that our 7 day window was still too wide because people who bought on day 1 would get ads on day 6 and get annoyed. The platform actually penalizes you for showing ads to converters, so your cost per acquisition goes up without you even knowing why. Have you looked at your customer list to see if those 30 day people are getting retargeted multiple times? That overlap alone can double your spend.

grant_allen8521h ago

Narrow it to 3 days max for ecommerce. I saw a buddy's shop do this and his ad costs dropped almost 20% right away. Those people who just bought are going to get annoyed seeing the same product they already got. Plus the platform counts them as wasted impressions so it messes up your whole algorithm. You end up paying more for everyone else just because of those few repeat hits.