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Ralph Burns
Hey, real quick, before we dive in, if you've got a brand or marketing tool that marketers need to know about, sponsor the show here at Perpetual Traffic. Perpetual Traffic puts you in front of thousands of seasoned marketers, CMOs and agency owners. So head on over to perpetualtraffic.com to apply to be a sponsor of this show.
John Moran
I wanted some more recent results to share with everyone of how the Andromeda diversification playbook came out and said, do it this way. And it's working extremely well if you follow the rules. I could drop my CPA from 44 to 25 in 10 days by simply just making more ads that work. Here's where a lot of media buyers will get stuck because they haven't been trained and taught attribution. So what I mean by this is there's a new feature inside of Meta. Okay, watch this. You ready?
Ralph Burns
You're listening to Perpetual Traffic. All right, I get it. You're a small business, you're a startup, you're a lean team. Everyone's doing dozens of different things and. And you got to move fast and be smart to compete with the big guys and the big gals. You've seen their endless resources. You know they are power. They have more money than you, but you can level the playing field and all their data scientists and their massive teams. Finally, the secret weapon that you have is ActiveCampaign AI. The ActiveCampaign AI suite is built exactly for you. The small business, the startup, the lean team. It's the secret weapon that saves the average average user up to 13 hours a week. Just think of what you could do with 13 hours a week. It's not about saving time on writing. It's about getting predictive insights that used to be out of your reach. From predicting which deals are most likely to close to generating on brand content in seconds from the AI brand kit. ActiveCampaign puts enterprise level capabilities in your hands. Compete smarter, not harder. Discover the power of autonomous marketing with ActiveCampaign. Go to activecampaign.com to get started today. Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic podcast. This is your host, Ralph burns, founder and CEO of Tier11. Not alongside my amazing co host Lauren Petrulo, but alongside our most popular guest on Perpetual Traffic. There is no question about it. This guy's downloads for his individual shows and for his videos are absolutely astounding because he brings it every single week. And this episode is one of the best ones I think we've ever done on our Friday lives. We call it the Ad Lab Cook it up Chaos and the conversion kitchen every Friday 2:30 on on YouTube on our Facebook. You can see it all on all of our socials on tier 11. But if you can't catch those, you can, you can obviously get them here or you can get them on our YouTube channel over@tiereleven.com YouTube but today's episode is all about Triple Whale. I get more questions about Triple Whale Now. Everyone knows that we use Wicked reports as our attribution third party software of choice because we get 99.4% accuracy on click based data. Highly accurate, way better than anything that's out there right now. We do love the guys over at North Beam. If you're a very high level like enterprise type client, that's not typically the types of clients that we serve because we're in that, that middle to upper range. A lot of e commerce, service based businesses, digital products businesses, all of those. Triple Whale is probably the worst platform we've ever seen because they miss so much data and it's because it gets blocked. And we go into why this is all the time. And John actually has a case study here today where he shows that nearly a quarter of the revenue, quarter of the revenue 25%, maybe even 30% of the revenue for this particular business doesn't even appear inside Triple Whale because of the way that they track. And the way that they track is basically they get blocked by all the ad blockers, they get blocked by all the ATT prompts, all the stuff that the tier 11 data suite ends around using Edge tags and using our data warehouse and ultimately piping that clean data through CAPI imports, which John talks about here today, back into the ad platforms and into our interface inside Wicked reports so we can actually view everything right. And today is the first time we've actually gone to a triple well account and deciphered this and actually compared it with the source of truth inside Shopify so that in addition to some amazing Andromeda updates. Nobody's talking about any of this Andromeda stuff. I'm still blown away. I think we're the only ones that are talking about it because it's so cutting edge, this content, content diversification strategy. And we'll leave links in the show notes here for an article or actually the Creative Diversification Playbook practitioners guide that we got from Meta, they're actually telling us to do this. So what John is doing and what he's teaching all of our growth strategists and our media buyers inside tier 11 is how to do this. And even Meta says this is the new way, which you should run ads on Meta. And when you spend, you know, a couple hundred million dollars on ads like we do, these are the things that really matter and metrics that matter, growth that scales. Which is what this podcast is all about, what this show is all about. So without further ado, we're going to get into myself and John Marin talking about Triple Whale and the latest greatest Andromeda update. Enjoy. And we are back.
John Moran
Hello.
Ralph Burns
Cooking up chaos.
John Moran
Ruining media buyers lives.
Ralph Burns
Once more, 1, 1 Media buyer at a time. I used to do it this way. No, now you need to do it this way to learn something new. No.
John Moran
Well, I guess I wouldn't say all media buyers, but the media buyers that are stuck in their ways. This is even more stuff that we're going to be throwing on top of things. But it's such as digital marketing. It's always, you know, full time job. So that's why I try to like even tell our clients too. It's like, hey, like, your job isn't to learn my job. Your job is to get better at your job. I will be better at my job. And together you make a good product and I can sell it like, oh, it's a match made in heaven.
Ralph Burns
Yeah.
John Moran
Yeah. Like Ryan Dice always used to say, I don't want my dentist to figure out digital marketing. I want them to.
Ralph Burns
Oh my God, it's so true. We have our one on ones or every other week, one on one right before this session here. So we get to talk about what's going on. And one of the things that I think this is the type of case where this business owner was trying to learn attribution, trying to learn marketing, as opposed to figuring out new products, servicing his customers. And then all of a sudden you come in and turn everything upside down and say, hey, if you look over here, it's actually doing better than you think because you're trying to learn and you're going through a faulty attribution model. And he was using our old friends over at Triple Whale.
John Moran
Yep. Yeah.
Ralph Burns
As opposed to looking inside the platform itself.
John Moran
Yeah. Or like instead of the platforms like Shopify. Right, Exactly.
Ralph Burns
Yeah, like, yeah, like Shopify. Like where the money is, like that's the source of truth.
John Moran
Yeah. Right. Your life with them.
Ralph Burns
Yeah. Your bank account will always win. Your back end will always win. Like that's actually where you're making your money. That's where people are buying your stuff.
John Moran
Yeah.
Ralph Burns
They're not buying it through your attribution platform that doesn't track anywhere from 20 to 40% is what we've seen, GA4 included. We've got over on our website. If you look up tier 11 data suite, there is a graphic in there that shows the difference between data suite capturing data and what you would typically see inside GA4. Not only is GA4 missing 40% of the conversions because of this unknowns and directs, they're missing another 50% of conversions because they're not even capturing any of that. So if you're not looking at the source of truth, you're not really looking at the right metrics in order to grow that business. And I know this is a theme that we've said many times here, metrics that matter, growth that scales, but show for the people at home exactly what we're talking about here. And a real life example of how you got this dentist to start doing more dentistry, so to speak.
John Moran
Pretty much almost exactly right, except for different type of doctor. But yes, this evolved as a client that came to me for help on Google Google. And while we're modifying the account for Google, most of the time the situation occurs is when a client or customer or whomever says hey, I need to grow and I'm going to use Google to grow and treat Meta and Applovin slash Axon, which is Applovin is now Axon. I'm going to use the channels against each other. So the opposite of what was developed to do. And so when we looked at everything and I said hey, we'll grow Google and we'll scale meta, but we don't want to necessarily have a lot of attribution that interrupts what we know to be true based on what we as digital marketers expect to happen. So what this means is that he was looking necessarily at his trip well account for the health of his business. And I understand why, because it has all sources, even if Postscript made a sale, etc. And yeah, it has a lot of information here and tracks all the spend, tracks all the revenue and new customers and returning customers and all the other good stuff. The problem though is the way that triple L tags is actually the Same methodology that GA4 and GTM will have an issue with. And for those that don't know, and this might be shocking to some, probably shocking to all in GA4, when a user does not grant consent in Google Analytics 4, which means they do not accept all cookies that is on the little consent mode pop up, they are not counted as a user for a session based metrics, the same as consented users, they're basically they use model data to fill gaps. Interestingly enough, Google Tag Manager also does the same thing. It will not count users who deny consent. So think about your Google Ads or think about anything that you've deployed inside of a Google Tag Manager. Might be a triple whale tag as an example. The information or the tag will not necessarily count or track the people if they did not ask for consent now or the Tier 11 data suite. Obviously we use edge tagging which doesn't have that issue, which is why a lot of that data is a lot more more useful and accurate. But also if you skip attribution and just say I spent money on campaign A and what happened to my total top line sales and then CAC and mer was that a good effect overall to my business? So just skipping attribution and I was looking at the back end of the website when we're making these changes and I'm like it doesn't look like triple whale is actually accurate at all because as an example when we scaled last week from 23 to 29, we pushed 47 more spend into Meta went from 46 grand to 67 grand. So basically $21,000 more in spend. Applovin that number's accurate.
Ralph Burns
I'm just.
John Moran
That number is accurate. Yes, the spend is 100%. I know, I know, I have no idea. So we looked at that and that was accurate. That's easy. I'm loving spent seven grand more and then Google stayed about the same. 1.6.
Ralph Burns
Got it.
John Moran
Now when you start to look at all of the metrics, when you see a whale tail here that's attributed. When you see a non whale tail that's not attributed basically just means all the data in and so we're looking through the metrics and like roas is down 10% 9% if you don't count attribution. All purchases are only up 13 the well no all attributed purchases up 13 non attributes up 19. And it's like hey, your customer value basically if you're looking at Roas attributed somehow says you made 177 non attributed says you hey, you went from 181 to 205. So it's only 13 increase in all of customer value. New and returning does not matter. So he's looking at this and saying hop, this is poor performance where you have for 24 more spend and only 13 more revenue right now. See that 205 number? I said it doesn't seem accurate. Why don't you. You install lifetimely Lifetimely is like a very good tool. It will just tell you the results of all of your marketing and your health of your business. Yeah. So when we install directly from Shopify. Exactly. Pull to from your actual customer data. So we saw a 24% increase in spend, and then lifetimely, during that time period, saw a 25% increase in net sales. So this number is 275,000 triple. Whale thought it was 205 on the high side. So we missed about $70,000 this week. Or two thirds of all activity, basically. About. Yeah, about two thirds of the increase. So that's why I'm like, I'm wondering where this is.
Ralph Burns
It's about a quarter of the spend, that's about a quarter of the revenue.
John Moran
Yeah, it's like this one said that it lifted up 23 grand, but it was actually fairly high. It was more like about 55,000. So when we look at this and say, okay, well, let's just see, was that healthy? We know that we pushed a bunch of money into Meta. We spent 47% more, which was a 25% increase. Now, Google didn't do anything. App love is just going to also rise with it because it does mostly remarketing anyway. So we have 25% increase in spend, 25% increase in net sales. Blended CAC down 3%. MER up a half a point. So we're looking at this saying, all right, so we increased it by 25%, and that is up 25% net profit. The contribution margin's up 41%. So we cleared 30 grand. Not to mention that the profit that Triple L said he lost 23 grand. So don't know how that happened, but apparently it says they lost 23 grand when they actually made 29. It's up $9,000 additional. So we're looking at that. And then we say, okay, units per order stayed, AOV stayed, orders are up 27%, refunds are down 6%. So that's fine. The percentage of marketing was flat. The blended CAC's better, the myrrh is better, and the marketing cost went up 25%. So, like, amazing. 25% marketing cost, 25% more sales. But at a cat cac that we like, at a MER that we like gave us a profit margin increase of 41. Yay. So this is very simplistic. We pushed 25% there and we got 25%. Wait a second, wait a second.
Ralph Burns
But you know, with. Mmm. It's media mix modeling. Modeling being the last m. Right. But this is not modeling. You're not modeling anything. You're actually pulling real data from the back end where people are actually buying. So that by virtue of this is really.
John Moran
It's not that it's almost like mmi. It's like media mix interpretation. We pretty, we're pretty sure it came from Meta. Now, nothing supports that. Instead of triple whale, ROAs went down 85%.
Ralph Burns
Like Meta's doing terrible, right?
John Moran
Yeah. So we put 47% more spend and ROAs went down 11. Oh, like it. It's just not true at all. And so that's what's interesting is like when you skip the attribution. I was playing around with this earlier and I thought this was really funny. Watch this. You know what, I'm. I think I can copy and paste this into a new window and I don't even know how this happens, but somehow changing the attribution model changes the totals. I'm like, wait a minute, hold on, that doesn't make sense.
Ralph Burns
Changes the totals. Okay.
John Moran
Right. That's not possible. All sales change with attribution model when you're talking about all sources, even organic. So I was looking through this thing and I said, wait a minute, let me, let me run a quick model here. So 23 to 29, compare previous period. 23 to 29, compare previous period one's first click, one's last click. So I'm like, I still have 205. And I still have 205 here. My customer value says 177. Unless you go last click. Then the Customer value is 294. It's 294 from a last click perspective, which is really cool because somehow it went from 177 to 294 and we still only have 275. So it either undershoots it by 100k or like overshoots it by 40k just depending upon what attribution model that you use. So I'm like, thanks, that was fantastic. However, the total customer value is still 205. So for those out there that love to stick with an attribution model and not change it, if you're looking at last click, you made 90 grand more than your totals, which is really interesting. Or you made basically like 25 grand less than your totals. Pick your poison. Either one of them is really freaking far off. And I also like the fact that my customer value actually went up 20% and overshot by totals. But on a first click basis, the totals were only up 11%. So you get different percentile increases and then also undershot or way overshot. So when we basically just removed everything and said let's just use your bank account. Remember how we've been teaching this for years of NCAC and MER and attribution margin? Same stuff. It was very interesting to see how when the tag misfires and they model it incorrectly and you make very expensive decisions off of this, how wrong it really can be.
Ralph Burns
And this is not an isolated case with triple well, is it? You probably have more experience well than I do. Yeah, I've been seeing, I've seen enough triple L accounts to know exactly like see this scenario. But you see this consistently. You're talking about you're missing one quarter of their revenue.
John Moran
Yeah, it's like you can't just fuck off 75 grand in seven day period, right. That's egregious.
Ralph Burns
I mean it's a difference between probably a 30k loss and a 30k gain in contribution margin, right?
John Moran
Yeah, I mean it's huge. And depending upon which attribution model, you're going to be overshot or undershot, but then you're making expensive decisions off of it. So, right, we're probably going to get rid of trip oil pretty quickly for this client here and move into basically just lifetimely. But the mmm modeling when you're looking at I push here, this and here's what's funny is check this out the week before this when he says, hey, push on Google. I'll show you the push on Google. Watch this. If we look at the lifetimely here and we're running performance max with non first click attributed which was going to happen with Google when you spike up Google. Well, if you're using non first click, non capi imports when this one went up 40% and we had a flat, basically spend the lifetimely where you have a flat return. So this one pushed up by eight grand. But the reduction of that two grand here was not made up by the increase in this money here. So meta pullback basically 10 grand and we added nine. Okay. What was supposed to happen at the time is that I'm going to increase Google, you increase meta and I increased Google. They didn't increase meta. I'm like, okay, so our spend is the same and our revenue is the same. CAC is the same, MER is the same. So it looked like me. It looks like Google and meta are doing well. It's just when you push one without the other, you don't really see much result. So when I took it from 21 up to 29 that next week I stayed at my level of 29 or like 2930 basically stayed at that level. And then they increase meta. So we basically just increase Google then increase meta and now our lifetimely after those two scales now we've up leveled and we went into the same. We've increased all of our sales by 25%. So it was really interesting that Google, when you take Google up and you push meta down, nothing happens. But if you push meta back up. Aha, this is good. So if we were to. And this is, I don't fault a guy. This is new to him. He was very nervous. I sent him an email and I said hello from 30,000ft. You know you messed up man. He responds with I know I caved. It was funny. We have a good relationship. He's like it looked good. I caved. I was like okay, I need you to do this now. So now that I've won him over in the modeling kind of thought process which is NCAC MER net sales contribution margin. Compare that to your spend. Don't look at attribution especially from a third party platform that's missing 2 1/3 of the data. Now this has actually become really easy now. Now life is easy. All we had to do is just stop confusing ourselves and stop paying for the confusion that it has been very beneficial.
Ralph Burns
You don't really even need lifetimely to get that result because you could have just gone back into Shopify and just like pull the results from there.
John Moran
Yeah, I was going to say if I just look at, look at here. This is the Same time period 23rd, 29 compared to previous period. 25% more sales. Like lifetimely says the new customer returning customer rate went down. Indicative new customers orders are up, traffic is up 17% with a better conversion rate. And we see Facebook, YouTube, Instagram. Like YouTube took a whole bunch of credit even though it didn't touch YouTube because it's a warm network. You push on Meta. YouTube naturally looks better which is why I tell people be cautious of demand gen. It gets drug around by the nose from other platforms but basically everything is up except for Google search. We already scaled up the week before. So that's what's nice is we can see through here. This is why I'm looking at he's he scaled. I look at this first, I'm like this looks good to happen to triple whale. It's like everything's terrible. Like well the spend I know is accurate, the revenue I know is accurate. The only thing that's saying things are Bad is triple whale. Like let's not look there, let's get lifetimely, get it installed, go retroactive, see what actually happened, and we may find out that third party attribution that is poor is not necessarily even worth our time.
Ralph Burns
Why would anyone ever use triple whale?
John Moran
I don't know. Hype is believed a lot. I do believe that when you're running heavy amounts of meta, your third party attribution, if it's going to take a third party approach and not have an actual baseline, like ignore what meta says happen, ignore the bank account, ignore like lifetimely ignore actual new customers and only track 2/3 of things you're tracking. 2/3 of a network that has 95% of its activity. Not even click based attribution at that point is like a dartboard. I could have sold 10 people or one just depending on if I think the people that saw the ad converted anyway. So it's like trusting view engage conversions. It's like it's directionally accurate, but we don't want too much of that trip. Well, just under reports that, yeah, you.
Ralph Burns
Want the click, you want the actual click being captured.
John Moran
Yeah, yeah. Or you take it like directionally, but you let your, your bank account dictate. Right. I want to move on to something else before I get to Q and a here in 10 minutes.
Ralph Burns
Well, that was great by the way, because we've never really talked about, well, all that much and it shows just all the holes that are in it. Yeah, of course, if you need our help, you can get our help over@tiereleven.com apply definitely check out our data suite that's on tier 11 as well. Helps pay the bills here. So anyway, all right, on to the next case study.
John Moran
Ah, Mitch is here. He says, I'm here, you can start.
Ralph Burns
Also, thank God Mitch is here. I love Mitch even more.
John Moran
I optimize for view only and brand terms only. On Google. It says Mitch. She goes, just kidding, just kidding. I'm like, I, I do too. I'm like, look at all the million dollars that you made off.
Ralph Burns
Yeah, there's a view that means it's coming from that platform form.
John Moran
Of course, of course. I wanted to touch upon the creative diversification we've been following the model that we've been using and this is actually the model here. You've seen this before and yeah, this.
Ralph Burns
Is an actual meta deck we're showing like meta stuff. Yeah, this isn't a hack, John.
John Moran
This is a practitioner guide. Like Andromeda came out in December of 2024. For those still not in the know or living under a digital marketing rock, but this is what they're producing. So here's an example and I won't go through this again because we've already gone through this, but we've been following the five driven this into people's heads. Yeah, really do. But those that are watching on this.
Ralph Burns
Channel, but you know, people that are actually working at tier 11 too.
John Moran
So anyway, go ahead, keep hammering, hammer away. 5 insight driven, 5 insights driven net new concepts per month basically means like, what's your hook, pain point offer? Like what is your marketing plan for this product or service? Create at least 2, 3, 4, 5 would be great. And that whatever starts to win when the traffic and audiences start to resonate with it leads to sales and clicks and yeah, make better versions of the winners. And so we said, okay, let's practice what we preach because you all seen me say this before, but now we're actually going to show you the actuality. So back on September 20th, we said, hey, let's scale up. So we added 3, 500, went from 9, 600 to 13 grand in.
Ralph Burns
So just so we're clear, you are basically doing what Meta recommends you to do.
John Moran
Yeah.
Ralph Burns
Hey, you know, when I was first a consultant, actually doing the stuff that we're doing right now in Tier 11, one of the first tools that I learned how to use was from a company called Unbounce. And they are now a sponsor of perpetual traffic. And the reason is, is that their landing pages and how quickly you can create those landing pages without having to consult your designer, your developer. With drag and drop builders now built in AI copywriting, it's even better than when it was 10 years ago when I first started using it on my own to create my very first landing pages. These guys are absolutely amazing. They've got conversion optimized templates giving you everything you need to launch your pages on your own without developers. In fact, Unbounce is the leading landing page platform for building, testing and optimizing high converting pages. Powered by data from over 2 billion conversions. That is 2 billion conversions with a B. That means they know what converts. So if you want to convert more customers one platform and launch pages fast, Unbounce is offering PT listeners a special offer. They are giving you the PT listeners 10% off when you enter coupon code PT10OFF over@unbounce.com PT. So head on over to unbounce.com PT, enter code PT10OFF and cash in. Today, convert more customers to one platform, launch pages Fast. You shouldn't have to wait for your designers and your developers to build and test your landing pages. Get started with Unbounce today.
John Moran
Okay. Crazy enough, the Andromeda model makes so much sense when you look at the literature.
Ralph Burns
Absolutely.
John Moran
It's basically, it says, here's all the people inside of Meta. Here's your ads. We're gonna find out what ads works to the right audiences, and we'll deliver your ads correctly to the users. Like, okay, I understand that. Let's and says do it this way.
Ralph Burns
So we said, okay, those beautiful Nvidia chips, right?
John Moran
Out of the 6,000 digital marketing agencies, there's like two that are running Andromeda and it's us. And my other agency I'm a part of, like, that I have personally. So hey, might as well be the first one to listen to Google and find out or listen to Meta and find out what happens.
Ralph Burns
I forget the last time we were together, but I was at a Meta conference in New York and nobody. I talked to everybody. Like, every agency I talked to, like, they're not doing any of this stuff.
John Moran
No, I've always talked to a dozen people.
Ralph Burns
Like, including my rep, who's brand new. Like, he came from TikTok. He's a nice guy, but he's still learning it. It's like, what do you think about the Andromeda update? He's like, what? What?
John Moran
It's insane.
Ralph Burns
Yeah.
John Moran
Like, so I know we're so far in. In the weeds and deep into this, but I don't know how you call yourself a professional and not do that. It's like, you know me, beyond me. It's like, hey, I need you to write a book. Like, okay, hold on. Like Dink. It's like, you know they invented pens, Right?
Ralph Burns
My way of doing it.
John Moran
Yeah.
Ralph Burns
All right, keep going.
John Moran
So we increased the ad spend 36. We saw some really hitting a point. Diminishing return cost per result went up 61 and our results went down 15. We said, okay, what do we do? Well, we have to iterate our creative. And so this is on September 20th, the 23rd or 22nd, when we push, we said, okay, this isn't working.
Ralph Burns
And just. So this is not an e Commerce client, correct?
John Moran
It is. It's a long sales cycle. They're college courses. So you could do it lead gen, you could do lead flow, you could do E commerce, everything. So we're basically optimizing for per click through checkout because this account has been tracking the wrong metric for over two years and over a million Dollars in ad spend. So because of a long sales cycle, we basically counted a micro conversion first so that we can retrain who these actual people are. We're backfilling it from AOS so that it actually appends to the per click through checkout custom events through capi. And so we're basically importing first click Capi Imports, but just on a previous touch point simply because their tech stack, even AOS is like, we can't see the conversions. Neither can anyone. No one can see the conversion. It goes through like three different websites and this loses everything. Got it. We're going to fix that. But anyway, we're just basically counting the point where they begin checkout + edge.
Ralph Burns
Tag on this as well.
John Moran
Edge tag first click checkouts rather than edge tag first click purchases. Exactly right.
Ralph Burns
Correct.
John Moran
Got it. Yep. And so we saw a softening in this performance and we basically just said, well, let's follow the model that and let's do we iterate our five new pieces of creative. And so that was on the 20th or the 22nd. And so after we uploaded our new creative on the 22nd and we look at the 23rd, 24th, 25th, and we see what happens. So we kept our spend or not kept our spend. We that was the next thing we did. We increased our spend again. We said, okay, let's try to make a push now that we have new creative. And that's where we saw all this is very cool.
Ralph Burns
These are three day increments.
John Moran
Three day increments.
Ralph Burns
Three day increments.
John Moran
Got it. Keep going. Yep. So now on the 23rd, 24th, 25th, our CPA is down 10 bucks. We went from 45 down to 34. And remember, we were at 30 and shot up to 45 and now we're at 45 down to 34. And then we increased our conversions by 62% with 25%, 23% ad spend. We said, okay, let's just follow this along. So the next week, Fast forward to October 1st. We said, okay, let's do some more creative iterations. We updated all of our creative on the 30th. I don't have the next three days. Since we only have the first two days after it, we've been looking at three day increments. 23, 24, 25. Three day increments. 20, 21, 22. I only have the first second. I'll have the third. But once I have the third, then that spend will normalize. But it looks like we're down 16%. We're good. Today we're back up to normal ranges. I just don't have all the imports just yet. But long story short, in the two days our CPA is now down to 25 better than it was the week and a half ago before we started our creative iteration process. And now we're seeing a 10% increase in results and a 24% decrease in cost per result for 16% less spend. So we're back down now to $25 where we started at 28. So now we're actually better since the 20th to the 1st. So that was 11 day period. We did three rounds of iterations and we dropped. Our CPA is still $3 cheaper than where we were before with an increase in ad spend and all we're doing and we look at the the view history here. Let me go to the 30th so you can see this is when we are this all started delivery of all of our ads. We basically just updated all of our creative on the 30th. You can see here we paused a whole bunch and then we added new iterations. Cool about this is you can see like from the 30th to the second compared to previous period when we said all right, let's start adding in new ads. These are all starting to be reduced. Some are still working, some are heavy reduced. And you can see all of this negative here, negative 63, negative 69, negative 70, negative 6. You can almost see it pausing these things for you. My spend is 0.07% difference, but these are all down 60 percentile. And then this one ad all of a sudden just sucked up 8 G's immediately in the first two days spends the same. And then look at this thing. It is giving us 221 conversions at a 37 which is still $10 higher, but it has brought down the overall $16. So people are like, well what happens if an ad sucks up the ad spend? It's like that's a. That's ABO and cbo. That's you in control. You're no longer in control anymore. Meta's in control. So if Meta says I'm going to do it, it works and you'll see a better result. The media buyer for some reason thinks that to hop in and like pause this one, it's like do not touch it.
Ralph Burns
That would be the first reaction.
John Moran
Exactly. Wait a second.
Ralph Burns
If I'm looking an app, I mean it's the cpa. I guess we're talking about NCAC here obviously. But CPA is it's not 37, it's the total for that. I thought it was like 47 for your top one for your top UGC ad.
John Moran
Oh, 37. Yeah.
Ralph Burns
Oh, it is 37.
John Moran
Okay. Yeah.
Ralph Burns
But also, why should I not turn that off? What's the rationale for that?
John Moran
Yeah. So this one you're thinking about what has a high amount of ad spend when you have 8,000 out of $14,000. What do we think this ad is doing to the cold traffic? Imagine we put an ad in there and it's going to go and go out to the cold traffic and it's starting the users on their journey. It has the highest amount of ad spend and has a high amount of engagement, but without having the frequency be crazy high. So you have a high amount of engagement.
Ralph Burns
It's, it's engaging in the market, it's expanding the market, it's increasing awareness in the market, it's getting some conversions, but it's sucking up the ad spend for a specific reason. Because Facebook says, or Meta says, that's where they are in the journey. They need to see this piece of content in order to continue down the journey and ultimately make the purchase.
John Moran
And we see the rest of the ads here doing What? So the CPA is getting better and we even have 20% more, 14% more. 143, 57. 100.
Ralph Burns
Now these, all of these other ads really is what's happening.
John Moran
Yeah. Now this is down checkouts for the cpa. Better. This is down checkouts, but the CPA is better. This is down checkouts, but the CPA is better. Ah, so it seems to be reshuffling the deck. And the ads that they have more information on because they've been running longer are extremely smart because they have had longer time period. So when we say, hey, we need to see this new ad start to re engage people. Why? Well, the week before when we were looking at the top performing pieces of creative that had the highest amount of ad spend, it was, guess what, a ugc. So what do you think we did? We went and created another more ugc. That's what works.
Ralph Burns
That's what's resonating with this market. And one of the 10 AD types, you just never really know which one is working. Is there a founder story in here too or no?
John Moran
Yeah, we have a founder story in here as well. But the here's what's awesome is here's where a lot of media buyers will get stuck because they haven't been trained and taught attribution. And this Is where if you learn attribution, everything else becomes so much easier. So don't skip the hard part because you're making the easy part hard. So what I mean by this is when we are importing first click capi imports, what's Meta's attribution model?
Ralph Burns
Last click.
John Moran
Bingo. So you're saying, John, I need this thing to spend a lot. I need to get the first click. They need to see nothing else and they have to click this and then I won't pause it like you're asking for the impossible possibility.
Ralph Burns
Everybody is going to see my ad and click the very first time and then buy John.
John Moran
Right.
Ralph Burns
That's no, humans work things. That always happens. Never.
John Moran
Yeah, time lag, sales cycle is all fooey. It's fugazi. So that's what's interesting is like if you haven't had this resonate with the marketplace and you say no, they have to click that and only that and not see anything else show up everything else. That's what I used to do, right? Yes. That's why you're not teaching these. This is why we are. This is the examples that we're going through. So it is very interesting to see how the Meta Andromeda engine is working. But if you follow the rules, I could drop my CPA from 44 to 25 in 10 days by simply just making more ads that work. Now to let me, let me jump back into Microsoft paint here, become a graphic designer again for a moment.
Ralph Burns
Well, just to your point, like you're looking, I want to get back to that one. But what you're really looking at is the bottom line, cost per checkout, which was 27. You don't really care about any of the other ones. That's your Univers Universal NCAC from all your assets.
John Moran
Exactly. This is the total assets combined. Exactly. And here's why. So if you develop an ad here, it says, great, I'm gonna take the ad and I'm gonna show traffic jump.
Ralph Burns
Shows this art skills.
John Moran
It's very good. I spent six months at art school in the parking lot picking up my wife when she went to art school. So FL in there somewhere. So you develop an ad, it takes the ad and shows it to the people and says, hey, you know what? Out of all 10, we like half of these. So these ads here are good and these ads over here are bad, whatever it is. So they choose the ads that are working with and then they say, okay, great. The next day they basically take those ads and they show it to them again and say, hey, they still really like those. Now on day three, are they going to say, take those same ads and show it to the users again? Meta's gonna say, no, sorry, we're cutting you off there. Stop. We're not going to beat the crap out of these people. Well, what has happened so far? Well, we tested a bunch of ads, and you know what they resonated with? They resonated with the fact that this has college credits that will transfer to any university, and the next week it was college credits that transfer to any university, and the next day is college credits that transfers to the next university, and the next day is college credit. I know that. Stop.
Ralph Burns
I'm banner blind already.
John Moran
Exactly. So what do we have to do? We have to use a new iteration. We have to use a different variation of these. What else can you tell them? You already told them that what else? Right.
Ralph Burns
They didn't convert on that message. However, in the back of their mind, they maybe remember it, maybe they don't. But then Meta says, let's show you another ad with a slightly different message because we didn't get the result by showing you that ad that we wanted. So let's show you another ad.
John Moran
Exactly. And there's always traffic flowing in and flowing out of the marketplace. So there's always flowing and flowing out. And what you're trying to do is identify your pain points, your hooks, your offers that are resonating with the marketplace. So this can become more evergreen. Once it's evergreen, you're like my Vermont glove company. I've been running the same ad since May 14th, and I have 129 active ads, and all of them have under 30 CPA. And I'm only spending 250 bucks a day. Because we've kept iterating our process to what we see working well with the audience. We said, let's make a new version, make a new version, make a new version. And if you go all the way back here, Since May of 2025, we're literally going back May, June, July, August, September into October. And we look at my one Andromeda campaign and we at with my one ad set, and we look at my ads that are descending by spend. I have now spent $23,000. Not a whole lot because I'm only spending 25 or 250 bucks a day. But I have 130 ads. And look at the CPA. They're just beautiful. Like $25 across the board, everything $125.
Ralph Burns
Product, $125 NAOV in this case, yeah.
John Moran
The $9,000 increase in Aspen year over year was a $220,000 top line increase. So this all we basically did is find the 130 different accolades about our product that everyone loves. And we're just like telling the world we don't have enough inventory to increase the spend because we're trying to keep up with demand from like plateaued. But again, that is a creative iterative process. I've been following it since for last five months, tested the out of it. It works. I wanted some more recent results to share with everyone of how the Andromeda diversification playbook came out and said, do it this way. I said, okay, I'll do it this way because no one else is testing this and it's working extremely well. When I say that media buying is technical, media buying has been snuffed and the creative media buying has been buffed, like that's what we're talking about. So when you're like, huh, this isn't working, think of creative first. What are your concepts? Hook, pain points, offers? Are you having good nomenclature? Are you reacting what is positive and are you iterating that process? If the answer is no, you're not.
Ralph Burns
Using Andromeda Snuffed and buffed. I love it. Now, on either one of those ad accounts which we just looked at, at some point you turn the ads off. So I noticed you had a couple of that were off, right?
John Moran
That was not our choice. Unfortunately. We have like this one here. That person's no longer with the company. That person is no longer with the company.
Ralph Burns
Oh, I see.
John Moran
Yeah. So we did do that one just because that one we. They just didn't like it. But all of the other ones we have are still on except for anything that see how that was a person in a field, I don't know. But that person in the field is actually the same one as this one here. That was also off is the same like person in the field that's starting with it. It's just basically they're like, hey, we're not allowed to use this anymore. We let them go. We can't use their likelihood. And so we said okay. So situationally we had to turn them off, but they had good performance.
Ralph Burns
Makes sense. So in what scenario do you ever shut anything off? I know I've asked this question before, but this is the question that keeps coming up.
John Moran
I what's funny is everyone knows now that there is a 50 AD limit inside of Andromeda. Yes. Now if you were following me back then you are not included in that. Right now if we look at the active ads because we're also iterating, I have 79 active ads in one ad set. So I. If you are, if you started back then I have more accounts that don't have that 50 than I do have the 50 restriction. Because if we're working together back then, or if we were using Andromeda when we started teaching it back in February March, there was no restriction. So all those users were grandfathered in. So I can use as many as I want. Everyone else is stuck at 50 and it's not 50 active or 50 pause. You can only have total. So you have to start deleting, which really sucks. Yeah, so what we've been basically doing is after we start our 5 iteration process or 10 iteration process, however many winners there are that we need to iterate, we look at what meta has started to ignore. So anything that basically has had tested Aspen and buried deep like under three dollar per day in the ads is where you're just going to start to see this basically get flatlined. And so those are the ones that we start to choose to hack off. So if we look at my account.
Ralph Burns
Meta basically shuts them off. Before you do, focus on marketing strategy, not marketing setup. ActiveCampaigns AI agents orchestrate your marketing for you with intelligent next steps, personalized content on demand and goal aware reporting that tracks every single win. So you can turn your ideas into revenue across email, SMS and WhatsApp without the heavy lifting. Try it for free over@activecampaign.com yeah, like.
John Moran
You saw how when we added new, everything dropped down by 60%. It's like this is performing better than those. So as long as you keep doing that, you're going to naturally find a divergence between the ones that continue to work and the ones that continue to suck. And that's when you're just going to basically hack off, add more, hack off, add more. It becomes very systemic. So we look at this last seven days as example. We have our active ads in this one we have 23. If you start descending by spend and go down to the ones with like 30 bucks, look at the chart here and just say was there any spend that has now been ignored? Yep, 34, 30 started ignore it. And this has been flatlined into sub few dollar spends. Like I said, this one is on the chopping block. It's not going to do anything for us spending 70 cents a day when we're spending 61 grand a week. You're not going to feel anything. So as long as Meta says thank you, I don't need that one anymore. You can delete it, but you also.
Ralph Burns
Take that data and you say, okay, that to the creative team. Those are not the ads that I want. I want more of the ads. The other ads. Like if it's the. If the chart is in the reverse. It just keeps going up and up and up. Obviously like the UGC ad that we showed in the previous example. Like that's obviously you need more ugc. UGC is resonating with this audience or the particular message or the feature benefit that is being discussed in that ugc.
John Moran
And what's crazy is that was true up to a point. Like everything with the dog picture is ugc. Ugc, ugc, ugc. Non ugc. UGC with a dog UGC with a dog non ugc. We've gotten to this point of spending about half mill to $600,000 per month with just UGC. However, if we filter towards the ads that are. I think I might be able to now use. Yeah, filter only selected rows. If we filter all the non UGCs in the last 30 days. You see, my CPA is 233.
Ralph Burns
Yeah.
John Moran
Oh, wait, I'm sorry, let's. We have to get rid of this one. Oh, that's three. 18. So anyway, so anyway, that wasn't a UGC.
Ralph Burns
Oh, you're filtering seven. Okay, you're filtering.
John Moran
Yeah, got it, got it. I should be filtering six now. So the six ads that are non UGC, I get 230. Look at this. Everything else is UGC. So these six ads 230 when we remove the filter, my overall when you include UGC. 371. My non UGC is a hundred dollars 150 cheaper than my non UGC. And the reason why is it says, hey, don't just basically make the same three different ways, create different points of view and different variations. So again we said, okay, we have to follow the hi fi lo fi treatment. Hi fi would be more graphics, lo fi be more ugc. We're doing the same thing. Video static reels. Once we followed that, the stuff that we've been adding has actually been performing better than our ugc. And we're able to scale up yet again so you can follow what works. But this has shown us that we tested all ugc, got us to a point. We're like, well, this sucks. We try to UGC our way out of it because we thought that's what worked. And we're like, let's try non ugc. And all of a sudden we up leveled ourselves into the next one because those ads came in at two thirds the cost of cpa. I was like, excellent. May people probably need to see more than just udc. See all these dogs, they're all getting healthier, huh? Buy this product. Ah, this is why. Thank you. Like, that was the logical sequence to a sale that a person's mind had to go through. Problem, solution together equals sale. Not just. We solved this problem with trust us, I don't even show you the product. People need to see the product. Right, Right.
Ralph Burns
Makes sense. A couple of those ads, they were off, but you only turn them off after the spend went down to basically negligible levels where it was spending maybe four or five dollars a day. But they had significant spend at one point in time, which is interesting. Oh, they're rolling because they're cycling in and out. I got you.
John Moran
And what we'll be talking about soon is I'm going to do one last example because there's a new feature inside of Meta. Okay, watch this. You ready? This is.
Ralph Burns
I'm ready.
John Moran
So freaking good. You are a meta media buyer, right?
Ralph Burns
We are in the performance kitchen, ladies and gentlemen, blowing stuff up.
John Moran
You were a meta media buyer, right?
Ralph Burns
I am.
John Moran
Like, we all were. All right. Yes. So would you say that this one ad set and this 47 ads in the last 37 days when $28,000 out of $31,000. 28 out of 31 across. How many active? 1, 2, 3, 4, I don't know, 12 ads. Okay, let's just do this. Let's look at the active delivery. So 11 ads right now only one of 11 is working and it's getting all of but $3,000 out of a total 31,000. This is what normally people be like, gotta shut that one off. Right. This is what we all believe.
Ralph Burns
Back in the day.
John Moran
Exactly. Back in the day. That's what the SOP was. If you went back to your handbook when you were hired at like tenuity or whatever it is, you'd be like.
Ralph Burns
Shut, minimize, maximize, optimize. That's what we used that we have to use stuff with spreadsheet of any ad that look like that. Minimize.
John Moran
Exactly. Like you pause. You're like, I have to get everything else to start. Yeah, this. Look at Meta's new beta. Go into ad set, go into charts. Look at. There's a creative fatigue meter. Now this creative fatigue meter says I'm. Yeah, the creative fatigue meter says I'm Sorry, media buyer. You think that one ad is getting all of the Aspen is horrible. We're only 12% fatigued.
Ralph Burns
Oh, geez.
John Moran
Aha. So this is basically even saying, hey, no, don't shut that off. You're only 12% fatigued. And some days it actually is better. 7% as of all recently, last three days. Hey, why? Because Andromeda is doing the targeting. It says that's at the ads, people.
Ralph Burns
If I'm reading this correctly, that's at the ad set level.
John Moran
Ad set level. But the ad set level is only one ad is 28 out of $31,000.
Ralph Burns
Got it, got it. I see what you're saying.
John Moran
Okay.
Ralph Burns
Can you do that at the ad level too or. No, it's only at the ad set level.
John Moran
Unfortunately, it's just at the ad set level, which makes sense because you can't have creative fatigue at the ad level.
Ralph Burns
It's true.
John Moran
The creative does the targeting.
Ralph Burns
Yeah, creative does the targeting.
John Moran
If that ad fatigues itself, it my spend can roll to nine more ads easy. It just doesn't. Why it's working. Remember when I said follow meta spend? Yeah. Now this is actually bringing us some of the most effective efficient NCAC we've ever seen. We've actually shut off Google Ads by 95% this. Wow. And so what I mean by they.
Ralph Burns
Were like all Google shopping, aren't they.
John Moran
At one performance max, counting the existing customers. Yes. Yeah. And so that's what was very interesting is if we just look at the last 30 days compared to the. Well, let's. Yeah, last 30 days compared to the previous year. And then we look at all here, not active avid, just all. And then we go into this one here for the same account. And then we go into the campaigns here. Last 30 days compared to the previous year. Again, previous see year that we'll do all here, not just all enabled or anything. We can look at the cost and say, okay, our cost year over year went from 40 grand down to 4200. We're 90% down in spend. Yeah. So I was like, this is all bs. We did cappy imports. We're like, nothing has ever worked in here. Cut off 35 grand, hop over into meta and we say, okay, meta year over year. We take on our 3500. So we're down 3500 plus 35 grand. So we're now we're $40,000 reduced and we're only spending 4200 plus 3130. So went from spending 75 down to 35 we cut off 40 G's. Wow. Now with the top total top line, which if we look at the last 30 days compared to previous year and we go into analytics, go in the last 30 days and then optimize towards this way, and then compared to previous year, our total top line is up 0.7% by cutting out 60% of all of our ad spend. Why? This is when you're looking at the actual difference between attribution and contribution. Everything was just sucking off the teat of the returning customers because those are 75% of the time focus on NCAC and profitability. You say, okay, I didn't need the other $40,000 a month in ad spend because it was telling us that's useless. It was attribution. Give us a signal reduction in spend. Give us a confirmation. So let me guess.
Ralph Burns
Your Google Ad spend is all brand name.
John Moran
It's just a PMAX brand. That's all it is.
Ralph Burns
Pmax brand.
John Moran
And think about this. It's lobster. Everyone pulls lobster out of the ocean. You didn't make it in season, you didn't spice it, you froze it and sent it to me. So all I have to do is just count on it being cheap. Well, I'm not going to take the most expensive network, try to be number one for everyone that's looking for the cheapest product. But I can win compared to my competitors if I'm the only one in your feed just shoving my amazing messaging down your throat. Who.
Ralph Burns
But also in the feed, they're not necessarily in market. They're not in that bloody red ocean of those high value keywords, which is like basically a race to the bottom. Whoever's cheapest wins.
John Moran
Yeah. And especially in Google Shopping, which is because Google Shopping didn't work and then they switched over to performance Max. Performance Max is like, look at all of everything that I'm doing. What happens is like if you type in main lobster, everyone's running like free one day or you get shipping. But it's like everyone is just trying to basically sell you 2, 3, 4, $500 worth lobster. Right. We did a list building in Meta that says, go sign up for my text messages and you'll receive two free lobster tails if you spend more than $100. We're like, okay, that's a pretty good deal. So I get two free lobster tails. I'm just trying to get lobster for cheap. But if you're going to give me two free tails on an order worth over $100 and you're putting your money where Your mouth is. Look at our first click attributed sales. We have $300,000 in sales with 235 new customers coming from SMS. I'm just using Meta as list building right now. Yeah. So no John.
Ralph Burns
No John. It's attentive that's getting all those customers for you.
John Moran
First click, text message.
Ralph Burns
First click.
John Moran
First click, text message. Thanks. Attribution, please. All. When you look at attribution, if you just turn that into gospel, you're gonna have a bad time. Well, I should say this. If you're looking at attribution as gospel, AI could do that. So please don't try to put yourself in a position that can be replaced by AI also being wrong.
Ralph Burns
Oh, my God, it's so true. Well, that's what we're trying to teach people here on this channel and on this show is to look at the broader view and how all the channels work together. And Andromeda is amazing. Do I have that Creative diversification playbook? I know I do. I need to show that around.
John Moran
You actually sent it to me.
Ralph Burns
I sent it to you.
John Moran
Did I really? Yeah. You're like, hey, man, we just got this. I was like, yes.
Ralph Burns
Because it's actually. That's the title of it. Is the content Diversification Playbook?
John Moran
I think it's Meta. I think it's the practitioner guide. Yeah. Creative Diversification Playbook Dash. Practitioner guidance. Yep.
Ralph Burns
Yeah. All right. I'll have to find it. I said that to you. I keep showing him, like, you know, your 10 ads thing and like the conference and Iceland, everyone's like, yeah, he's making that up.
John Moran
I'm like, he's not making it up. I know. That's why I love. It is. It's so beautiful when all of our competitions, like, I don't believe it. We're like, yes. You know what? Keep thinking that.
Ralph Burns
Keep thinking that. We actually got it from Meta, which is crazy.
John Moran
So I know.
Ralph Burns
All right. Hope you enjoyed this week's show. We're going to continue to do this. Take the best episodes from our ad labs, bring those over to perpetual traffic, put them on our YouTube channel so you can actually see what's going on. This stuff isn't theory. We're actually doing it. We're spending our own money. John, when he first started doing this, just as a brief background, when Andromeda first started taking place the end of 2024, he has a bunch of his own private businesses. He tested it out with his own money to start before we started utilizing it, before we started deploying it inside tier 11. And that's why this whole thing works so well. We're not testing new strategies, you know, on client accounts. We're testing it on our own businesses, some of which are John and my businesses actually together. So that's how we do things here. And that's why we can bring you this type of content every single week with real case studies, real usage. We're not just talking theory, we're actually doing this and getting amazing results. So if you enjoy this show, make sure that you leave a comment, leave a rating, a review. We'd love to have your feedback and help us get out to a wider audience to teach people how to do this stuff the right way. The right way, not the way that we used to do it back in 2015 and 2016, 2017, 2018, like how we do it today in 2025 and going into 2026. And you leave us a rating and review, we can pass that learning along to more marketers out there and help them grow and scale their business and using metrics that matter and growth that scales. So on behalf of my amazing co host, Lauren E. Petrillo, who couldn't make it on this show, but on behalf of John Moran, who was on this show, until next show, see ya.
John Moran
You've been listening to Perpetual Traffic.
Podcast: Perpetual Traffic
Host: Ralph Burns (Tier 11)
Guest: John Moran
Episode: 3 Mind-Boggling Ways Triple Whale Is Screwing Your Business
Date: October 17, 2025
This episode delves into critical issues with third-party attribution platforms—specifically Triple Whale—and how they can misrepresent your marketing performance, sometimes missing up to a quarter of your actual revenue. Ralph and John use real client case studies to demonstrate these pitfalls, contrasting Triple Whale’s data loss with more accurate methods like direct back-end reporting (Shopify, Lifetimely) and modern attribution strategies (Tier 11 Data Suite, Meta's Andromeda model). The episode also covers game-changing advances in creative diversification recommended by Meta, and gives actionable advice for CMOs, media buyers, and business owners aiming to scale profitably, measure what actually matters, and outmaneuver misleading analytics.
The episode’s tone is direct, expert, and practical—Ralph and John are clear that marketing success in 2025 is about actionable data, ruthless creative testing, and getting out of attribution quicksand. If you want to improve your real marketing ROI, stop wasting money on bad attribution software, and finally scale with the strategies insiders are using, this episode is a must-hear (or, thanks to this summary, must-implement).