The Future of Media Buying: John Moran on cAPI Imports + Edge Tagging (Part 1)

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Future of Media Buying — John Moran on cAPI Imports + Edge Tagging (Part 1)

Podcast: Perpetual Traffic
Hosts: Ralph Burns (Tier 11), John Moran (Guest, Data & Attribution Expert)
Date: September 30, 2025
Length Covered: [01:02]–[32:05]
Episode Focus: Exploring cutting-edge strategies for solving the attribution gap in digital advertising by leveraging cAPI imports, edge tagging, and creative diversification in the face of evolving tracking limitations on Meta and Google.

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Ralph Burns sits down with John Moran live at Growth Hacking Live in San Diego to dive deep into advanced strategies for resolving the growing disconnect between advertising platforms and true business results. The discussion focuses on the shift from platform-based metrics to business-aligned goals through new technologies: specifically, first-click edge tagging and cAPI (Conversions API) imports. The episode also examines how marketers can regain control over attribution, optimize for new customer acquisition, and properly align ad platform algorithms with real business objectives—despite privacy changes and black-box reporting.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Attribution Disconnect: Why Platform Metrics No Longer Tell the Whole Story

• The Problem:
  Traditional digital ad strategies once relied on fine-grained campaign targeting and manual tracking, segmenting new vs. returning customers and remarketing across channels. With the rise of auto-bidding, auto-targeting, and “blended” campaign types on Meta and Google, these distinctions have vanished—making “just counting a sale” insufficient for business growth ([05:30]).
• The Manual Approach Is Dead:
  “What Meta or Google is measuring now is completely disconnected [from business goals].” – John Moran ([01:02])
• Black Box Effect:
  Modern platforms “will pat themselves on the back” for conversions they didn’t truly generate, using opaque attribution models and wide-reaching pixels/tags ([10:28–11:28]).

Real-World Impact: The Results from Adopting These Strategies

• Stunning CPA Decreases:
  Burns shares data from a Tier 11 client—a beauty brand dropping cost per acquisition (CPA) for new customers from ~$26–$27 down to under $7 by implementing the discussed methodology ([01:10], [04:22–05:23], [28:01–28:33]).
• Alignment Is Key:
  Moran emphasizes only counting conversions that fit specific business criteria (e.g., “brown shoes in size 12 in New York”), thus realigning platform reporting with true company priorities ([05:30], [09:19–10:41]).

The Solution: First-Click Edge Tagging & cAPI Imports

• Core Approach Defined:
  • First-Click: Count only conversions originating with a verified first click from a specific platform/campaign/ad ([15:49], [17:36]).
  • Edge Tagging: Track user identity and source before a visitor even reaches the site, circumventing cookie consent and ad-blockers, for maximum data fidelity ([15:49–17:36]).
  • cAPI Imports: Directly import verified conversion events back to Meta/Google, but only those that meet business-defined criteria (e.g., real new customers, specific products), rather than simply tallying all purchases ([17:36], [19:09]).
• Analogy:
  “We tag them in the parking lot before they get into the store.” – John Moran ([17:36])
• Flexibility:
  Marketers can define conversions as narrowly as they wish—by SKU, customer type, or any other business indicator—granting precision absent from standard platform reports ([14:20–19:09]).

Platform Limitations and the Challenge of Model Data

• Platforms Attribute Everything:
  Both Meta and Google can claim credit for sales and leads from any channel, training algorithms on outcomes they did not influence ([10:28–13:10]).
• Model Data Explained:
  While Meta and Google extrapolate results using modelled (not measurable) data, this creates a “disconnect” for media buyers who see different realities in ad dashboards versus actual bank accounts ([11:28–13:10], [31:14–32:05]).
• False Attribution:
  “The conversions are training an algorithm to repeat an action it was never responsible for in the first place.” – John Moran ([11:28])

Content Diversification & the Future of Creative Optimization

• Shift from Targeting to Creative:
  Creative assets—not targeting hacks—now drive differentiation and campaign results as platform algorithms take over, making unified concepts and nomenclature critical ([20:36–23:56]).
• Attribution on Clicks Despite View-Based Platforms:
  With over half of Meta’s engagement now happening on Reels (which usually don’t drive clicks), Moran explains that directional attribution must rely on click data for apples-to-apples measurement—even if it means evaluating concepts on a small % of all impressions ([19:56–24:36]).
• Directional Testing:
  “As long as we’re congruent in our messaging across all platforms, now we’re testing real marketing again rather than letting the data-driven attribution dictate the success of our company.” – John Moran ([23:56])

Training the Algorithm: Why Cleaner Data Means Better Optimization

• Retraining for Real Growth:
  By importing only the “correct” conversions (those aligned with business goals), you retrain the Meta/Google algorithm to scale only actions that matter ([25:27], [26:39]).
• Reassurance:
  “We just know that it works…and in the source of truth (Shopify, CRM)…we see sales of new customers. It’s the correlation.” – Ralph Burns ([19:09])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Defining the Problem:

  “Just counting a sale is not enough anymore. Not enough to scale.”
  — John Moran ([01:22], [05:30])

• On Platform Attribution:

  "Meta and Google will be able to identify and also attribute anything that they would like to themselves, even without having a click take place.” — John Moran ([11:28])

• On Algorithm Training:

  “The conversions are training an algorithm to repeat an action it was never responsible for in the first place.” — John Moran ([11:28])

• First-Click Edge Tag Analogy:

  “We tag them in the parking lot before they get into the store.” — John Moran ([17:36])

• Result Summary:

  “…when did you guys start doing capi imports? …26 and then it was like 27, then all of a sudden it was 24 and then it was 20 and then…down to $6.73 as of last week.” — Ralph Burns ([28:01–28:33])

• On Model Data:

  "If you're going to import it to me, I'll take credit for it. So it can count everything, even if it didn't come from that channel." — John Moran ([29:08–31:14])

• Strategic Payoff:

  “As long as the metric I care about is the only thing [Meta/Google] can count…that’s the difference.” — John Moran ([29:08])

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• [01:02] – State of attribution: disconnect between Meta/Google metrics and business results.
• [04:22] – Real case: cutting CPA from $27 to $7.
• [05:30] – Why the old ways no longer work; campaign structure changes.
• [09:19] – The problem with using platform exclusions and not going granular.
• [10:28] – Black-box attribution and loss of business-driven measurement.
• [11:28] – Platforms taking undue credit and the need for new tracking guardrails.
• [13:10] – Technology overview: edge tagging & cAPI imports.
• [15:49] – Technical explanation for marketers: tagging on the “edge,” avoiding cookie consent issues.
• [17:36] – “Tagging in the parking lot” analogy.
• [19:09] – Why correlations with Shopify and CRM data prove the method is working.
• [19:56] – The challenge of attribution when clicks are decreasing (esp. Reels).
• [20:36] – How creative strategy and concepts become the new “targeting.”
• [23:56] – Clicks as a directional metric across all platforms for fair testing.
• [25:27] – How this approach retrains ad algorithms for true growth.
• [28:01] – Case study: timeline of CPA reduction after cAPI imports.
• [29:08] – Why it takes time for new data to optimize platform delivery.
• [31:14] – False attributions and how model data creates misleading results.
• [32:04] – (Episode ends; teaser for Part 2)

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Flow and Tone

Ralph and John maintain a practical, candid, and solution-oriented tone throughout, regularly referencing in-the-trenches experiences, evolving challenges in digital ad attribution, and actionable solutions for marketers and agencies. Their nerdy enthusiasm for data is matched with real-world empathy for marketers struggling with misleading platform reporting and the pressing need for accurate, scalable attribution.

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In Summary

This episode delivers a masterclass on why the old ways of media buying have become obsolete, how first-click edge tag technology and cAPI imports can finally bridge the attribution gap, and why aligning ad platforms’ optimization signals with true business outcomes (like new customer acquisition) is the new gold standard for advanced paid marketers. The strategies shared offer a clear roadmap—complete with analogies and data-backed case studies—demonstrating how to reclaim control over paid media spend, optimize ad platform algorithms for what truly grows a business, and pave the way for reliable media scaling in the post-cookie era.

For a deeper dive, catch Part 2 of the conversation and visit the resources over at perpetualtraffic.com.

Transcript

[Ralph Burns]

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[John Morin]

This campaign will go after new customers, this campaign will go after returning customers. What Meta or Google is measuring now is completely disconnected.

[Ralph Burns]

One of our larger beauty accounts was getting about a 26 to $27 CPA it cost to acquire a new customer and now it's down to under seven using the strategy. How are we getting these kind of results and what's the key role?

[John Morin]

Just counting a sale is not enough anymore. Not enough to scale. And so what we' doing is.

[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 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 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, the founder and CEO of Tier 11 alongside not Lauren Petrulo as here guest. This is actually John Morin in the flesh. I know, I can't believe it. He's like sitting here we are in San Diego, obviously a beautiful view, the San Diego Bay here. We're here for growth. Hacking live. John's going to be speaking in a couple of hours and we just grabbed him and say, come on Perpetual Traffic, give us a little preview of what you're going to be talking about here. Great conference so far hosted by our friend Qasem Aslam. Perpetual Traffic listeners will obviously know who that is. The former co host here. But John, great to have you. First off, we just plucked you out of the crowd and said come on upstairs and let's record. Usually it's me and you in two different locations. You doing lots of screen sharing, which is some of our best episodes. And obviously we'll leave some of the most popular episodes in the show [e-mail] of course. But today you're going to be talking about a lot of the things that we talk about every single week on our Ad Lab series on YouTube 2:30 Every week, every Friday. I don't know if it's going to be this week, but traveling. But Anyway, every week 2:30 Eastern over on YouTube at the Cheerleven YouTube channel. Yeah, yeah, Fridays, a lot of fun. We always do that. But today you're going to be talking about all of those things that we discuss. But you actually have sort of a name for it now.

[John Morin]

Workable name.

[Ralph Burns]

A workable name. We've been talking about it like content diversification, capi imports, you know, obviously tier 11 data suite. Summarize for people who maybe have not had the opportunity to see any of those lives. Yeah, like what exactly are you doing between Meta and Google to get the great results? And one of the results I texted you yesterday is that our team is super ecstatic about this, is that one of our larger beauty accounts was getting about a 26 to $27 NCAC or what we used to call a CPA, a cost to acquire a new customer. And now it's down to under seven using this strategy. So for 26 to seven and now it's a matter of scaling and their NCAC target I believe is 10 or 12. So this, these are like amazing results. Even like our growth strategist Cole is like, I can't believe this works as well as it does. So Spildigger is like explaining, sort of in theory, without the ability to screen share here. I know, I know you love to do that, but it's probably easier.

[John Morin]

It's like a speech impediment, I know.

[Ralph Burns]

Just to talk through it. So what exactly is it? How are we getting these kind of results and what's the key role?

[John Morin]

I think for the main point that can kind of put your mind into the right frame of understanding is to know that we've been evolving in the digital media from before. What we had our targeting, we had our ads. We chose the demographics, the psychographics, the geographics. It was very manual. And we were able to attract people that we want to attract with our ads through the paid media platforms, whether it be Google or Meta. And that has since changed gradually. It's like the frog in boiling water where we don't really feel it until we take a step back and say, wow, the landscape has really changed. And what has changed into is auto targeting, auto bidding. The remarketing has kind of been rolled in. The prospecting has kind of been rolled in all down into more singular campaigns. So we had massive amount of granularity. It wasn't really important to track new versus returning or track omnichannel traffic. Which means my meta is going to remarket Google traffic and our Google is going to remarket meta traffic. You can set that up as a campaign. Remember, RLSA is a remarking list for search ads. You're like, if they've been to our site and if they came from Google and if they look at this product, they're going to see this ad, right? That's all gone now. They've eroded it piece by piece. Because of that, we have now had to rethink the way that we're optimizing for results. Just counting ac sale is not enough anymore, not enough to scale. And so what we're doing is we're changing what has been counted as simply a sale to something more specific where if it's a company goal or is that campaign goal. We used to say this campaign will go after new customers, this campaign will go after returning customers, right? And now that they're combined into one, people still don't necessarily optimize differently. They still put in the ads, they still crank up the ad spend. But what they're measuring as a growth of their business versus what Meta or Google is measuring now is completely disconnected. Because when Google and Meta have Merged the targeting and the tracking. Now that they merged everything kind of into one like Meta or Google merged everything into one I. E. Performance max and demand gen. Now if every platform is counting simply a lead and or a sale, your goal for your company is now disconnected from, from what Meta and Google think. And now Meta and Google will think something's happening and maybe pat themselves on the back. Yeah, but what we're measuring outside of Google and Meta, like I need more new customers, I need to sell more shoes, I need to sell the brown shoes, I need more subscriptions, I need more subscriptions on this product and if they like that, I can then sell them this product. All that cannot be achieved by just counting a purchase. And so I believe that the introduction of third party metrics, Wicked reports, North Beam High Roast, Triple Whale, all of those have come out as a, to try to deliver more clarity as to what the black box is doing. But we haven't really taken an approach to can we change the black box or can we influence the black box differently? And so that's, that's what the kind of what we call first click edge tagged customer imports is doing is we are only allowing those platforms to count what we allow them to count because that is aligned with our business model. Any more new customers only allowed to count. The customers need more new subscribers only count new subscribers. You need more sales of the brown shoes in size 12 in New York, then that is only going to count the sales of the brown shoes in size 12 in New York so that you, the business owner or the agency and Meta and Google are now aligned in your goals. I think that's the biggest thing is if Google Meta thinks everything is normal and operating fine and you're panicking, you know, you're not. You can't even pick up the phone and call Google and be like what are you doing? It thinks it's doing well. It's a machine.

[Ralph Burns]

Right, right. The, the, the big question that I get is well, if I just put in exclusions inside my Meta campaigns then I'm fine. I take out my, you know, all my previous customers or all my previous visitors, like my non warm traffic and I want to target cold traffic and then I install the event which is purchase and you know, it seems like I'm doing pretty well. Like my Meta ads platform or Facebook ads manager looks pretty good. However, when I check Shopify and my bank account there might be sort of a slightly different story. So and explaining this to people, it was actually I was on a call with a client Yesterday where I was explaining this, it's like the platforms themselves are, are unto themselves are not accurate. You have to take sort of the next step of granularity. And this is this cappy import edge tag technology plus content diversification, which is a whole other thing which you're sort of like trying to name here. But like that's where you actually get the real source of truth. Because at the end of the day, marketing is about acquiring new customers and growing businesses.

[John Morin]

Right, Right. Yeah.

[Ralph Burns]

And the platforms themselves will say, hey, we're doing great. I know we've talked about this hundreds of times on our lives, when in actuality it's not moving any metrics, like business metrics for the business forward.

[John Morin]

Right.

[Ralph Burns]

And that's really the big change right now. And that's what this breakthrough is all about.

[John Morin]

Yeah. The way that I've been thinking about it or trying to explain it, and this is actually on the, on the presentation today is, is a picture of cloud and the cloud is the website traffic that your, your brand has. So you have this kind of like cloud over your website and there is traffic coming from all channels. You have direct, you have organic, you have email, you have influencer, you have Google, you have Meta, you have TikTok, you have Pinterest, you have everything and it's all going into one area called your website. And then that cloud has traffic flowing in and out. Now if you take meta as an example and you just kind of slap it over top, Meta, like the remarketing will, will be covering all of that cloud. And then on Google you have another kind of overlay that is on top of meta is the same size that also covers that entire cloud.

[Ralph Burns]

Right.

[John Morin]

So meta and Google will be able to identify and also attribute anything that they would like to themselves, even without having a click take place. And so when you think, well, my bank account is disconnected from my meta account or my bank account's disconnected from my, my Google Ads account, it's sort of not because it is attributing to itself like those metrics are correct, you did have all of those sales, they just didn't come from there. And what that is doing inside of the ecosystem that is meta or Google, and I say this as a, as a kind of a quote, it is the conversions are training an algorithm to repeat an action it was never responsible for in the first place. And that is what is causing the disconnect between I can't scale, I crank up ad spend, but I don't really see more net new with more Ad spend, it will attribute more because it can. It's running longer in the day or is running more often during that day. So the metrics will go up, but that's just because it's counting more of the activity you already have. So every dollar you put in means it can attribute to itself another sale. So you think, wow, look at my scale. But it's not actually happening. And that's because the meta remarketing essentially the pixel or Google Ads, the tag sees all traffic from all sources and can take a take credit through their model data and their attribution model to say you've had 58 sales today and it came from this campaign. Well, did they click? No. Did they start there? No. Was it a new customer? No. Okay, so that's where everything simply being counted as an event but not having the guardrails of is it new? Did it come from you? And did they even engage in the ad from a click perspective? That's, that's what people just assume happen and that's where it breaks down. Right, right.

[Ralph Burns]

Explain from a technical standpoint like what this kind of does without getting too in the weeds because this is this edge tag technology and obviously you can learn more about like the 211 data suite and just the edge tag technology over at two11.com forward/datasuite. But there are other ways in which to work this. Like we figured it out through a company called Blood Out. We obviously use Wicked reports. We have our own data warehouse. We're capturing basically the click and the data on the edge without it being blocked by all The Privacy Blockers, iOS 14 and all the other ones that have come out since then, ad blockers, you name it. But this capi import thing that we've been talking about is a, is kind of a separate as a. Is a new animal here. And it really gets even more granular where you can, if let's say you have 10 SKUs, you can target specific SKUs, not just a purchase event. But this is like the old custom conversion way back when when you know, Facebook and Meta first started. But it's like it's to the next level and then you can granularity. You can actually target new customers versus returning customers specifically.

[John Morin]

Oh yeah.

[Ralph Burns]

And that's where the key is. And then you can actually see the breakdown. It's never going to be 100% new customers. There's always going to be some return customers in that. But explain like how that all works. Yeah. Technically without getting too in the weeds because most of the people that are listening are directors of marketing and marketers and probably not like development people. So if you're an in house marketer, you're an agency focused on digital marketing and CRO. Unbounce is the solution that we recommend over here at tier 11 and unbounce perpetual traffic. First off, you can build, experiment and optimize your landing pages in a single platform. You can build pages in record time with the drag and drop builder using conversion optimized templates and you get full control of the experimentation process which I remember when I was first starting using Unbounce I was amazed at how easy the AB tracker is. So you can get insights for all this stuff all in one platform. Improve your marketing ROI without additional ad spender resources by using AI as well, it automatically routes visitors to your best performing variant. Now for you specifically, the perpetual traffic listener Unbounce is offering you 10% off when you enter the coupon code PT10OFF. Head on over to their page Specifically for you, the perpetual traffic listener [e-mail] PT Enter the code PT10OFF and get 10% off. Start building your landing pages fast and convert more customers today with Unbounce.

[John Morin]

So I guess, well I'll simplify the overview first before going too technical is we only allow meta and Google to count is did it come from that channel? Is it actually a click in that channel and is it the first click? Because that is a repeatable scalable action. Did it come from that channel by a click? Yes. Is it the first time they've ever visited my site? Yes. So now we know that the conversion that we're tracking had to have actually come from that campaign and that ad set and that ad, there's no question about it, it it start there. So that's that was the first thing we had to cover is did it actually come from there? Yes, that's first click. So in the first click edge tag imports that's the first click portion. Now edge tag basically means that we are tagging a user on the way to the website, not after they've been on the website and had something load afterwards. GA4 actually now this is in Google's literature, GA4 will not actually count a session user visitor, nothing that will be completed completely blank if they didn't hit accept all cookies. So GA4 will not. I was on a call with Google this morning. They confirmed it. I they gave me the transcript of of the message and everything. It's actually on in some of their literature. So for example, if you're importing GA4 events into Google and someone didn't even click Consent mode of. Yes. That metric is not even visible. So edge tag means before we hit the privacy issues, before we hit, you know, consent mode, before we have ad blockers that are gonna, they're gonna stop the tracking on the website. It's being tagged on the way from the actual domain. Yeah. So when they're connecting to the WWW from anywhere on the way to the host, which is where your website lives. As it gets like in the car on the way, we like, you know, take a picture of them. Now we know who they are and because they were connecting to the website, we know where they were from.

[Ralph Burns]

So you gave a great analogy on this. Once I'm going to use about the store and the parking lot.

[John Morin]

We tag them in the parking lot before they get into the store. Right, Right, Yep. And so now we have first click. We know where it actually came from. Edge tag, which means the data is very, very clean. I mean, the cleanest and purest that we can actually get it with the technology that we have today is we can't get any more accurate. Yeah. And now the imports, those are what we're trying to achieve as a conversion event in that campaign. So it could be anything that we, we want. I mean, you can label these things essentially anything you want. You can say, I need to have, you know, a new customer or I need to count a conversion as a returning customer. You can even actually, since we know where the data is, we can count conversions in Google that says did they actually come from Google or do they come from Meta first? So we can even separate out. Google had 100 conversions today that came from Google and 127, because 27 of those actually started on Facebook. We can get extremely granular. We can also see what is actually being purchased. So I need a new customer of a product or I need a returning customer of this product because it might be a cross seller upsell. So anything that you want to track as a goal where you're allowing Google or Meta to pat themselves on the back because that number is going up, you get to decide what that is now. So not just a purchase because it might be a new returning might come from a different channel, may not even have have actually had a click on it. But when you say I need to have it make sure it came from Google, I need to make sure the data is clean and I need Google and Meta to actually optimize off of what I want them to optimize, which is My business goal that is now first Click Edge Tech Capi Imports. Got it.

[Ralph Burns]

All we know is that it works and, and accordingly in the. In the source of truth, which is the CRM and or inside Shopify. Let's use that as an example. In an E commerce store, we see sales of new customers. It's like the correlation. And once again we'll do. We have hundreds of. Well, maybe not hundreds, multiple dozens of shows. Over at the Tier 11 YouTube channel for myself and John on the ad lab that we do every single Friday where we go through screen shares of all this sort of stuff. Though I was at a meta conference last week and this was an interesting thing and I actually had this question asked me this week. I don't know if I answered it correctly, so I'm going to ask it to you. Is it for Millennials and Gen Z, the majority of the ads and. Or the content that they view does.

[John Morin]

Not have a click. Yeah.

[Ralph Burns]

So accordingly, 50 to 60% of the content now that's actually being viewed on the meta platform is on reels.

[John Morin]

Yeah.

[Ralph Burns]

Which usually does not have a click, but it has a view. So if you are showing and we're doing, you know, the way in which you set up a campaign is one campaign, one ad set and then lots of different pieces of content which we can talk about oftentimes. A lot of that content, a lot of those ads, when they're shown, there is no click. What do you do there? And how do you sort of, how do you mesh the source of truth with the actual ad platform in order to know which ads, what type of content is resonating with the audience?

[John Morin]

Yeah. So this actually ties into two parts that I think is actually, that answers the other question is how what are we doing on Google and Meta and how are we tying those together? What we have to look at is this is now more of a function of the media buyer. So the media buyer who's in charge of Google or Meta is making very specific decisions and typically it's by cpa. You know what has the best row as well as the best cpa. Yep. Now what we have to look at is your targeting is actually at the creative level and it's actually the same thing for performance. Max and demand Gen is still the creative level. So if you're thinking about, well, if my meta, my Google, my reels, my stories, my, you know, YouTube, my shorts, my everything is at the creative level, then we have to find consistency and congruency and not only are execution but also our nomenclature. So if we're looking at a, I'll give you a, give us an example. Like you have a remarkable tab here and this thing is a really, really cool, remarkable tab. Now there is a few different concepts that we can try to use to sell this. So green, that's gonna be one of them. So no more paper. Like you don't actually have to cut down trees and you're better for the environment. So that's a concept. And now that concept is going to be executed between meta and YouTube, you know, Google and Meta Meta as an example. And that concept is going to be tested in a few different variations. You're going to have to have you know your stories, you're going to have to have your feed items, you're going to have to have your YouTube shorts, you're going to have to disseminate those creatives across all of the platforms. And when you're using your click attributed conversions, which is what we import, you're going to see some pretty terrible CPAs because only if you think about it, if you have a 3% click through rate, 97% of the people out of a hundred cannot be tracked. Right? So those CPAs look really, really horrible. Plus as their only new customers it's going to even look worse inside the platform. Right? So the way that we look at the data is now much different. We know it's fragmented but we also know that it's highly directionable. So if we are saying okay, our first concept is the green concept, how is that doing? We have X amount of ad spend in an X amount of sales in and it's coming in at a specific cost, require first time customer and the amount of customers. Okay, now let's try a different concept. The other one is going to be how it's thin and lightweight. So no, no longer carrying this big ream of paper and going through 75 pages and losing things. It has a table of content. It's thin, it's light, it's sleek, it's sexy and it's, it's easy to carry around with you. Okay, so that's another concept. So that is now in addition to, we have that ads, those ads are created, it's delineated and then it is going to be measured as well. So if we're looking at hyper specifically, yeah, it's going to be messed up because people are watching content. But I still do believe that people are going to be clicking on ads. I don't think that that's going to be ever something that's going to Go away. It will absolutely be reduced. But the flip side to that is with less ad clicks simply be. Simply have to be okay with a higher in platform CPA or a lower platform roas. But if our sales are increasing and the cost require first time customer globally is. Is being acquired and we're testing different concepts over time and comparing those concepts. We're still measuring Apple Stapples because well, people only clicked on this half the time of just one concept half the time and then the other concept they click maybe a little bit more, maybe a little bit less. But we have to measure those congruently. But as long as we're congruent in our messaging across all platforms now we're testing real marketing again rather than letting the data driven attribution dictate the success of our company.

[Ralph Burns]

So you're using, you're assuming that the concept like green versus lightweight not carrying around a stack of paper like basically two different ideas to sell the concept of a remarkable two. Those ads that have those concepts, some are going to have a lot of views, obviously a lot of impressions. But then you're still using the clicks as the proxy as to whether or not even if it's a very small portion overall it might be maybe 10% of the actual views of the ad might be a click. You're still using the click as the source of truth as the to say, all right, green is working better than thin light and not carrying around a ream of paper.

[John Morin]

Right.

[Ralph Burns]

Like these two concepts selling this, you know this product actually done a podcast like you know how they actually sold me? It's really sponsored by sponsor. They're remarkable too. They're watching. They should be a sponsor of the show. We talk about it enough. Focus on marketing strategy, not marketing setup. ActiveCampaigns AI agents orchestrate your marketing through 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 [e-mail] so that idea of no click, you're still using the click as your directional, you know, piece of data to say okay, this is an ad that resonates. I need more of that or I need less of it or whatever it is. That's true.

[John Morin]

You say okay, that concept is working. Is it working on TikTok? Is working on YouTube shorts? Is it working on horizontal? Is it working on reels? Is it working on stories? Is it working on feeds? I Doubt. You're going to have two different concepts that do a perfect 50, 50 equal split. You're going to have it leaning one way or leaning the other way more often. And so I do believe that you're going to see as you, as you take the data and you kind of, you know, distill it down to just what, what happened on all the platforms in these two different concepts, you're going to find a winner. But I think the bigger picture in the click imports is what we're attempting to do not only be able to measure but to also retrain the algorithm. So the pixel and the tag are going to want to do whatever they want to do and that's the bad part. So if we can train it off of fewer clicks than it would normally be used to train it will train it on a repeatable action. So it found a user, they clicked and then they purchased. Excellent. You start to scale up the ad spend now we have two clicks and two new customers. You scale up the Aspen. I got three clicks. What is happening though in the back end of that algorithm is it's hitting the right audience more often, but you also have the right audience seeing those ads more often even if they're not clicking.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah.

[John Morin]

So you're still benefiting on. I'm hitting the right target and I'm, I don't need to have my CPA drop. I just need this thing to scale without increasing my ncac. Yeah. So if it's, if the targeted audience is clicking less but watching more and still buying, there is only one rule that that thing has to follow is those new customers better continually go up. Yeah. And so that's where we look at things as a media buyer differently. And sometimes an $800 CPA can have a $50 cost per acquired first time customer. Great. If I scale it up, does 800 stay 800? Well, it may go to 800 to 900. My cost to acquire a first time Customer might be 50, maybe goes up to 55, but it's repeatable and it's controllable and it is something that is very reliable.

[Ralph Burns]

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's one of the, I mean I've been doing this for 15 years. You've been doing it for just as long. It's like this is one of the biggest breakthroughs I think we've seen on the platforms.

[John Morin]

Oh yeah. Would you, I mean 100.

[Ralph Burns]

I hate saying these sorts of things because it's like hyperbolic and I start to sound like Casa Muslim. Like everything is the Best in the world, the most brilliant, whatever. We just saw him on stage.

[John Morin]

But watching on stage is halfway like, like a magic trick.

[Ralph Burns]

Magic trick. It totally is. Yeah. It's a parlor trick.

[John Morin]

You pull data out of a hat. I'm like, wow, wow. How did the data get in there?

[Ralph Burns]

He does it so convincingly and so persuasively. The point is, is like, this is true. It really is like a big, big deal.

[John Morin]

Yeah.

[Ralph Burns]

And you know, in the example that I texted you yesterday, I was like, I looked at the data, I said, well, when did you guys do the. Start doing capi imports? He said, well, it was around August 1st. So sure enough, I went through the weekly report. So 26 and then it was like 27, then all of a sudden it was 24 and then it was 20 and then it was maybe back to 21 and then it was down to 17, then it went to 12, then it went to 10, then it's going to 8 and then it was $6.73 as of last week.

[John Morin]

Yeah.

[Ralph Burns]

And that is the cost to acquire a new customer. So it took about a month, month and a half. As we're sitting here today in the middle of September.

[John Morin]

Yeah.

[Ralph Burns]

And you know, a credit to our team because they've obviously they've been, you know, they've been listening to you and.

[John Morin]

This is hard, it's hard to do.

[Ralph Burns]

Because those first couple of weeks, you know, the client was like, what are you guys doing? Like, CPAs don't really seem to, they still talk in CPA language. We talk about as you know, cost to acquire a new customer language. Anyway, be that as it may. Set that aside. The point is, is like, it does take a while for the algorithm to start working.

[John Morin]

We think about it like imagine taking a test. The only grade that will ever be visible is an A. Now if you answer 10 questions and what is your grade? It's null. Do it again. Okay. And all of a sudden as soon as they do it again. Now once they get it right, you get the A. That's essentially what we're doing is meta and Google are complete closed off ecosystems. They know more about the people than we ever can. They, they claim 70 million signals on a, on a user, which is what Google says. Yep. They're having, you know, search, shopping, YouTube, G speed, Discover, display, just all in performance max. There's massive engines that are extremely powerful. And as long as we say you're allowed to pat yourself on the back and continually do so, and I'll give you even more money and you can pat yourself on the back harder as long as the metric that I, the only metric that I care about is the only thing that they can count. And that's, that's the difference is if it's like, hey, I got 50 sales. Like, well, what, what happened? Well, we, we did an email blast for our 4th of July event and we had 50 sales and Meta's like, yeah, that was all me. That doesn't happen anymore. Like that can happen now. If we think about this in a media buyer or in a, in a paid media channel perspective, it can attribute pretty much anything that's happening. We ran a test where we in, we imported a hundred conversions that never came from Facebook and all 100 of those showed up in Facebook, but they just came under the one day view, which means we don't have a click. We're not sure where it happened. But our model data is only missing data from probably due to regulatory regulations. So if you're going to import it to me, I'll take credit for it. So it can count everything, even if it didn't come from that channel. Think about your cost caps. So I need to have a conversion that is coming underneath $100. Well, if you do a text blast early in the morning, you can meet that cost cap and that goal even before the ad spend turns on Y. So as long as it's counting everything that's happening anyway and spending your money to do so, you're basically now using a platform like, I'll pay you a hundred dollars to just repeat what my Shopify data says. Right. It's already did its job today. It, it closed the shop, went home and fell asleep before the ad started. Like, that's, before the ad spend started. That's, that's the disconnect. And because it can count everything and will count everything, the ad spend and your results are now disconnected. Yeah, this reconnects.

[Ralph Burns]

That's fascinating. The. One of the other big questions that I always get is, and I've, we've been at this conference for two days now and this always comes up like, you guys talk about model data all the time. Explain that sort of in layman's terms on the meta and probably on the Google side, because people say, well, you know, I look in my Meta and it looks like, looks like everything's accurate.

[John Morin]

Yeah.

[Ralph Burns]

And I said, well, part of that, a large part is models, because the AI algorithm, the algorithm for meta is so good. They're saying, all right, if these six people did this, then we're going to extrapolate that these other six people did the same thing. So is it that simple, or what's your take on model data? How do you explain it to people?

[John Morin]

Yeah, and I've. I've learned a lot about the model data this last two months, and basically just by changing.

[Ralph Burns]

Hey, Please stay tuned for part two of this episode by subscribing to this show so you don't miss the golden nuggets. To help you with metrics that matter and actually scale your business, you've been listening to Perpetual Traffic.