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Analytics

Why last-click ROAS makes every channel look profitable

The short answer
Last-click ROAS assigns full credit for a conversion to the final touchpoint, so paid search claims demand that organic and paid social created. Blended CAC — total acquisition spend divided by total new customers — is the only acquisition figure that cannot be inflated by attribution choices.

S. Whitfield

Performance Director

8 min

Last-click ROAS assigns full credit for a conversion to the final touchpoint, so paid search claims demand that organic and paid social created. Blended CAC — total acquisition spend divided by total new customers — is the only acquisition figure that cannot be inflated by attribution choices.

Why this comes up so often

In United States, this question tends to surface at the point where a business has outgrown its first marketing setup but has not yet built the measurement discipline to know what to change. The instinct is to add another channel. The more useful move is usually to establish a defensible baseline first.

What good looks like

  • Every claim states its timeframe, baseline and attribution method
  • Decisions are documented, including the ones that turned out wrong
  • Leading indicators are reported between the lagging ones
  • Underperformance is raised the month it happens, not at quarter end

Where to start

Document what you currently believe to be true, then check it. In our experience roughly a third of what a business assumes about its own funnel does not survive that exercise — and finding out early is considerably cheaper than finding out after a year of optimising the wrong constraint.

Frequently asked

How do we apply this in our own business?

Start by documenting your current baseline before changing anything. Most of the value in this approach comes from being able to prove what changed and why.

Analytics

Apply this to your own situation

We will work out which part of this is actually relevant to your constraint — and which part is not.