DAM: What the F is it?
You'll want to know.
As we progress ever so closer to the promised land this week, I wanted to get a quick micro post out and address DAM or Delayed Attribution Multiplier, when it comes to FB Ads.
I’m also probably going to ride this Micro Post wave. It’s kind of fun. One chunky newsletter a month with some tasty micro-posts in between.
And… that was me typing out loud…
Anyway, hopefully, this can provide another layer of data and insight this Holiday season that you can act upon to… make more money!
I’ll keep it short for everyone and toss in a word from Andrew Foxwell and Nicholas Kneuper.
First, how are you doing? Is your mind right going into this weekend?
Good!
After 7-years of this rodeo, I’m pumped for another one!
I can’t wait to see the wins when I check back in next week.
Alright, alright. Back to DAM.
Andrew, can you pop in some advice here real quick?
“Ensuring you have an open conversation about DAM in Q4 is absolutely huge for you and your clients.
Facebook has the ability to track longer tail conversions and while you may not want to take credit for all those, it's important that you have a conversation with your team and your clients about why it matters, how you plan to credit delayed conversions, and what it can do for your bottom line.
No doubt Facebook is a powerful tool that takes users from literally never hearing of you or knowing they need your products and if done well, convinces users over time to buy.
Ensuring you have a DAM calculator set up properly, will ensure you have a more holistic picture of what worked over time.
(Jake: pay attention here, please)
To start, simply measure the overall % lift you get on a 7 day and 28-day click.
Look at generally what is reported and then the rolling average of 7 and 28 day clicks, separately, to understand. That way you'll be able to begin to say, "Hey I need a 3X and I know that usually, I get a lift of .08% after 28 days and .05% after 7 days, so here are the numbers I need to hit today.”
Such a clear answer, as Foxwell is well known for.
PS. Andrew has theee best courses. He’s a solid human being and has become a true friend. Check out what he’s offering here: https://www.foxwelldigital.com/courses
Some of it may come in handy for you. And if you find any of this useful, please let either of these gentlemen know on Twitter. The love is appreciated.
Twitter Handles:
If you’re building your own DAM calculator, there are tons of guides out there. Choose wisely and I recommend bringing that into a Supermetrics to Google Data Studio Dashboard.
I’ll probably do a breakdown of this once things cool down, so you can see my thought process on dashboards outside of FB Ads Manager and how to leverage that data.
Alright Nick, where’s your head at with DAM for the readers here?
“Delayed Attribution with Facebook Ads, and marketing attribution in general, is a fascinating subject.
A delayed attribution multiplier helps you understand how your Day-1 ROAS will evolve into a full 28-day ROAS. For example, a large brand I work with usually has a Day-1 ROAS of 2, which evolves to a 2.5 with full 28-day attribution.
Most brands fall in a range of 20-30% additional attribution after Day 1.
However, this isn’t the only type of delayed attribution when it comes to Facebook Ads. There is also a data lag in data attribution that you need to factor in, especially on big sales days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Data lags increase greatly on these days and since they are high spend days, you need to make decisions off of data that is slow to come in.
Since spend attributes instantly, while a typical customer may take 30 minutes to multiple hours to complete a purchase after click. Additionally, with so much data flying around on Black Friday, Facebook can take an additional 30 minutes - 1 hour to sync the data.
So if you spend $1,000 at the 8 AM window, your ROAS may look terrible for this hour until 2-3 hours later when most of the purchase data starts to roll in.
Waiting for the data can hamstring your decision-making on spend changes, usually stopping you from increasing budgets until you’ve missed hours of opportunity.
I handle this delayed data problem with two strategies:
1. Hourly FB Spend to GA Revenue Matching.
If I know I spent $1,000 at 8 AM window and 8-9 AM on Google Analytics says I did $5,000 in Revenue, then I know I’m spending at a 20% spend-to-revenue ratio.
If this is in my acceptable range, then I can feel safe to increase spend on Facebook.
However, this won’t help me make campaign and ad set level adjustments, and some of this data can be muddied with Email and SMS campaigns going on throughout the day.
So I blend this with strategy two:
2. Hourly Delayed Attribution Multiplier.
When every hour ends on Facebook, I use the breakdown hour of the day to see the spend and ROAS for each hour when it ends.
If the 8 AM window shows $1,000 in spend and $1,000 in revenue, then I mark that into a spreadsheet. After the 9 AM window closes, I will enter the data for 9 AM, but will also check the attribution evolution for the 8 AM window.
Let’s say it now shows $2,000 in revenue. By recording this data hourly, I can safely assume that a 1 ROAS for the last hour will likely attribute to a 2+ ROAS when the data fully rolls in.
By understanding this, I can make a campaign and ad set spend increases and adjustments much more rapidly. If I triple spend per hour to $3,000 for the 10 AM window, and at the end of the window revenue shows $3,000, then I know my spend increase was efficient and my performance is stable.
If hourly ROAS drops to a 0.5, then I may have gotten too aggressive and need to scale back the spend increases.
Neither of these strategies is foolproof but used together you can have a much better understanding of how your performance will evolve by hour on Black Friday.
Hopefully using this will help you be able to scale faster and make more money.
Good Luck!”
A lot to soak in right?
Especially if this is your first time hearing about DAM. Process this, marinade in it a bit, and get to work. You’ll want this knowledge and understanding going into BFCM.
I know your time is limited, and there are about 9,000 sales emails in your inbox right now. But, I wanted to crank this out with these guys so that maybe we can help some of you during this period.
I can’t wait for what’s about to come!
After 7-years of this, I’m just as excited as the first Black Friday, Cyber Monday.
I hope you maintain some excitement, some “hype” as the kids say, and celebrate every, single, win of yours, your teams, and more importantly… your clients/partners.
Wishing you the best of success!
Until next time,
Cheers!
PS. Toss a heart on this post if you’re ready to go for BFCM or just excited for the end of the year (or if this was helpful)!