Get more from your Google Value Based Bidding and Meta Value Optimisation.
At a glance
Meta report that the average advertiser moving to value optimisation (VO) sees a 12% ROAS improvement and Google say the average advertiser switching to value based bidding (VBB) sees a 14% increase in conversion value at the same ROAS.
But not all VO or VBB campaigns are equal. Maximising the quality of the signal you send is essential to get maximum performance. You need to understand the difference between EC4W and EC4L, how to increase match rates and when to send a predicted value vs. a real one.
Mobile campaigns are even more complex post iOS 14, with a plethora of technologies and abbreviations to understand: SKAdNetwork (SKAN), On Device Measurement (ODM), Integrated Conversion Measurement (ICM), Consent Mode, Aggregated Event Measurement (AEM), Advanced Matching, Probabilistic Attribution, IDFA/AAID Matching, Universal Links, Android App Links, MMP Links, Deferred Deep Links etc.
Common pitfalls
You send the signal, but Google or Meta can't match it back to a click or an ad view.
Bidding for a conversion days or weeks after the ad click. Too slow for Google and Meta to effectively optimise towards.
What you bid for is what you'll get. Too many advertisers don't distinguish high and low-value conversions.
Post iOS 14, we no longer have user-level tracking for mobile install campaigns. Each platform has dealt with this differently.
Google leant heavily into Firebase, building their own privacy orientated alternatives. Meta leant further into server side data, encouraging advertisers to send a much broader set of identifiers.
Most mobile advertisers we speak to struggle to understand the plethora of available technologies and which ones are right for them. Or can't answer the privacy team's questions and end up being overly risk averse as a result.
Our approach
Understand which campaigns you're running, on which networks, the conversion goals you're optimising campaigns towards and any pain points you're experiencing. Discuss and agree the optimal bidding strategy going forward.
Dive into your ad platform MMP and tag management configuration to identify gaps in the current setup which are hurting ROAS.
Recommend which technologies or additional data points you should implement. Work with your legal and privacy team to ensure you remain compliant.
Work with your engineering team to make required changes to event payloads. Configure your ad platforms, mobile measurement partners, tag managers and other tools according to the plan.
Your team meets with us weekly throughout the project so they always have a thorough understanding of what we're doing and why. We'll demystify how it all works under the hood so you walk away feeling informed.
After fixing the signals, it's usually time to move on to attribution and other forms of measurement.
Industries like SaaS, Fintech and Digital Marketplaces usually need multiple transactions to hit LTV/CAC targets.
But waiting to send the conversion signal or relying on conversion adjustments blunts the effectiveness of Google and Meta's optimisation.
Instead, advertisers increasingly use Machine Learning to predict a customer's LTV within hours of the conversion and send an accurate value signal to the ad networks.
At Metron Growth, we help advertisers identify the right signal to send, trading off latency vs. accuracy, develop machine learning models to predict the value and then decide the best way to send these back to the ad network.
The strategic question
At Metron Growth, we help companies with 7 and 8-figure performance marketing budgets achieve 10-30% higher ROAS.
Don't leave ROAS on the table. Talk to an Expert.
Anh Ngo
Head of Acquisition Marketing
“Working with Metron Growth has been a refreshing experience. No fluff or endless slide decks. Just clear, practical insights that you can actually act on. Everything they deliver is thoughtful, well-structured, and grounded in real technical expertise and hands-on experience.”
EMQ improves when every server event carries enough information to match it to a Meta user or client side paired event. We work with you to identify which additional data points will be most impactful and then implement these, working with your legal and privacy team to ensure you remain compliant. Sometimes this means adding a hashed phone number, sometimes it's adding a cookie ID and sometimes it's including your order ID. Read more about Meta CAPI on our Blog.
Enhanced Conversions is Google's equivalent of Meta's Advanced Matching. There are now three versions: Enhanced Conversions for Web (EC4W), Enhanced Conversions for Leads (EC4L) and On Device Measurement (ODM). Although Google have announced they will be merging EC4W and EC4L soon. At Metron Growth we always start these projects by understanding your bidding strategy. If you want to bid towards predicted lifetime value then EC4L is usually best. If you're bidding towards a value exposed in the browser then EC4W usually works best.
Google VBB and Meta VO work best when you send the value of a conversion within 24 hours of the user clicking an ad (ideally sooner). But many businesses, especially in financial services, digital marketplaces, SaaS and media won't know the value of the customer until days, weeks or even months have passed. Just bidding for lead form completions or applications can encourage the ad platforms to send 100s of mediocre leads. Sending a predicted LTV or lead score within 24 hours enables the ad networks to send you the customers you actually want instead. LTV/CAC ratios improve massively.
SKAN 4.0 requires you to set multiple conversion values. A fine grained value between 0 and 63 in the first window plus coarse values when privacy thresholds aren't met or in the 2nd & 3rd windows. Setting the schema up correctly is essential to allow you to optimise for conversions or value (not just installs). Full walkthrough in our SKAN 4.0 implementation guide.
Probabilistic attribution is less reliable than it was previously, but still pretty accurate when the app is installed AND opened within a few minutes of the ad impression or click. iOS 17 introduced Required Reasons APIs, Privacy Manifests and Link Tracking Protection, which all made user level tracking harder. Savvy mobile advertisers started to rely more on SKAdNetwork, geo-tests and media mix modelling to supplement patchy user level attribution.
Once implemented, improvements to conversion signals you send via the conversions API and enhanced conversions start to show improvements quickly (days or weeks). How long it takes to implement the changes will depend on your existing infrastructure, but can be as quick as a week for a simple setup. The slowest part is usually ensuring your legal and privacy team understand what data is being processed and can make an informed decision on the legal basis for processing.
Yes, at Metron Growth we're customer and marketing data specialists who don't run campaigns. We will ensure you're sending accurate signals to the ad networks and help configure the right conversion goals, then leave you or your agency to focus on creative and bidding. Our focus is on making sure you have data you trust to confidently optimise and measure campaigns.
Get started
30 minutes. No pitch deck.
Prefer email? contact@metrongrowth.com
