How does Clickmax know which leads and sales came from each ad?
Clickmax links each lead and each sale to the last ad the contact clicked up to 28 days before becoming a lead or buying. The result is counted on the day of the click, in the ad account's time zone — the same way the ad platforms do it. That is why the last 90 days can still change: a sale today may land on a click from three weeks ago, and a refund or chargeback reduces the sale up to 90 days after the click.
This is where the Page views, Leads, Sales, Revenue, CPL, CPA and ROAS columns in Traffic → Performance come from, along with the Attributed revenue, ROAS, Return on ad spend and Leads generated cards.
Before you start
- A workspace role that reaches the Traffic area — see Traffic.
- At least one ad account connected and synced — see How do I connect my ad account to Clickmax?.
How a click is matched to an ad
Clickmax recognizes the ad behind a click in these ways, from most to least reliable:
To tag the link, follow Why does my campaign show "No funnel identified"?. An ad click without any of these marks is not counted: there is no way to tell which ad it came from.
The click counts for the contact even when the person only identifies themselves on a later visit — they clicked the ad on Monday, came back on Thursday another way and bought: the sale goes to Monday's ad.
What each column counts
CPL, CPA and ROAS are calculated from these numbers: spend ÷ leads, spend ÷ sales and revenue ÷ spend. Return on ad spend is revenue minus media spend — it is not profit, because it does not subtract product cost, fees or taxes.
Ad sets and campaigns add up the ads inside them.
Currencies
Only revenue from sales in the same currency as the ad account is counted, which is the currency of the spend next to it. A sale in another currency does not show up in that account's ROAS, instead of adding up amounts that cannot be added — see Why does the Ads dashboard ask me to pick a currency?.
When the numbers show up and update
The numbers are recalculated on every account sync — the automatic daily one and the Sync button. Each time, Clickmax redoes the last 90 days of clicks — the period in which a refund or chargeback can still arrive and must reduce the sale on the click day.
Until no click in the workspace has turned into a visit, contact or sale, the dashboard hides these columns and cards and shows a notice at the top: zero there would mean "not measured yet", not "did not sell". Meanwhile, only the numbers the platforms report appear: spend, impressions, clicks, CPC and CPM.
Why the Clickmax number differs from the ads manager
The platforms count conversions with their own pixel, windows and models. Clickmax counts what actually became a contact and a sale here, by last click. The two numbers measure different things; use the Clickmax one to know how much real revenue each ad brought.
Related
- Traffic — what each area does.
- Why does my campaign show "No funnel identified"? — how to tag the ad link.
- How do I know my ad data is up to date? — when the dashboard looks out of date.