Performance Marketing Metrics: What to Track and What to Ignore
Which performance marketing metrics drive business decisions and which are misleading distractions.
Performance marketing generates mountains of data. The challenge is not access to metrics but knowing which ones actually matter for your business decisions.
Track: cost per acquisition (CPA), return on ad spend (ROAS), customer lifetime value to CAC ratio, conversion rate by channel, and incrementality (would these conversions have happened without the ad spend?). These connect advertising to business outcomes.
Ignore (or deprioritize): impressions, CPM, CTR in isolation, reach, and frequency as standalone metrics. These are input metrics that help diagnose performance issues but should never be optimization targets.
The most dangerous metric in performance marketing is last-click attribution revenue. It over-credits bottom-of-funnel channels and under-credits awareness and consideration activities. Multi-touch attribution or incrementality testing gives a more accurate picture of channel performance.
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