At a glance
AdRoll-attributed conversion value. SUM(conversion_value) for every purchase event AdRoll’s pixel + server-side tag captured within the configured attribution window, summed across line items at the advertisable level. This is AdRoll’s self-reported revenue, not the truth from your commerce platform; the two often disagree by 20, 50% post-iOS ATT. See Reconcile for the gap explanation.
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your AdRoll data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A UK homeware DTC brand running AdRoll for site retargeting + lookalike prospecting + cart-abandon orchestration. The 30-day window is 02 Apr 26 to 01 May 26. Account currency GBP. AdRoll Conversions API server-side tagging is live (rolled out 18 Mar 26).
Shopify-side total revenue for the same period: £218,000. Of that, UTM-tagged AdRoll-source revenue: £52,400. GA4 Display channel attributed revenue: £61,200.
What the revenue pattern tells you:
- The headline £95,800 is what AdRoll claims; the truth is closer to £55, 65k. Real AdRoll-driven Shopify revenue (probabilistic blend of UTM truth, GA4 display attribution, and AdRoll’s own measurement) is in that range. Don’t quote £95k to the CFO without the gap caveat. The honest read is “AdRoll is contributing £55, 65k of Shopify revenue per month at £13.7k spend, business ROAS 4, 4.7×.”
- Cart-abandon orchestration at 14.11× is mostly cannibalised email revenue. Many of those buyers would have completed the purchase via your existing Klaviyo cart-recovery sequence anyway. AdRoll’s email + display add-on claims credit alongside Klaviyo for the same orders. Run an A/B holdout (10% of cart abandoners get no AdRoll touch) for 30 days to measure incremental value, expect the “real” lift to be 30, 50% of claimed.
- Retargeting at 8.59× is in-band for warm-audience retargeting. Typical retargeting ROAS sits at 6, 10×; if you’re seeing <5× on retargeting, audience match rate is degraded (usually iOS / Safari ITP shrink). If you’re seeing >12× consistently, you’re probably defending revenue you’d already capture organically (same dynamic as Branded Search on Google).
- Prospecting at 2.19× is acceptable cold-audience performance for retargeting platforms. Pure cold prospecting on AdRoll typically lands 1.5, 3×, lower than Meta or TikTok cold audiences because AdRoll’s prospecting inventory is mostly GDN remnant. If prospecting is the growth lever, Meta or TikTok will outperform.
- Pre-CAPI on this account, conversion value was reading £71,400 on £15,200 spend (4.7× ROAS). The CAPI rollout in March lifted reported revenue by ~34% (catching iOS conversions Pixel-only had missed). The lift is real measurement, not inflation; the underlying business performance was the same.
- iOS share is 47% on this account. ATT and Safari ITP impact is material; CAPI is closing most of the gap but expect a residual 10, 20% under-report on iOS retargeting line items. Plan a creative + audience refresh on retargeting line items every 21, 28 days; ATT-eligible audience pools shrink fast and creative-fatigue accelerates the decline.
- Revenue up + spend up = healthy scaling, the optimiser is finding incremental conversions.
- Revenue down + spend up = scaling beyond the efficient frontier. Cap spend, refresh creative, audit per-line-item ROAS.
- Revenue flat + spend down = budget cut without channel deterioration; channel is still healthy.
- Sudden revenue drop with spend stable = pixel breakage (most common, check pixel diagnostic in AdRoll dashboard) or ATT audience collapse.
- Revenue dropped 20%+ but Shopify revenue is stable = AdRoll is losing claim on conversions Meta or Google are now winning. Attribution shift, not real loss.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Total Revenue on its own only tells you what AdRoll claims. Pair it with these to know whether the revenue is real and incremental:Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in AdRoll’s own dashboard:AdRoll Dashboard → Reporting → Performance Report → “Conversion Value” (filter to the same advertisable and date range used in this card).The “Conversion Value” column matches the field this card sums. AdRoll’s Home tile and Reporting → Custom Report → Group by Day both surface the same number for the chosen window. For a sanity check, the Conversions column × the Avg Order Value column should equal Conversion Value within rounding. Why our number may legitimately differ from AdRoll itself:
Why the BUSINESS revenue often differs from this card (the important one):
The
conversion_value AdRoll reports is what the pixel + Conversions API saw, attributed back through AdRoll’s last-touch model. That value flows from your tag setup:
- If the pixel sends order revenue with VAT, AdRoll reports VAT-inclusive revenue (matches what the customer paid).
- If the pixel sends only first-purchase value (a common cap), AdRoll under-reports returning-customer revenue.
- If the pixel sends modelled value, AdRoll includes some imputed revenue that wasn’t actually paid.
shopify.total_revenue attributed to AdRoll UTMs by AdRoll spend. The two figures should be within 30, 50% post-CAPI; bigger gaps usually mean (a) commerce-platform attribution disagrees with AdRoll’s window (different click windows, different last-touch logic), (b) the pixel is misconfigured, or (c) iOS / Safari ITP impact is degrading attribution despite CAPI.
Cross-connector reconciliation:
This card is AdRoll’s view of AdRoll-driven performance. The same purchase will be claimed differently by every platform with a tag in the path:
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
My AdRoll says £95k revenue but Shopify shows £52k from AdRoll UTMs, which is true? Both are true; they measure different things. AdRoll’s £95k is AdRoll-attributed revenue: every purchase that touched AdRoll inventory inside the 30-day-click + 7-day-view window. Shopify’s £52k is UTM-tagged AdRoll-source revenue: only orders where the customer’s last referrer carried AdRoll UTM parameters. The gap (£95k vs £52k) is structural and expected. Drivers:- View-through credit. AdRoll claims any purchase from a user it served an impression to within 7 days, even if the user later arrived via Google search, an email, or direct. Shopify only sees the last UTM.
- iOS / Safari ITP. AdRoll’s UTM strip-rate is 30, 50% on Safari and iOS-app-WebView traffic; those orders show as Direct in Shopify but are still counted by AdRoll’s pixel.
- Modeled conversions. AdRoll auto-fills attribution gaps with statistical estimates; that revenue exists in AdRoll’s number but not in Shopify’s UTM count.
- Identify a user across sites (the basis of retargeting).
- Tie a conversion back to the impression that influenced it.
- Shopify: AdRoll has a native Sales Channel app; one-click install enables CAPI. Auto-deduplicates Pixel + CAPI via
event_id. 30-minute setup. - BigCommerce: AdRoll BC app + manual CAPI via Tag Manager + custom event_id. 2, 4 hours.
- Adobe Commerce / Magento: AdRoll extension + custom server endpoint. 1, 3 days.
- Custom / headless: Build a server-side proxy mirroring Pixel events. 1, 2 weeks.
- Test in AdRoll → Pixel → Server-Side Events tab; if dedup is working, both Pixel and CAPI events show but AdRoll credits one per conversion.
- Allow 7, 14 days for retraining before judging the revenue lift; AdRoll’s models recalibrate over that window.
conversion_value invisibly. Patterns:
- Pre-CAPI: modeled fill ~18, 28%. Inflated.
- Post-CAPI clean: modeled fill ~6, 12%. Healthy.
- Post-CAPI but still high (>20%): implementation gaps; audit
event_iddeduplication and event coverage.