At a glance
Gross media spend on AdRoll across retargeting, prospecting display, and email-orchestration campaigns. SUM(spend) at the advertisable (account) level. AdRoll bills on CPM by default for display inventory, with optional CPC pacing on selected line items, so spend = impressions × CPM ÷ 1000 plus any CPC-priced clicks rolled in. This is the gross media bill, before AdRoll platform fees, agency markup, or rebates from inventory partners (Google Display Network, Facebook Audience Network, AdRoll’s own exchange partners).
| What it counts | Gross media spend at the advertisable level, summed across every active line item in the period. Includes display, native, video, and email-amplification spend if the merchant runs the orchestrated suite. Excludes platform subscription fees (those are billed separately and not in API-reported spend). |
| Cost basis | CPM-dominant. AdRoll buys impressions on Google Display Network, Facebook Audience Network, and ~500 SSP/exchange partners. Default optimisation is dynamic CPM with auto-bid; CPC and CPA-target options are available on specific line items. The card sums whatever AdRoll billed regardless of the underlying bid model. |
| Currency | Advertisable currency (single, set when the AdRoll account is created). Multi-currency advertisers run separate advertisables per currency. No FX conversion in this card; the figure is already in the account’s billing currency. |
| Conversion attribution | Not relevant for spend. Spend is what you paid; attribution affects the revenue/conversion side. AdRoll’s default attribution model is 30-day post-click + 7-day post-view, configurable per advertisable. |
| Attribution window | N/A for spend. (For ROAS pairing: 30-day click + 7-day view default.) |
| Bot / invalid traffic | AdRoll claims IAB-certified bot filtering at the impression layer via Integral Ad Science partnership. Detected invalid traffic is removed from billable impressions before it hits spend. Real-world: expect 1, 4% IVT slippage on long-tail exchange inventory; the card cannot correct for this. |
| iOS 14.5+ ATT impact on the card | None on the spend number itself, you still pay for the impressions. Indirectly, AdRoll’s auto-optimiser has narrower targeting signal post-ATT, so spend often shifts toward broader-reach (cheaper-CPM) inventory, which can artificially lower CPC and inflate “click volume” without proportional revenue. Watch CTR alongside spend to spot this. |
| Time window | T/7D/30D vsP (default 30D vs the prior 30D). Real-time updates with up to 4-hour ingest lag on “today”. |
| Alert trigger | spike >2σ vs 30D baseline. A single-day jump beyond two standard deviations of the rolling baseline fires the alert; the usual cause is a fresh line item launching, a budget cap lift, or a programmatic auto-bid runaway. |
| Roles | owner, marketing, finance |
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 US apparel DTC brand running AdRoll for site retargeting and lookalike prospecting. The 30-day window is 02 Apr 26 to 01 May 26. Account currency USD. Conversions API web-tag is live; ATT prompt acceptance is at 28% on iOS traffic.| Line item | Spend ($) | Impressions | Clicks | CTR | Avg CPM |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Site retargeting (web visitors, 30d) | 8,400 | 3,200,000 | 14,800 | 0.46% | $2.63 |
| Lookalike prospecting (purchaser LAL) | 6,200 | 4,100,000 | 8,200 | 0.20% | $1.51 |
| Cart abandoner email + display orchestration | 2,800 | 980,000 | 6,400 | 0.65% | $2.86 |
| Brand-safe contextual prospecting | 1,400 | 1,800,000 | 2,100 | 0.12% | $0.78 |
| Account total (this card) | $18,800 | 10,080,000 | 31,500 | 0.31% | $1.86 |
- Retargeting carries 45% of the spend on 32% of impressions. Retargeting CPMs run higher (warmer audiences, more competitive auction) but the conversion rate justifies it. Expect retargeting ROAS of 6, 10× and prospecting ROAS of 1.5, 3× in this mix; if the account ROAS lands at 4×, retargeting is doing the heavy lifting.
- Cart-abandoner orchestration at $2.86 CPM is healthy. AdRoll’s email + display sequenced campaigns typically deliver the strongest ROAS in the suite (8, 15×) because the audience is intent-stamped. If this line item is running below 5× ROAS, the email triggers are misfiring, audit the journey in AdRoll’s email module first.
- Contextual prospecting at $0.78 CPM is suspiciously cheap. Either you’re winning premium contextual placements on under-priced inventory (rare), or the line item is buying long-tail exchange traffic with high IVT exposure. Cross-reference with
adr_ctr_trendandadr_landing_page_cr, if CTR is below 0.10% and bounce on the landing page is above 80%, you’re paying for impressions no human will see. - The 30-day prior window had spend $16,200, ROAS 4.8×. Spend rose 16%, watch ROAS in
adr_roasto confirm scaling is healthy. If ROAS dropped below 4× alongside the spend rise, the auto-optimiser is buying lower-quality inventory to hit pacing. - iOS share is 51% on this account. Pre-ATT, AdRoll’s cross-site cookie tracking gave it best-in-class retargeting precision; post-ATT the iOS audience pool collapsed by an estimated 60, 75% (Safari ITP plus iOS app-tracking opt-out). The card still reports gross spend accurately; what’s degraded is the match rate between ad-side audiences and converters. Plan creative refresh and audience expansion in 14, 21 days.
- Spend up + ROAS flat = healthy scaling, the optimiser is finding inventory at the same efficiency.
- Spend up + ROAS down = scaling beyond efficient frontier, or auto-bid runaway. Cap budgets and audit per-line-item.
- Spend flat + impressions up = CPMs falling, usually because AdRoll shifted to cheaper inventory. Check CTR and viewability.
- Spend up + impressions flat = CPMs rising, either auction competition increased or you tightened targeting.
- Sudden spend spike day-over-day with no creative or budget change = auto-bid runaway, pause and contact AdRoll support.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Spend on its own only tells you how much you paid. Pair it with these to know whether the spend is working:| Card | Why it matters next to Total Spend | What the combination tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Total Revenue | The revenue side. AdRoll-attributed conversion value for the same period. | Spend trend without revenue trend is meaningless. Both rising = healthy scale; spend rising while revenue flatlines = early sign of efficiency loss. |
| ROAS | The ratio. The single number that tells you whether the spend was profitable. | A spend spike with ROAS holding above 4× is a green light to expand budget; spend spike with ROAS dropping below 2× is a stop signal. |
| Spend vs Budget | Budget pacing. Are you on track, over-pacing, or under-pacing? | Catches auto-bid runaway and budget exhaustion before month-end surprises. |
| Spend by Campaign | Per-line-item breakdown. Where is the money actually going? | Headline spend hides huge variance. Retargeting eats 40, 60% of spend on most accounts; if prospecting is dominating, you’ve shifted to top-of-funnel. |
| CPC Trend | Auction pressure proxy. Rising CPCs mean either tighter targeting or competitive auction heat. | A spend rise that comes from CPCs going up (not click volume) suggests auction competition is eating budget without adding reach. |
| CTR Trend | Creative-fatigue early warning. CTR drops typically lead spend-efficiency drops by 1, 2 weeks. | Falling CTR while spend climbs = the auto-optimiser is paying more per click for less engaged users. Refresh creative. |
| Wasted Spend | Zero-conversion line items. The line items eating budget without producing revenue. | Pause-or-fix list. Typically 8, 15% of total spend is in this bucket on accounts running 6+ line items. |
| Impressions Trend | Reach. Impressions rising while spend flat = CPMs falling. | Helps diagnose whether spend changes came from rate or volume side. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in AdRoll’s own dashboard:AdRoll Dashboard → Reporting → Performance Report → “Cost” (filter to the same advertisable and date range used in this card).The “Cost” column in AdRoll’s Performance Report is the same field this card sums. Headline figure on the dashboard’s Home tile shows the same number for the chosen window. For a granular sanity check, Reporting → Custom Report → Group by Day shows daily spend rows that should sum to this card’s total within sub-percent rounding. Why our number may legitimately differ from AdRoll itself: A small gap is normal. Usual suspects:
| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Time zone | Boundary days off | AdRoll uses the advertisable’s configured time zone (set at account creation, mutable via support request). Vortex IQ uses UTC for period boundaries. For a 30-day window the gap averages out; for “today” or “yesterday” on US Pacific advertisables the boundary can shift the figure 5, 12%. |
| Ingest lag | Ours lower for “today” | AdRoll Reporting API has a 2, 4 hour lag on impressions/spend; today’s number is incomplete until catchup. Yesterday and earlier are stable. |
| Platform fees | Theirs higher in some views | AdRoll’s Billing view (Settings → Billing → Statement) includes platform subscription fees and orchestration add-ons. The Performance Report’s “Cost” column is media-only and matches this card. Don’t reconcile against the Billing view. |
| Currency | None expected | Both views use advertisable currency. |
| Pre-bill adjustments | Ours marginally higher | AdRoll occasionally credits-back IVT spend post-billing-cycle (typically 0.5, 1.5% of monthly spend on long-tail exchange line items). The Performance Report shows pre-credit; final invoice is post-credit. Reconcile to invoice for finance, not for performance. |
| Removed line items | Ours captures them | If a line item is fully deleted (not paused), AdRoll’s UI hides historical spend; the API still returns it. Our card includes it. |
spend figure has no direct counterpart on other platforms (each ad platform reports its own spend). However, for merchants running parallel retargeting on multiple platforms, the reasonable comparison set is:
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
criteo.cri_total_spend | Independent retargeting platform spend. No mathematical relationship; useful as a benchmark of how much the merchant is investing on each retargeting vendor. | Different audience pools, different inventory; expect AdRoll to skew toward GDN/FAN-mix and Criteo to skew toward open-exchange catalogue retargeting. |
facebook_ads.fac_total_spend | Different funnel position. Meta is top-of-funnel + retargeting; AdRoll is mostly retargeting. | Most DTC accounts spend 4, 8× more on Meta than on AdRoll; if AdRoll is more than 25% of Meta spend, retargeting allocation is unusually heavy. |
google_ads.gads_spend | Different funnel position. Google is mostly intent-driven (search + shopping); AdRoll is awareness/retargeting. | No reconciliation, comparable benchmark only. |
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
Why is my AdRoll spend higher than my AdRoll invoice? The Performance Report (and this card) shows pre-credit gross media spend; the invoice reflects post-credit billing after AdRoll applies IVT credits, MOAT/IAS verified-impression adjustments, and any goodwill credits. The difference is typically 0.5, 1.5% on monthly spend; bigger gaps usually mean a credit dispute is in flight. Reconcile to invoice for finance reporting; reconcile to this card for performance decisions. My spend spiked overnight, what should I check first? In order of likelihood: (1) Auto-bid runaway, AdRoll’s optimiser found a sudden auction win and kept buying. Check Spend by Hour for an unusual hour-level concentration. (2) Budget cap lift, someone raised a daily cap. Check the audit log under Settings → Activity. (3) New line item launched, fresh creative or new audience went live and is pacing aggressively. Check Spend by Campaign for a line item that didn’t exist a week ago. (4) Inventory partner change, AdRoll occasionally adds new SSP partners; this can spike reach (and spend) on accounts with permissive partner allow-lists. Tighten the partner list under Settings → Inventory. (5) Seasonal auction heat, Cyber Week, Black Friday, Father’s Day; CPMs spike industry-wide. Why does AdRoll spend look so different from Criteo or Meta on the same audience? Different inventory, different bidding logic, different audience pools. AdRoll buys mostly Google Display Network + Facebook Audience Network + open-exchange display; Criteo runs its own commerce-media network with deep catalogue retargeting; Meta is closed Facebook + Instagram inventory. There is no apples-to-apples spend comparison across them. The honest comparison is on outcome, ROAS or CPA, not on input spend. Use Total Revenue and ROAS for the cross-platform read. iOS 14.5 ATT, what does it actually do to my AdRoll spend? The spend figure itself is unaffected, you still pay for impressions. What ATT broke is the targeting precision on iOS users who declined the prompt (60, 75% opt-out rate in UK / US). AdRoll can no longer reliably identify those users across sites, which:- Shrinks retargetable audience pools (typically 50, 70% smaller post-ATT for retargeting line items).
- Forces the auto-optimiser onto broader, cheaper inventory to hit pacing.
- Compresses ROAS without reducing spend.
spend field. The line items appear in Spend by Campaign under the “Email + Display” channel tag. To isolate display-only spend, filter on channel in that breakdown card.
Can I trust the “today” spend?
Less than the rolling 7-day. AdRoll Reporting API has a 2, 4 hour ingest lag and platform-fee accruals settle nightly; today’s spend is structurally low until catchup. Yesterday is fully reliable. Don’t restructure budgets based on a single day’s spend reading, use the 7-day rolling.
My multi-currency setup, how does spend work?
AdRoll advertisables are single-currency by design; multi-currency merchants run separate advertisables per currency. Each advertisable reports spend in its own currency. This card is per-advertisable. To roll up across currencies for a single business view, you’ll need to FX-convert at month-end rates externally; AdRoll doesn’t surface a unified-currency total.
Why does AdRoll’s auto-optimiser sometimes overspend pacing?
AdRoll’s auto-bid optimiser can over-pace by up to 20% on any given day if it identifies high-conversion-probability auctions; it self-corrects over a 7-day pacing window. Daily over-pace is normal; weekly over-pace is not. Set a hard daily cap (Settings → Budget → Daily Cap) if you need strict pacing for finance reasons; this trades some optimisation efficiency for predictability.
Should I optimise for Spend × ROAS (revenue) or for ROAS alone?
Depends on your phase. If you’re in profitability mode (need every retargeting dollar to break even on its own), optimise for ROAS, retargeting-platform ROAS should sit at 6, 10× because the audience is warm. If you’re in growth mode and AdRoll is funded by a healthy top-of-funnel channel (Meta or Google), optimise for absolute conversion volume; ROAS will compress as you push into prospecting line items but total profit grows. The right answer is rarely “highest ROAS”; usually it’s “max profit subject to spending the budget”.