At a glance
Roll-up of AdRoll spend on line items, audiences, or placements that produced zero attributed conversions over the 30-day window. The recoverable line in any AdRoll account, every dollar here is, by definition, available for reallocation if you remove the zero-converting source. Critical reading on retargeting accounts because ATT and Safari ITP have made some retargeting audiences mathematically incapable of producing attributable conversions; those line items should be paused, not “given more time”.
| What it counts | SUM(spend) filtered to line items, audiences, or placements where attributed conversions = 0 over the 30-day window. Aggregates across the AdRoll Reporting API at line-item, segment, and (where available) placement level. |
| Cost basis | Mixed across CPM (most display + native), CPC (selected line items), and CPS (email orchestration). The card sums whatever AdRoll billed regardless of the underlying bid model. Spend is real money charged; only the conversions side determines whether it counts as wasted. |
| Currency | Advertisable currency, single per account by design. Multi-currency advertisers run separate advertisables; the card is per-advertisable. The >$0 alert threshold is local-currency aware; AdRoll users in GBP, EUR, AUD see the threshold in their billing currency. |
| Conversion attribution | AdRoll’s default attribution is 30-day post-click + 7-day post-view, configurable per advertisable in account settings. Switching the model can move line items in or out of the wasted bucket; a more permissive model (longer view window) typically reduces wasted-spend by crediting late-attributing impressions. |
| Attribution window | 30-day click + 7-day view default. The 30-day card window aligns with the attribution window so a click on day 1 has full opportunity to convert before being declared wasted. Shorter card windows (7D) over-flag low-velocity audiences that simply did not have enough time to convert. |
| Bot / invalid traffic | AdRoll filters detected IVT via the Integral Ad Science partnership at the impression layer, so spend in the wasted bucket is human-billed clicks/impressions. Real-world IVT slippage of 1 to 4% on long-tail exchange inventory is included in this card and slightly inflates wasted-spend, your IAS-credit reconciliation at month-end recovers the IVT portion separately. |
| iOS 14.5+ ATT impact | Significant. ATT-opt-out users (60 to 75% of iOS traffic in UK / US) cannot be measured by AdRoll’s pixel post-click; their conversions cannot be attributed even when they happen. Retargeting line items that target iOS-heavy audiences will show artificially high wasted spend. The adr_conversions_api_health card is the diagnostic, if CAPI is healthy and conversions are still zero, the spend really is wasted; if CAPI is failing, the conversions exist but are unreported. |
| Time window | 30D. The 30-day window matters; shorter windows over-flag low-velocity retargeting audiences that simply have not had enough conversion opportunity yet. |
| Alert trigger | >$0 on any zero-conversion line item. Drives sentiment_key: wasted_spend. Aggressive threshold is intentional, on AdRoll accounts the wasted-spend pattern is usually a single misconfigured line item rather than account-wide drift. |
| Roles | owner, marketing, finance |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your AdRoll data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A US apparel DTC brand running AdRoll for site retargeting and lookalike prospecting. Account currency USD. The 30-day window covers 02 Apr 26 to 01 May 26. Account total spend 2,140 (11.4% of total spend) as zero-conversion.| Source | Spend ($) | Conversions | Why it is wasted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Display Remarketing (90-day visitors) | 980 | 0 | Audience saturation, frequency over 7 in 30 days, no fresh visitors recycling through. Pause or refresh creative. |
| Lookalike prospecting (purchaser LAL, 1%) | 620 | 0 | Audience too narrow post-ATT; iOS opt-out collapse left the matchable pool too small for AdRoll’s optimiser to find conversions. Expand to LAL 5% or pause. |
| Brand-safe contextual prospecting | 320 | 0 | Long-tail exchange inventory; conversions theoretically possible but match rate is in the 0.05% range, statistically unlikely on a 30-day window at this spend level. |
| Email-orchestration (cart abandoner, segment B) | 220 | 0 | Email triggers misfiring; the segment B audience was created 18 days ago and has not received a single email send. Connector setup error. Audit the email module. |
| Total wasted spend | $2,140 | 0 |
- **The 1,200 immediately (220). The Lookalike and contextual lines need a deeper decision; if the brand is in growth mode and intentionally accepting low retargeting yield in iOS-heavy markets, leaving them on with a daily cap of $20 can be defensible. If the brand is in profit mode, pause both.
- 11.4% wasted is on the higher end for AdRoll. Industry typical sits at 6 to 12% on retargeting-platform accounts. Below 5% suggests over-aggressive line-item pruning (you may be missing scaling opportunities); above 15% means the account needs a sweep.
- The Email-orchestration zero-conversion is not normal. AdRoll’s cart-abandoner email module typically delivers 8 to 15x ROAS within 7 days. A segment with $220 spent over 18 days and zero conversions is almost certainly a connector misconfiguration (audience definition wrong, email creative not approved, send schedule paused, or the trigger event not firing). Open the email module and audit the journey before pausing.
- The Lookalike 1% audience went from “best” to “worst” in 12 months. Pre-ATT, AdRoll’s purchaser lookalikes at 1% were typically the highest-ROAS prospecting segment. Post-ATT iOS opt-out shrunk the seed audience, the lookalike model is no longer reliable on small seeds. Expand to LAL 3 to 5% and re-evaluate at next cycle.
- The 90-day display remarketing audience is almost certainly saturated. Frequency cap data on this line item shows 8.4 average impressions per user across the 30-day window. Anyone who was going to convert from seeing your ad has already either converted or stopped responding. Refresh the creative (new visuals, different copy) or shrink the audience window to 30-day visitors.
- Wasted spend > 15% of total: account needs a line-item sweep. See Spend by Campaign.
- A single line item > $400 wasted: highest-priority single fix.
- Wasted spend rising while account ROAS holds: the Conversions API is healthy but specific line items have saturated audiences. Pause and redeploy.
- Wasted spend rising AND ROAS dropping: ATT / Safari ITP audience match rate is degrading. Switch heavier toward Conversions API server-side tracking and AdRoll Identity Graph.
- Wasted spend zero or near-zero on an account with 6+ line items: probably over-pruned; check whether the optimiser has any prospecting headroom left.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with Wasted Spend | What the combination tells you |
|---|---|---|
| Total Spend | The denominator. Wasted spend in dollars is meaningless without context of total spend. | Wasted as % of total is the read; 6 to 12% is healthy retargeting. |
| ROAS | Account-level efficiency. Wasted spend rising while ROAS holds = single bad line item. Both moving together = systemic issue. | Whether the wasted bucket is concentrated or spread. |
| Spend by Campaign | Where wasted spend concentrates. Most accounts have 1 to 2 line items carrying 60 to 80% of the wasted-spend roll-up. | Pinpoints the line items to action this week. |
| Conversions API Health | The diagnostic for “is it really wasted, or is the pixel just not seeing conversions?”. | If CAPI is failing, the wasted spend may be measurement, not performance. Fix CAPI first. |
| Frequency | Audience saturation detector. High frequency on a small audience drives wasted spend. | Wasted line item with frequency > 7 = audience exhaustion; refresh creative or shrink window. |
| iOS Match Rate | Post-ATT match rate on iOS audiences. Below 30% match rate often means iOS line items are mathematically incapable of producing attributable conversions. | A wasted line item heavy on iOS impressions with low match rate should be paused, not optimised. |
| CTR Trend | Creative-fatigue early warning. Falling CTR usually precedes the line item entering the wasted bucket. | A line item with CTR dropping AND zero conversions = creative fatigue plus audience exhaustion. Refresh and re-launch or pause. |
| Google Ads Wasted Spend | Cross-platform peer. Multi-platform marketers should sweep both weekly. | Same operational pattern, different audience pools. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in AdRoll’s own dashboard:AdRoll Dashboard, Reporting, Performance Report. Filter to the same advertisable and date range used in this card. Sort byFor per-segment breakdowns: AdRoll Dashboard, Audiences shows segment-level spend and conversions. Combined with the Performance Report’s filter, the union of zero-conversion segments produces this card’s roll-up. Why our number may legitimately differ from the AdRoll dashboard:Costdescending and filterConversions = 0. The total at the foot of that view should match this card to within 1 to 2%.
| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Time zone | Boundary days off | AdRoll uses the advertisable’s configured timezone; the card uses UTC. For a 30-day window the gap averages out; for line items with conversion velocity concentrated near a boundary, the line item may flip in or out of the wasted bucket on the boundary day. |
| Ingest lag | Ours lower for “today” | AdRoll Reporting API has a 2 to 4 hour ingest lag on conversions; a conversion from the last few hours may not be in this card yet. Re-check the next morning before pausing. |
| Attribution model changes mid-window | Either | If the merchant changed attribution mid-window, AdRoll’s UI shows the current model retroactively; the card pulls fresh data on each refresh and matches the current state, but cached values may briefly diverge. |
| CAPI vs Pixel-only | Ours can be lower | If the merchant has Conversions API enabled, server-side conversions count both in AdRoll’s UI and in this card. If CAPI is misconfigured or disabled, both views see the same lower conversion count. Not a divergence, a shared blind spot. |
| Currency | None | Both use advertisable currency consistently. |
| Identity Graph attribution | Ours can be lower | AdRoll’s Identity Graph (post-cookie ID solution) credits some conversions the standard attribution model misses. The card uses the standard model unless Identity Graph is enabled at the connector level. Check connector settings. |
- Driven a conversion the pixel missed. Tag-fire failures on specific landing pages cause pixel under-reporting. Cross-check against
shopify.total_revenueUTM-tagged for AdRoll. - Driven a multi-touch path where AdRoll was the first touch and got no last-click credit. Common on retargeting because the closing channel (Google Branded Search, direct, email) gets the conversion credit.
- Driven a conversion outside the attribution window. A high-consideration product (furniture, jewellery) may convert at day 35 and miss the 30-day window entirely.
- Driven an iOS conversion that ATT made invisible. On iOS-heavy line items, 60 to 75% of conversions can be unattributable post-ATT. Cross-check iOS Match Rate.
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
google_analytics.ga_revenue_by_channel (Display, Retargeting) | If GA4 credits revenue from sources this card marks zero-conversion, the AdRoll pixel is under-reporting. | Pixel misfire on AdRoll-specific landing pages. |
shopify.total_revenue (UTM-filtered to AdRoll) | Sum of Shopify revenue tagged with AdRoll UTM should approximate AdRoll’s reported attributed revenue. | Multi-touch attribution differences; commerce platform sees the order, AdRoll sees the touch. |
google_ads.gads_wasted_spend | Independent paid platform; same operational concept. | Different audience pools and bidding logic; comparable benchmark only. |
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
My wasted spend jumped from 6% to 14% in one week. What changed? Three usual causes, in order of likelihood. (1) Conversions API broke or degraded. A CAPI failure means server-side conversions stop flowing; line items that depended on CAPI for attribution start showing zero. Check Conversions API Health first; this is the highest-likelihood cause and the cheapest fix. (2) A new line item launched and is in learning phase. Fresh line items typically need 7 to 14 days before producing attributable conversions; if launched in the last 2 weeks, give them more time before pausing. (3) Audience saturation on a long-running line item. Frequency over 7 in 30 days = audience exhausted; refresh creative or shrink the window. Should I just pause every line item with zero conversions? No. The 30-day window matters: a low-velocity prospecting audience may need 45 to 60 days to produce its first conversion. Use these filters before pausing. (1) Spend > $200 (smaller line items are noise). (2) Frequency > 5 (audience is saturated, not under-served). (3) Live for at least 21 days (past learning phase). (4) CTR has been flat or falling for 14 days (creative fatigue, not optimisation runway). If all four hold, pause. If only one or two hold, refresh creative and give it another cycle. My wasted spend looks low (under 4%) but my ROAS is also low. What is going on? This is the over-pruned account pattern. You have killed every line item that did not produce within its first 14 days, leaving only the saturated retargeting audiences. ROAS will be acceptable in absolute terms but absolute conversion volume is anaemic. Action: relaunch a prospecting line item with a 30-day patience window and explicitly tolerate higher initial wasted-spend; growth requires upstream investment that pays back later. Can the Email-orchestration module produce wasted spend? Yes, and it is one of the cleanest fixes when it does. Email line items at zero conversions for 14+ days are almost always a setup issue (audience definition wrong, creative not approved, send schedule paused, trigger not firing) rather than an audience-quality issue. Audit the journey in the AdRoll email module first; relaunch usually recovers the line item entirely. Why is my Display Remarketing 90-day audience always in the wasted bucket lately? Almost certainly audience saturation combined with iOS opt-out drift. Pre-ATT, 90-day visitor audiences were the workhorse of retargeting (large enough to optimise against, fresh enough to convert). Post-ATT and post-Safari ITP, the iOS visitor pool has collapsed to roughly 25 to 40% of pre-ATT levels, which makes 90-day visitor audiences too small for the optimiser. Two practical fixes: (1) shrink the audience to 30-day visitors (smaller but fresher); (2) expand to 180-day visitors (larger pool, lower-quality, requires creative refresh). Does the card include Identity Graph-attributed conversions? By default, no. Identity Graph is AdRoll’s post-cookie ID solution; turning it on at the connector level credits Identity Graph-attributed conversions to the underlying line items, which can pull line items out of the wasted bucket. Identity Graph adoption typically reduces wasted spend by 8 to 20% on iOS-heavy accounts. Enable it in connector settings if you have not already. My wasted spend is concentrated on contextual prospecting. Should I pause it? Depends on your phase. Contextual prospecting (long-tail exchange inventory) is the cheapest reach AdRoll offers but is mathematically unlikely to produce attributable conversions on a 30-day window at typical spend levels. If you are in profit mode, pause it. If you are in growth mode, treat the spend as brand-awareness spend and accept that AdRoll’s attribution model cannot value it; check brand-search lift in Google Ads Branded Search over the next quarter to see if the contextual layer is producing downstream branded demand. Does iOS 14.5+ ATT inflate this card artificially? Yes, and significantly. ATT-opt-out users (60 to 75% of iOS traffic in UK / US) cannot have their conversions attributed by AdRoll’s pixel post-click. On retargeting line items targeting iOS-heavy audiences, this can make the line item look like 100% wasted when in reality 30 to 50% of the spend is producing real conversions that AdRoll cannot attribute. Two mitigations: (1) Conversions API server-side tracking recovers 40 to 60% of the lost attribution; (2) AdRoll Identity Graph recovers another 10 to 25% on top. Without these two, iOS-heavy retargeting line items will always show inflated wasted-spend. The threshold is>$0. Is that not too aggressive?
Intentional. On AdRoll accounts the wasted-spend pattern is usually a single misconfigured line item rather than account-wide drift; an aggressive threshold catches the issue quickly. The 30-day window prevents over-flagging on low-velocity audiences. If your account runs many small experimental line items, override the threshold to >$200 per line item in connector settings.
Wasted spend dropped to zero. Should I be happy?
Not necessarily. Zero wasted spend on an account with 6+ line items usually means the optimiser is running every line item at saturation, which leaves no headroom for scaling. The healthy reading is 4 to 10% wasted; below that suggests the account has no exploration budget left.