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GuideTrue ROAS: why your ad platforms claim more sales than your store made
Add up the sales TikTok, Snap and Meta report and you often get more than your store recorded. Here is why that happens — and how True ROAS gives you one number you can scale on.
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Why platform ROAS is higher than reality
Every ad platform measures its own ads, with its own rules. None of them sees the others, and none of them sees your store's order list. Three things push the totals up:
- Overlapping credit — a shopper who saw a TikTok ad and clicked a Snap ad before buying can be counted as a sale by both.
- View-through conversions — platforms can count a purchase that followed an ad view, even without a click, inside their default attribution windows.
- Different windows — each platform credits sales over its own number of days after a click or view, so the same order can fall inside several windows at once.
The opposite problem: sales the pixel never sees
At the same time, browser pixels miss real purchases: in-app browsers, iOS privacy limits, ad blockers and declined cookies all break the link between an ad click and the order. So platform numbers are too high in total and still wrong per campaign.
What True ROAS means
True ROAS = revenue from your store's orders attributed to a channel under one attribution model and window, divided by that channel's ad spend.
Each order is counted once, refunds and cancellations are removed, and the starting point is your store's own order list — not a platform's report.
| Platform ROAS | True ROAS | |
|---|---|---|
| Source of sales | Each platform's own tracking | Your store's orders |
| Same order counted by several platforms | Yes | No — once |
| View-through sales | Often included | Only if your model includes them |
| Refunds and cancellations | Usually still counted | Removed |
An example
Illustrative: in one week the platforms claim 435 sales between them. The store recorded 87. Scaling the campaign with the highest platform ROAS would have moved budget onto sales that were already credited elsewhere.
How MabrookTrack calculates it
- Read the ordersOrders come directly from Salla, Zid or your store's API, server-side.
- Match each order to its ad clickClick IDs and UTM tags captured on your storefront and stored with the order link each sale to the exact ad.
- Attribute onceYou pick the model — last click, first click, linear, time decay or position based — and the window.
- Show both numbersEvery channel, campaign and creative shows the platform's ROAS next to True ROAS, so the gap is visible before you scale.
Questions
Is True ROAS always lower than platform ROAS?
Usually, in total — because overlapping credit and view-through sales are removed. For a single channel it can be higher, when the pixel missed sales that the store recorded.
Should I stop using platform ROAS?
No. Platforms optimise on their own numbers, so keep them running and feed them better data. Use True ROAS to decide where the budget goes.
Which attribution model should I choose?
Most stores start with last click and a 7-day click window, then compare first click to see which channels start purchases.
See your true ROAS this week.
Connect your store and ad accounts, and see what TikTok, Snap, Meta and Google really bring in — counted once, against your store's orders.
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