How to Optimize Your Media When You Are Spending Heavily On Meta and Google

Most brands launching these days will start advertising on Meta and Google before anywhere else. And it's surprising how far just those two channels will get you! To simplify a bit, Meta can get you reach and plenty of prospecting opportunities, while Google can help get your new brand in front of in-market shoppers. Between the two publishers you have North America's biggest two social platforms (Facebook and Instagram), biggest search platform (Google), and biggest online video platform (YouTube). So it is entirely possible to scale a new brand with just those two publishers.

To start with your budgets might be small and the range of tactics minimal, but over time you can end up with complicated campaigns, multiple audiences and will be in need of a very robust measurement system. Even to start with, having a plan for understanding the effectiveness of your advertising is essential. At Rockerbox we propose having an evolving and advanced framework for measurement even when on the surface it appears as though your Meta and Google only setup is straightforward.

Low spend and simple campaigns:

For when you just have one strategy or tactic per publisher

• Use platform-only attribution, supplemented by your site analytics
• Use Meta Ads Manager and Google Ads reporting as your primary sources of truth
• Cross-reference platform data with Google Analytics (GA4) to understand the full conversion path
• Be aware that site analytics is click-biased and will typically over-credit Google while under-crediting Meta's view-through impact
• Set up basic UTM tracking to distinguish between different campaign types and tactics
• Monitor key efficiency metrics (CPA, ROAS, CTR) directly in each platform

Moderate spend and more complex campaigns

Once you start running multiple strategies on Facebook and Google such as prospecting vs. remarketing and brand vs. non-brand search

• Begin a testing program to go beyond what you can get natively from Google and Meta
• Run geo-based holdout tests to measure true incrementality—designate control markets where you reduce or pause spend
• Test different budget splits between Meta and Google to find your optimal allocation
• Establish a testing calendar
• Invest in a MTA solution to go beyond what your site analytics is telling you
• Choose a MTA vendor that captures view-through exposures, not just clicks—this is critical for being able to identify paths from say, awareness campaigns to brand search to retargeting
• Implement a unified tracking solution that can tie together cross-device and cross-browser journeys
• Use your MTA data to understand how Meta and Google work together in the customer journey (e.g., Meta introduces, Google converts)

High spend and complex campaigns

Once you start spending substantial amounts with highly complex interactive strategies in both Google and Meta

• Invest heavily in controlled experiments to supplement and double check what is available via Google and Meta
• Run geo-holdout tests to measure true incrementality—designate control markets where you increase, reduce or pause spend
• Aim to have tests in market constantly throughout the year

The bottom line

Your measurement approach should grow alongside your advertising sophistication. What works when you're spending $10K a month on a few simple campaigns will fall apart when you're spending $500K across dozens of campaigns with varied objectives. The key is to invest in the right measurement tools at the right time—not too early when you can't yet leverage them, but not so late that you're flying blind as you scale.

The beauty of a Meta and Google-only strategy is its simplicity, but don't let that simplicity fool you into thinking measurement can be simple too. These platforms are sophisticated, but their attribution models have built in biases simply by virtue of what they are trying to measure, and understanding the true incremental value of your spend requires more than just looking at what platforms tell you. Start with the basics, but have a roadmap for evolution. Your future self (and your CFO) will thank you.