Measure your success: Your guide to campaign-level metrics

This guide walks you through the campaign-level performance metrics available on your Overview dashboard for Sponsored Products (SP) conversion campaigns. To help you better understand your ad performance, our reporting features a full suite of campaign-level KPIs that align with how our optimisation algorithms work. These metrics bridge the gap between exact article matches and your total brand assortment.

Make sure you have:

• Admin or manager user permissions for your Business profile in zDirect.

• Active Sponsored Products conversion campaigns running in Ad Manager.

Find out more about creating and optimising your campaigns here:

• 
  Create your campaign strategy step by step

  From market prioritisation to driving growth and profitability, explore the key levers for sustainable, long‑term success.

• 
  Sponsored Products optimisation roadmap

  This guide helps you launch, monitor and scale your Sponsored Products campaigns to improve your results.

Our reporting gives you three complementary views to help you look at your performance from different angles. Campaign-level metrics represent the middle tier that captures how your specific article selections drive performance.

Let’s say you run one campaign promoting black jeans and blue jeans.

If a customer clicks the ad for black jeans but buys the blue ones, this counts as campaign spillover.

Within this scenario, Campaign ROAS accounts for the initial two transactions, the direct match and campaign spillover, whereas Total ROAS encompasses all three purchase events.

Total metrics measure broader brand-level halo sales across your entire assortment, while campaign metrics focus strictly on the articles you choose to advertise. Campaign value is a subset of total value, so Campaign ROAS will always be equal to or lower than Total ROAS. They match perfectly only if you have zero brand halo spillover, which is common in high-intent categories like Beauty.

Our Sponsored Products algorithm optimises your ads at the campaign level. Tracking these five core metrics helps you see exactly how the engine evaluates your article selections.

• Campaign GMV (gross merchandise volume): The total sales revenue generated from items sold within the campaign scope following an ad click. We report this value before cancellations and returns to keep it comparable with your Direct GMV and Total GMV logs.

• Campaign ROAS (return on ad spend): Calculated as Campaign GMV divided by ad spend. This shows your precise financial return based on your campaign article selection.

• Campaign items sold: The total count of individual items bought within the campaign scope, including exact SKU matches and campaign spillover.

• Campaign conversion rate: The percentage of ad clicks that result in a customer buying an article included in that campaign selection.

• Campaign CPSI (cost per sponsored item): The average advertising cost you incur for every individual item sold through the campaign.

We’ve recalculated all campaign-level metrics back to January 2023 to help you analyse your long-term trends and target benchmarks, and rebuild trends and targets on a like-for-like basis. You can access these campaign-level metrics across all your breakdown views (such as views by week or country) and within your CSV file downloads.

Campaign and Total ROAS numbers are typically different because they measure different scopes of value. Total ROAS includes broader brand-level spillover across your entire assortment. Campaign ROAS focuses solely on the value generated within your advertised campaign.

Currently, we display both Campaign ROAS and Total ROAS side-by-side on your overview dashboard so you can compare performance data easily. 

In the future, Campaign ROAS and Campaign GMV will become your primary default metrics. When this shift happens, Total ROAS will stay fully accessible: we will simply move them to the Adjust columns menu where you can toggle them back onto your main screen at any time.

This comprehensive data update gives you the exact baseline data you need before using our upcoming Target ROAS automated bidding tool. These metrics give you the transparency needed to set precise performance goals and scale your advertising predictably because the algorithm already optimises at the campaign level. This is a reporting change only and does not affect your live budgets, billing or how you are charged.

• Removing articles: If you remove an article from an active campaign, its historical data still counts toward your Campaign ROAS. If a customer clicks a removed item, it stays eligible for direct attribution for 14 days after its last click. Future sales triggered by clicks on your active items still count as campaign spillover while the campaign remains live.

• Multi-brand campaigns: We determine attribution at the campaign level, not strictly by the brand code of the clicked item. If your campaign targets multiple brands, a purchase within those targeted brands credits the campaign. For a sale to count as spillover halo, the converted article must match both a targeted brand code and the stockowner Merchant ID associated with the campaign.