What Is SKU-Level Ad Spend Attribution? And How Can It Transform Your Marketing ROI

Nothing will drain your brand of profitability like ads - whether that’s Google, TikTok, Meta or Amazon - they’ll run you dry if you’re not careful. But why does this commonly happen to growing eCommerce businesses? The answer. Blind spots, not knowing how your ad spend truly performs at product level. You might be running sleek campaigns and generating impressive Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) figures, but here’s the uncomfortable truth: a strong ROAS can hide weak profits when you don't have SKU-level attribution.

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This article is your ultimate guide to SKU-level ad spend attribution - what it is, why it matters, and how it transforms your marketing ROI into a true engine of growth.

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The Problem with Traditional Ad Spend Tracking

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Most eCommerce marketers rely on campaign-level or channel-level ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) to guide decisions. That might sound fine in theory - if your Meta or Google Ads campaigns are generating a 3.0x ROAS, you’d assume things are going well.

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But this surface-level view hides more than it reveals.

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Let’s say you spend £5,000 on Meta ads and see £15,000 in revenue. That gives you a healthy-looking 3.0x ROAS. Great, right?

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Not necessarily. That figure tells you nothing about the actual performance of individual products involved in that revenue.

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Here’s what it misses:

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• Which SKUs were advertised: You might assume your hero product is pulling all the weight, but the revenue could be skewed by a few high-ticket, high-cost items.
• Which SKUs were clicked on vs. purchased: Your ads may be driving traffic to Product A, but customers are checking out with Products B and C. That disconnect can distort your performance assumptions.
• Whether your bestselling items are even profitable: A product that sells in high volume might be getting the lion’s share of ad spend but delivering razor-thin margins, or even losses when you factor in shipping, returns, and fees.
• Cross-product and upsell behaviour: Some products may perform poorly in isolation but act as gateway SKUs that drive multiple-item carts. You wouldn’t see this dynamic with channel-level ROAS.

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The result? You're left optimizing for volume, not value. You double down on campaigns that appear to perform, while missing hidden inefficiencies that eat into your margins.

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Without SKU-level attribution, you're often making high-stakes marketing decisions based on incomplete data. It's like steering a ship while staring only at the sails, ignoring the compass, the wind, and the storm on the horizon.

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And when your acquisition costs rise or product mix shifts? You're caught without a roadmap.

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What Is SKU-Level Attribution?

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SKU-level attribution is the practice of tying marketing ad spend directly to individual product SKUs (Stock Keeping Units). It gives you a granular view of how much ad budget went into promoting each product, and how much revenue and profit each SKU generated as a result.

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Think of it as product-level ad spend tracking. Instead of just knowing that your TikTok campaign generated sales, you know that £320 was spent promoting Product A, and it generated £1,200 in revenue with a 30% margin, making it one of your most profitable SKUs.

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Now imagine doing that across all of your products. That’s the power of SKU-level attribution - pretty useful right?

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How Conjura Tracks Ad Spend at the SKU Level

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Conjura is one of the few Product Analytics Tools that can track SKU-level ad spend with precision. Here’s how it works:

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1. Landing Page Attribution

When a user clicks on a product ad, they’re taken to a specific product landing page. Conjura captures that URL and ties the click to the SKU featured on the page.

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2. Deep Linking & Feed-Based Attribution

For Google Shopping, Performance Max, Meta catalog ads and TikTok campaigns, Conjura uses deep links and product IDs to identify which SKUs were involved in ad impressions and clicks.

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3. Cross-Product Revenue Calculation

Sometimes customers land on one product but buy another. Conjura identifies this pattern and calculates:

• Landing-Page Revenue (revenue from sessions that began on that product page)
• Cross-Product Revenue (revenue from other products bought after landing on a specific product page)

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4. Contribution Profit by SKU

Ad spend is just one piece of the puzzle. Conjura combines marketing data with costs, refunds, and shipping fees to calculate true profitability by product.

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If you're even more curious about how Conjura optimizes ad spend then read more here.

‍Why SKU-Level Attribution Changes the Game

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Let’s break down the real business benefits of SKU-level attribution:

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1. Smarter Budget Allocation

When you can see which products have the highest ROAS and the best margins, you can focus your ad spend where it matters most. Stop wasting budget on low-margin SKUs that might look like winners but actually drag your profitability down.

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2. Marketing ROI That Reflects Reality

If you're asking, "what does ROI mean in marketing?" it's more than a ratio of revenue to spend. Real marketing ROI should reflect profit, not just top-line sales. SKU-level attribution lets you connect your ROI marketing meaning directly to contribution margin.

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3. Better Product Strategy

Which products are great at driving traffic but don’t convert? Which SKUs punch above their weight in repeat purchases? This insight fuels better product development, merchandising, and discount strategies.

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4. More Accurate ROAS Calculator Inputs

With precise ad spend and revenue per SKU, your internal ROAS calculator becomes 10x more accurate. Now you can track ROAS in a way that’s tied to real business outcomes.

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5. Campaign Optimization by Product, Not Just Channel

You might find that Product A performs incredibly well on TikTok, while Product B does better on Meta. SKU-level data helps you tailor creative, messaging, and budgets by platform and product.

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Let’s Look at a Real World Example

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Imagine you run a skincare brand. You’re running a Meta campaign promoting a best-selling moisturiser (Product A). It gets loads of clicks, but few direct conversions. At a glance, it looks like a poor performer.

But SKU-level data reveals something else: customers who land on Product A’s page often go on to purchase other items in the same routine. Product A is actually a top traffic driver, contributing to significant cross-product revenue.

Without SKU-level attribution, you’d pause ads on Product A and cut off your own funnel…huge mistake!

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What Happens When You Don’t Have SKU-Level Data?

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You’re reacting to revenue trends without understanding the cost dynamics, and that leads to poor decision-making across the board.

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Here are the most common (and costly) consequences:

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• You double-down on high-revenue products that secretly have razor-thin margins: A product generating tens of thousands in revenue might seem like a hero. But if it has high production costs, steep return rates, or requires heavy discounting to convert, it could be quietly eroding your profits. Without SKU-level insight, you keep feeding these products more ad spend, thinking they’re winners.
• You kill ads for products that convert poorly, not realizing they drive valuable upsell traffic: Some SKUs act as entry points - customers land on their product pages, then browse and buy other, more profitable items. Without visibility into landing-page and cross-product revenue, these "gateway products" get culled, and your overall funnel suffers.
• You miss opportunities to scale high-performing but low-visibility SKUs: Maybe there’s a product in your catalogue with stellar contribution profit and an efficient CAC, but it never gets featured in paid campaigns. SKU-level data brings these unsung heroes to light, giving you the confidence to test, scale, and double down on them.
• You can't compare marketing ROI across products, campaigns or platforms with any confidence: Without knowing how ad spend maps to individual SKUs, it's impossible to say which campaigns are delivering real profit. Your ROI marketing strategy becomes fuzzy, relying on averages instead of accurate, product-level attribution.
• You struggle to justify budget increases or cuts with confidence: When you're reporting on channel-level ROAS, you're often defending or adjusting budgets based on gut feel. SKU-level data gives you the precision to say, "Product X on Channel Y generates 5x ROAS and 40% margin, let's increase investment there."

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Put simply: without SKU-level attribution, your marketing strategy is based on guesswork. You’re optimizing what looks good, not what is good. And in a competitive market where margins matter more than ever, that guesswork can cost you dearly in the long run.

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Why Most Analytics Platforms Can’t Do This

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Most analytics tools attribute ad spend at the order level. Some try to divide cost equally across all products in a cart. That leads to inaccurate ROAS, skewed margins, and poor optimization.

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Conjura goes deeper, combining landing page data, product feeds, and campaign tracking to map ad spend directly to the SKU. It’s purpose-built to give eCommerce operators the real picture.

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Getting Started with Conjura

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Connecting your ad platforms (Meta, Google, TikTok), eCommerce (Shopify, BigCommerce, Amazon, Walmart, etc.) and ERP/OMS (Linnworks, Cin7, Brightpearl) to Conjura is a one-click process. Once connected, you can:

• See ad spend by SKU across campaigns
• Measure contribution profit by product
• Track new vs returning customer behaviour
• Identify marketing actions (e.g., stop ads, boost pricing, improve exposure)

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The result? Marketing ROI that reflects your actual business performance.

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Book a demo with Conjura today and see SKU-level ROI in action.

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