Attribution beyond your website
A consumer may see or click an ad, then buy your product in a store or on a marketplace. Your website’s purchase tracking alone does not capture that transaction. Signal supplies the purchase event that lets the advertising platform evaluate it for attribution. Attribution is the platform’s process of assigning credit for a conversion to an ad interaction, such as a view or click, under its attribution settings. Signal supplies the purchase information; the advertising platform performs the matching and attribution. That gives you a way to:- Measure purchases beyond DTC. See eligible retailer and marketplace purchases attributed to your campaigns alongside purchases on your own website.
- Understand reported return on ad spend (ROAS). Include attributed purchase value from those channels without counting the same transaction twice.
- Inform campaign optimization. Make additional purchase signals available for supported campaign objectives and optimization settings.
Conversion events
Signal supports two meaningful events that brands may choose to treat as conversions: a consumer linking an account and a consumer sharing a purchase.Account linked
When a consumer connects a supported retailer or marketplace account to your brand through Subtotal Link, Signal can send an account-linked event. You can measure account linking as a conversion or use supported audience tools to reach consumers who have linked accounts. Linking does not establish that someone is a new customer or that they have purchased your products. The event represents the first successful activation of each connection. A consumer can link multiple accounts; reauthorizing an existing connection does not produce another account-linked event. No monetary value is assigned to this event.Purchase shared
When a consumer shares an eligible purchase through a linked account, Signal can send a purchase event. This provides purchase feedback to advertising platforms for attribution, measurement, and supported campaign optimization. Purchase value reflects the items matching your brands. These purchases can happen in stores, on retailer websites, or through marketplaces, extending conversion measurement beyond your own DTC checkout. You choose which event types to send and their destinations. See How Signal works for eligibility and Meta events and data for platform-specific event names and settings.Custom audiences and lookalike seeds
These events can also inform audience strategy, where the advertising platform supports the event source and audience type:- Custom audiences: define groups based on account linking or shared purchases for remarketing, tailored messaging, or campaign exclusions.
- Lookalike seeding: use an eligible audience as a source, or seed, to find additional people with similar characteristics. An audience of consumers who shared purchases of your products provides a different seed from an audience of consumers who linked accounts.
Who Signal is for
Signal is designed for brands with a meaningful share of sales through retailers and marketplaces and a substantial investment in paid media. Two questions help establish the opportunity:- How much of your sales happens outside your direct-to-consumer website? The more meaningful those channels are to your business, the more important it is to connect those purchases to your marketing.
- How much do you invest in paid media? At larger budgets, even a small improvement in advertising efficiency can have meaningful business value.
Turn purchases into advertising signals
Signal lets you send purchase events valued on the items matching your brands. If a shared purchase contains $24 of your products and $36 of other products, the Signal purchase event has a value of $24. You can choose destination datasets and route events by retailer or marketplace. Signal also sends a separate account-linking event, so you can measure consumers connecting accounts without assigning a purchase value to that action. Meta is Signal’s first advertising integration. See Set up Meta for configuration and verification. More complete attribution can reveal sales that were previously absent from campaign reporting. An increase in reported ROAS from that added visibility is different from generating additional sales. Use campaign tests to evaluate whether using Signal improves performance.Plan your implementation
Before using Signal, set up a process to communicate consumer opt-outs to Subtotal. This is a prerequisite for enabling event delivery to advertising platforms.
Signal covers eligible activity from linked accounts, rather than every sale across your distribution channels. Confirm coverage for the retailers and marketplaces relevant to your brand when planning your implementation. Contact support@subtotal.com for help getting started.