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Facebook adsTape 053▶ 06:091 May 2025
Why attribution massively underreports Meta ads impact
Attribution only shows part of reality
Jude Cornish, CCO & co-founder✓£2,000 to start, then nothing until your first deal.
The short answer
Attribution understates what ads deliver. For Kimble Solar, about £180,000 of revenue was directly attributed to the ads, while a further £221,000 cited social media as a reason for enquiring or buying. We were reporting only around 45% of influenced revenue. Education-led video ads nurture prospects over time.
Good evening. I’m back on camera.
I was very recently with Chris Sadler of Kimble Solar, and he said something that really stuck with me about attribution.
Roughly £180,000 in revenue could be directly attributed to our ads.
That’s revenue we can clearly track through the funnel we built.
But there was another figure.
An additional £221,000 in revenue cited social media as a reason for either enquiring or choosing Kimble Solar — even though it didn’t come through the funnel.
Which means we were only reporting on around 45% of the revenue that was actually influenced by the campaigns.
That’s not a rounding error.
That’s a structural blind spot.
This video is about why attribution always underreports impact, why education-led video ads behave very differently to price-led ads, and why social media works as a long-term nurturing channel — even when the final conversion happens somewhere else.
For context, this video was originally recorded on 5 December 2024, views & strategies may have changed since.
Full transcriptRead the full transcript2 min read · 473 words · open ▾
▶ 0:00Good evening, guess who is back on camera? Now, I was very recently with Chris Sadler of Kimball, so a lot of you will recognise him. And he said something particularly interesting that I want to share with you about attribution and the success of his Facebook and Instagram advertising campaigns with us. Now, he essentially said that of the advertising efforts that we've done, £180,000 has been generated, maybe a little bit more by now because that was about a week ago, that can be directly attributed to our advertising efforts, i.e. it came through the funnel that we built, which is how we track everything that we actually claim credit to through our advertising campaigns, right?
▶ 0:41However, he also said that £221,000 of additional revenue cited social media as a reason for going ahead or for inquiring with Kimball Solar and didn't come through the funnel that we created. So what this means is that we were only actually reporting on 45% of the deals and revenue that was coming as a result in some way of our advertising campaigns.
▶ 1:09Think of how crazy that is, right? So all of our highlight real case studies, all of the successful client stories that we've got, all the happy customers, they are looking at figures that are potentially as low as 45% of the real amount that is being generated from these campaigns, right? And why do I think that is, right?
▶ 1:27So firstly, when you're advertising on social media in any form, you're just getting more eyeballs on your business. Your ads could be the absolute worst. People are still going to click on your profile, maybe check out your website. If your website is super strong, then they might convert, right? So you're going to get additional leads regardless of whatever you do.
▶ 1:42But I think the real reason that the discrepancy is so large and that the benefit is so large beyond what we're actually taking credit for is the fact that Kimball Solar's ads are very much focused on education. They are video ads, which again, no brainer. I've been banging on about this for quite some time now. And they show off really, really good work and installations, right?
▶ 2:06And what that does is actually acts as a nurturing mechanism. Not many people are getting nurtured by you slapping 5995 on an ad, 14 panels, two batteries, and £1,000 off this month, next month, and the next one after that, right? That does not nurture people. In fact, it just kind of annoys people and it commoditizes you.
▶ 2:25What you want to be doing is nurturing prospects as well as generating them as leads and sales through your social media advertising campaigns. And I think that this could not be a more clear-cut example of how that occurs.
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✓£2,000 to start, then nothing until your first deal.