Find Wasted Ad Spend

This article is for users who may be looking for more ways to get value from Wicked Reports and want to understand how they can find where they are actively wasting money.

Why This Matters

One of the fastest paths to improved profitability is cutting wasted ad spend. Whether you’re a new user or a long-time customer, establishing a routine for identifying underperforming marketing can dramatically improve your marketing efficiency.

At Wicked Reports, we provide accurate, daily-attributed marketing data that helps you pinpoint where your money is being spent—and where it’s being wasted. Creating a recurring routine to evaluate and optimize that spend is a foundational step in using Wicked effectively.

When done consistently, this routine helps you:

• Increase return on ad spend (ROAS)

• Reallocate budget toward high-performing campaigns

• Avoid long-term losses due to slow-to-detect inefficiencies

• Build confidence in your data and decisions

We recommend running this analysis every 2–3 days, but you can adjust the frequency to match your marketing rhythm. Just make sure you wait until you have at least two weeks of healthy attribution data before starting.

Setting Up a "Find Active Waste" View in FunnelVision

Step 1: Create a Custom View

• Go to the FunnelVision Report

• Click "+ View" > "Create Custom View"

• Name the view: Find Active Waste

Step 2: Apply Filters

These filters help isolate ad sets that are active, spending money, and underperforming:

• Date Range: Last 7 Days, compared to Previous 7 Days

  • If you want a longer date range, feel free to expand

• Channel: Start with Facebook (you can later update for Google, Microsoft, etc.)

• First Click Date: More than 3 days ago (to exclude newly launched campaigns)

• Last Click Date: Within 1 day (indicates recent activity)

• Cost > 0

• ROAS < 1 (change to your preferred performance metric if needed)

Tip: ROAS < 1 means you’re spending more than you’re making. Feel free to use another metric such as aCAC if it’s a better fit for your business.

Step 3: Attribution Settings

Leave as default for now. You can customize them later as you get more comfortable.

Step 4: Select Columns for Analysis Grid

Clear all columns, then add:

• Ad Set

• Cost

• Clicks

• Revenue

• ROAS

• New Visit %

• New Customer Count

• Total Customers

• Clicks to Customer Conversion Rate

• aCAC

• AOV

• First Click Date

• Last Click Date

 

Step 5: Create and Save the View

Click Create and Apply View. Your new view will appear as a pinned tab and can be reused across channels.

Using the View to Optimize Ad Spend

1. Review Summary Metrics: The summary bar at the top shows your total cost of active waste.  We suggest adding all the metrics in your grid to be summary metrics across the top.

   Summary Costs can be considered your "Wasted Ad Spend"

2. Scan the Grid: Identify low-ROAS ad sets or ad groups.

3. Drill Into Details: Expand individual ad sets to review ad-level performance.

4. Take Action:

   • Pause underperforming ad sets

   • Test new creatives or offers

   • Reallocate budget to high-ROAS campaigns

You can use this same view with other channels by simply changing the Channel filter to Google, Microsoft, etc.

Making This a Routine

This isn’t a one-time task - it’s a habit. Make "Find Active Waste" part of your ongoing optimization routine. Once every 2–3 days (or weekly), revisit the view and make data-backed decisions about where your ad dollars are going.

Consistently doing this will:

• Sharpen your ad performance

• Reduce wasted budget

• Improve your confidence in campaign optimization