Strategic
Budget, allocation, optimisation.
Budget drifts toward channels that report well — not channels that perform well.
Each optimisation cycle widens the gap. ROAS-based allocation built on signals corrupted at the structural layer below — so every decision compounds the next.
Meta reports 4.2× ROAS. Google reports 3.8×. Shopify shows revenue neither fully accounts for. Budget shifts to Meta.
Was Meta better — or did it just have better tracking?
Performance Max trained on conversion data missing 38% of actual events.
The algorithm optimises toward a diverged version of reality — drifting further from ground truth with every cycle.