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Import Ad Spend

Signal Sparrow already knows your revenue from Stripe. To turn that into ROAS, CAC, and payback, it also needs to know your spend. Importing ad spend is what completes the money picture.

The easiest way: connect your ad accounts​

When you connect an ad platform, Signal Sparrow can pull your spend automatically — kept up to date each day, broken down by campaign and ad. This is the recommended approach: set it once and your ROAS and CAC stay current on their own.

Spend can be pulled automatically from Meta, Google Ads, TikTok and LinkedIn. For anything else, use the CSV upload below.

Two connections, two jobs

Connecting a platform as a destination sends conversions out. Connecting it for spend brings numbers in. They're separate switches — for full ROAS you'll usually want both.

Or upload a CSV​

For a platform Signal Sparrow can't connect to, or to backfill history from before you signed up, upload a spreadsheet instead. Open Settings → Ad spend (there's a link from the ROAS and Attribution pages), download the template, and fill it in:

channel,campaign,date,spend,currency,impressions,clicks
meta,summer-sale,2026-06-01,1250.50,usd,10000,250
google,brand-search,2026-06-01,430.00,usd,5000,120

impressions and clicks are optional — spend is what the cost metrics need. Uploaded rows sit alongside automatically synced ones, so you can mix both.

What it unlocks​

Once spend is flowing, these light up across your analytics:

  • True ROAS — revenue vs spend, per channel.
  • CAC — spend ÷ new paying customers.
  • CAC payback — how many months to earn that cost back.

Without spend, you'll still see revenue and attribution — you just won't see the cost-based metrics until spend is added.

Keeping it accurate​

Import spend from every channel you run ads on. If one channel's spend is missing, its ROAS and CAC will look better than reality — so completeness matters for trustworthy comparisons.

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