Case: a CPM-as-CPC cost import showed -90% ROI on a profitable campaign

Case: a CPM-as-CPC cost import showed -90% ROI on a profitable campaign

The scare: a buyer reported a campaign at -88% ROI and was one click from killing it. Volume and conversions looked fine, so the cost side was suspect.

The check we ran:
1. Compared tracker-reported spend against the traffic source's own billing for the same day
2. Tracker said $4,100 spent; the source billed $410 — a clean 10x gap
3. Traced the cost integration: the source pushed a CPM value into a field the tracker read as CPC
4. Every 1,000 impressions was being counted as the price of one click

The fix:
— Switched the cost model in the campaign settings from CPC to CPM
— Re-mapped the cost token so the source's CPM landed in the CPM field
— Re-imported the day to correct historical spend

Outcome: reported ROI moved from -88% to +34%. The campaign had been profitable the entire time; the tracker was multiplying real spend by ~10.

When ROI looks impossibly bad, reconcile tracker spend against the source's billing before touching the campaign. A 10x gap is almost always a CPC/CPM model mismatch.

Save this SOP. Run this before every launch.