Budget Allocation
The budget allocation view helps you understand where your marketing spend goes and which channels deliver the best return. It combines ad spend data from your connected integrations with conversion and revenue data to show ROI by channel.
Prerequisites
To use budget allocation, you need at least one ad platform connected:
- Google Ads — paid search and display spend
- Meta Ads — Facebook and Instagram ad spend
- LinkedIn Ads — LinkedIn campaign spend
For revenue-based ROI, also connect Stripe or HubSpot.
Setting a Budget
Go to the budget view
In the dashboard, navigate to the Budget section. This shows all connected paid channels with their current spend.
Set your total budget
Enter your total monthly marketing budget. This is the number you're working with across all paid channels.
Review the channel breakdown
Apex shows each channel's share of the total budget, alongside performance metrics:
| Metric | Description |
|---|---|
| Spend | How much you've spent on this channel in the current period |
| Leads | Conversions attributed to this channel |
| CPL | Cost per lead — spend divided by leads |
| Revenue | Revenue attributed to this channel (requires Stripe or HubSpot) |
| ROAS | Return on ad spend — revenue divided by spend |
Channel Breakdown
The channel breakdown table shows a row for each connected ad platform. Metrics are pulled from the most recent sync data and enriched with Apex's attribution data.
Channels are sorted by efficiency (lowest CPL first, or highest ROAS if revenue data is available), making it easy to see which channels deliver the most value per dollar spent.
Tip
Don't optimize purely on CPL. A channel with a higher CPL might deliver higher-value leads that close at a higher rate. Use ROAS (when available) for the most accurate picture.
Spend Tracking
Apex tracks spend over time so you can see trends:
- Daily spend — plotted per channel over the selected date range
- Budget pacing — whether you're on track to spend your monthly budget, over-spending, or under-spending
- Month-over-month comparison — how this month's spend compares to last month
ROI by Channel
When you have both spend data (from ad platforms) and revenue data (from Stripe or HubSpot), Apex calculates true ROI:
ROAS = Revenue attributed to channel / Spend on channel
Attribution is based on the visitor's original traffic source, captured by the tracking snippet via UTM parameters and click IDs (gclid, fbclid, li_fat_id).
Info
Revenue attribution uses Apex's identity resolution to link anonymous visitors to paying customers. This requires that customer emails in Stripe or HubSpot match the emails captured through your forms.
Making Allocation Decisions
Use the budget view to inform decisions like:
- Shift spend to high-ROAS channels — if LinkedIn delivers 5x ROAS and Google delivers 2x, consider reallocating
- Identify underperforming channels — a channel with high spend but low conversions might need creative optimization or pausing
- Set experiment priorities — channels with high spend but uncertain ROI are prime candidates for experiments
- Validate assumptions — if your team believes "Meta drives our best leads," the budget view shows whether the data agrees
Best Practices
- Review weekly. Spend and conversion patterns shift — checking weekly catches trends before they become expensive.
- Connect all paid channels. Partial data leads to incomplete attribution. A channel with no connector looks like it has 0 spend, skewing comparisons.
- Don't over-optimize on short windows. A single week of data can be noisy. Look at 30-day trends for allocation decisions.
- Pair with experiments. Before cutting a channel's budget, run an experiment to confirm the impact. Your attribution model might not capture all the indirect value a channel provides.
Next Steps
- Connect your ad platforms if you haven't already
- Connect Stripe for revenue-based ROI calculations
- Run experiments on underperforming channels before cutting budget