Understanding Marketing Costs
The Custom Costs section of your cost settings enables you to track expenses beyond Meta, Google Ads, and TikTok costs. While these platforms are automatically ingested, you may need to import additional costs such as agency fees, platform fees, or offline marketing spend.
Without accounting for all expenses, we cannot provide an accurate contribution profit, hindering informed decision-making. By manually adding costs such as agency fees or offline marketing spend, businesses gain a comprehensive understanding of their marketing investments and can optimize strategies accordingly.
When to Use a Marketing Costs Import
Common use cases include:
Agency fees for managing paid search, paid social, or SEO campaigns
Platform fees such as Klaviyo email platform costs
Influencer costs for partnerships and collaborations
Affiliate network costs (e.g., Awin fees, other affiliate costs)
Offline marketing such as TV ads, billboard ads, print ads, or POS costs
SMS marketing costs
Other marketing costs not captured by connected platforms
How to Manually Add Marketing Costs:
Navigate to the Custom Data Import tab under ‘Connectors’ on the left-hand side navigation bar.
Select ‘Marketing Costs’.
Fill out the table provided with the following details:
Store (optional): The store these costs apply to. Select from your connected stores, or leave blank if the cost applies across all stores.
Shipping Country: The country these costs apply to. Select from the dropdown. Choose "All Countries" to apply to all markets.
Start Date (optional): Specify the start date of the cost in the format yyyy-mm-dd. If no value is entered, the costs will be applied across the entire store period automatically.
End Date (optional): If known, provide the end date in the format yyyy-mm-dd. If left blank, costs apply indefinitely.
Period (required): Frequency of the costs incurred. See Period options below.
Channel Group/Cost Description: The channel group the cost should be applied against.
Currency: Select the currency of the cost. Costs are automatically converted to your reporting currency.
Amount: Input the cost amount (e.g. if a period of 'monthly' was selected, this will be the monthly amount to you).
Repeat for additional costs and select ‘Submit Data’.
Your data will sync overnight and appear in your report.
Using CSV for Bulk Uploads:
Download the CSV template from the Marketing Costs page. The template includes a row per connected store with example values pre-populated. Fill in your data offline,
delete all rows you don't need, and upload by dragging and dropping the completed file onto the editor.
Period Options
Daily: Cost is applied every day within the date range
Example: 10.00 daily = 10.00 per day
Weekly: Cost is applied every 7 days, starting from the Start Date
Example: 100.00 weekly = 100.00 every 7 days
Monthly: Cost is applied on the same day each month, starting from Start Date
Example: 500.00 monthly starting Jan 15 = 500.00 on the 15th of each month
Annually: Cost is applied once per year on the anniversary of the Start Date
Example: 6000.00 annually starting Jan 1 = 6000.00 on Jan 1 each year
Once-off: Total cost is divided evenly across every day in the date range
Example: 3000.00 once-off over 30 days = 100.00 per day
Ad Spend vs Marketing Fees
Costs are categorised as either ad spend or marketing fees based on the Channel Group selected:
Marketing Fees: Platform fees (e.g., Klaviyo Platform Fee), agency fees (e.g., CRM Agency Fee, Google Agency Fee), and "Other" costs for Organic Search and Paid Search
Ad Spend: All other channel groups (e.g., Influencer Costs, Offline ads, Paid Social, Email: Other)
These categories appear separately in your marketing dashboards, allowing you to distinguish between direct advertising costs and associated fees.
Managing Your Imports
To remove costs, identify the file under ‘My Imported Data’ in the custom data import tab and select the delete button.