When a Facebook campaign starts bringing in orders, it is tempting to increase the budget. Orders are arriving, the dashboard looks positive, and the cost per order seems manageable.
But for an e-commerce business in Bangladesh, an order placed is not always an order delivered. Some customers cancel. Others cannot be reached. A few parcels return after shipping. Those outcomes matter when you calculate whether the campaign actually made money.
Start with delivered orders, not just placed orders
Suppose your store receives 100 orders from an advertising campaign. If 20 are cancelled or returned, you have only 80 delivered orders. The advertising platform may report 100 purchase events, but those events do not tell the full business story.
A useful first question is: How much did we spend to generate each delivered order?
Use this simple calculation:
Cost per delivered order = Total ad spend ÷ Number of delivered orders
If you spend ৳12,000 and deliver 80 orders, your advertising cost per delivered order is ৳150. That is very different from the ৳120 cost per placed order you would see using all 100 orders.
Include the costs that do not appear in Ads Manager
Ad spend is only one part of the cost of a sale. You also need to consider product cost, packaging, delivery subsidies, payment charges and any loss from returned parcels.
To understand the contribution from a delivered order, subtract those variable costs and the advertising cost from the revenue you actually collect. The number left is what helps cover your fixed costs and, eventually, profit.
A campaign can show a strong ROAS and still leave little money behind if margins are small or delivery failure is high. ROAS is a useful advertising signal; it is not the same as net profit.
Keep a simple weekly performance sheet
- Ad spend: The amount spent during the reporting period.
- Placed orders: Orders recorded by the website or sales team.
- Delivered orders: Orders successfully completed and paid for.
- Cancelled and returned orders: Track these separately, with reasons when possible.
- Collected revenue and variable costs: Use actual business records rather than estimated dashboard revenue.
Review these figures together. If the cost per placed order looks good but the cost per delivered order keeps rising, investigate confirmation calls, delivery areas, customer expectations and the accuracy of the product offer before increasing the advertising budget.
What to do before scaling your campaign
Confirm that the campaign can generate delivered orders at a cost your margin can support. Check whether the offer attracts the right customer and whether the product description matches what arrives. Compare performance over a meaningful period rather than reacting to one unusually good day.
The goal is not simply to collect more orders. It is to grow the number of profitable, delivered orders.
If you want a clearer view of what your advertising is bringing back to the business, talk to MarketR about performance measurement and campaign strategy.