The Metrics You Cannot Get from Google Ads

(And how a Data Warehouse Changes Everything)

Google Ads is one of the most powerful acquisition platforms available, but it operates in a silo. It gives you performance metrics, but only in the context of Google’s ecosystem. What you do not get is the complete picture: how ads connect to real revenue, customer behaviour, profitability, and long-term value.

That is where a modern data warehouse and pipeline come in. By integrating Google Ads with data from your CRM, finance tools, eCommerce platform, and customer behaviour tracking, you unlock a completely new layer of insight, one that goes far beyond ROAS.

Here are the seven essential metrics you cannot get from Google Ads alone, but can unlock once you connect and enrich your data.

1. True Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

What Google Ads shows you:

• Cost per conversion

• ROAS based on pixel-attributed purchases

What a data warehouse unlocks:

• Total CAC including ad spend across channels, affiliate costs, and agency fees

• Attribution of each customer to their actual full acquisition journey

• Granular CAC by channel, campaign, customer segment, and product

Why it matters:

Google’s platform reports conversions that it attributes, often over-crediting itself with last-click or partial view-through logic. In reality, customers interact across multiple touchpoints before converting. When you calculate CAC across all acquisition costs and true attribution, you uncover:

• Overlaps and duplication across paid channels

• Organic and word-of-mouth impact that’s hidden from ad platforms

• High-cost segments that initially appeared efficient

This makes CAC a business-level metric, not a media metric, and it becomes a foundation for understanding profitability.

2. Payback Period

What Google Ads shows you:

• Immediate ROAS from a tracked conversion

• No sense of when you actually recover your investment

What a data warehouse unlocks:

• Customer-level timelines showing when revenue matches or exceeds acquisition cost

• Cohort-based payback analysis (by campaign, product, geography)

• Rolling payback tracking over days, weeks, or months

Why it matters:

A Google campaign may deliver a 2x ROAS in 7 days, but if those purchases are refunded, or the cost of goods sold erodes margin, you are not actually making money. Payback period is a cash flow metric, not just a marketing one. Understanding when acquisition spend is recouped:

• Improves budgeting and forecasting

• Helps manage working capital and inventory cycles

• Tells you which campaigns are worth scaling and which are too slow to return

Without this metric, you risk scaling unprofitable campaigns under the illusion of short-term ROAS.

3. Real Lifetime Value (LTV)

What Google Ads shows you:

• Conversions and estimated LTV within a short attribution window

• No visibility of future purchases, churn, or subscription revenue

What a data warehouse unlocks:

• Actual transaction-level LTV over time

• Segmented LTV by source, campaign, or customer type

• Margin-adjusted LTV that reflects profitability, not just revenue

Why it matters:

Some customers buy once and vanish. Others return, subscribe, or refer others. Google treats these outcomes the same, but your business should not. When you connect eCommerce, subscription, and CRM data, you get LTV curves that show:

• Who your best customers are

• Which channels attract high-value vs. one-off buyers

• How long it takes for a customer to generate positive margin

This enables smarter CAC targets and unlocks budget reallocation toward high-LTV growth, not just short-term sales.

4. Multi-Touch Attribution

What Google Ads shows you:

• Last-click or Google-driven attribution

• Limited cross-platform visibility (e.g. Meta, TikTok, email not considered)

What a data warehouse unlocks:

• End-to-end customer journeys across platforms and sessions

• Attribution models that reflect your actual funnel (first-touch, linear, U-shaped)

• Granular clickstream and impression data from tracking tools like Segment or RudderStack

Why it matters:

In-platform attribution gives undue credit to the final touchpoint, often inflating the role of Google Ads. But your customer’s path likely includes:

• TikTok discovery

• Email nurturing

• Branded search

• Word-of-mouth

When you track the full journey, you see the true contributors to each conversion and make smarter spend decisions. This leads to:

• Rebalancing top- and bottom-of-funnel investment

• Scaling undervalued sources like content or influencer traffic

• Avoiding over-investment in channels that simply close sales

5. Retention and Repeat Purchase Rate by Channel

What Google Ads shows you:

• Single-session conversion events

• No long-term customer retention data

What a data warehouse unlocks:

• Customer lifecycle analysis: how often and when customers return

• Repurchase curves and cohort retention by acquisition source

• Subscription renewal and churn tracking

Why it matters:

Some acquisition channels may produce high-converting traffic but low-retention customers. Others might bring in fewer users, but with much higher retention or repeat order rates. Understanding retention by source helps you:

• Prioritise long-term value over cheap traffic

• Build loyalty-driving campaigns

• Identify and stop investing in one-and-done audiences

Retention is a growth engine, and tracking it unlocks compounding value that Google Ads does not surface.

6. Profitability by Product / SKU

What Google Ads shows you:

• Conversion value (e.g. total order revenue)

• No awareness of what products were sold or their associated margins

What a data warehouse unlocks:

• SKU-level sales attribution to each ad or campaign

• Integration of margin and fulfilment cost data

• Campaign-level profit, not just revenue

Why it matters:

A campaign might drive lots of revenue, but if it mostly sells low-margin or loss-leading products, you are wasting ad budget. By calculating gross profit per campaign, you can:

• Pause or restructure underperforming ad sets

• Promote high-margin items more aggressively

• Optimise creative and landing pages for more profitable product mixes

Profit is what fuels sustainable growth—and your warehouse is the only place to measure it properly.

7. Geographic and Device-Level Performance Over Time

What Google Ads shows you:

• High-level performance breakdowns by location or device

• No cross-referencing with LTV, churn, or cost of service

What a data warehouse unlocks:

• LTV, CAC, and retention by geo and device type

• Regional trends in churn, refund rates, and AOV

• Device-level behaviour across time and funnel stages

Why it matters:

Different customer segments behave differently. Mobile users in urban centres may convert more quickly but have lower basket sizes. Rural users may convert slowly but have better retention.

With joined-up data, you can:

• Localise creatives and offers

• Adjust CAC targets by region

• Tailor your UX or delivery model for specific segments

Without this, you risk under-serving valuable audiences, or wasting spend on regions that do not scale well.

Final Thoughts: Stop Optimising In A Silo

Real business growth comes from looking beyond that interface and measuring what truly drives profit, retention, and long-term value. With a modern data stack you unlock metrics that Google Ads can't (and won’t) give you. You get to ask smarter questions, spot hidden opportunities, and make decisions that align with your bottom line.

At 173tech, we help teams build these capabilities. If you are ready to stop optimising for clicks and start scaling for profit, let’s talk.