This one is brought to you by our friends at Triple Whale.
You've heard the weird name. And seen the big stuffed whale on a stage somewhere and thought… what has this got to do with ecommerce? Truth be told, I still don’t know the answer.
But here's why I wanted to do this one. There has never been more money pouring into Meta and Google, and at the same time I reckon there has never been more confusion about what is actually working. Everyone's chasing a magic number on where their sales really come from, and nobody quite trusts the numbers from the platforms themselves.
Triple Whale was one of the first to land on the scene with a clearer approach. And I was lucky enough to sit down with Triple Whale’s Chief Revenue Officer, Zach Rego, and Angus Growney, Performance Marketing Manager at Bared Footwear. Also, I'd just switched Triple Whale on for a client when we recorded this, so I enjoyed being able to give my own reactions the whole way through. We got properly nerdy on data and measurement - hopefully useful even if you aren’t a Triple Whale user.
I’m really hesitant to build this one up too much. Because this isn't really a story about finally solving attribution. It's about what happens once you trust your data and the journey from there - moving from just understanding data to making quick decisions and eventually automating the actions. That’s the exciting bit. Attribution is just the boring speed bump.
WATCH THE EPISODE
Chapters worth skipping to:
What Triple Whale actually is [03:21]
Why attribution is a 14-year-old problem [08:00]
Moving from justifying results to making decisions [10:39]
Letting the AI settle a team debate [12:28]
The backup pixel that paid for itself in a week [14:26]
Getting your data right before you switch anything on [16:16]
Handing a whole Meta budget over to AI [24:55]
Trading the US market overnight while Australia sleeps [27:27]
IS ATTRIBUTION FULLY SOLVED? WELL... NO.
Meta says it drove the sale. Google says it drove the same sale. They can't both be right, and you're probably paying on both.
Angus has been chasing this exact problem for 14 years. Back when he was buying TV for HelloFresh, he worked out he could game their attribution model, make his numbers look brilliant without selling a single extra thing. [08:00]
That's a limitation most of us have been battling for a long time. No single source of truth is ever 100% right, and if you optimise hard against a number that's slightly off, you just get very good at the wrong thing. But the trick isn’t to find the perfect number. It's to build something you trust enough to act on.
SO WHAT IS TRIPLE WHALE, THEN?
That gap is where it started. At its simplest, it pulls all your data into one place and stitches the messy customer journey into a single view. Plenty of tools promise that though, so here's what actually makes it different. [03:21]
It triangulates, it doesn't back one number. It runs last-click, media mix modelling and incrementality together, because no single method is ever right on its own. [04:38]
It has its own first-party pixel. That's what stitches every touch into one customer, one order, start to finish.
It goes past ads into profit. Load your real costs, agency fees, operating expenses, even the rent, and it works to contribution margin and a true MER, not just ROAS. [17:36]
It reads more than ad data. Social comments, reviews and returns sit next to the numbers, which is how the odd hidden problem surfaces.
The AI acts, it doesn't just report. Moby can run budgets and turn campaigns on and off, not just build you another dashboard. [24:55]
That last one is a massive shift most people aren’t even thinking about. A good analytics platform isn’t somewhere you go to read neat numbers anymore. It's the engine room of decision making.
THREE TIMES IT MADE A REAL DIFFERENCE AT BARED
Angus runs performance marketing at Bared Footwear, the podiatrist-founded footwear brand scaling across the US, NZ and beyond. Three moments stood out.
1. It found money that was leaking out. Bared set up a backup pixel behind their Klaviyo abandoned-checkout flow and caught about 20% Klaviyo was missing. Roughly two grand a week they weren't recapturing, and it paid for the platform inside the first fortnight. [14:26]
2. It let them scale the US while Australia slept. They built an autonomous buyer that trades overnight to rules they wrote, turning ads off when they burn budget with no sales, right down to what's selling in Chicago versus New York and when to shift from sandals to boots. Growth in new markets without new headcount. [27:27]
3. It got the data out of the marketing team. Since the latest Moby, product teams query it directly: who buys which shoe, what they buy next, and stock alerts when a line is about to sell out. It's helping decide what to make and push in each market, not just how to advertise it. [30:38]
It’s a fascinating arc there. Trust the data, make faster calls from it, then let it take the action. That's a big leap.
SEE IT ON YOUR OWN NUMBERS
If any of those three moments sound like a problem you've got, the quickest way to know is to look at your own data through it. Triple Whale runs demos with their team here in Australia.
FIVE TIPS FOR TRIPLE WHALE POWER USERS
If you're already in the platform, or about to be, these are the things Zach and Angus rate that most people miss.
Feed it your reasoning, not just the task. Angus writes out why he's setting a campaign up and what he expects, then tells Moby to circle back every three days and flag if it's off track. [10:39]
Plug it into Slack. Slack is a harness for Moby. It learns the context of your channels, so it can answer questions about the actual debate your team had on Tuesday, not just the raw numbers. [23:03]
Go past attribution to contribution margin. Upload your real costs, agency fees, operating expenses, even the rent, and optimise on profit per order and a true MER. [17:36]
Ask Moby to write the prompt for you. Zach's tip: get the AI to write the prompt before it does the task. It beats you prompting it cold, every time. [37:00]
Write a tight rules file before you let it run. The brands automating safely wrote down every decision they'd make first. Spend your time on the rules, not in the ad account. [26:06]
WHEN MIGHT YOU BE READY FOR TRIPLE WHALE?
A quick gut check. You're probably ready if:
You're spending enough that decisions need to be made fast, not weekly.
Meta says one thing, Google says another, and you can't get a straight answer on what's actually working.
You're scaling into markets or time zones you can't staff around the clock.
You're drowning in dashboards nobody acts on.
Your data is already in decent shape, or you're willing to do the work to get it there.
Probably not yet if your data is a mess (sort that first) or you're small enough that Shopify and a good spreadsheet still tell you everything you need.
Whatever you land on, ask any tool three things: what data does it miss, can it prove incrementality or just report it, and how much of my week does it give me back.
A FEW HONEST CAVEATS
It's only as good as the data underneath it. Rubbish in, rubbish out. It's why the Bared team spent three months on the plumbing before they switched anything on. [16:16]
Your data going out has to be governed. The moment it flows to Slack and the AI labs, you've got rules to set, not panic to have. Ask about pen tests and what can be locked down. [39:20]
AI creative isn't there yet for brand-led brands. If you guard your look, use it for briefs and edits, not for generating hero images. [33:03]
Automation still needs a leash. Handing over budgets works because someone wrote the rules first. Skip that, and you're not automating, you're still guessing… automatically. [26:06]
THE FUTURE: FROM DASHBOARDS TO AUTOMATED ACTIONS
The big takeaway for me from this chat is that the dashboard is just the start. You used to log in, pick a report, read the numbers, then go and do something about it. Now you ask a question in plain language, or better still, the answer lands in your inbox at the time you'd have done ten clicks. I’ve seen this behaviour with new users firsthand.
And it doesn't stop at the insight. The next step is the tool taking the action for you, running budgets, turning ads on and off, all to the rules you set.
And here's the part I loved. When the boring ad lever-pulling gets handled, the human job moves back up to the stuff only you can do: brand, taste, creative, service, testing a channel you've been too flat out to try. Zach's hope, and it's mine too, is this pulls us out of the Meta and Google trench and back into building brands. Maybe… even doing a bit of telly again.
I’m keen to get your view on this: how far would you actually let the machine go in placing your Meta ads?
Would you hand your entire Meta budget to an AI with no human in the loop?
If you want to have a poke around, Triple Whale is at triplewhale.com, and a demo routes to their Aussie team so you're not stuck on US time.
Listen to the full nerd-out with Zach and Angus:
🎧 Spotify | 🎧 Apple | 📺 YouTube
A big thank you to Triple Whale for making this episode possible. We really do appreciate their support, and it's great to have them on board.
Cheers
Bushy
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