The paid media mistake beauty brands don’t realise they’re making

Many beauty brands focus heavily on creative and campaign optimisation, without realising that the biggest barriers to paid media performance are often happening underneath the surface - tracking, attribution, audience structure and spend allocation.

During our recent webinar with CEW (Creative doesn’t matter without this), one of the most interesting perspectives came from Deborah Stead, CEO at Studio 10.

While much of the conversation focused on conversion tracking and ad account structures (see summary here), Deb brought the discussion back to what these problems actually look like inside a beauty business - particularly when performance appears healthy on paper, but the commercial reality underneath feels much less clear.

The warning signs many brands ignore

Deb described what it felt like operating with inconsistent tracking and reporting. In her words:

“It’s a bit like driving a car with the tyre warning light on. You’re not really sure if you’ve got a puncture or whether it’s just the warning light that’s iffy.”

It’s a feeling many beauty brands will recognise.

Campaigns appear to be performing well, ROAS looks healthy inside the ad platforms, and reports suggest growth is happening - but something underneath the surface feels slightly off. 

Customer acquisition may be slowing, profitability might not feel as strong as the numbers imply, or different platforms may all be reporting completely different versions of reality.

Deb explained that before working with Leaf Signal, Studio 10 had an awareness that something wasn’t quite right, but struggled to identify exactly where the issue sat.

“Performance marketing is all about precision data and metrics, and making key decisions based on that data. If you suddenly start to doubt whether those metrics are actually correct, that’s not a great situation to be in.”

When platforms tell different stories

One of the issues discussed during the webinar was inconsistency between reporting platforms.

Meta reporting one version of performance. Google reporting another. Shopify telling a different story again. Meanwhile, various analytics tools and apps all offer their own interpretation of what’s happening.

Deborah explained that Studio 10 had reached a point where:

• sessions disagreed across platforms

• attribution was unreliable

• reported ROAS looked stronger than commercial reality

“We were looking at all sorts of different platforms, apps and analytics providers, and every single one was giving us a different read.”

For many beauty brands, this becomes more than a marketing issue, also impacting forecasting, investor reporting, budget planning, confidence in spend efficiency and ultimately decisions around scaling.

Where your paid media budget is really going

Another key discussion point in the webinar was how platforms skew spend allocation towards the easiest conversions (unless campaigns are intentionally designed to prevent it).

Deb explained that Studio 10’s biggest priority was new customer acquisition. But in reality, a large amount of spend was being unintentionally weighted towards existing customers and high-intent users already close to converting.

This is something many beauty brands experience without realising it.

Platforms naturally optimise towards the easiest conversions because their algorithms are designed to prioritise the quickest and most efficient path to a reported purchase. That can make performance appear stronger than it really is, particularly when returning customers are being repeatedly captured inside conversion reporting.

“A lot of our spend was getting wrapped up and lost across existing customers rather than pure new-to-brand customer acquisition.”

This issue was resolved when Studio 10 engaged Leaf to restructure its tracking and audience setup to create clearer separation between new customer acquisition, retargeting and existing customer activity.

Why more creative isn’t always the answer

In beauty, the instinctive response to underperformance is often to produce more creative.

More influencer partnerships. More content. More campaign variations. More testing.

But Deb argued that many brands are moving too quickly to add complexity before properly optimising what already exists.

That idea became one of the defining takeaways from the session.

What changed for Studio 10

Enhanced tracking, simplified reporting and clearer campaign structures give Deb and the Studio 10 team a clearer, more reliable view of what is driving performance - and where spend is actually delivering value.

That creates:

• more confidence in spend allocation

• faster campaign iteration

• better visibility into customer acquisition

• more confidence when communicating performance to investors and stakeholders

“Suddenly your day-by-day, week-by-week and month-by-month analysis is coming from one source - and that source is good and honest.

We can also identify very quickly what isn’t working. We can pivot, change, try again, iterate differently.”

The biggest takeaway for beauty brands

Scaling beauty brands invest heavily in creative, influencers and media spend - but many are still operating on broken foundations.

The webinar’s biggest takeaway wasn’t that creative doesn’t matter. It absolutely does.

But before investing in content production, or scaling spend, or launching more campaigns, it’s worth asking whether the infrastructure beneath your paid media activity is actually supporting the performance you think you’re seeing.

Because, as Deborah’s perspective highlights, sometimes the biggest issue isn’t the creative itself - it’s what’s happening behind it.

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We built Leaf Signal to help brands fix, monitor & maintain the tracking foundations that underpin better paid media performance.

If you’re questioning whether your tracking setup is up to scratch, we can take a look, highlight any gaps and provide actionable next steps. Book your free audit here.