Before you start: set the terms and only pay for results
Sponsored Listings is built around choices you make before you ever spend a dollar. You choose the return you want to aim for by picking a spending strategy, and you set a weekly spending limit you can change anytime. Together those frame what your campaign is working toward and the most it can cost.
You're only charged when your ad produces a result:
Customer clicks and then places an order within 28 days
That fee is deducted from your payout after the order is submitted
A click that doesn't lead to an order costs you nothing
Every campaign shows exactly what it spent and the orders it generated, so you can always see what your investment is producing
Building your campaign
A good campaign starts with three decisions: who you want to reach, how much you're willing to spend in a week, and which spending strategy matches your goal.
Choosing who to reach
Sponsored Listings lets you target new, existing, lapsed, or all customers depending on the goal of the campaign.
Customer types
New customers are people who have never ordered from your store
Existing customers are people who have ordered in the last 90 days
Lapsed customers are people who have not ordered in the last 90 days
When to target each group
Target new customers when your goal is acquisition and net-new growth
Target existing customers when your goal is retention or increasing share of wallet from buyers who already know you
Target lapsed customers when your goal is reactivation and winning back buyers who have cooled off
Keep an all-customers campaign if you want simplicity, or test one additional targeted campaign alongside it and compare results over time
If you don't want to increase total ad spend, you can shift part of your existing budget into acquisition or reactivation campaigns instead of adding new dollars
Targeting new and lapsed customers is the most direct way to make sure your spend is reaching people who wouldn't otherwise have found you
Setting your budget
Your budget is a weekly spending limit per store, so you stay in control of the maximum a campaign can cost. We recommend starting at $250 per week. That has been the typical starting point associated with roughly 4 to 7 orders per month attributed to the campaign, depending on your order sizes and market conditions.
How budgeting works
Budget is set as a weekly cap, so you stay in control of the maximum amount a campaign can spend
Budget should match both your growth goals and your operational capacity
A higher budget can help you capture more orders, but only if your store can handle the added demand and the campaign is performing efficiently
A lower budget can be a smart testing approach, but if it is too low, the campaign may not collect enough data or stay competitive long enough to show its full potential
Match budget to operations
Ask these questions before increasing spend:
Can my team reliably fulfill more catering orders without hurting service quality?
Is my campaign generating efficient returns, or am I spending more without getting enough value back?
Am I hitting my weekly budget cap regularly, which suggests demand is being limited by budget instead of performance?
If the answer to those questions is yes, a higher budget may help you grow. If not, improve campaign performance first before simply spending more.
Choosing your spending strategy
Most campaigns use automatic bidding, which manages your bids for you and works toward a target return on your ad spend. You choose the target by picking a strategy, and each strategy is built around a different balance of cost and reach.
Balanced
Balanced is the recommended default and is designed to optimize for both spend and visibility
It targets about $6 in orders for every $1 of ad spend and is built for steady, predictable performance — a good starting point for most ongoing campaigns
Efficiency
Efficiency is the lower-cost, lower-reach option
Best when your budget is tight, when you want a lower-risk start, or when you care most about keeping your cost per order down
Visibility
Visibility is the higher-reach, higher-investment option
Best when you want to grow quickly, reach more new customers, fill slower periods, or support a new location or menu
Conclusion
The simplest way to think about it: Efficiency keeps more of each dollar working but reaches fewer customers, Visibility reaches more customers but invests more to do it, and Balanced sits in between. If your current strategy isn't matching your goal, changing it is often the fastest way to fix the problem.
Manual bidding is also available for advanced users who want to set their own bid rather than a target. Most of the guidance in this article assumes automatic bidding; where manual bidding behaves differently, it's called out
Reading your campaign
In the Partner Portal, go to the Marketing tab > Sponsored Listings
Start by filtering by date range and campaign
The graph will show sales from ads over the period you select
Summary cards show: total amount spent on ads, conversion rate, return on ad spend (ROAS), customer breakdown
The Campaign breakdown shows: Budget, ad views/clicks, conversion rate, ad spend, ad sales, number of orders from campaign, ROAS
Read it as a funnel
Start by asking: Are enough people seeing the ad? Are they clicking it? Are those clicks turning into orders?
The funnel works in this order:
Impressions (ad views) → Clicks (ad clicks) → Orders
Key terms to understand
Ad views: Show how many times your Sponsored Listing was seen
Clicks: Show how many times customers clicked your Sponsored Listing
Conversion rate: the percentage of clicks that turn into orders — a read on how convincing your menu, pricing, and offer are once someone arrives.
This is a different from the conversion rate in the Sales Performance dashboard, which is based on all menu views. Read more here
How to measure results and what to do
When you check on a campaign, three numbers tell you almost everything: conversion rate, ROAS, and whether you're hitting your budget cap.
Conversion rate —
Aim for double digits, with 15% or higher as a strong benchmark
Low conversion rate isn't a reach problem — it's a menu problem. Check your photos, dietary options (vegetarian/vegan/gluten-free), pricing, and settings (delivery fee, order minimum, rewards). The stronger your conversion rate, the more efficient your ad spend becomes, since the algorithm favors listings that convert
Return on ad spend (ROAS) — how much in sales you're getting back per dollar spent
Target 5–6x as a healthy range for ROAS:
In range → your spend is working efficiently. Keep going
Below range → tighten your strategy (move toward Efficiency, or lower a manual bid) before spending more
Much higher than 5–6x? This isn't automatically a win. A very high ROAS often means your bid or budget is set conservatively — you're winning cheap orders efficiently, but likely losing out on additional orders and growth you could be capturing with a slightly higher bid or budget. If your ROAS is well above range, ask whether you're also hitting your budget cap early or seeing limited views — if so, you have room to spend more and grow, while still staying profitable
Are you hitting your weekly budget cap?
Look at the views/impressions chart. A pattern where views spike Monday (when budgets reset) and then drop to near-zero by Tuesday or Wednesday means you're burning through budget fast
If ROAS is healthy (5–6x) but you're still running out of budget early in the week → you have room to increase your budget; demand is there and being wasted
If ROAS is weak and you're still running out fast → don't add budget yet. Fix efficiency first (switch to Efficiency strategy or lower your bid)
If the views line never really spikes at all → you're likely not winning auctions. This usually means your bid or budget is too low, or (with manual bidding) your bid needs to be raised
Customer mix — who your orders are coming from (new, existing, lapsed).
Set up for growth but seeing mostly existing customers? Your targeting isn't reaching new/lapsed customers — adjust it
Set up for retention? A high existing-customer share means it's working as intended
Compare this to your overall Sales Performance customer mix — if your whole business skews heavily new, that's a signal customers aren't coming back, separate from any one campaign
Organic vs. Sponsored — check the Sales Performance breakdown to see if ads are adding orders on top of your organic business, or just standing in for orders you'd have gotten anyway. This is the clearest way to tell if your spend is truly incremental.
Quick Playbook
What you're seeing | What to do |
Few views/clicks | Raise your bid or weekly budget, widen targeting, or switch to Visibility |
Views but few clicks | Improve your ad's appeal — menu presentation, promos, Rewards |
Clicks but few orders | Fix the menu, not the reach — photos, dietary options, reliability |
ROAS far above 5–6x | You may be too conservative — consider a higher bid or budget to capture more growth |
Budget runs out fast + strong ROAS | Increase your budget |
Budget runs out fast + weak ROAS | Improve efficiency first, then raise budget |
Mostly existing customers, but goal is growth | Shift targeting toward new/lapsed |
Bottom line: Read your results in order — reach, then clicks, then orders, then spend efficiency — and change one thing at a time so you know what actually moved the needle. A campaign built for growth should show new customers on the funnel; a campaign built for retention should show existing customers converting well. Conversion rate around 15%+ and ROAS around 5–6x are the numbers to watch — and if your ROAS is running much higher than that, it's worth checking whether you're leaving growth on the table rather than treating it as pure success.