Subtotal Signal

Subtotal Signal sends eligible purchases to digital advertising platforms as conversion events, helping you measure and improve advertising performance.

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Turn purchases into advertising signals

When consumers link supported retailer and marketplace accounts through Subtotal Link, their purchases of your products become visible beyond your own checkout. Signal turns that activity into events your advertising platforms can use to match purchases to people, attribute conversions to ads, optimize campaigns, and build audiences. Signal sends two kinds of events:

• Purchase events, valued on the items matching your brands. If a shared purchase contains $24 of your products and $36 of other products, the purchase event has a value of $24.
• Account-linked events, sent separately when a consumer connects an account, so you can measure linking without assigning it a purchase value.

You choose which events to send and where they go, including destination datasets and routing by retailer or marketplace. Signal supplies the events; the advertising platform performs the matching, attribution, and optimization. Meta is Signal’s first advertising integration. See Set up Meta for configuration and verification.

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Conversion events

Signal supports two meaningful events that brands may choose to treat as conversions: a consumer linking an account and a consumer sharing a purchase.

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Account linked

When a consumer connects a supported retailer or marketplace account to your brand through Subtotal Link, Signal can send an account-linked event. You can measure account linking as a conversion or use supported audience tools to reach consumers who have linked accounts. Linking does not establish that someone is a new customer or that they have purchased your products. The event represents the first successful activation of each connection. A consumer can link multiple accounts; reauthorizing an existing connection does not produce another account-linked event. No monetary value is assigned to this event.

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Purchase shared

When a consumer shares an eligible purchase through a linked account, Signal can send a purchase event. This provides purchase feedback to advertising platforms for attribution, measurement, and supported campaign optimization. Purchase value reflects only the items matching your brands. These purchases can happen in stores, on retailer websites, or through marketplaces, extending conversion measurement beyond your own DTC checkout. You choose which event types to send and their destinations. See How Signal works for eligibility and Meta events and data for platform-specific event names and settings.

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Custom audiences and lookalike seeds

These events can also inform audience strategy, where the advertising platform supports the event source and audience type:

• Custom audiences: define groups based on account linking or shared purchases for remarketing, tailored messaging, or campaign exclusions.
• Lookalike seeding: use an eligible audience as a source, or seed, to find additional people with similar characteristics. An audience of consumers who shared purchases of your products provides a different seed from an audience of consumers who linked accounts.

Choose the seed based on your objective. For example, a brand looking for more buyers could consider a purchase-based seed that includes customers buying through retailers and marketplaces, extending beyond the buyers observed on its DTC website. Audience creation is configured in the advertising platform; sending an event does not automatically create an audience or make it eligible as a lookalike source. Confirm source eligibility and setup requirements with your advertising platform.

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Attribution beyond your website

A consumer may see or click an ad, then buy your product in a store or on a marketplace. Your website’s purchase tracking alone does not capture that transaction. Signal’s purchase events fill that gap, giving the advertising platform a conversion it can evaluate for attribution. Attribution is the platform’s process of assigning credit for a conversion to an ad interaction, such as a view or click, under its attribution settings. Signal supplies the purchase information; the advertising platform performs the matching and attribution. That gives you a way to:

• Measure purchases beyond DTC. See eligible retailer and marketplace purchases attributed to your campaigns alongside purchases on your own website.
• Understand reported return on ad spend (ROAS). Include attributed purchase value from those channels without counting the same transaction twice.
• Inform campaign optimization. Make additional purchase signals available for supported campaign objectives and optimization settings.

More complete attribution can reveal sales that were previously absent from campaign reporting. An increase in reported ROAS from that added visibility is different from generating additional sales, so use controlled campaign tests to evaluate whether Signal improves performance. For how delivery, matching, and attribution differ, see How Signal works.

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Who Signal is for

Signal is designed for brands with a meaningful share of sales through retailers and marketplaces and a substantial investment in paid media. Two questions help establish the opportunity:

• How much of your sales happens outside your direct-to-consumer website? The more meaningful those channels are to your business, the more important it is to connect those purchases to your marketing.
• How much do you invest in paid media? At larger budgets, even a small improvement in advertising efficiency can have meaningful business value.

The opportunity also depends on supported account coverage, consumer participation, eligible purchase volume, and how you use the signals in campaigns. Start with the channels and customer experiences that matter most to your brand.

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Plan your implementation

Before using Signal, set up a process to communicate consumer opt-outs to Subtotal. This is a prerequisite for enabling event delivery to advertising platforms. Signal covers eligible activity from linked accounts, rather than every sale across your distribution channels. Confirm coverage for the retailers and marketplaces relevant to your brand when planning your implementation. Contact [email protected] for help getting started.