08 Aug Is CPAS Tracking Accurate? And Should You Also Run Shopee Ads?
Two questions that tend to come up together: is CPAS tracking actually reliable enough to trust, and if it is, should you still bother running native Shopee or Lazada ads on top of it? The short answers: yes, and often yes.
What CPAS actually gives you
CPAS connects your Shopee or Lazada product catalog directly to your ad account. Once that’s set up, you get real visibility inside Ads Manager — add-to-cart data, cost of purchase, ROAS, the full attribution picture, not a rough estimate. If you have CPAS access, this is genuinely one of the better features available for anyone selling on those marketplaces, because it gives you the transparency to actually run ads effectively and attribute orders correctly.
On accuracy: there will be some discrepancy — realistically, expect somewhere around 80-90% accuracy rather than a perfect one-to-one match. That’s not a flaw worth worrying about. It’s more than enough signal for the campaign to learn meaningfully and deliver real results. If you have CPAS access, use it — the tracking question shouldn’t be what’s holding you back.
Should you still run ads directly on Shopee or Lazada?
This is where a lot of advertisers assume it’s an either/or decision. It isn’t, and treating it that way leaves intent on the table. For certain categories, running platform-native ads on Shopee or Lazada alongside your CPAS Facebook ads makes real sense.
Here’s why: if your category is something people actively search for inside the marketplace app — someone opening Shopee and typing “nail polish” because they’ve decided to buy nail polish right now — that search represents a fundamentally different, and often higher, level of intent than someone scrolling Facebook and seeing your ad interrupt their feed.
A real example: a nail polish client runs Facebook ads to build exposure — showing people the brand, the colors, generating interest and driving good ROAS. But that same client also runs Shopee ads, for two specific reasons. First, nail polish is a category people actively search for within Shopee itself, so being present there catches people at the exact moment they’ve decided to buy. Second, someone who saw the Facebook ad earlier but didn’t buy immediately — maybe they were busy, maybe they wanted to think about it — often comes back later and searches for the brand directly on Shopee or Google. You want to be there when that happens.
A third layer: your own brand name on Google
This same logic extends one step further: buying your own brand name as a Google keyword. If someone sees your Facebook ad, doesn’t convert right away, and later searches your brand name on Google, that’s about as high-intent a search moment as exists — they already know who you are and are actively looking for you. Owning that keyword makes sure you’re the result they land on, rather than ceding it to someone else.
The actual philosophy: build a holistic journey, not a single channel bet
The bigger point underneath all of this: it’s not about picking the “best” platform and running everything through it. It’s about building a holistic advertising presence that captures your audience wherever they’re actually looking for you — Facebook and Instagram for exposure and interruption, marketplace search ads for people actively browsing the category, brand-name search ads for people who already know you and are looking to come back. Each of these captures a genuinely different moment, and skipping any one of them means leaving some of your highest-intent traffic uncaptured.
A quick self-check on your own setup
- Do I have CPAS access set up correctly, and am I actually using the attribution data it gives me?
- Is my product category something people actively search for inside Shopee or Lazada? If so, running native marketplace ads alongside CPAS is worth testing.
- Have I bought my own brand name as a Google keyword, so I’m not ceding that high-intent search moment to someone else?
- Am I treating this as a single-channel decision, when the better frame is capturing multiple distinct intent moments across channels?
This breakdown is written by Jason Gan, a Meta Certified Professional and Badged Meta Business Partner who has personally audited over 1,000 advertiser accounts since 2010. You can see real account breakdowns on the Jason Gan YouTube channel.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I actually track results properly with CPAS? Yes, close to fully. If you have CPAS access, your Shopee or Lazada product catalog connects directly to your ad account, giving you visibility into add-to-cart, cost of purchase, ROAS, and other attribution data right in Ads Manager. There’s some discrepancy — realistically around 80-90% accuracy — but that’s more than enough for the campaign to learn meaningfully and deliver good results.
Should I run Shopee/Lazada ads if I already have CPAS set up on Facebook? For a lot of categories, yes — it’s not either/or. If your product is something people actively search for inside Shopee or Lazada, running ads there captures a different, often higher-intent moment than a Facebook or Instagram ad ever will. The two channels serve different points in the customer’s journey, not the same one twice.
Why buy Google ads for my own brand name? To capture the moment someone remembers your brand after seeing an ad and searches for you later. If someone sees your Facebook ad, doesn’t buy immediately, and later searches your brand name on Google, you want to be the result they land on — that’s about as high-intent a search as exists. Buying your own brand keyword makes sure you own that moment.
What’s the right way to think about multi-channel advertising? Stop thinking of it as picking one channel. Different platforms capture different moments of intent — Facebook and Instagram for exposure and interruption, marketplace search for active category browsing, Google brand search for recall. A holistic approach places you wherever your audience is actively looking, rather than betting everything on a single touchpoint.
Book a Meta Ads Audit — $80 / 30 Minutes →
No login required. If you’re not sure whether your CPAS tracking is set up correctly, or whether it’s worth adding marketplace or Google ads to the mix, we can go through your specific setup together.
If you want ongoing help building out a holistic strategy across CPAS, marketplace ads, and search, that’s exactly what 1-on-1 coaching is for.