Cases

Two teardowns.
Real numbers, no names.

We don't have named client cases yet. They'll land as clients clear NDA. Below are two real accounts we audited. Anonymized, but with real numbers, reconciled against Shopify.

Case 01
Haircare
USShopify DTCMeta Ads
The problem

$118 to win a $50 order.

The account spent $38,246 over 8 weeks at a verified 0.48× ROAS, about 3.5× under break-even. Meta claimed 0.43×. We reconciled it against Shopify: the channel lost money on every order.

By the numbers
$38,246
spent in 8 weeks
$148
CPM, the priciest ad market on earth
81%
of budget on age 45+, buyer is younger
0
catalog ads across the whole range

What we found

  • 66 campaigns, most alive one to two weeks, never learning
  • A $110 cost cap that accepted almost any expensive conversion
  • Creative cropped by placement
  • Catalog ads, the cheapest format for ecommerce, unused

Outcome

We did not bill to "rescue" a losing channel. We proved with numbers that it lost money, and the spend was stopped. The money moved to channels that pay back. Sometimes the best ad result is to stop running ads.

$27,000
of losing spend over 8 weeks — stopped
Case 02
Skincare
EUShopify DTCMeta Ads
The problem

Meta reported 1.5×. Reality was 0.35×.

A fourfold gap between what Meta claimed and what Shopify verified. The reason was simple: the account ran no UTM tags, so about 30% of orders came back as "source unknown". Until we reconciled the data, the picture looked acceptable. After, it did not.

By the numbers
~30%
of orders with no source, tracking broken
~40%
of budget on age 55 to 65+, buyer is 28 to 45
75%
of a €335 test on cropped-creative placements
0
catalog ads across 100+ SKUs

What we found

  • Five or six campaigns competing for the same audience
  • Optimization set to add-to-cart instead of purchase
  • On cropped placements the button never showed, and the test went there

In progress

Fixes are going in with no budget increase:

  • UTM tags and clean tracking
  • Placement splits
  • Age narrowed to 28–45
  • A catalog pilot
  • Priority on higher-margin products

The brand name is under NDA. We show the full version on the audit call.

03 — How we measure results

Ecommerce

We set target ROAS off your margin, AOV, conversion rate and payback window. ROAS on its own means nothing. A 4× can be a win or a loss depending on the economics.

Lead-gen

Cost per lead and lead quality, judged together. A cheap lead that never converts is not a result. Closing the lead into a sale is partly your job, and we will say so.

04 — Straight talk

We don't pass off other people's logos or results as ours.

The numbers above are real and reconciled against Shopify. Names stay hidden until the client clears them. We show the full version, brand name and all campaigns, on the audit call.

Want to see
your numbers?

On the audit call we review your account and reconcile Meta against real sales.

Get an audit