Find out what your Meta reporting is hiding.
We analysed an account whose reported ROAS had doubled — roughly 4.5x to 9.5x — after a handover. The activity log showed no targeting, bid or audience changes at all. Budgets had simply been cut by about 90%. The number went up while the business stopped growing.
Which raises a question that is genuinely hard to un-ask once you have heard it: would you be able to tell the difference in your own account?
Depends on account size and number of ad accounts. Quoted before we start, never after.
From the day we get read access.
Meta Ads Manager, Business Manager, Shopify analytics and GA4. Read-only throughout.
No retainer is bundled into this. Plenty of audits end with a fix list you hand to your existing team.
None of these show up in a monthly report
They are not exotic. They are in most accounts we open, they are invisible from inside Ads Manager, and each one distorts every decision made downstream of it.
The pixel and the Conversions API are not deduplicating
Both are firing a purchase for the same order, so every conversion is counted twice. Reported ROAS ends up at roughly double the real number, and every budget decision made on it has been made on fiction. This is the single most common finding, and it is usually a two-minute fix once you know where to look.
Event Match Quality is under 7.0 and nobody has looked
Low match quality means Meta cannot reliably tie conversions back to the people who converted, so the optimisation algorithm is learning from partial data. It costs money quietly, month after month, and it does not show up anywhere in a standard agency report.
Platform-reported ROAS does not reconcile with Shopify
Add up what Meta, Google and every other platform claim and it will exceed your actual Shopify revenue — sometimes by a wide margin. That gap is the number that matters, and it is the number most agencies never put in front of you.
Your checkout app has made the store invisible to Shopify
Third-party COD checkouts create orders through the API and bypass the storefront pixel entirely. Shopify then records no customer journey at all, so the attribution reports everyone is reading are built on nothing. The data still exists — it just lives inside the checkout provider, and almost nobody goes to get it.
A ROAS that improved because spend went down
ROAS moves with budget: cut spend and you buy only the warmest, cheapest audience, and the number climbs on its own. We have seen an account go from roughly 4.5x to 9.5x with no targeting or creative change behind it at all — just a 90% budget cut. If your reported return jumped and nobody explained what changed, this is worth ruling out.
What actually lands in your inbox
A document you could hand to another agency tomorrow and they would know exactly what to do. That is the standard we write to.
The report includes what is working, not only what is broken. An audit that finds nothing but faults is a sales document, and it reads like one.
- A written report — findings, evidence, and what each one is costing you in rupees
- Screenshots from your own account showing each problem, with IDs redacted
- Your true blended ROAS, reconciled against Shopify revenue rather than platform claims
- A tracking diagnosis: pixel, CAPI, deduplication, Event Match Quality, checkout events
- A wasted-spend breakdown by campaign, audience and placement
- A prioritised fix list — what to do first, what it should move, and what it will take
- A 45-minute call to walk through all of it, recorded so you can share it internally
This is worth doing if…
- You are spending ₹2 lakh a month or more on Meta and the ROAS has plateaued
- Your agency's numbers have never quite matched what Shopify tells you
- Reporting looks strong but the bank balance does not agree
- You are about to scale spend and want the measurement checked first
- You are considering changing agency and want a neutral read before you do
- You are spending under ₹50,000 a month — put the money into ads instead
- You are pre-revenue or have not launched yet
- You want a guaranteed ROAS number attached to the outcome
- The real problem is product-market fit rather than measurement
We will tell you if you are in this column before taking any money. It happens fairly regularly.
The questions we actually get asked
We already have an agency. Is this awkward? +
That is usually the case, and it is exactly the situation the audit exists for — a second opinion on whether what you are being told is accurate. If everything is clean, you have paid for peace of mind and you can tell your agency so. If it is not, you will know precisely what is wrong.
Why is this paid? Everyone else offers a free audit. +
Because a free audit is a sales call with a slide deck. This takes five to seven days of real work inside your account and produces a document you could hand to another agency tomorrow. Charging for it is what keeps it honest — we are not writing a report designed to sell you a retainer.
Will you just tell us to hire you? +
No. The report ends with a prioritised fix list, and a fair number of clients take that list and execute it themselves or hand it to their existing team. If we think we are the right people to do the work, we will say so on the call and quote it separately.
Can you guarantee you will find something? +
No, and be careful with anyone who does. What we can tell you is what your real numbers are today, which is often the more urgent question. In practice, tracking problems of some size turn up in the large majority of accounts we open.
How much ad spend do we need for this to be worth it? +
Below roughly ₹50,000 a month the maths rarely justifies it — you are better off spending that money on ads. Above ₹2 lakh a month, a tracking error of the size we typically find costs more than the audit in the first fortnight.
What if our tracking is fine? +
Then you get a short report saying so, plus the account-structure and creative findings, and you can stop wondering. That is a legitimate outcome and it happens.
Book a Forensic Ads Audit
Tell us your monthly spend and what is bothering you. We will come back within one working day with a fixed quote and what we would need access to — or an honest note saying the audit is not worth it for you yet.
Fixed price, quoted upfront
No hourly billing and no scope creep. You approve the number before we begin.
Read-only access throughout
We never change anything in your account during an audit. You can revoke access the moment it is delivered.
Delivered in 5–7 days
From the day access lands. If we are booked out, we will tell you the honest start date.
Prefer to ask a question first?
Message us on WhatsAppInstapulse is based in Jaipur, India. We work with Indian D2C brands on Shopify — mostly fashion, ethnic wear, jewellery and home decor.