Results
One of these accounts spent $276,000 while its own reports said $11.
That business was fine. Trucks rolling, phones ringing, roughly $392,000 a month in booked work.
It just couldn't see any of it. Here are seven accounts I've been inside, and what the numbers actually said
once someone opened them.
Before you read them.
Every one of these has a note saying where it stops.
Best month rather than average, estimate rather than money in the bank, one channel out of ten. You can open
those notes on each card.
I went through 39 accounts to get to seven. Most
didn't hold up once I was in the data, so they're not here. Which is also why a few of these look modest next
to what you'll see on other people's sites.
Money that landed
55 months of account history
An $8M plumbing and HVAC company
They were spending about $46,000 a month on Google and could not tell you which of it worked. For six straight months the account reported almost no revenue at all, while the business kept booking roughly $392,000 a month. Nothing was broken in the business. The measurement was broken.
The number
Three different agencies ran this account. Only one of them could see the revenue it produced.
What this one does not cover
- Booked revenue is channel-mixed across roughly ten sources. Most of it is not paid search, and none of it is credited to the ad account here.
- 64% of revenue arrives unattributed, so every per-channel figure is a floor rather than a measurement.
- No improvement is claimed. The eras differ in what each could measure as well as how each performed, and the data cannot separate the two.
- The eras are not like-for-like: one is entirely Search, another roughly a quarter a different Google campaign type.
- No change log exists for any era, so nothing attributes a result to a specific action.
Estimated from their numbers
15 months
A regional internet provider
They could tell you their ad spend to the dollar. Ask what a customer actually cost and nobody had ever worked it out. It's in their own sales records, so we did: $246 in their best market. Most of this industry pays between $300 and $500.
The number
$246 to win a customer in their strongest market. The industry typically pays $300 to $500.
What this one does not cover
- These are estimates. Nobody bought anything at this stage. Every conversion is a lead; no purchase event exists, so no revenue figure and no return can be stated.
- The figure is one platform in one market. The same close rate gives materially higher costs in the other market and on social. Read the table, not the best number in it.
- The close rate is the client's own, taken from their sales reporting. That figure came from them, not from me.
- No lifetime value, payback or return is available: the client's reporting records no churn model.
- Lead volume itself carries a caveat, because several form actions are counted at once.
Money that landed
3 clean months
An apparel brand being told it made money it never made
A setting inside Google was quietly adding $74 to every new-customer order, and a second one added $74 again for returning customers. Their reports showed roughly $8,000 of revenue in a month that never existed. We switched both off. You can check the fix yourself in their own export.
The number
CA$63,146 in ads produced CA$385,651 in tracked store sales, over three clean months.
What this one does not cover
- Three months back to back with no gaps, stated in Canadian dollars. the return is the same either way; the dollar totals are not.
- The earlier month affected by value inflation is excluded rather than restated, so no platform-added value reaches this total.
- No lift is claimed. The padded period is not a 'before' to improve on, because its numbers were not measuring the right thing.
- The final month was captured on its closing day and is still settling.
Money that landed
13 months straight
An apparel brand doing $340K a month
Good numbers, sitting still. They'd never pushed the spend because nobody could promise the return would survive it. Thirteen months on, the budget is roughly double and the return held. Every dollar of that traces to an actual order in their store.
The number
$131,218 in ads produced $1,315,875 in tracked store sales, across 13 straight months.
What this one does not cover
- Thirteen months back to back with no gaps of tracked store sales, averaged across the whole period. The 15.43x peak month is a peak and is labelled as one.
- No improvement is claimed. There is no engagement document and no change history, so this is the account held up while we ran it, which is not the same as us lifting it.
- Nothing here speaks to incrementality. Tracked return is what the platform measured, not what the business would have lost without it.
- The final month was captured on its closing day and is still settling, so the figure is conservative rather than optimistic.
Money that landed
first 40 days
A membership brand, first 40 days
Forty days. Small money. The point of including it is that the purchase tracking was right from day one, so the cost per sale is a fact rather than a guess.
The number
$3,427 in ads produced $16,627 in sales. About $19 to make a sale.
What this one does not cover
- Forty days. Short window, small absolute spend, and nothing here extrapolates to a month or a year.
- Tracked purchase revenue, not an assigned value.
Money that landed
90-day audit window plus an 8-month series
A small jewellery store
A small budget, honestly tracked. It's here because most owners are running something this size, not something with six figures a month behind it.
The number
A small budget, with every sale traced back to a real order rather than an estimate.
What this one does not cover
- Small absolute spend over a short window. A supporting data point, not a headline.
- No intervention record exists, so no result is attributed to any action.
Money that landed
3 months
An industrial tooling shop
Three months, every dollar tied to an actual order, and no inflated value anywhere in the reporting. A newer account, shown because the tracking is honest.
The number
$7,281 in ads produced $41,201 in tracked sales, across three months.
What this one does not cover
- Three months back to back with no gaps with no inflated value. The most recent was captured on its closing day and is still settling, so the figure is conservative.
- Averaged across the whole period it is 5.66x. June peaks at 7.21x, and a peak is labelled a peak.
- Small absolute spend. Nothing here extrapolates.
- Revenue is brand-heavy, so the incremental contribution of paid search is not established.
- No before-and-after and no change log, so this is sustained performance rather than a lift.
Want to know what your account really says?
Your dashboard will not tell you. The audit tells you what a lead
is actually worth to you, and how much of your revenue you currently cannot trace at all. Most owners have
never seen either number.
Book the Owner's Math audit