Case studies

Real accounts. What the dashboard said, and what was true.

65 businesses — from HVAC companies and dental practices to online stores. Each one shows the numbers before and after, in plain English. Start with the kind of business you run.

Bing showed zero conversions for 11 months. Month one of tracking found 147.

95 “leads” a month. Only 5 booked jobs.

28% of Google's “leads” never became patients.

Bookings held steady. Meta said they had dropped 60%.

Google said $44 a lead. The real cost was about $410.

A 96% bounce rate made a new $18K website look like a failure.

Meta claimed 390 new members a month. 97 were real.

90% of memberships were invisible to Google.

52% of purchase events were invisible to Meta's algorithm — for months

Agency said tracking was fine. 38% of purchases were never reaching Meta.

GA4 showed 94% bounce rate. Marketing decisions had been frozen for 3 months.

Google was counting each sale 3 times. Smart bidding was optimizing on ghost wins.

12% match rate. Creative decisions were being made on completely unreliable data.

Meta, Google, and TikTok each claimed full credit. Attributed revenue was 3.1× actual sales.

Shopify showed 89 purchases/day. Meta pixel saw 31. A 65% gap — invisible for 18 months.

3 agencies, 4 years, 31 zombie tags. ROAS declining for 8 months with no explanation.

71% iOS customers. EMQ at 2.4. $28K/month in ad spend running essentially blind.

$30K/month launch budget. Zero tracking in place. 5 days until go-live.

70% of sales closed by phone or showroom. Google Ads had no idea any of them happened.

Meta ads were driving showroom sales — but 48% of that revenue was completely invisible to the algorithm.

Snap ads showed 0.8x ROAS. The actual number was 2.7x — and the budget was 2 weeks from being cut.

Google Ads lost 40% of conversion data overnight after March 2024. Smart Bidding collapsed in weeks.

Pinterest reported 0.7x ROAS. Before the budget was cut, I audited. The real number was 3.1x.

Smart Bidding optimized for $45 first orders — not the $360 LTV per subscriber. It was finding the wrong customers.

Mobile showed 0.8% conversion rate. Desktop showed 4.2%. Mobile was about to be cut — but it started 62% of all purchases.

Revenue sent to Meta in AED, GBP, and EUR — no currency codes. Every ROAS figure across 5 markets was wrong.

Purchase events firing twice — reported ROAS was 2.4x but actual was 1.2x

Enhanced Conversions not sending hashed emails — Google losing 40% of conversions

TikTok pixel client-side only — iOS users completely invisible to the algorithm

Snap pixel missing from checkout pages — purchase ROAS impossible to measure

GDPR Consent Mode V2 rollout wiped 70% of events — entire tracking stack broken

Triple-counted conversions across GA4, Meta, and Google — attributed revenue was 312% of actual

TikTok Events API dedup key missing — every purchase counted twice in reporting

iOS 14 cutting 55% of Dutch purchase signals — ROAS stuck at 0.9x for 8 months

UA to GA4 migration left all ecommerce events missing — revenue showing zero in GA4

WooCommerce CAPI sending INR values without currency code — ROAS inflated by 83x

Smart Shopping bidding at 4x ROAS target but tracking NZD as USD — actual target was 0.16x

Snap CAPI rejecting events with silent 400 errors — Arabic URL paths were malformed

6 ad platforms with no deduplication — attributed revenue was 440% of actual Shopify revenue

Meta Dynamic Catalog Ads returning zero purchases — product IDs in pixel didn't match catalog

Google optimizing for Add to Cart on $3,000+ items — actual purchases completely invisible

TikTok Shop and website both sending purchase events — every sale counted twice

Snap CAPI sending without event_id — 180% purchase inflation, dedup impossible

4 ad platforms with client-side pixels only — post-iOS 14 coverage had dropped to 38%

Dynamic Product Ads not matching WooCommerce products — zero DPA conversions on $40K/mo

Meta reporting 4.8x ROAS on jewelry — Shopify showed half the revenue. Every purchase was double-counted.

Google Smart Shopping bidding on 'Add to Wishlist' events on a £2,000+ AOV jewellery store — zero purchase signal for 9 months

Bridal jewellery brand running Meta and Google with no cross-platform dedup — attributed revenue was 380% of actual Shopify sales

$45 CPL looked great. The real cost per paying customer was $1,500. Smart Bidding was making it worse every month.

42% of their visitors used ad blockers. All tracking was browser-side. £50K/month running on 58% of real data.

GA4 tracking page views only — signups, trials, and paid upgrades completely invisible

Trial signups not reaching Meta — iOS 14 killed pixel, no CAPI in place for 18 months

Smart Bidding optimizing for free signups, not paid conversions — $180K wasted on free users

TikTok app and web events double-counting signups — 44% inflation in reported conversions

5 different tools all reporting different user counts — attribution was a complete guess

Paid conversion event firing on page load, not actual upgrade — 300% inflation in conversion volume

A marketing analytics tool with completely broken marketing tracking — the ultimate irony

120-day sales cycle. Google's 90-day attribution window. The last month of every closed deal was invisible — forever.

Meta optimizing for leads from a decommissioned form — ghost conversions for 3 months

LinkedIn Insight Tag conflicting with GTM — demo request events not reaching LinkedIn

GTM Server-Side container not deduplicating across Meta, Google, and LinkedIn simultaneously

Google Ads had zero visibility into which keywords closed deals — all 12 reps reporting verbally

LinkedIn form fills converting in Campaign Manager but showing zero in GA4 — UTM stripping

GA4 sessions resetting inside Calendly embed — every booked demo appeared as direct traffic

80% of RFQ form submissions were from competitors and students — Google bidding on noise