The number
$1,094 a month of ad spend leaking, found in a line-by-line account audit
Service · Meta Ads management
Meta Ads management judged by real orders.
Meta Ads management for Facebook and Instagram, in this order: a read-only audit of the account, the pixel and Conversions API fixed so Meta learns from real purchases, then campaigns and creative judged by the orders your store recorded, with a written review every month.
A written audit. No pitch unless you ask for one.
Building something new? Get your free Production Gap Review
Synaptech is not affiliated with Meta.
84 vs 35
purchases Meta reported in 30 days, against store orders traced to Meta ads
receipt
SOURCE · Meta ad account reporting and store order history for a DTC pet-food brand
METHOD · Purchases in the ad account’s default reporting for 2026-09-03 to 2026-10-02, against store orders in the same window whose first or last visit came from a Meta ad. Store orders exclude $0 sample drafts.
VERIFIED · 2026-10
CLASS · platform account
✓ every number on this site opens its receipt
CLAIM · meta-reported-vs-store
How we countMeasured for a DTC pet-food brand whose Meta account we now run.
01 · What goes wrong
Meta says the ads work. The store says otherwise.
What owners bring us with a Meta ad account, in their words. Most of it is measurement and housekeeping, not targeting.
- Overcounted
Meta is counting sales the store never made.
View-through purchases, free sample orders sent to Meta as sales and a pixel that fires twice all land in the purchase column, so every ad set looks better than the bank account says.
- Double-counted
Every platform claims the same order.
Meta and Google each report the purchase, the store recorded it once, and the dashboards add up to more than the business sold. Nobody can say which spend paid for it.
- Broken offer
The ads promise an offer checkout won’t honor.
A first-order code in the ad copy that the store no longer applies, or a link that drops the discount on the way, and the customer finds out at the last step.
- Unreviewed
Dozens of ads, and nobody reading them.
Copies of copies spread the budget so thin that no ad gets enough to be judged, old audiences keep spending, and the winners and losers are never named.
- Fatigued
The same creative runs until it’s stale.
A few images run for months because nobody tracks which ones still sell, and new ads launch without a rule for when to stop them.
- Locked in
The agency owns the account, and the pixel.
The ad account, the pixel and the business portfolio sit under the agency’s logins. Leaving means starting from nothing, so nobody leaves.
02 · What we do
Audit first. Tracking before spend. Ads judged by orders.
The order is the method. Nothing gets more budget until the number it is judged on is one the store would recognize.
01Audit
A read-only account audit, ad set by ad set
Every ad set’s spend against the orders the store traced to it, every ad’s offer checked against what checkout honors, and the waste written down with the dollar amounts. Read-only access is enough.
The free ads and tracking audit02Tracking
A pixel and Conversions API that count real purchases
One purchase per real order, sent by the pixel and the Conversions API and deduplicated, with sample and test orders kept out and click IDs carried from the ad to the order.
Conversion tracking03Structure
Fewer ad sets, each with room to learn
Budgets big enough for each ad set to learn, audiences and exclusions set from your customer list, and the attribution window chosen on purpose instead of left at the default.
04Creative
New ads launched with stop rules written first
Static and video ads built from your product photos and footage, each launched against written keep-and-stop rules and judged on clicks, carts and store orders, so the losers stop before they eat the budget.
05Reporting
A written review every month
What changed, why, what it did to spend and orders, and what comes next, in plain sentences with the figures beside them. If a month went badly, the review says so.
06Ownership
Your ad account, pixel and data, from day one
The ad account, the pixel, the business portfolio and the product catalog stay in your name, with our access as a partner. If we part ways, nothing has to be rebuilt.
We also run Google Ads, lifecycle email and SMS, and landing pages when the account needs them. That is the Growth Engine.
03 · Proof you can check
What a Meta audit found, and what we changed.
A DTC brand’s Meta account audited against its store orders and then handed to us to run, and the click IDs we carry from the ad to the order. Clients whose sign-off is pending are described, not named. Every figure opens its receipt.
84 vs 35
purchases Meta reported in 30 days, against store orders traced to Meta ads
37 of Meta’s purchases were view-throughs, and free sample orders were reaching Meta as sales.
receipt
SOURCE · Meta ad account reporting and store order history for a DTC pet-food brand
METHOD · Purchases in the ad account’s default reporting for 2026-09-03 to 2026-10-02, against store orders in the same window whose first or last visit came from a Meta ad. Store orders exclude $0 sample drafts.
VERIFIED · 2026-10
CLASS · platform account
✓ every number on this site opens its receipt
CLAIM · meta-reported-vs-store
How we count92%
of Meta spend advertised a first-order code that checkout refused on the product most first orders buy
The code was tied to archived versions of that product. We caught it in a store check, and it was fixed the same day.
receipt
SOURCE · Meta ads and spend, and the store’s discount settings, for a DTC pet-food brand
METHOD · Spend in the 30 days before the written ads audit of 2026-09-25 on ads whose copy carried the code, as a share of all Meta spend. The code’s product scope was read in the store and checked with test carts that were never checked out, before and after the fix on 2026-10-03.
VERIFIED · 2026-10
CLASS · platform account
✓ every number on this site opens its receipt
CLAIM · meta-offer-code
How we count32 of 49
active Meta ads spending under $5 a week, too little to judge any of them
Five ads took about three quarters of the week’s spend, and most of the rest never got enough to be judged.
receipt
SOURCE · Meta ad account for a DTC pet-food brand, read for the written ads audit of 2026-09-25
METHOD · Active ads and their spend over the 7 days before the audit, read from the ad account.
VERIFIED · 2026-09
CLASS · platform account
✓ every number on this site opens its receipt
CLAIM · meta-thin-ads
How we count12
tracking parameters carried across the landing-to-store hop
Every ad click ID (gclid, wbraid, gbraid, fbclid, msclkid, ttclid) plus UTMs, passed into store deep links so attribution survives the domain change.
receipt
SOURCE · Landing-system repository for a DTC pet-food brand
METHOD · Parameter passthrough list in the landing system’s link builder.
VERIFIED · 2026-09
CLASS · repository
✓ every number on this site opens its receipt
CLAIM · tracking-params
How we countThe work behind the numbers
- ClientA DTC pet-food brandTook over a Meta account the previous agency had stopped editing: ad sets that weren’t paying back paused on the first day, the broken first-order code fixed, and a new campaign launched on fresh creative, judged on store orders over a seven-day click window.
- ClientA California new-car dealershipFacebook and Instagram links pre-built and tagged in English and Spanish for a dealership’s sales events, in one documented matrix with every other channel, so each lead shows where it came from.
- Venture we co-operateCravebleA full Meta Pixel ecommerce funnel on a brand storefront, from product view to purchase with its order value, so paid social was judged on purchases rather than clicks.
04 · How it starts
The audit, then the tracking, then the account.
The same order every time. You see the audit before anything changes, and the plan before you commit to anything.
Every engagement starts at step one, because the tracking in the accounts on this page was broken when we got it. We would rather show you an unflattering number than a pretty dashboard.
Step 1: The free ads and tracking audit
Grant read-only access to the ad account, the pixel, analytics and the store. We trace each ad set’s spend against the orders the store recorded and hand you the written audit either way.
Out a written audit, yours to keep
Step 2: A written plan
If there is a fit, you get a written plan with the scope, a timeline and an estimate: what gets fixed, what gets paused, and in which order. If there is not a fit, we say so.
Out scope, timeline and an estimate, in writing
Step 3: Tracking fixed
One purchase per real order through the pixel and the Conversions API, sample and test orders kept out, the attribution window chosen on purpose, and click IDs carried through to the order.
Out one purchase per real order
Step 4: The account rebuilt
Ad sets that never sold paused, the rest consolidated so each budget can learn, offers checked at checkout, and new creative launched with keep-and-stop rules written down first, every change logged.
Out a changelog you can read
Step 5: The monthly review
A written review of what changed, what it did to spend and orders, and what comes next. When a change did not work, the review says so and what we are doing instead.
Out a written review, every month
05 · Straight answers
Questions owners ask before handing over a Meta ad account.
Do you need full access to my Meta account to start?
No. The audit runs on read-only access to the ad account, the pixel and the store’s order data. Nothing changes until you have read the audit and agreed to the plan. When the work starts, we are added as a partner on accounts that stay in your name.
Why does Meta report more sales than my store?
Meta counts a purchase when someone clicked or only saw an ad within its attribution window, and it counts whatever the pixel sends, including duplicate events and free sample orders. Your store counts each order once. We line the two up, choose the window on purpose, and judge every ad set on the orders the store recorded.
Do you make the ads too?
Yes, when the account needs new creative. We write the copy and build static and video ads from your product photos and footage, launch them against written keep-and-stop rules, and stop the ones that don’t sell. Customer quotes run only with the customer’s written permission.
Is there a minimum ad budget?
There is no published minimum, because the right spend depends on your margins and what the audit finds. The audit form asks for a budget band so we can say honestly whether Meta is the right place for that money. Sometimes the answer is to fix the offer, the store or the tracking first, and we say so.
How do you charge?
The audit is free and ends with a written plan that carries the scope, a timeline and an estimate for your account. We do not publish prices or packages because no two accounts leak in the same places. You see the plan before you commit to anything.
Do you run Google Ads as well?
Yes. Most stores we work with run both, and the two platforms claim the same orders. We judge both against the store’s own order count, so the budget goes where the orders actually come from.
06 · The front door
Find out what your Meta spend actually sells.
Bring read-only access and your last agency’s reports. We check spend, tracking and offers ad set by ad set against what the store actually sold, and hand you the written audit either way.
A written audit. No pitch unless you ask for one.