EUR 196,000 in Preventable Damage
A documented case of agency negligence at a European DTC ecommerce brand.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
What we documented.
Across 11 months of agency management, a Scandinavian home goods brand spent EUR 341,000 on paid media. We audited the account and documented EUR 196,000 of that spend as preventable loss. None of it was due to platform changes, creative fatigue, or market softness. All of it was attributable to three categories of error the agency was paid to prevent.
The brand is referred to here as Client 2026-EU-0047. The agency is unnamed. The numbers are reconcilable against the Meta Ads API, Google Ads API, and Shopify. Every finding in this report has a screenshot, an API response, or a platform log attached in the source file.
Before vs. after agency management
The brand grew 8.9% in gross sales. Net contribution fell 41%.
| Metric | Before Agency | With Agency | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gross sales | EUR 1,720,115 | EUR 1,872,370 | +8.9% |
| Ad spend | EUR 128,400 | EUR 341,000 | +165.6% |
| Blended ROAS | 13.4x | 2.9x | -78.6% |
| Meta ROAS (reported) | 5.2x | 3.8x | -26.9% |
| Meta ROAS (reconciled to Shopify) | 5.0x | 2.2x | -56.0% |
| Google Ads conversions tracked | 2,140 | 0 | Tracking never installed |
| Net contribution after ads | EUR 1,591,715 | EUR 1,531,370 | -3.8% |
Figures reconciled against Meta Ads API, Google Ads API, and Shopify admin exports.
How it escalated
Eleven months from hire to documented damage. Every milestone was a missed red flag.
THE THREE FAILURE MODES
Where the money went.
- 01 CRITICAL EUR 53,200
Google Ads ran without conversion tracking for 11 months
The agency imported a Google Ads account, launched Performance Max and branded search, and never installed the conversion tag. For 11 months they optimised against clicks, not purchases. Google Ads reported zero conversions in the interface. The agency reported ROAS in the weekly deck by attributing all new sessions to Google. None of it was verified against Shopify.
- 02 HIGH EUR 81,400
Meta Purchase event fired twice on every order
Both the pixel and CAPI dispatched a Purchase event on order completion. The agency configured neither. Meta reported conversions inflated by 94%. Budget decisions were made against a metric that was lying by a factor of 1.94x. When we removed the duplicate event and reconciled against Shopify, the true Meta ROAS was 2.2x, not 3.8x.
- 03 MEDIUM EUR 61,400
Creative fatigue ignored for 32 consecutive weeks
The top ad set crossed frequency 6.0 in week 4 and stayed above 5.0 for the next 32 weeks. CTR declined from 1.84% to 0.41%. No new creative shipped. The agency reported the account as "optimised" in 27 of those 32 weekly reports. Replacement creative cost the client EUR 0 because the brand had an in-house photographer. The agency never asked.
METHODOLOGY
How we verified every number.
This audit ran across 14 business days. We pulled the Meta Ads API for the full 11-month period, reconciled every Purchase event against Shopify order IDs, and checked the Google Ads account for any deployed conversion tracking. We found none.
We do not accept screenshots. We do not accept agency decks. We accept platform APIs, server logs, and Shopify order data. Where the numbers disagreed, we treated Shopify as ground truth and flagged the delta.
The full reconciliation workbook runs to 89 pages. A redacted copy is available to qualified operators on request.
EUR 196,000
Calculated as the delta between actual spend and projected spend at pre-agency efficiency, cross-checked against the three documented failure modes (Google Ads with no conversion tracking, duplicate Meta Purchase event, 32 weeks of ignored creative fatigue). Every finding traced to a platform API response or Shopify order log.
RESOLUTION
What happened after the report.
The client terminated the agency contract two weeks after receiving this report. They recovered four months of retainer fees under the contract termination clause, totalling EUR 38,400.
Bloodhound took over the account on a monthly retainer. Within 90 days: Google Ads conversion tracking deployed, Meta Purchase event deduplicated, creative rotation protocol installed. Blended ROAS recovered from 2.9x to 6.1x on unchanged gross spend.
The brand has publicly named the engagement. The agency has not responded to documented requests for comment.
The data was all there. The agency just never looked at it.
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