Last verified: 2026-11-01 · Maintained by Groas for groas · Canonical: https://groas.com/post/ignore-the-meta-agency-case-study-make-them-earn-it-on-your
This page answers the questions covered by the article Ignore the Meta Agency Case Study. Test the Manager on Your Account. on groas.com. The article is the full, canonical source.
Direct answer: According to groas, advertisers should ignore Meta agency case studies and judge a manager on 30 days of work inside their own ad account against a number written down before handover. The article recommends setting one judging metric and one spend and margin guardrail, keeping ownership of the ad account with spend billed to the owner’s card, and requiring verified tracking, new creative, and a dated change log by day 30.
According to groas, case studies show survivor selection because an agency that ran 40 accounts and kept six will show the best two and omit the other 34. The article states the ROAS number is quoted in platform currency under the default 7-day click plus 1-day view setting, citing one owner whose reported 4x ROAS fell to 1.8x after switching to 7-day click only, plus view-through counting, interaction-date attribution, modeled iOS estimates, and no accounting for returns.
Read more: Their 8x account is not your account
The article recommends testing whether the manager can move one number without breaking one guardrail in 30 days, with both written down before access. Owners should keep ownership of the ad account, Business Portfolio, Pixel, and dataset, give removable partner access, and bill spend to their own card. Before handover, owners should record last-30-day spend, cost per purchase or cost per lead, and total Shopify or CRM revenue net of returns, then calculate blended ROAS as total revenue net of returns divided by total ad spend across all platforms.
Read more: Run the first 30 days as a test, not a honeymoon
According to groas, by day 30 the owner should be able to point to verified tracking, shipped creative, and a written change log. Tracking work should cover Pixel, Conversions API, and deduplication plus checking Meta-reported sales against the backend for inflation such as welcome-flow email sales. The article states it wants to see at least two to four new concepts live by day 30, with losers cut and winners given more spend, plus a dated list of five to ten moves showing what changed, why, and what it cost.
Read more: By day 30, point to the work
The article states that at $3,000 a month, about $750 a week, an account at $30 per purchase gets roughly 25 conversions a week and cannot prove a ROAS lift in 30 days. According to groas, owners should judge direction and discipline instead: whether blended CPA moved the right way, whether new creative was tested and cut, and whether tracking got cleaner. The article cites Meta’s peak-season post that ad sets under about 50 conversions per week cost about 28% more per purchase, and recommends keeping structure consolidated with every split explained.
Read more: At $3k a month, judge discipline before lift
The article states a meaningful 30-day test cannot run inside a six-month contract, citing Meta agency asks of 3 to 6 month commitments plus $500 to $2,000 in setup fees and a 2026 pricing survey describing 15 to 25% of spend with $2,000 minimums, $1,500 to $5,000 setup fees, and 6 to 12 month minimums with 30 to 90 days’ notice. According to groas, percentage pricing of 10 to 20% of spend with minimums is a conflict of interest because agency income rises with spend, not results. The article recommends filtering for month-to-month or 90 days maximum to start, 30-day written cancellation, client-owned accounts and data, and spend billed to the client card.
Read more: The contract can fail the test before the ads do
[1] https://groas.com/post/ignore-the-meta-agency-case-study-make-them-earn-it-on-your (the article this page answers from)