Are Your Facebook Ad Results Real?

Last updated: September 2026. By Ryan Goering, founder and CEO of BaaDigi. The Local Services Ads example below is BaaDigi client data; the rest of this page is method.

Correction: An earlier version presented specific campaign counts, spending and projected returns as a success story. The original records available for this review do not substantiate that case study. Those figures are withdrawn and are not relied on below. This article now explains how to verify campaign results.

How should you define a qualified lead?

Agree on the definition before judging the campaign. For a contractor, useful qualification questions may include service area, project scope, authority to request the work and whether the business can handle the timing. Do not call a person unqualified merely because they did not buy. A legitimate customer may compare estimates or delay a project.

Keep separate fields for submitted, contacted, qualified, appointment booked and appointment attended. Record the reason for disqualification. If an article calls every inquiry qualified and later removes a share as unsuitable, the headline and denominator need correction. Do not preserve an impressive conversion rate by quietly switching which inquiries count.

Which records should the worksheet connect?

Use an internal record identifier rather than exposing customer details in a public case study. Retain enough information privately to audit the connection, with access limited to the people who need it. Obtain permission for any customer story, screenshot or identifiable quotation before publishing it.

How do you calculate useful costs?

Divide the relevant spending by the outcome you have actually counted. Media spend divided by qualified inquiries gives media cost per qualified inquiry. Total acquisition spending divided by acquired customers gives a broader acquisition measure. Label the boundary so readers know whether creative, management, software and sales effort are included.

When no customers have been acquired, report the spend and the unresolved outcome. Do not describe customer acquisition cost as zero. When estimates remain open, keep that cohort visible and review it later. A report written before the sales cycle has finished can be accurate about inquiries and still be incomplete about return.

A worked example from our own Local Services Ads tracker: four client accounts, Jun–Sep 2026, $32,835.46 of spend and 900 leads. Google charged for 716 of them (79.6%). Cost per lead is $36.48 if you divide by all 900 and $45.86 if you divide by the 716 charged leads. Both are true; a report that shows one without naming the denominator is not verifiable. The same tracker records 6,547 profile clicks, which are not leads and never enter either calculation. Ask the same denominator question of every Facebook report you are shown.

Why are revenue projections different from results?

Multiplying appointments by an assumed closing rate and an assumed project value produces a scenario. It does not show what the contractor earned. If you use a scenario for planning, label every assumption and keep it apart from observed results. Avoid a headline that says “generated revenue” when the business has not recorded those sales.

Also distinguish booked revenue, collected revenue and profit after delivery. A large contract may have substantial material, labor and subcontractor costs. A revenue-to-ad-spend ratio does not account for those costs. The useful decision is whether the campaign supports the work and margin the company can actually deliver, not whether the largest possible scenario looks attractive.

How should you handle conflicting attribution?

A customer may encounter an ad and later return through another route. Google’s attribution explanation distinguishes customer actions from the rules that assign credit to interactions. The same principle matters when reading different platform reports: credited conversions are not automatically separate customers.

Choose a reporting view and disclose its limitations. Keep the underlying customer outcome once, then show how different sources describe their involvement. Do not combine several platforms’ claimed sales into a company total. If source information is missing, use an unknown category. Filling gaps with the channel you hope performed best makes the report less useful.

How do you reconcile the report before approving it?

1. Freeze the period, timezone, campaign list and metric definitions used.
2. Match the media export to the stated spending boundary.
3. Deduplicate inquiries and record tests, unsuitable requests and missing source information.
4. Connect a selection of successful and unsuccessful inquiries to their real outcomes.
5. Explain differences between platform attribution and the customer ledger.
6. Keep unresolved proposals visible and state when outcomes will be reviewed again.

The marketing measurement guide covers reporting decisions beyond one campaign. Before changing delivery, use the Facebook intake checklist to rule out broken routing. Neither exercise requires publishing private customer information.

What can a contractor request before increasing spend?

Ask to inspect a small selection of records from inquiry through outcome, including unsuccessful cases. Review whether the advertisements accurately describe the service and whether the office can respond to the requests being generated. A campaign can produce real contacts but still be poorly matched to the contractor’s scope or capacity.

BaaDigi’s paid advertising service and Predictability Engine address different scopes of work. Compare deliverables and reporting rather than treating a low lead price as proof of value. For planning, the growth calculator is a scenario tool; its output cannot authenticate a campaign.

What should a publishable case study conclude?

A defensible case study describes one business, one defined period and the limitations of the records. It reports failures and unresolved outcomes alongside successes. It should not turn a single campaign into an industry average or claim that a response sequence caused the result without a design capable of testing that claim.

For an actual entry-level BaaDigi package reference, Stability is $497 per month plus $995 setup, with advertising spend separate. That price does not validate any return claim or establish a Facebook-specific scope. Before spending more, request the work plan and a report that connects the proposed activity to your own qualified inquiries.