Platform-attributed ROAS counts branded clicks.
PMax and Advantage+ claim credit for buyers who would have searched the brand and converted regardless. ROAS reads strong; incremental revenue does not.
Problem Stan Consulting · Agency relationship
Agency reports growth. Bank account does not. Read the decision log.
Updated May 2026 · AI-search reviewed · 72-hour written diagnostic
When the agency dashboard reports green and revenue stays flat, the gap is structural. Five signals decide whether the agency is selling activity or judgment, whether platform-attributed ROAS reflects bank revenue, and whether the brief itself is the wrong shape. The diagnostic names which.
$999 diagnostic
Delivered in 72 hours
Reviewed by Stan Tscherenkow
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Last reviewed 20 May 2026 · Updated as agency reporting patterns shift
The structural truth
Decision log.An agency that cannot articulate the decision it made this quarter is selling activity. The decision log is the truth metric; the dashboard is the marketing.
What this diagnostic does
When the agency dashboard reports green and revenue stays flat, the gap is structural. The diagnostic reads five signals: whether the agency is selling activity vs judgment, whether platform-attributed ROAS reflects bank revenue, whether the brief is aligned to the right decision, whether attribution dedup is honest, and whether the retainer scope matches the actual problem.
The output is a written read naming the structural cause and the recommended next move. Sometimes the answer is fire the agency. Sometimes it is keep the agency and change the brief. Sometimes it is consolidate three vendors into one. The diagnostic names which fits. $999 one-time. No retainer attached.
What this page covers
Seven sections, in this order.
Why this keeps recurring
Four reasons the agency-vs-bank gap hides for months.
Activity reports replace decision reports.
Monthly review shows campaigns launched, creatives tested, audiences refreshed. None of those are decisions; they are activity. The decision the agency made is invisible.
Attribution overlap inflates lead counts.
The same lead counts in GA4, Google Ads, and Meta. The dashboards stack the count; the bank counts it once.
The brief is wrong, not the agency.
Agency executes faithfully against a brief that targets the wrong layer. The work is good; the result is flat because the brief was off.
The pattern in one diagram
The agency reports up. The bank reads flat.
Illustrative. The gap between platform-reported lift and bank revenue is the structural truth the diagnostic surfaces.
DThe diagnostic
The 5-Signal Agency Relationship Diagnostic.
Five structural signals. The diagnostic reads each against the agency relationship and names the recommended move.
01
Decision log vs activity log.
The agency reports activity. The decision log records what the agency decided and why. An agency that cannot produce the decision log is selling activity.
Diagnostic tellsMonthly review centres on creatives tested and campaigns launched; no documented decisions on budget allocation, channel mix, or audience strategy; quarterly review reads as activity recap rather than judgment review.
02
Platform ROAS vs bank revenue.
Platform-reported ROAS inflates by counting branded clicks and existing-customer return visits. Bank revenue is the truth metric.
Diagnostic tellsROAS reports above 3x while revenue stays flat; no brand exclusion on prospecting; no incrementality test in the last 12 months; PMax cannibalising branded Search.
03
Attribution dedup honesty.
Conversions counted across GA4, Google Ads, Meta, and the CRM. Without dedup, the lead count inflates 2-3x. Honest CAC requires dedup'd numbers.
Diagnostic tellsGA4 vs Google Ads variance over 15%; CRM lead count differs from both; Pixel + CAPI firing without correct dedup key; no documented attribution policy.
04
Brief alignment.
The agency executes against a brief. If the brief targets the wrong layer (channel growth instead of offer clarity, for example), the agency cannot win. The brief is the upstream decision.
Diagnostic tellsBrief written in vanity-metric language; brief targets channel KPIs without naming the commercial outcome; brief signed off without sales team input; brief unchanged for over 12 months despite category shifts.
05
Retainer scope vs actual problem.
Retainer covers channel management; actual problem is offer clarity. Retainer covers content; actual problem is attribution. The retainer that does not match the problem cannot solve the problem.
Diagnostic tellsRetainer scope unchanged in 12+ months; retainer covers tactics, not strategic decisions; agency owns admin-level access to client accounts; percentage-of-spend pricing without ceiling.
The inflection
Activity is visible.
Decision is load-bearing.
Stan Consulting · pattern observation across agency-relationship diagnoses
Agency reports show what was done this month. Judgment reports show what the agency decided and why. An agency that cannot articulate the decision it made this quarter is selling activity.Pattern observation · Stan Consulting
Three priorities before the fire-the-agency call
01
Ask for the decision log, not the dashboard.
02
Run the bank-account dedup against platform reports.
03
Read the brief; check whether the agency can actually solve it.
The decision question
Diagnose before you fire.
Firing without diagnosis often hires the same problem with a different name. The diagnostic names whether the fix is fire, rebrief, or leave alone.
Where the agency-vs-bank gap typically lives
Signal incidence across SC agency-relationship diagnoses.
Illustrative pattern. Platform ROAS inflation is the most common single cause when agency reports diverge from bank revenue.
What you receive
The diagnostic deliverable.
Signal scorecard
Each of the 5 signals scored Green / Amber / Red with rationale.
Platform-vs-bank dedup
Reported ROAS reconciled against bank-account revenue on a 90-day sample.
Brief read
The current agency brief read against the actual commercial decision needed.
Recommended move
Fire, rebrief, consolidate, or leave alone. With the reasoning in writing.
Decision-log template
The decision-log structure to require from any agency going forward.
30-minute walkthrough
Live call with Stan to walk findings. Recording shared. No upsell.
The position
Read the decision log.
Not the dashboard.
Dashboards report activity. Decision logs report judgment. The agency that cannot produce the decision log is selling activity.
$999diagnostic
The Conversion Second Opinion runs the 5-signal agency-relationship diagnostic in 72 hours. Written read, optional walkthrough, no retainer attached.
Stan Consulting · diagnostic format“
We were ready to fire our agency. The diagnostic showed the brief was the problem; the agency was executing it well against the wrong target. We rewrote the brief, kept the agency, and quarterly revenue moved 14 percent.Operator observation · SC client (anonymised)
FAQ
Buyer questions, plain answers.
Why does my agency report growth and bank stay flat?
Agency reports emphasize platform metrics (impressions, clicks, ROAS as reported by ad platforms) that are not the same as bank-account revenue. The gap is usually attribution mismatch, branded cannibalization, or counting page views as conversions.
Activity vs judgment, how do I tell?
Activity reports show what was done this month. Judgment reports show what the agency decided and why. Ask for the decision log, not the dashboard.
Should I fire the agency?
Sometimes. More often the right move is keep the agency and change the brief, because the agency is executing against the wrong decision.
Platform ROAS vs bank revenue?
Platform ROAS includes branded clicks and existing-customer returns. Bank revenue is the deposit. Honest ROAS is the dedup'd number across GA4, Google Ads, Meta, and the bank.
How long before firing?
90 days minimum for Smart Bidding to stabilise. Beyond 6 months without measurable bank-revenue lift, the engagement is failing on strategy, brief, or measurement.
What does this cost?
$999, the Conversion Second Opinion. 72-hour written read. No retainer attached.
Will you replace the agency?
Not by default. The diagnostic names the right next move; sometimes that is firing, sometimes rebriefing, sometimes leaving alone.
Stan’s take
Most "the agency is not producing" cases are brief problems, not agency problems.
Operators arrive ready to fire and shop for replacements. The replacement search takes 90 days; onboarding takes another 90; results take another 180. By the time the new agency proves itself or fails, twelve months have passed. The faster move is reading the brief against the actual decision and reading the platform ROAS against the bank.
Sometimes the agency genuinely is the problem and firing is right. More often the agency is executing a brief that targets the wrong layer. The diagnostic names which case is yours so the next 12 months go to the right work, not to onboarding a different agency to the same wrong brief.
Stan Tscherenkow · Principal · Stan Consulting LLC
Adjacent reads
If the question is broader.
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5 signals diagnosed in 72 hours. Written deliverable, 30-minute walkthrough, no retainer attached.
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