“Your ad spend grew but ROAS dropped”

This is rarely the auction getting more expensive. In the accounts we open it is one of four things:

1. Tracking broke quietly. A site update removed the purchase event, or the pixel fires on a thank-you page that some payment flows skip. Smart bidding then optimises toward whatever it can still see.
2. The feed degraded. Products with missing identifiers, wrong availability or stale prices get limited delivery, and budget flows to the few items that are still eligible.
3. Performance Max took over brand search. Brand queries were cheap and converting; now PMax buys them at a higher cost and reports them as its own success.
4. The offer changed. Delivery got slower, a competitor started free shipping, the best sellers ran out. Ads cannot fix that, and we will say so.

We check all four in the first week and show you which one it is, with the numbers.