Paid acquisition practice · Meta and Google Ads
A steady flow of qualified prospects.
Meta and Google advertising, tracking, data. We turn a media budget into qualified meetings. Campaigns driven by data, optimised on cost per lead rather than on the number of clicks.
The challenge
Without flow, the best offer stays invisible.
The best brand and the best website are worth nothing if they stay invisible. Without acquisition, you depend on word of mouth and a little luck.
But acquisition that is badly steered burns budget: fuzzy audiences, broken tracking, decisions made blind. You pay for clicks, not for clients.
Acquisition under control is a system: the right audiences, reliable tracking, decisions settled by the data. The budget works, the pipeline fills.
Our approach
From the data to the pipeline.
Four steps in order: we measure first, we target accurately, we launch cleanly, then we optimise relentlessly.
- 01
Tracking and foundations
GA4, pixels, server-side conversions. Before a single euro is spent, we make sure the measurement is right. Without reliable data, steering is impossible.
- 02
Strategy and audiences
Offer, angles, targeting. We decide who to talk to, where, and with what message, to attract the right prospects rather than just anyone.
- 03
Build and launch
Meta and Google campaigns, creative, landing pages. We launch cleanly and structure everything so that we learn fast.
- 04
Optimisation and reporting
Analysis, trade-offs, iterations. We cut what does not convert and push what works. Cost per lead stays under control.
What we do
The acquisition machine, in full.
Complementary areas of expertise, brought in according to your objectives and your market. We define the right set-up at the diagnostic stage.
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Meta Ads
Facebook and Instagram: prospecting, retargeting, creative and audiences. The social lever put to work for qualified leads.
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Google Ads
Search, Display, YouTube. Capturing the demand that already exists and building awareness, at the right moment.
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Tracking and GA4
Pixels, server-side conversions, reliable measurement. The data every one of our decisions rests on.
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Landing pages and CRO
Landing pages built to turn paid traffic into meetings.
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Data and reporting
Dashboards you can actually read: cost per lead, ROAS, what works and why. Zero vanity metrics.
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Media strategy
Budget allocation, angles, test plan. The frame that makes the investment pay, instead of merely spending it.
Case study
Filling the pipeline of a B2B SaaS.
For a B2B SaaS company, we built the acquisition machine: GA4 tracking and server-side conversions, Meta and Google campaigns, dedicated landing pages, cost per lead reporting. A steady flow of qualified prospects, driven by data.
- GA4 tracking and server-side conversions
- Meta and Google Ads campaigns
- Landing pages and reporting
- 38 €
- cost per qualified lead
- 4.8 %
- conversion rate on the landing pages
What you can check
Five questions whose answer is in a public text.
Paid acquisition is the marketing trade where received wisdom drifts furthest from what the platforms actually document, and its most repeated rule of all appears nowhere in that documentation. Here are five points you can check yourself.
If my agency created the ad accounts, do I own them?
Partly, and the answer differs by platform, so it is settled on the day the accounts are created rather than in the contract. Meta states that an ad account created inside a business portfolio will permanently be part of that portfolio, and cannot be deleted or transferred out of it. Google states the reverse for its own accounts: manager account owners do not take data ownership or administrative rights away from client accounts, the client account still owns its data, and it can remove that access by unlinking. The account history most advertisers fear losing is partly a fiction, since Google’s documentation states there is no ad group level, campaign level or account level Quality Score. We therefore ask who created each account before anything else, and work inside accounts that already belong to the client, as our guide to changing agency without breaking campaigns sets out.
Do I pay the amount I bid?
Almost never, and the mechanism is less settled than the trade admits. Google documents the maximum cost per click as a ceiling and states you are often charged less, sometimes much less, than that figure. What you are actually charged is the minimum required to clear the Ad Rank thresholds and to beat the ad immediately below you, or the reserve price when no qualified advertiser sits below. The average cost per click is a division performed afterwards: in Google’s own worked example, clicks charged twenty and forty cents produce an average of thirty cents, an amount charged for neither. Everyone writes that Search runs a second price auction, yet Google never writes it, and its 2019 announcement moving Ad Manager to first price bidding explicitly excluded Search. We present no bid as a price, as our article on the three numbers called cost per click explains.
How much volume does a campaign need before the algorithm learns anything?
More weekly volume than most B2B accounts produce, and both platforms publish the figure. Meta states that ad sets exit the learning phase after approximately fifty results in the week following the last significant edit, and describes an ad set unlikely to reach that as learning limited. Google publishes eligibility thresholds for target return on ad spend of at least fifteen conversions in thirty days for Search and Shopping campaigns, and thirty in thirty days for video action campaigns. The widely taught twenty percent budget rule appears in none of that documentation: Meta’s only worked example contrasts a rise from one hundred to one hundred and one dollars with a rise from one hundred to one thousand, as our reading of the twenty percent rule shows. We count the weekly conversion events before proposing any structure, and consolidate ad sets rather than fragment them.
Why do Meta and GA4 never report the same number of conversions?
Because they count two different objects, and neither is wrong. Meta is people based: it credits conversions to people it exposed to an ad, on a default setting of seven day click and one day view, and can credit the same person more than once. GA4 is session based: one credit per key event, no view through modelling at all, an acquisition lookback running up to thirty days, and direct traffic excluded from credit unless the whole path is direct, per Google Analytics Help. Ruler Analytics puts a gap of ten to twenty percent between the two as completely normal. The Conversions API recovers signal lost to browser restrictions and deduplicates against the pixel through a shared event identifier, but changes neither the crediting nor the window, as our article on the GA4 and Meta gap details. We use Meta to steer bids and the CRM as the record of revenue.
Does the reported return measure what the ads actually caused?
No, and the size of the overstatement has been measured on the platform’s own data. Gordon, Moakler and Zettelmeyer analysed six hundred and sixty three large scale randomised experiments at Facebook with access to more than five thousand user level features, richer, they note, than what most advertisers or their measurement partners can access. Median true lift came out at twenty nine percent upper funnel, eighteen percent middle and five percent lower, against twenty four to one hundred and seventy six percent for the best observational methods applied to the same data. On the lower funnel outcome, that is roughly a fivefold overstatement, and the authors concluded they were unable to reliably estimate an advertising campaign’s causal effect. We therefore settle any decision to scale or cut with a holdout test, as our analysis of acquisition cost at low volume explains.
Frequently asked questions
What company leaders ask us.
A paid acquisition agency designs and runs your paid advertising campaigns, mainly on Meta and Google, to turn a media budget into qualified prospects. It sets up measurement, defines the audiences and the messages, launches the campaigns, then optimises continuously. Its work is judged on cost per lead and on lead quality, not on the number of clicks.
It depends on the model: a share of media spend, a fixed retainer, performance-based pay or a hybrid formula. No French institutional source puts a reliable figure on the fees charged by media agencies. On top of that sits the media budget itself, separate from fees, which goes straight to the platforms. Cost can therefore only be compared at equivalent model and scope.
You do, and it is a point to lock down before signing. Meta and Google documentation provides for the advertiser owning their advertising account, their pixel and their data, and granting access to their provider, never the other way round. If the provider owns the account, you risk losing the history, the audiences and the algorithm’s learning the day you leave.
No. We start where the return can be measured, we validate what works, then we raise the budget gradually. A modest budget that is well steered beats a large budget spent blind.
Often both, because they complement each other. Google captures demand that already exists (people are searching), Meta creates demand and builds awareness. We arbitrate according to your offer, your sales cycle and your objectives.
The first signals arrive within a few weeks, the time it takes for the algorithms to learn and for the data to build up. After that, optimisation never stops. We do not promise miracles, we promise rigorous and transparent steering.
No. The media budget belongs to you and goes straight to the platforms (Meta, Google): you keep control of it and visibility over it. Our role is to steer it and get the most out of it. Full transparency on what is spent and on what it brings back.
On what genuinely counts: cost per lead, lead quality, return on advertising spend (ROAS). Not on impressions or clicks taken in isolation. Clear reporting shows you where every euro goes and what it brings back.
Where to go next
Understand the mechanics before you spend.
We publish sourced analysis on paid acquisition, including the benchmarks that do not survive a look at their own method. Enough to hold a supplier to account.
- How to split budget between Google and Meta The three variables that actually set the split, and why the familiar ratio is a placeholder rather than a principle.
- LinkedIn ads against Google ads, read properly A click costs roughly the same on both. The leads do not, and the reason sits after the click rather than in it.
- Cost per lead, and the denominator nobody defines Why the published benchmark tables are unusable, and why a falling cost per lead is often the bad news.
- Why return drops when you scale Four causes that compound as budget grows, and the signal that tells you which one you are looking at before you act.
- What agency reporting must contain The three things a report has to let you verify, and the contract clauses that make the third one possible.
- How long before you can judge an agency The verdict date worked out from the platforms’ own published clocks, and what is fair to judge at thirty days instead.
The logical next step
Qualified traffic deserves a destination.
Acquisition gives its full effect when it lands on a strong brand and a website that converts. Explore the other practices.
Ready to fill your pipeline?
A budget that works, reliable tracking, qualified leads. Let’s talk about your acquisition objectives and the route to get there.