Meta leads cost $101. Google conversions cost $259.
$46,544 across the two channels over Aug 29 to Sep 27. Meta produced 321 leads, 11% fewer than the month before on 20% more spend. Google produced 54 conversions on half the clicks it used to buy, at the best click-through rate the account has recorded.
This edition reports what the ad platforms and the call tracking measured directly, over Aug 29 to Sep 27. CRM outcomes (appointments set, sales closed, set rate by channel) are deliberately left out this window: those numbers come from MarketSharp, we cannot yet query it first hand to verify them, and the Ad Click ID field is empty on every record so the CRM carries declared source only. Appointment reporting returns once the MarketSharp figures can be reproduced independently.
The story
The window in three moves.
Everything here is measured by the platforms themselves. No modelling and no attribution guesswork.
01
$101
Meta pays more for less
Spend up 20% to $32,564, leads down 11% to 321, cost per lead up 35%. Click-through held at exactly 2.22%, so attention is fine. What slipped is the share of clicks that became leads.
02
$254
Search alone beats the old mix
On matched windows, Search only spent $13,180 for 52 conversions at $254. The four weeks before, with Performance Max and Demand Gen running, spent $12,200 for 46 at $265. The August pause is still paying off.
03
54.8%
One market cannot spend, another is capped
Core DFW turns away more than half its available demand for lack of budget while Waco loses 2.8% and converted nothing on $1,167. Moving that money costs nothing.
Meta Ads
Where the leads came from.
Daily volume and cost, then the campaigns and creative behind it.
Leads & spend per day
Leads Daily spend
Window total 321 leadsHover any day for its leads and spend
→
The last nine days are a different account. Daily spend sat between $655 and $965 through the middle of the window, then stepped up to $1,276 to $1,717 from Sep 19 onward. Leads followed, but not proportionally: the week of Sep 19 cost $10,664 for 90 leads at $118 each, against $91 in the opening week. The final two days are the cheapest in the window at $78, which is worth watching rather than banking.
Campaign
Spend
Leads
Cost / lead
CTR
CPC
CPM
NZ 01 - Austin Best Performers Form
$13,136
95
$138
1.84%
$3.67
$67.56
NZ 01 - DFW Form Best cost / lead
$6,528
116
$56
2.57%
$1.51
$38.84
NZ 01 - Waco/Temple Form
$6,531
32
$204
2.34%
$2.66
$62.15
NZ 01 - DFW Best Performers Form
$6,370
78
$82
2.25%
$3.68
$82.83
Blended total
$32,564
321
$101
2.22%
$2.70
$59.81
→
DFW Form is the engine and Austin is carrying the cost. DFW Form produced more leads than any other campaign, 116, on half of Austin's budget, at $56 each on a $1.51 click. Austin Best Performers took 40% of the money at $138 a lead on the account's lowest click-through, 1.84%. Waco/Temple is the one to question at $204 a lead, and Google shows the same weakness in that market.
Top-performing creative
Ranked by leads produced.
Hold rate is the share of people who started the video and stayed to ThruPlay, 15 seconds or the end. Finished is the share who watched all of it. Hook rate is not shown this window because the 3 second metric was not in this pull. 94 creatives carried spend.
The two best ads in the account are both from April. "Before and After" holds 18% of its viewers to ThruPlay and finishes with 6.1%, and the ASMR cut from the same batch holds 16.6% ($1,004, 18 leads at $56). Everything built since holds between 5.5% and 12%. The September re-cut of Ad Creative_v3 did well on volume, 29 leads at $65, and still holds only 8%. The Austin all-in-price ad took the most spend of any single creative, $7,102, at double the cost per lead of April's work. The brief for the next batch is to beat an 18% hold, which nothing in five months has done.
Who the leads come from
Leads by age & gender
Where the leads concentrate.
MenWomen
Leads by placement
Bar length is leads; the label shows cost per lead.
→
Instagram is the cheapest inventory in the account and holds 6% of the budget. Instagram Stories produced leads at $51 and Reels at $59, against $99 on Facebook Reels, which carries 55% of the spend. Facebook in-stream video and notifications together spent $1,481 for six leads and should come off. On audience: men 65+ produced 61 leads at $93 and women 55 to 64 produced 49 at $88, while women 65+ took the largest single slice of spend, $7,412, at $190 a lead.
i
A second account is also buying Austin. The EcoView owned Meta account spent $3,868 in the same window for 34 leads, including $1,785 on an Austin instant form at $78 a lead and $1,763 on an Austin landing page at $441. Two accounts bidding for the same Austin homeowners raises the price for both. Worth agreeing who owns Austin on Meta.
Google Ads
Half the clicks, the same conversions.
Daily conversions against daily spend, Sep 1 to 27.
Conversions & spend per day
Conversions Daily spend
Window total 52 conv.Hover any day for its conversions and spend
i
This is a Search only account now, and it is performing better than the mix it replaced. On the matched window, Search alone spent $13,180 for 52 conversions at $254. The four weeks before, with Performance Max and Demand Gen still running, spent $12,200 for 46 at $265. Click-through went from 1.75% to 3.60% even as the cost of a click rose from $9.07 to $19.73. Fewer clicks, better clicks.
Campaign split
Where the budget worked.
Spend and conversions by campaign. Brand search is separated so the true acquisition cost stays visible.
The one move to make this month is free. Core DFW shows for 11% of its searches and loses 54% of its impressions to budget. In the same account, Waco/Temple loses 3%: its budget physically cannot be spent, because the ceiling there is rank and geography rather than money. Waco and Window Types Waco took $1,167 this window for zero conversions. Moving that budget to DFW costs nothing and buys demand that is currently being turned away.
i
How to read the conversion count. Google counts 54 conversions, but most of the recorded actions are not leads: 159 Google Business Profile engagements, 51 direction requests and 32 profile website visits. The actions that represent someone asking EcoView for something are the 16 landing page leads, the 16 GA4 form submissions (the same people, counted by a second system) and the 52 phone actions. Read the cost per conversion in this table with that in mind: the real cost of a person making contact is higher than $259, and the call section below is the cleaner read on phone demand.
i
Where the money leaks. Of 278 search terms that spent anything, 246 produced no conversion, accounting for $5,483 of $8,235 in term-level spend. The pattern is competitor and adjacent terms: "texas energy rebate" $230, "saginaw surplus" $171, "burris windows" $151, "don young windows dallas tx" $142, "glass guru frisco" $119. EcoView's own brand terms do convert, 4 conversions on $809. Mobile took $12,421 of the spend and produced 48 of the 54 conversions.
Call tracking
What happened on the phone.
Every tracked call in the window and what became of it, measured on the call itself rather than on the ad platform.
73
Tracked calls
Across 19 trackers
100%
Reached someone
73 of 73, no voicemail
51
Ran past a minute
151 minutes on the phone
How long the answered calls ran
Under 30 seconds
5
30 to 60 seconds
17
1 to 3 minutes
35
Over 3 minutes
16
Calls by day of the week
Monday 16 of 16 reached someone
16
Tuesday 10 of 10 reached someone
10
Wednesday 12 of 12 reached someone
12
Thursday 13 of 13 reached someone
13
Friday 17 of 17 reached someone
17
Saturday 4 of 4 reached someone
4
Sunday 1 of 1 reached someone
1
i
59 of the 64 unique callers had never called you before. Volume peaks at midday, 12 calls in the noon hour and 10 each at 9am, 1pm and 3pm, with only two calls after 4pm. The website pool number took 28 of the 73 calls, more than three times any other number.
→
Whisper messages are now set on every active tracker. All nine active trackers, including the 18 number website pool, announce the source before the call connects, so whoever answers knows what the caller responded to before they speak. The four trackers without a whisper are all disabled and carry no numbers. This closes the request from the sales meeting: it looked missing because the Google trackers already had whispers while the website pool, which takes the most calls, did not.
What's next
Where we take it from here.
Each move ties back to what this window proved.
Operating plan
The next window.
Move the Waco budget to DFW Waco cannot spend what it has, 3% lost to budget, and produced no conversions on $1,167. Core DFW is turning away 54.8% of its demand for lack of budget. This costs nothing.
Rebuild creative against April, not last month "Before and After" and the ASMR cut still hold twice the attention of anything made since. The brief is to beat an 18% hold rate.
Shift placement money toward Instagram Reels and Stories produce leads at $51 to $59 on 6% of the budget. Facebook in-stream video and notifications spent $1,481 for six leads and come off.
Negatives on the competitor and rebate terms $5,483 of term-level spend converted nothing this window, led by "texas energy rebate" and a set of competitor names.
Put UTMs on Brand DFW It is the only live campaign without them, so its traffic cannot be separated from anything else in GA4.
Agree who owns Austin on Meta Two accounts are bidding for the same Austin homeowners, which raises the price for both.
Get first hand MarketSharp access So the next report can put appointments and sales back alongside these numbers and show its working.
The next chapter
Now we spend it where it works.
Search is cheaper per conversion than the mix it replaced and is capped by budget, not by demand. Meta has the volume and needs creative that holds attention the way April's did. Both of those are moves we can make inside the current budget.