The Monthly Read

Meta won’t tell you what’s working. I will.

You’re guessing every month, and the figuring out takes hours: Ads Manager’s numbers sit there raw, never lined up against your Shopify or last month. Once a month I do that job for you and send one report in plain english: which ads and messages are working, which aren’t, and exactly where to put your money next. No dashboard to learn, no jargon, no meeting.

A$900 audit and setup, then A$350/mo The audit reads 12 months of your account · No call · No lock in · Prices inc GST
01The problem

Is it you, or is Meta broken?

The numbers don’t match Shopify. The columns keep moving. When sales dip, nothing in there says why. Meanwhile the spend doesn’t pause. Every month you guess is a month the account quietly drains, paying for ads that stopped working and starving the ones still making money.

When sales move, it’s your ads, your site, Meta’s measuring, or just noise. Ads Manager won’t say which. The read will.

Making money Breaking even Burning it

All three are running right now. Meta gives you the average. I give you the plain english version.

02What’s in it

A real one, with the client’s name taken out.

Same figures, same words, same report they got. Scroll it. This is the whole thing, not a sample of it.

ashtopham.com/read/●●●●●●/august

Their real monthly read, name taken out, figures untouched. Open it full screen

It pays for itself by telling you what to stop.

That report found 69 people a week adding to cart and walking away. It found a market doing 4.58x that was getting 10% of the budget. It found a tracking change that would have looked like a win to anyone reading the chart.

The market doing 4.58x Everything else

The best-returning market in the account was on 10% of the budget. Each cube is 10%.

None of that costs anything to fix. It costs something to not know, and Meta bills it monthly.

The hard part is knowing which of the 40 numbers on screen is the one that changes what you do next. Ads Manager has never once volunteered that.

Every month you get
  • 01What changed, what caused it, and what to do about it.
  • 02Your return on every dollar you spend (your ROAS), week by week, against the exact return you need to break even at your margin.
  • 03Which ad and which message is pulling sales, and which has worn out.
  • 04Clicks to sales: where people leak out between the ad and the checkout, and which leak costs you most.
  • 05Any ad that’s stopped working but is still spending, and the dollars a day it’s burning.
  • 06Whether Meta’s numbers match your store’s, and whether the gap is normal or broken.
  • 07Which organic post to turn into your next ad, because your audience has already proven it.
  • 08What to do next, in order of what will move the numbers most. None of it needs an agency.

Your spend now The same spend, moved

Making money Breaking even Burning it

Each cube is 5% of your budget. Nothing extra goes in. The read tells you which cubes are which, and you move them.

03Who this is for

An ads manager in your back pocket, without the price tag.

Don’t pay A$1,800 a month for a manager when you’re spending $2,000 on the ads themselves. For A$350 you get the experience without the retainer: what’s lacking, where you’re going wrong, what the numbers actually mean, and ideas for next month.

This is for you if
  • You sell products on Shopify.
  • You’re spending roughly $2,000 to $10,000 a month on Meta.
  • You run the ads yourself, or someone in your team does.
  • You’ve got an Instagram and you post to it.
  • You just stopped paying an agency, or you never started.
  • You lose hours in Ads Manager and still aren’t sure what it’s telling you.
  • Or you’ve stopped opening it, and the money goes out regardless.
Not yet if
  • ×You’re not running ads. No ads means no ad data.
  • ×You’re spending under about $1,000 a month. There isn’t enough in the account to read yet.
  • ×You’re spending $25,000 or more a month. You don’t need a read, you need a manager.
  • ×You want someone to take the account off you. That’s done for you, further down.
  • ×You want a guaranteed number. I sell you understanding, not a promise.
04Pricing

A$900 to audit it.
A$350 a month to read it.

No call, nothing to install. Pay, then one form does the rest.

  • 01Pay, then fill in the form. It’s in the onboarding email that lands straight after payment. It takes a few minutes and tells me everything I need. I send back exactly what access to click, then let you know the next steps.
  • 02I audit the account. 12 months of ad data: what returned money, what died and kept spending, and where the leaks are. You get it written up, plus a video of me walking through the account so you can see what I see.
  • 03Your first read lands within 14 days. On your own private link, in plain english, ending in the do-this-next list.
  • 04Then every month. Same link, new read, and what to do next. Cancel any time.

One read, every month

Month to month
A$350 /mo inc GST
+ A$900 audit and setup, once, inc GST
about US$250 a month, US$640 setup
Cancel any time

The A$900 covers the audit, the walkthrough video and connecting your accounts, once. After that it’s A$350 a month, no lock in.

Start the read
6 months upfront
A$2,600 day one, inc GST
A$500 audit and setup + 6 months at A$350 + a free 7th month
about US$1,840 day one
You save A$750

Setup drops from A$900 to A$500 and the 7th month costs nothing. Prepaid months aren’t refundable, so only take this one if you’re sure.

Prepay 6 months

All prices AUD and include GST. USD figures are rough and move with the exchange rate. One ad account per subscription, extras priced separately.

Receipts
“If anyone is considering getting Ash on board, I highly recommend it.
RX Smart Gear. 6 years and counting.
05Done for you

Or I run the ads and you read the report.

Ad management · 4 seats

Meta only. I build it, run it, and tell you what happened every week in the same plain english. You own every account and asset at the end of it.

The audit comes first, always. Every ad client starts with a Revenue Leak Report, and half that fee comes off your first invoice. I don’t run ads on an account I haven’t read.

Then it’s from A$1,800 a month, depending on the account and the spend. Capped at 4 clients, because past that the accounts stop getting the attention that makes this work.

from A$1,800/mo
Management fee
A$18k+
Monthly sales, min
3 months
Minimum term
Weekly
Reporting
Who reads it

13 years in live accounts. Still in them this morning.

Clothing, jump ropes, toys, fashion accessories, skin care, and more. Different products, same diagnostic, which is how I know it transfers.

Most people teaching ads have only ever sold teaching. When I tell you what a frequency of 4.2 means, it’s because I watched it happen in an account last month.

06Questions

The ones people actually ask.

Do I have to give you account access?

Yes. I need enough access to see everything, and you can revoke it in one click. Changing things isn’t part of the read, and I don’t read accounts from screenshots, because that wouldn’t be a read.

What if nothing’s wrong that month?

Then I’ll tell you that, in writing, and you’ll still get what to watch next. A month where I say don’t touch anything is a month you didn’t spend money acting on a hunch.

I just dropped my media buyer. Why would I pay someone else?

Because the job that’s left isn’t a retainer, it’s a read. Somebody still has to watch match quality, catch frequency creep, and check your ad sets aren’t bidding against each other. That’s 2 or 3 hours a week, it’s the part people quietly stop doing once the buyer’s gone, and this costs a tenth of what you just saved.

What if my account is a mess?

Messy accounts are my favourite kind. More history means more signal, and the failed campaigns are data too. Especially the failed campaigns.

Can I cancel?

Month to month, any time, no lock in. The 6 month prepay is different: those months aren’t refundable, which is why it’s cheaper.

You know you need new ads. Deciding what to make is the hard part.

So the next ad is the last ad in a different colour, and it does what the last one did. The ad bank is 18 ads worth making instead. Each one says what to shoot and the detail most people skip. Free.