Executive Summary

Many SMB e-commerce brands and finance leaders are stuck paying opaque agency retainers without reliable proof of incremental ROI, leading to wasted ad spend and hard-to-justify marketing budgets. This pain is acute for roughly 1.5M merchants who lack affordable, audit-ready tools to reconcile platform reporting with first‑party outcomes. You could build a SaaS product that automates ad-spend attribution and forensic reconciliation across Meta, Google, TikTok and in-house data, delivering near-real-time dashboards, anomaly detection and audit reports that quantify over- or under-billing. The core deliverable would be plug-and-play integrations plus AI-driven audits that produce actionable recommendations and a clear reconciliation trail suitable for CMOs and CFOs. The market looks attractive now: a $6.0B TAM (1.5M merchants × $4K ACV) driven by rising ad costs, tighter margins, and maturing platform APIs that lower integration cost. Small teams can now buy automated audits instead of expensive manual reviews, creating a scalable buyer pool among SMBs and brands trying to cut waste. You can differentiate by focusing specifically on “opaque retainer” audits with SLA-backed reporting, transparent reconciliation logic, and a lightweight onboarding aimed at SMB tech stacks. The main challenges are obtaining reliable data access amid privacy/attribution changes and overcoming agency pushback, but if you solve those technically and legally, the ROI story ($4K ACV and measurable cost recovery) makes this worth exploring.

Market Opportunity

Opaque agency retainers — automated ad-spend attribution and audit targets a $6.0B = 1.5M e-commerce merchants × $4K ACV for marketing-transparency & attribution tooling (global SMB focus) total addressable market with medium saturation and a year-over-year growth rate of 12% YoY (Gartner / Forrester MarTech and marketing analytics estimates, 2023-2024).

Key trends driving demand: Higher ad costs and tightening margins — brands need tools to prove incremental ROI and cut waste, increasing demand for audit and attribution products.; Platform APIs and first-party data capabilities are mature — this lowers integration cost and lets vendors provide near-real-time reconciliation.; AI-driven anomaly detection is now practical for small teams — automated audits and recommendations can replace expensive manual agency reviews.; Brands are shifting from vanity metrics to LTV-driven decision making — solutions that tie agency work to LTV and unit economics are more compelling..

Key competitors include Triple Whale, Hyros, AgencyAnalytics / Whatagraph-style reporting.

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Opaque agency retainers — automated ad-spend attribution and audit

Executive Summary

Market Validation

Market Opportunity

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