How do I know my media buyer is burning my money?

From the numbers, not your feeling. Compare the last two months: if spend rose and the increase in sales is much smaller than the increase in spend, and he can't explain why in detail, that's the clearest sign.

Spend and sales rose but ROAS fell. Is that normal?

It can be normal if the increase was gradual (20-30%) and the campaign was left to settle. It isn't normal if the increase was a big one-time jump and ROAS dropped sharply with no plan to go back.

My media buyer says the numbers are good but I don't feel any extra money. Where's the problem?

He is probably showing you revenue (order value), not profit above your break-even point. Ask him: is this ROAS above my break-even point or below it? If he can't answer within seconds, he isn't measuring the right thing.

Should I keep him or replace him?

If one sign appeared, talk to him and let him fix it. If 3 signs or more appeared together over two months, the time you lose waiting turns into actual money.

What's the most important question to ask now?

Which attribution window is this number on, and how does it match the money in the back end? If the answer isn't clear and quick, you have a bigger problem than one number.

Signs Your Media Buyer Is Burning Your Money

A question I get a lot from store owners: "My media buyer tells me everything is fine, but I feel money is being spent and there's no real difference." You won't feel the difference from what he says. You'll feel it from specific numbers, if you know how to read them. Most store owners don't look at those numbers because they don't know what to look for, so they judge on the general feeling of the call. This article gives you 7 practical signs, each with a real example instead of a theoretical one, so you can judge on evidence and leave the feeling out of it.

1. Spend rises and the result stalls or falls with no explanation

This is the most dangerous sign because it disguises itself as "scaling." In the Kuwait store case exactly this happened: we raised the budget 25% in June, sales rose only 8%, ROAS fell from 3.31 to 2.79, and cost per order rose from 24 dollars to 28.6 dollars. More money spent, less result.

What separates a good media buyer from one burning your money isn't whether this happens. It happens to everyone, and it's part of scaling. The difference is the reaction. In that case we stopped and pulled daily tracking for every dollar, discovered there were fixed days each month with no sales where we were spending like peak days, and redistributed the same budget to paydays. The result: July made 50,593 dollars in 29 days on spend 16% below June, and ROAS came back to 3.73.

If your media buyer saw the same pattern and told you "the account is learning, leave it for two weeks" without opening the daily data and telling you the specific reason, that's a delay and no explanation at all. Read How to scale without breaking the account to see the difference between a natural ROAS drop in scaling and a ROAS drop because nobody is watching.

2. He shows you ROAS without telling you the attribution window

If you ask him "how is this number calculated?" and he has no quick answer, that's a red flag. The exact same campaign can give you a ROAS of 2 on a one-day click window, and a ROAS of 4 on a 7-day click + view window, without performance changing by a single pound. The whole difference is the lens he's looking through.

The media buyer burning your money comforts you with the bigger number and doesn't tell you the measure. A skilled one fixes one window, starts with the narrow one, and matches it against the money in your back end, because that's the only referee. Full details are in The ROAS in Ads Manager isn't always the real one.

3. A campaign hits max cost and he leaves it bleeding

In the scaling case from 1.1 to 6.3 million, a core part of the method was that any campaign hitting max cost (the highest acceptable cost per order) was shut down immediately, and never left to "improve on its own." That's exactly how we brought CPO down from 37.5 to under 25.

If a month goes by with a campaign whose cost per order is above your acceptable limit and nobody shuts or adjusts it, that's spend with no accounting, which has nothing to do with needing a bigger budget. Ask your media buyer a simple question: "Do you have a written cost per order cap for each campaign, and what exactly do you do when it's hit?" If the answer is general, like "we monitor continuously," with no specific number and clear action, there's no cap in the first place, and that's what lets a campaign bleed with nobody stopping it.

4. He starts production from scratch instead of trying another hook

Every creative burns out over time, and that's normal. What isn't normal is when the only fix a weak media buyer knows is "let's do new production," which means double the time and money. In the Re-Hook case, the creative had started dropping after its success, and instead of producing from the start we changed only the first second (the hook) and made several versions of the same video with different hooks. The result: 7 million EGP in two months, a 4.9% CTR, CPA down to 38 EGP.

If every time performance drops the fix is a new production budget, ask about the Re-Hook before you approve any extra production money.

5. He talks spend and CPM, never conversion or landing page

If every call revolves around "how much we'll spend this month" and "CPM is up" but nobody asks about conversion rate or the landing page, the person in front of you is running one link of the chain and ignoring the rest. The strongest media buying on a product page that doesn't convert burns money on visits that will be lost anyway.

This is exactly where a media buyer and a Performance Marketer differ. Read What's the difference between a media buyer and a Performance Marketer if you feel whoever holds your account sees only the ad.

6. His reports are all green

No campaign succeeds 100% of the time. A media buyer whose reports are all positive is either hiding something or not measuring properly. A skilled one shows you the good and the bad together, and tells you clearly, "This campaign isn't working, and here's what we'll do about it." Details are in How to choose a media buyer for your store, with the trust signals to look for from the start.

7. He tells you "we made sales" instead of "we made profit above break-even"

This is the most dangerous sign because it hides behind a big, comforting number. Sales of 200 thousand EGP can be a loss if ROAS is under your break-even point, and a gain if it's above. If your media buyer brags about spend size and sales and doesn't even ask about your margin, he's measuring the wrong thing. Read I get orders and I lose money: how to calculate your real profit and calculate your number with the break-even calculator before your next call with him.

A bonus sign: his answer is always the same, "raise the budget"

If you ask him "sales are stuck, what do I do?" and the ready answer is always "raise spend," that's repeating the same action and expecting a different result, and it fixes nothing. Raising the budget amplifies what works and what doesn't at the same time. If the problem is conversion or the offer, you're raising cost and leaving sales where they were. A media buyer who understands the whole chain finds where the problem is first, before suggesting one extra pound of spend. Full details are in Why raising the ad budget isn't always the answer.

How to actually check, without relying on feeling

The practical step is to stop taking his word as absolute truth and do this calculation yourself before any decision:

Compare the last two months: the percentage increase in spend against the percentage increase in sales. If the gap is very large, there's a problem.
Ask him about the attribution window and match it yourself against the money in the back end.
Ask him how many campaigns he shut down this month for hitting max cost.
Compare your CVR with the ecommerce benchmarks for Egypt and the Gulf. If it's far from average and he isn't treating it as a priority, that's a signal.
Ask him about your break-even point. If he doesn't know it, he's measuring spend rather than profit.

The bottom line

One sign out of seven isn't necessarily the end of the world. Every media buyer goes through a weak month. The real problem is when these signs repeat two months in a row with no clear explanation and no correction plan. What separates a media buyer building a business from one burning your money isn't the result each month. It's the reaction when the result falls. If you're thinking of switching, read What a media buyer costs in Egypt and the Gulf and How to choose the right one before any decision, and see the case studies with their numbers and who I am.