Introvert

Selected findings

Where economics, cost or demand changed after review.

Selected anonymised findings from independent reviews of marketing leakage, agency economics, SEO investment and digital quality of growth.

Case 01

Marketing Performance · Acquisition Economics

~90%

Understated CPA

below actual cost

Reported Google Ads CPA understated the cost of generic acquisition by roughly 90% once reconciled against verified customers.

Google Ads CPA
Understated the cost of generic acquisition by ~90%
Attributed conversions
Up to 65% originated from existing brand demand
Meta
41% of spend delivered outside the commercially relevant age segment
Most affected campaign
Almost 70% of spend fell outside the intended audience

Reported efficiency masked the true cost of acquisition.

Platform reporting suggested highly efficient customer acquisition. Our reconciliation of media data against verified customers showed a materially different picture.

We separated incremental acquisition from brand capture, reconciled platform events against actual customers and isolated spend with no valid commercial contribution.

Non-incremental Google acquisition was removed and paid social was restructured around verified customer economics rather than platform-reported conversions.

What it changed

The business received a materially different view of what it was paying to acquire new customers.

Case 02

Digital Quality of Growth · Digital Assets

~64%

Valuation

below the seller's valuation

Our assessment resulted in a valuation approximately 64% below the seller's valuation, separating historical performance and theoretical upside from what was realistically transferable.

Revenue per session
Historical revenue generated per session
Organic traffic
Current organic traffic and commercial intent by landing page
Non-transferable traffic
Traffic tied to brands, products and categories that would not transfer to the buyer
B2C vs B2B
B2C demand separately from concentrated historical B2B revenue
Buyer model
The buyer's expected product mix, order economics and market coverage
Downside assumptions
Order value, fulfilment and addressable markets
Search value
Existing search value separately from potential future SEO recovery

Outcome

Valuation
Approximately 64% below the seller's valuation
Valued on
What the buyer could monetise — not the potential embedded in the seller's narrative

Demand value, not revenue history, drove the valuation.

A potential e-commerce acquisition was being valued partly on historical revenue, customer data and the future value of an established organic search position.

The seller's valuation attributed material value to the search asset using third-party traffic estimates, despite that traffic not being fully monetised under the existing setup.

Rather than applying a traffic multiple or extrapolating historical revenue, we rebuilt the investment case around what a new owner could realistically monetise.

A meaningful organic asset existed, but its value could not be established from headline traffic estimates alone. Part of the existing demand would not transfer to the buyer, while historical revenue contained commercial activity that could not simply be extrapolated into the new operating model.

At the same time, the remaining search footprint had demonstrated an ability to generate material commercial demand when matched with the right product offering.

The acquisition was valued from transferable demand and realistic monetisation, not from historical revenue alone.

What it changed

The valuation followed what the buyer could monetise, not the potential embedded in the seller's narrative.

Case 03

Agencies · Paid Media

>80%

Agency cost

reduction

Agency cost was reduced by more than 80% after parts of the mandate were removed entirely and the remaining channels were operated with less external capacity.

Agency cost
Reduced by more than 80%
Unprofitable activity
Removed from the mandate
Paid social spend
Reduced by approximately 27%
Customer volume
Increased by more than 130% on comparable activity
Customer acquisition cost
Fell by approximately 70%

A smaller mandate produced more commercial output.

The client was operating under an agency model whose cost and scope had become disconnected from the commercial value being created.

We reviewed the channel mix, actual workload and economics of the remaining activity. Several parts of the mandate could be removed entirely, while the channels that remained could be operated with substantially less external capacity.

The reduction in agency cost did not come at the expense of growth. It came from removing work, channels and complexity that were not contributing enough commercial value.

What it changed

The business bought substantially less agency capacity and got materially more from the media that remained.

Case 04

Marketing Performance · Acquisition Model

~85%

Customer acquisition cost

reduction

Customer acquisition cost was reduced by approximately 85% after paid media was repositioned from a customer acquisition channel into a lead acquisition engine.

Direct paid acquisition
Operated far above the required ROI threshold
Funnel complexity
Had failed to solve the underlying economics
Affiliate acquisition
Produced insufficient customer duration
Telemarketing
Consistently stronger unit economics, but lacked sufficient lead volume to scale

Outcome

Customer acquisition cost
Reduced by approximately 85%
Acquisition economics
Moved back within the company's ROI target
Customer volume
Increased materially to match internal acquisition goals
Channel scaled
The one that had already demonstrated sustainable economics

Acquisition economics required a different model.

The business had tested most conventional digital acquisition models, from direct-response paid media and branded funnels to affiliate partnerships.

They could generate customers, but not at economics that supported the business. Paid acquisition produced unsustainable customer costs, while affiliate cohorts failed to deliver the required duration.

The review shifted attention from channel optimisation to the way profitable customers were actually acquired.

Paid media was repositioned from a customer acquisition channel into a lead acquisition engine and more than 90% of media investment was redirected toward feeding the proven sales process.

What it changed

Marketing investment moved toward the acquisition model that already had sustainable economics.

Case 05

Brand Demand Leakage · Search Reputation

3 → 0

Negative results on page one

within eight months

Within eight months, no negative editorial result remained on page one for the company’s brand.

Branded search results
Negative editorial coverage held positions #2, #4 and #6
Customer exposure
Anyone searching for the brand met an environment the company had little influence over
Approach
The entire branded search environment was coordinated, not individual rankings

Three negative articles ranked on page one for the brand. Eight months later, none did.

Historical negative coverage from some of Sweden’s largest media outlets occupied positions #2, #4 and #6 for the company’s own brand.

Customers actively searching for the business were immediately exposed to a search environment the company had little influence over.

We built new owned assets capable of competing for branded visibility, strengthened authoritative third-party resources already relevant to the brand and expanded paid search coverage to increase controlled presence across the SERP.

What it changed

The company moved from reacting to branded search results to shaping what customers encountered.

Case 06

Marketing Performance · Retargeting

Negative

Verified return

vs 10x+ reported

What had been reported as 10x+ ROI became negative ROI once repeat-customer revenue and persistent attribution were removed.

Repeat customers
Were returning independently and placing new orders
Attribution
Earlier paid interactions continued receiving attribution for those purchases
Existing customer demand
Was being counted as paid-media generated revenue
Reported return
Materially overstated the channel’s incremental contribution

Outcome

Reported 10x+ ROI
Became negative once repeat-customer revenue and persistent attribution were removed
The revenue itself
Was real
The issue
Was who was receiving credit for it

Retargeting reported a 10x return. The verified return was negative.

A retargeting setup appeared to be one of the company’s strongest-performing paid-media activities.

Platform reporting showed a return of more than 10x. At customer level, the economics looked very different.

We reconstructed performance around the actual customer journey rather than the platform conversion record. That meant separating new acquisition, repeat purchasing, genuinely incremental retargeting and revenue that would likely have occurred without a new paid interaction.

What it changed

The revenue stayed in the business case, but the credit moved away from retargeting.

Case 07

Performance Control · SEO Investment

Market by market

SEO investment

risk-adjusted capital allocation

The analysis established a defined investment ceiling for SEO and changed how budget was prioritised across markets — concentrated where the expected incremental return justified the cost and risk.

Measured
Actual organic CTR relative to current ranking positions
Cross-matched
Query-level search demand with real commercial performance
Modelled
Incremental clicks available from realistic ranking improvements
Converted
Those additional clicks into expected commercial value
Aggregated
The remaining opportunity market by market
Benchmark
Expected return from SEO against the cost of acquiring the same demand through Google Ads
Adjusted for
Execution risk, market maturity and declining organic click share

Outcome

Investment ceiling
A defined investment ceiling for SEO was established
Budget allocation
Concentrated where the expected incremental return justified the cost and risk — mature markets with limited remaining upside received less capital
Decision type
SEO stopped being a ranking ambition and became a risk-adjusted capital allocation decision

Search opportunity was not the same as investment value.

The company already held meaningful organic visibility across several mature markets.

A conventional SEO forecast would have started with search volume, assumed higher rankings and translated the resulting traffic into theoretical revenue.

We started with commercial value, existing organic click share, realistic ranking movement and the cost of acquiring the same demand through paid search.

The largest search markets were not automatically the strongest investment opportunities. In several markets, existing organic visibility was already sufficiently mature that further ranking improvements produced limited incremental value, while other markets offered substantially more commercial upside relative to the investment required.

The model separated search volume, available upside, commercial value and rational investment.

What it changed

SEO stopped being a ranking ambition and became a risk-adjusted capital allocation decision.

Case 08

Brand Demand Leakage · iGaming · Monitoring & Enforcement

+21%

Branded organic CTR

during the engagement

Branded organic CTR increased by approximately 21% as the priority market moved from repeated losses of the top organic position to sustained #1 visibility.

Monitoring
Continuous monitoring of the core branded keyword by market and device
SERP history
Historical tracking of every material ranking movement
Detection
Identification of affiliates, copycat pages and other assets taking branded visibility
Evidence
Evidence capture for suspected infringement and DMCA enforcement
Response
A response framework combining enforcement, owned assets and authoritative third-party reinforcement
Verification
Verification of whether each intervention actually restored and maintained visibility

Outcome

Branded organic CTR
Increased by approximately 21% during the engagement
Priority market
Moved from repeated losses of the top organic position to sustained #1 visibility
Process
A permanent process for detecting and responding to future brand hijacking

Their most important branded keyword was being hijacked in search.

The company operates in a highly competitive iGaming market where branded search demand is routinely contested by affiliates, copycat assets and other third parties.

Its most important branded keyword generated substantial existing demand, but the company did not consistently own the primary organic position across its priority markets.

In one key market, third-party pages repeatedly displaced the official site from #1.

The review focused on preventing existing demand from leaking before the customer reached the brand.

What it changed

The brand protected demand it had already earned and made recurrence visible earlier.

Case 09

Digital Quality of Growth · Commercial Due Diligence

>50%

Branded share of organic search

in the largest market

In the largest market, more than half of estimated organic search traffic was branded, and genuine generic visibility was only a fraction of what the headline traffic numbers implied.

Non-paid traffic
Discussed as one acquisition asset despite combining fundamentally different sources of demand
Branded search share
More than half of estimated organic search traffic in the largest market was branded
Generic search visibility
Only a fraction of what the headline traffic numbers implied
Generic visibility trend
Declining rather than compounding
Revenue trend
Already trending materially below the previous year

Outcome

Acquisition thesis
Materially revised

The traffic story did not survive a channel-level review.

A potential e-commerce acquisition was presented as having a substantial non-paid traffic base capable of supporting significant revenue without continued media investment.

On paper, the economics looked compelling. We decomposed the traffic behind the claim.

The website did have traffic. The diligence issue was whether that traffic represented a durable customer-acquisition engine a buyer should pay for.

What appeared to be a growing organic distribution asset was predominantly existing demand, while the generic search engine required to acquire new customers was both smaller and weaker than the headline figures suggested.

What it changed

Headline traffic was real, but the acquisition engine was weaker than the thesis required.

Case 10

Brand Demand Leakage · Organic Search / Demand Capture

1–3

Targeted GCC search visibility

from launch

The resource ranked 1–3 across the targeted GCC search landscape from launch and maintained top-three visibility for approximately 16 months — without buying links.

Asset selection
Evaluated which available asset had the highest probability of competing
Strategy
Built around existing authority rather than manufacturing it from scratch
Publishing
Commercially focused resources against the highest-value queries
Prioritisation
By commercial intent, ranking probability and time to value
Link acquisition
Avoided paid link acquisition entirely

Outcome

Ranking position
The resource ranked 1–3 across the targeted GCC search landscape from launch
Duration
Top-three visibility maintained for approximately 16 months
Method
Achieved without buying links or forcing a weaker domain into the market

The company’s own domain was not the best asset to capture the demand.

The conventional approach would have been to invest in building authority on the company’s own domain.

We assessed the probability, time and investment required to compete and chose a different asset.

An existing authoritative domain offered a materially stronger route to the target search demand without requiring paid link acquisition.

The objective was demand capture through the asset with the best risk-adjusted probability of winning.

What it changed

The highest-probability asset captured the search demand without buying links.

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