Quarterly reviews spent defending numbers
The meeting that should decide next quarter's plan opens with a reconciliation. Brand, finance and the agency arrive with different figures, and the one with the least stake wins by default.
Audience · Marketing agencies
You run the campaigns.
You write the report.
Who checks it?
Your results come from the platforms you run and the client's GA4, and the client knows both have a stake in the answer. Sealmetrics gives agency and client one measured layer, without consent loss and checked against the client's orders. The client owns the organization; your team works inside it with one login across every client.
One organization per client · one login across clients · last click per session · EU-hosted in Dublin
Quick answer
Analytics for marketing agencies is a measurement layer the agency and its client both accept, because neither of them produced it and no ad platform grades its own work in it. Agency reporting usually rests on Meta and Google Ads, which credit conversions to their own ads, and on the client's GA4, which does not record visitors who reject the banner. Sealmetrics counts visits without cookies and credits revenue to the last click of each session, read from the UTMs of the landing page. Each client is its own organization, with its own sites, members and billing. One agency login can belong to all of them and switch between clients from the sidebar, and Member access is limited to the sites assigned. Client dashboards read the same data through the BigQuery connector, the REST API or the MCP server. It does not send conversions to ad platforms, import spend or model multi-touch attribution.
Why clients doubt the report
Every source has a stake.
Including yours.
An agency report stitches together figures that were each produced by someone with an interest in them. The client does not need to suspect bad faith to discount the result; the structure is enough.
| Source in the report | What it counts | Why the client discounts it | What settles it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meta Ads Manager | Conversions Meta credits to its own ads | Its own attribution window; view-through and modelled conversions, depending on settings | Revenue measured on the client's site, by campaign |
| Google Ads | Conversions Google credits to its own ads | Can claim the same sale Meta claims; modelled conversions where consent is missing | The same measured revenue, same UTMs, same days |
| Client GA4 | Sessions from visitors who accepted the banner | Consent loss is uneven: paid traffic loses more than direct, so the agency's channels look smaller | A count that does not wait for the banner |
| Agency dashboard | Whatever the platform connectors return | Built by the party being evaluated | A dataset the client owns and can query |
| Client order system or CRM | Orders that were placed | Accurate total, no dependable channel | The reconciliation point for everything above |
The gap is measurable. At Incapto, Sealmetrics recorded 11% more direct traffic than GA4 but between 37% and 52% more from paid campaigns: the traffic an agency is judged on was understated several times more than direct. At Palladium Hotel Group, 40% of inbound traffic had no source or medium. Why consent-based tools lose that traffic is covered under Consent Mode v2.
What the doubt costs an agency
The review is about the data.
Not about the work.
When the client does not trust the source, three things happen to the agency, and none of them is about performance.
Paid work credited below what it delivered
At Incapto, GA4 showed paid campaigns as 50% of traffic; measured without consent loss they were 62%. An agency judged on the consent-based figure is judged on twelve points less than it drove.
No fair comparison between partners
Clients that run several agencies or partners cannot compare them when each reports its own platform. Palladium Hotel Group rebuilt its Display model on a neutral base before rebalancing partners, placements and audiences.
Setting up a client
The client owns it.
The agency operates it.
The neutral layer only works if the client does not have to take the agency's word for its configuration. These steps keep ownership with the client and the operating work with you. The reasoning behind a shared reference is on single source of truth.
Let the client own the organization
The client creates its Sealmetrics organization and stays Owner, with billing and member control. It invites the agency as Admin, with access to every site, or as Member, limited to the sites it assigns. Each agency person keeps one login across all client organizations.
Add the client's sites and install the tracker
Create one site per domain inside the client's organization, with its own timezone and currency, and install the tracker and the purchase or lead conversion on each. Subdomains of the same domain stay on the same site.
Tag every paid link and agree the channel rules
Put UTMs on every paid link: an account-level tracking template in Google Ads and URL parameters in Meta. Define custom channel rules as drafts, test real source, medium and campaign values, then publish. Export the rules as CSV and import them into the next client's site to reuse the same taxonomy.
Reconcile with the client's orders before the first report
Run Sealmetrics next to the current analytics over a full commercial cycle and compare the measured total with the client's own order system or CRM for the same period and currency. At Incapto, Sealmetrics recorded 96% of real orders and 97% of revenue over 48 days.
Report from the dataset the client owns
Keep the ad platforms for bidding. Build the client report on measured revenue by channel and campaign, through Data Studio on the BigQuery connector, the REST API with a read-only token, or an AI assistant connected to the MCP server.
Who uses it at the agency
One dataset,
four desks.
Agency teams keep their platform tools. What changes is the figure the client report and the budget recommendation stand on.
Account lead
Walk into the quarterly review with a number the client does not dispute.
Channel revenue measured without consent loss and reconciled with the client's orders before it reaches the deck.
Single source of truthPaid media specialist
Show what each campaign sold, outside the platform's own report.
Revenue by campaign and creative from the UTMs of the landing page, joined with the platform's spend.
Google Ads trackingData and BI
Build client dashboards on data the client can audit.
The BigQuery connector, included on every plan, feeds Data Studio or any BI tool from a star schema in the client's project.
BigQuery connectorClient CMO
Judge the agency on a figure neither side produced.
The client owns the organization and billing, sees the same dataset and controls who has access.
Analytics for CMOsMeasured in practice
“Today every player is happy. The data is neutral, there's no black box, and everyone has accepted these numbers as the reference.”
Toni Andújar · Digital & Direct Sales Director · Palladium Hotel Group
Palladium Hotel Group uses Sealmetrics as the reference its brand, departments and agencies accept. The agencies still optimise inside their platforms; the results are judged in one place.
Display Cost-per-Search after rebalancing partners on the neutral model
Palladium Hotel GroupRead the case
more sales attributed, checked against the CRM total
Dreamplace HotelsRead the case
more paid-campaign traffic recorded than GA4 in a 48-day parallel run
IncaptoRead the case
What it does not do
A neutral layer
is not an ad platform.
Agencies recommend more confidently when the edges are clear. Attribution is last click within each session, by design.
— It does not feed bidding
Sealmetrics sends no conversions to Google Ads or Meta. The platforms keep their own pixel and consent setup for optimisation.
— It does not import spend
Cost comes from each ad platform and is joined to measured revenue in a spreadsheet, in BigQuery or by an AI assistant.
— One client at a time in the dashboard
Clients are separate organizations and you switch between them. A view that combines several clients is built in BigQuery or through the API.
— Access follows the client's decision
The Owner controls billing and members. An Admin cannot remove an Owner, and a Member sees only the sites assigned.
— No audiences or user-level data
Data is aggregate, with no visitor identifiers, so it cannot build remarketing lists or follow a person across sessions.
— Last click per session, nothing more
No multi-touch model and no view-through. Upper-funnel campaigns need a holdout or geographic test before they are cut.
Questions agencies ask
Before you propose it
to a client.
Can an agency manage several clients from one Sealmetrics login?
Yes. Each client is its own organization with its own sites, members and billing, and one person can be a member of several organizations. When they are, an organization switcher appears in the sidebar. Each client sees only its own organization.
Who should own the Sealmetrics account, the agency or the client?
The client, if the point is a reference the client trusts. The Owner controls billing and members; the agency joins as Admin, with access to every site but no billing, or as Member, limited to the sites the client assigns. Invitations are sent as Admin or Member, and only an existing Owner can promote someone to Owner.
Will the ad platforms still report their own conversions?
Yes. Sealmetrics does not send conversions to Meta or Google Ads, so the platforms keep reporting and optimising on their own data. The agency uses them for bidding and the measured revenue for the client report and the budget recommendation.
How do we build client dashboards in Data Studio?
Connect Data Studio to the client's BigQuery dataset, which the Sealmetrics connector fills with star-schema tables for traffic, conversions, pages and landing pages, hourly or daily. The connector is included on every plan. The REST API is the alternative for other BI tools.
Can we reuse the same channel rules across clients?
Yes. Custom channel rules are defined per site. Export them as CSV from one site and import the file into another; the import replaces that site's custom rules atomically, with up to 100 rules per site. Rules apply to traffic received after they go live.
Can our AI assistants query client analytics?
Yes, through the Sealmetrics MCP server. Each query targets one site, and the assistant can list the sites its key can access. API tokens are read-only, with scoped permissions and an expiry date.
Which agencies already work with Sealmetrics?
Product Hackers, for growth-led implementations with cross-channel attribution and CRO; 3dids, for technical implementations of tag management, data layers and consent platform migrations; and Ayesa, for enterprise transformations across several business units.
Agency walkthrough
Bring one client.
We bring the neutral layer.
Thirty minutes: we look at one client's platform reports, analytics and order total together, and show how the organization, channel rules and reconciliation would be set up.