Case study · E-commerce · Seasonal retail

Unique Fire Pits: Meta ads with numbers you can check

A product with one short season, sold on a share of what the store actually banks. So every sale Meta claims gets matched to a real order before we send an invoice.

more thanA$127,000

Meta-attributed sales since we took over the ads · May to early September 2026

Case study result. Outcomes vary.

Business
Unique Fire Pits, an Australian online fire pit retailer. We run the Meta ads and make the creative.
Season
Winter is the peak, and July is the month that makes the year
How we're paid
A share of product sales, measured in the store
What we did

The starting point

One short season to get right.

Fire pits sell when it's cold. The busy stretch runs through winter, and July does more than any other month. Get the peak wrong and you wait a year for another go.

It's also a considered buy. People look, measure the backyard, ask a partner and come back later, so the ads have to keep showing up after that first visit.

Unique Fire Pits pays us a share of product sales. That puts our fee on the same number the owner cares about: what the store actually took. We have every reason to know exactly what that is.

Unique Fire PitsMeta Ads Manager · Results value, purchase · May to early Sep 2026

Meta splits the purchase value across two results rows. Added together, they make the headline number. Tap the screenshot to look closer.

Case study result. Outcomes vary.

Tracked return, best monthReal client result
about10x

May 2026

Its best month on Meta's own tracking. Further down, we check a peak month against the store, because that's the number we bill on.

Unique Fire PitsMeta-reported ROAS

Case study result. Outcomes vary.

What we ran

Built around the peak.

Budget and creative get lined up before winter arrives, then we keep feeding the account while it's hot.

  • New creative every month

    Fresh statics and video in monthly batches, briefed from what sold the month before.

  • Retargeting

    For everyone who looked at a fire pit and went off to measure the yard. It's rarely a first-visit buy.

  • Seasonal angles

    A winter code, a gift card angle, a Father's Day set and a spring sale, each timed to when people were already thinking about it.

  • Monthly reconciliation

    Meta's daily purchases lined up against the store's orders, one by one, before the invoice goes out.

  • A pixel audit

    Finding the purchases the pixel counted that never turned into a paid order, and showing the owner where they came from.

Two statics from the spring set

Made in-house for spring, when the days warm up but the nights stay cool. Same fire pit, two hooks, one code. Tap either to see it full size.

Content and creative
Dinner's done. Selling the evening, not the steel.
Warm days, cool nights. A reason to buy after winter.

Peak month, checked

July, as Meta saw it and as the store saw it.

Ads Manager and the store will never agree to the dollar. The question is by how much, and which way.

Meta counts a purchase when its pixel fires, and credits it to an ad the buyer clicked or saw. The store counts orders that were actually paid for. So each month we take Meta's daily purchases and find the matching order for each one. What survives is the store-verified number.

In July the gap was small, and it went the way it usually does: Meta a little ahead of the store. A healthy account, measured honestly.

Why Meta purchases don't match Shopify orders

Results value

A$23,432

Meta-reported, 8.3x

What Ads Manager credited to the ads. July 2026.

Product sales

A$19,795

Store-verified, about 7x

Matched order by order in the store. July 2026. This is the one we billed on.

Case study results. Outcomes vary. Both on the same A$2,830 of Meta spend.

Reconciliation · August 2026

Real client result

Real, paid orderNo matching paid order

Purchases the pixel reported
22
Real, paid orders in the store
12
What we billed on
The store's orders
Each square is one purchase the pixel reported. Solid squares matched a real order.

Case study result. Outcomes vary.

The month the pixel over-counted

We billed on what the store could prove.

In August, Ads Manager reported a lot more purchases than the store had orders. So we pulled every order for the same days and matched them one at a time.

The extras were double counts, test orders and checkouts that were never paid for. We showed the owner the gap and billed on the store's count. If we're paid on results, we should be the first to say when they look too good.

The numbers

All of it, labelled.

Meta-reported figures come from Ads Manager. Store figures come from Unique Fire Pits' own orders. They're kept apart on purpose.

Case study results. Outcomes vary. Sources: Meta Ads Manager and the store's order records, reconciled monthly.
MetricValueWindowMetric type
Sales credited to the ads since we took overMore than A$127,000May to early Sep 2026Meta-attributed purchase value
Tracked return, best monthabout 10xMay 2026Meta-reported ROAS
Purchase value credited to adsA$23,432July 2026Meta-reported
Product sales, matched to ordersA$19,795July 2026Store-verified
Ad spendA$2,830July 2026Meta spend
Pixel purchases vs real orders22 vs 12August 2026Reconciliation

What's next

A landing page, then the rest of the year.

We've proposed a dedicated landing page for the ads, so cold traffic lands on one clear offer instead of the full catalogue. Then a spring and Christmas calendar built around the products that already sell, so the account has a reason to run outside winter.

The reconciliation keeps running every month. It's the part of the job the owner never has to think about.

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