The analytics had been dark for two months. Nobody knew.
The engagement opened with a measurement audit instead of a media plan, because the reported acquisition cost could not be reconciled against the enrollment data on any of three attempts.
A 76% duplicate rate in the enrollment records, which meant every cost per acquisition reported to the board had been divided by a count that was roughly four times too high. A two month window in which the GA4 property received nothing at all, following a GTM container republish. A $15,000 vendor contract billing against deliverables that could not be evidenced.
None of these were visible in the platform reports. All three were visible within nine business days of getting admin access.
GA4 and GTM rebuilt against a written event specification, so that every event has a defined trigger, a defined parameter set, and a named owner. Meta CAPI configured server side, so conversions no longer depend on a browser that may or may not run the pixel. A seven page UTM and attribution specification written from zero, covering naming, ownership, and the exact reconciliation query that proves the numbers agree.
72 optimizations shipped in 10 weeks against signal that could be trusted. The vendor contract was killed and the full $15,000 refunded. Cost per lead settled at $6.08 from a $13.51 baseline and lead volume doubled on the same budget, because the budget was finally being pointed at the creative and audiences that were actually producing enrollments.