Building a simple Meta Ads reporting tool for agencies — need to talk to people who run ads
Hey Indie Hackers,
I've run Meta ads myself, and one thing that always bugged me: building a report that actually shows what's improving (and what's not) takes way more effort than it should.
Yeah, tools like AgencyAnalytics, DashThis, Whatagraph, etc. already do this — but they're full-stack platforms. You pay for 50+ integrations when all you actually need is clean Meta Ads reporting for your clients. That pushes small agencies into $100-800/month plans for one feature they'll actually use.
So I'm building something small and focused: a tool that auto-generates a clean, white-labeled, shareable PDF report from your Meta Ads data — no dashboard to configure, no 15 metrics to wade through, just the numbers that matter for your client's goal (leads, sales, awareness, etc.), ready in minutes.
I want to talk to people who manage Meta ads for clients (agency owners, freelancers, media buyers) — what your reporting process looks like today, what's annoying about it, and what a report actually needs to have to make a client happy.
If that's you, drop a comment or DM me — happy to hop on a quick call.
The focused approach makes sense. One question I would test early is whether agencies really want a better PDF or an easier client conversation. A report can be clean and still create work if the client immediately asks what changed, why it changed and what happens next. I would want a short plain language summary beside the numbers, plus a clear comparison with the previous period. Have the agencies you spoke with complained more about building the report or explaining it afterward?
I like the question you raised. Although I didn't talk any agency yet. And this is one of the reason why i am here. I need to understand more deeply the problem. Do you run ads?
The Meta-only angle makes sense, but I would not lead with a nicer PDF. The report is useful when it helps the agency explain why cheap leads turned out to be junk. I would show lead quality next to CPL, creative fatigue by ad, and one clear recommendation for the next budget move. If it cuts the client call short and makes the next step obvious, that is a much stronger product than automated reporting alone.
For that i need a person who run ads. (Just asking, do you run ads for agency or are you from a agency?)
And one more approach that i had is the same tool but for SEO people.
(If you don't mind let's connect somewhere)
As someone who employs a social media agency in one of my other businesses, I think this could be interesting if it can be packaged into a client-facing story. From the client side, we want to see core metrics like followers and click-through rate improving, but the most important is the efficiency of each ad dollar spent. That is the most crucial metric, because it signals to the client that they are spending their resources wisely and can look forward to better outcomes over time thanks to the activity of the hired agency/socials manager (of course there are ceilings on this but saying this within reason).
To return directly to the product you're building, then, I'd say it would be good to have 3-5 numerical metrics and then a concise paragraph directly explaining how those metrics relate to the ROI of ad dollars.
Beyond what you asked, and more in line with what I do with Honed (we review pitch decks for founders), I'd say you need to ensure that the product cannot be easily duplicated both by competitors and by larger agencies in-house. I think the moat here comes from developing more advanced metrics and finding pain-points that existing agencies overlook. A next step could be looking at how this works across platforms beyond Meta and incorporating comparisons to traditional advertising routes.
The focused approach makes sense compared to paying for broad agency reporting platforms.
What would convince you that Meta Ads reporting alone is painful enough to become a standalone workflow, rather than something agencies tolerate as part of a larger reporting stack?