How to Spot Ecommerce Stores Already Spending on Facebook Ads and Why They Make Ideal Agency Clients

If you're running or working at a marketing agency, there’s a gold mine waiting in stores that are already leaning heavily on Facebook ads. These retailers have budgets in motion, are already convinced about paid acquisition, and often are hungry for optimization. The trick is finding them, then convincing them your agency is the missing piece.

StoreCensus offers powerful data points like Facebook Pixel detection, estimated sales, and estimated traffic. Combine those with sharp outreach and you’ve got a recipe for landing clients who are already spending, so your ROI in pitching to them tends to be much higher. In this article, we’ll walk through how to identify these stores; why they tend to be more willing to hire agencies; and how to approach them in a way that makes sense.

1. Why Stores Running Facebook Ads Are High‑Potential Prospects

Before we dig into the “how,” it helps to understand the “why.” Here are some strong signals that stores already spending on Facebook ads are better agency clients.

• Existing Ad Infrastructure: They’ve already installed the Facebook Pixel, have ad accounts, have ad creative, audiences, budgets. Less education required; more room for optimization.
• Budget Flexibility: A store that spends on Facebook is already allocating money to growth. If they spend enough, they’re likely to see the value in investing in strategy, testing, creative, and efficiency.
• Dependence on Paid Channels: Many ecommerce brands rely heavily on Facebook/Meta for a large share of traffic, sales, or customer acquisition. If their performance dips, they feel it. That creates urgency.
• Scaling Opportunity: Having considerable web traffic and decent revenue means there’s room to improve ROI, reduce cost per acquisition, improve creative, improve funnels. Those are the wins agencies can deliver.
• Competitiveness and Volume of Ads Grow Budgets over Time: As ad costs rise and performance pressures increase, many stores are looking for experts who can squeeze more output from their spend.

Statistically, video content and video ad formats are among the fastest‑growing and highest performing, which further raises the stakes. For example:

• Over 50% of Facebook’s video ad revenue now comes from mobile‑first video ads, showing where most budget is flowing. (Amra and Elma LLC)
• Implementing Facebook videos is becoming standard for businesses, and they tend to achieve higher engagement, awareness, and in many cases better conversion compared with static formats. (Shopify)

All this means that stores running Facebook ads + posting traffic + showing sales are already “primed” for advanced services: optimization, creative direction, attribution, audience growth, and creative refreshes.

2. How to Use StoreCensus to Find These Stores

Here’s a practical workflow for using StoreCensus to spot ecommerce stores that are running Facebook ads — and are good fits.

After applying those filters, you’ll arrive at a list of stores that are likely investing in Facebook ads, with enough revenue and traffic to be able (or willing) to hire an agency.

3. Validating Real Facebook Ad Spend & Dependence

Filtering gives you a candidate list. Now, you validate to make sure these stores are genuinely spending enough and depending on Facebook ads.

• Meta Ad Library: Search the store’s brand name/FB page to see if they are running active Facebook ads — especially video formats, or frequent ad moves / creative updates.
• Traffic Patterns: If you see web traffic numbers spiking or consistent monthly traffic in StoreCensus, especially from paid/referral sources, that often correlates with paid social activity.
• Revenue vs Ad Spend Ratios: If possible, look for signs of return on ad spend (ROAS) being highlighted in case studies or public materials. Or you could estimate, based on ad frequency, creative variety, etc., that they are real advertisers.
• Creative Audit from Website / Social Media: Check storefront, Instagram/Facebook/YouTube for video content, ad creative, user‑generated content. If they’re producing content regularly, ads are likely part of the strategy.

4. Why These Stores Are More Likely to Become Clients

This is where the agency pitch gets stronger: not only are these stores easier to find, but they are more likely to say yes to agency services. Here’s why:

• Need Already Recognized: They are paying for ads; they’ve already seen both the upside and the challenges (rising costs, creative fatigue, scaling issues). You’re not selling them on “why facebook ads,” but rather “how we can make what you’re already doing better.”
• Budget Available: Because they are generating revenue & traffic, there is room in their marketing budget for optimizations, split testing creative, better funnels, higher fidelity targeting, etc.
• Pain Points They Usually Have: Ad creative burnout, poor ROAS, limited testing, underutilization of video creatives, inefficient ad account structure, attribution issues. You can position your agency as the solution.
• Speed of Impact: With stores already spending, changes you make can produce noticeable improvements quickly — making your results tangible. That helps in converting leads and retaining clients.

5. How to Reach Out & Position Your Agency

Having found and validated the right stores, your outreach and service offering need to be sharp.

• Messaging: Lead with results. Speak their language (ROAS, cost per acquisition, conversion rate, creative split testing). Don’t explain what Facebook ads are; propose improvements. Example: “We noticed from your Facebook ad content that you might be under‑utilizing video creative split tests. We can help increase your ROAS by X% by optimizing creative + budget allocation.”
• Case Studies / Social Proof: Having concrete past wins helps. Especially if you’ve worked with similar verticals or revenue/traffic levels.
• Audit Offers: Free or low cost audits of ad creative, website funnel, or video creative quality often break down resistance. It shows you see what they are doing and how you can help.
• Transparency: Be clear about what your optimizations cost, what metrics you will track, what improvements they might expect (e.g. conversion %, cost per click, ROAS).
• Pricing / Packages: Make sure your services align with their size — don’t pitch to a mid‑six‑figure/month store the same way as a $50K/month store. Tailor your offer to the revenue/traffic level.

6. Challenges & How to Mitigate Them

Working with stores that already spend on Facebook is great, but not without challenges.

• Ad Fatigue / Creative Burnout: Stores often rotate through creatives; older creatives lose impact. You’ll need to plan for frequent creative refreshes.
• Scaling Costs: As budgets grow, cost per acquisition tends to rise. You need to be realistic when promising growth.
• Account Structure & Attribution Issues: Not all stores have clean ad accounts or accurate event tracking. Fixing these is foundational — sometimes more work than optimization.
• Competition & Rising Costs: As more brands compete, bids go up, CPMs rise, etc. Having an edge with creative or novel formats helps.

Conclusion

Ecommerce stores already spending heavily on Facebook ads are some of the best prospects for agencies. They have infrastructure, budgets, and a dependency that creates opportunity. StoreCensus (with its Facebook pixel detection, estimated sales & traffic data) is one of the most powerful tools you can use to identify them cleanly and accurately.

If you're an agency, this should become part of your lead generation strategy: use StoreCensus filters to build a list, validate their ad activity, tailor your messaging, and offer services that address specific pain points these stores have. When you do that, you’re not selling “maybe this will work.” You’re selling “this will help you spend smarter, make ads perform better, and scale more reliably.”