If you are shortlisting performance marketing agencies in Malaysia, ask each one for a named client, the return on ad spend it reached and the margin that return was measured against. A ROAS screenshot on its own proves very little. A 3x return is a strong month for a brand on 60% gross margin and a loss for one on 25%.
Oblique is a Kuala Lumpur agency founded in 2016. We have worked with more than 350 businesses and manage over RM7 million in ad spend across Meta, Google and TikTok. Four of our paid programmes have published numbers, and they cover a mattress launch, a two-market pet store, an international school group and a flower delivery brand.
What should you judge a performance agency on?
Judge it on return after product cost, the number your finance team would sign off on. The ad account shows revenue, which rarely tells you that. Platform ROAS counts revenue the platform believes it caused. It leaves out cost of goods, agency fees and the sales that would have happened anyway.
Start from your break-even point. Divide 1 by your gross margin and you have the ROAS at which media pays for itself. At a 40% margin that is 2.5x. Anything below that line is buying revenue at a loss, however healthy the dashboard looks. Our free break-even ROAS calculator does the sum for you, and we set out the full method in how to measure marketing ROI beyond ROAS.
An agency worth hiring asks for your margin in the first meeting. Without it, they cannot tell you whether your ads made money.
What results have we delivered for named clients?
Every figure below is published on our performance marketing page with the client named.
| Client | What we ran | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Getha | Launch of Transforme, a premium mattress line from a 50-year-old Malaysian brand. Meta and Google, tied into KOL partnerships | Seven-figure revenue from one product launch, 3.08x ROAS, e-commerce revenue up 2.5x |
| Petico | Full paid programme for an online pet store in Malaysia and Singapore, one creative production line feeding both accounts | 9.18x ROAS in Singapore, 6.45x in Malaysia |
| Sunway International Schools | Enrolment lead generation, restructured around discipline-specific creative and tighter audience signals | Cost per lead down from RM120 to RM80, 33% lower in a single restructure |
| FlowerChimp | Seasonal e-commerce campaigns built to hold efficiency through gifting peaks | 4.5x peak ROAS while spend scaled |
Before you read the numbers, note how different these four businesses are: a mattress launch, a repeat-purchase pet store, a school selling a multi-year decision and a florist with three hard peaks a year. Each one needs a different account structure. Getha is the one we point at most, because a launch has no historical data to optimise against. The creative had to find the buyers from a standing start.
Why does the ad itself matter more than targeting and bids?
The ad itself moves sales more than the targeting behind it. Nielsen and NCSolutions' 2017 analysis of nearly 500 FMCG campaigns found creative is still the largest single driver of sales lift. Media's share has grown to 36%, up from 15% eleven years earlier, and when the creative is weak, most of the lift that remains comes from media alone.
In Malaysia that weighting gets sharper, because the audience is already reachable by everyone. Meta's ads reach 23.0 million people here and TikTok's reach 30.7 million adults, per DataReportal's Digital 2026 Malaysia report. Every brand in your category can reach the same Malaysian audience at a similar cost, so the ad itself decides who makes the sale.
So most of our effort goes into the ad itself. Our paid team sits with the social and content team that shoots the work, and the organic posts that earn the most attention become the first paid tests. That saves cold-testing from nothing every month.
Who builds your landing pages, and how does paid search feed your SEO?
In the accounts we audit, much of the wasted spend is lost after the click, on slow pages, weak offers and forms that ask for too much. A strong ad that opens a slow product page loses the sale, and the ad account reports it as a creative failure. We build and fix the landing pages ourselves through our website design team, so the promise in the ad matches the page it opens. If your traffic is rising and sales are flat, our guide on why website traffic is not converting walks through the usual causes.
Search terms that convert in paid also go to our SEO team. Over time that turns keywords you are renting from Google into rankings you own.
Who are we the right fit for?
We work best with brands spending RM50,000 or more a month on media. At that level there is enough data to test creative properly each week, and the gains are large enough to show up in your monthly revenue. Below it, a tight single-channel setup is usually the more honest spend. Our Meta ads cost guide for Malaysia covers budgets and fee models at every level.
We are a poor fit if you want a guaranteed ROAS in the contract. Nobody controls Meta's auction, and an agency that promises a number is planning to move the goalposts or pick a campaign that flatters it. We are also a poor fit if the offer itself is not selling, because no budget fixes a product people do not want at the price asked.
Frequently asked questions
Which is the best performance marketing agency in Malaysia?
The best one for you depends on your margin, your category and how much you spend. Compare agencies on evidence: a named client in a similar category, the ROAS reached and the margin it was measured against. Oblique publishes four named results, from 3.08x on a product launch to 9.18x in Singapore, which is a fair standard to hold every shortlisted agency to.
How much should I spend on ads before hiring an agency?
For a managed programme with weekly creative testing, RM50,000 a month in media is where we see the work pay back clearly. Brands spending less can still get results, usually by focusing on one platform and one offer until the numbers justify expanding.
How long before paid ads show results?
Most accounts move within 30 to 60 days, once tracking is cleaned up and the first creative tests are live. The larger gains usually come from month three to six, when there is a library of proven ads and enough conversion data for the platforms to find buyers reliably.
Can you take over an account from another agency?
Yes, and it is how most of our paid clients start. The first step is an audit of tracking, account structure and the existing creative, with a handover plan so spend never goes dark. The audit often finds money being lost before we change a single campaign.
Do you run TikTok and Google as well as Meta?
Yes. We run Meta, Google and TikTok from one team and one creative line, and budget moves between them based on blended return rather than which platform reports the best number about itself.
Start with an account audit
If you are comparing agencies, the most useful first step is finding out where your current spend is leaking. Get in touch and we will audit your ad account before we say anything about budgets, so the first meeting starts from your numbers.