Paid Media Audit
A full review of your paid accounts across every active channel. You see what is costing you, what to fix ranked by dollar impact, and a prioritized action plan you can execute immediately.
What you get
Five deliverables. One clear plan.
Channel-by-channel performance review
Meta, Google, TikTok, and any other active channels reviewed against benchmarks and your own historical performance.
Spend efficiency and ROAS analysis
Where budget is producing and where it is not. Every line of your spend gets ranked by return, surfacing what to cut, shift, or scale.
Naming and UTM standards audit
Inconsistent naming breaks attribution. You get what is broken documented and a clean standard your team can implement immediately.
Attribution and tracking review
Pixel health, conversion event setup, view-through versus click-through attribution, and any gaps that are hiding real performance.
Dollar-weighted opportunity plan
A prioritized list of the highest-ROI moves available to you right now, ranked by estimated dollar impact, not just effort.
Who it is for
The right fit.
Marketing leaders who own significant paid media spend and want to know what it is actually producing
Multi-location brands where performance varies by location and nobody can explain why
Teams whose paid media results have plateaued and the usual fixes are not working
Businesses moving between agencies and needing an independent read on what they inherited
The plan is yours regardless of what happens next. You walk away with a clear picture of your accounts whether you continue or not.
The full scope
39 checks. Here is every one of them.
Most audit pages describe a review without saying what gets looked at. This is the whole list, so you know what you are buying before the diagnostic call.
Account structure and settings
7- Campaign and ad group architecture against how you actually sell
- Duplicate and overlapping campaigns competing in the same auction
- Search term reports and the negative keyword lists behind them
- Match type usage and keywords competing with each other
- Ad extensions and asset coverage on every active campaign
- Network and placement settings, including partner and audience networks
- Geographic targeting, including radius overlap between locations
Budget, bidding and pacing
6- Spend and return by campaign, ad group and channel
- Bid strategy fit against the conversion volume each campaign actually has
- Budget pacing across the month and where spend runs out early
- Budget allocation against where conversions and revenue really come from
- Automated rules and scripts still running unattended
- Bid management tooling and what it is optimising toward
Targeting and audiences
6- Audience overlap between campaigns bidding on the same people
- Remarketing list health, size and recency
- Customer match and first-party audience coverage
- Exclusions, including existing customers and unqualified segments
- Demographic and device performance splits
- Product feed quality where Shopping or retail campaigns are running
Creative and landing experience
6- Creative and ad copy performance by campaign and audience
- Creative fatigue and rotation across active sets
- Message match between the ad and the page it sends people to
- Load speed and mobile experience on paid entry points
- Form length, friction, and what happens after a submission
- Whether the page asks for the conversion you are paying for
Tracking, attribution and data
8- Pixel and tag health across every platform in use
- Conversion events counted more than once
- Primary versus secondary conversions and what bidding optimises toward
- Offline and CRM conversion import where the real sale happens later
- View-through versus click-through attribution and how it flatters each channel
- The attribution model in use and what it hides
- Consent settings and the tracking lost to them
- Whether your analytics property agrees with the ad platforms
Naming, reporting and governance
6- Naming conventions across campaigns, ad sets and creatives
- UTM standards and where inbound traffic loses its source
- Reporting that reconciles platform numbers with analytics and the CRM
- Account ownership, and what leaves with a departing vendor
- Change history and unattributed edits to live campaigns
- Per-location reporting that rolls up and hides variance
How it works
Three steps. Fixed timeline.
01
Access and intake
You grant read access to your ad accounts and share any relevant context: goals, recent changes, what you think is broken. The review starts immediately.
02
Full account audit
Your accounts get reviewed channel by channel: spend efficiency, naming, attribution, audience structure, creative performance, and the tracking layer underneath it all.
03
Prioritized plan delivered
You receive a written report and a dollar-weighted opportunity plan. You get walked through it and every question answered before close-out.
If you run more than one location
Multi-location accounts break in ways single-location accounts do not.
When the same brand runs paid media across a footprint, the expensive problems are rarely inside any one campaign. They live in how the locations interact, and they do not show up in a blended report. These get checked specifically.
Locations bidding against each other
When two locations target overlapping radii on the same terms, you pay more for the same click and both campaigns look weaker than they are.
Budget split evenly, demand split unevenly
Equal budgets across locations that convert at different rates quietly move money away from the markets that work.
Attribution that only rolls up
Blended numbers hide which markets carry the account. Per-location reporting usually changes what you would fund next month.
Naming and tracking drift
When different people or vendors touch different location accounts, conventions diverge and the reporting stops reconciling.
One pixel, no separation by location
A shared pixel with no per-location conversion events cannot tell you which market produced the revenue.
Running paid media across locations already? See how paid media management works once the accounts are rebuilt, or read the audit checklist to run a first pass yourself.
Before you book
What a paid media audit includes, and what it does not.
What does a paid media audit include?
A channel-by-channel review of every active paid account, usually Google, Meta, and TikTok. 39 checks across account structure, budget and bidding, targeting and audiences, creative and landing experience, tracking and attribution, and reporting governance. You receive a written report and an opportunity plan ranked by estimated dollar impact.
How long does a paid media audit take?
One to two weeks from the day read access is granted, depending on how many platforms and accounts are in scope. The scope is fixed, so the timeline is fixed. You get the report and a walkthrough before close-out.
How much does a paid media audit cost?
It is priced by scope: the number of platforms, the number of accounts, and the spend under review. You get the scope and a fixed price confirmed on the diagnostic call before anything starts. There is no hourly billing, and the scope does not grow once the work is underway.
What access do you need?
Read-only access to the ad accounts and to your analytics property. Nothing is changed in your accounts during the audit. You keep every permission and revoke it whenever you like.
How is our account data handled?
Access stays read-only for the length of the audit and is revoked at close-out, or sooner if you revoke it first. Nothing is exported beyond what the report needs to show its work, and your data is never used to inform another engagement.
Will the audit interrupt our live campaigns?
No. Everything is read-only, so campaigns keep running exactly as they are. If something is actively costing you money while the review is underway, you hear about it immediately rather than at the end.
How often should you audit paid media?
Once or twice a year for a stable account, and sooner after any of the four events that usually break things: a platform migration, a website rebuild, an agency change, or a significant budget increase. Accounts drift most in the weeks nobody is watching closely.
Is an audit useful if we are not planning to change agencies?
Yes, and that is the common case. A good agency relationship benefits from an independent read, because it turns disagreements about performance into a shared list of specific fixes. The report goes to you, and what you share with your agency is your call.
What if we already use a bid management or automation tool?
The tool gets reviewed alongside everything else. Automation optimises toward whatever it was pointed at, so when the conversion setup underneath it is wrong, the tool efficiently buys the wrong outcome. That is one of the more expensive problems this review finds.
Do you review landing pages and what happens after the click?
Yes. Message match between the ad and the page, load speed and mobile experience on paid entry points, form friction, and whether the page asks for the conversion you are paying for. Paid media problems are frequently post-click problems.
Do you review ad creative and copy?
Yes. Creative performance by campaign and audience, rotation and fatigue across active sets, and whether the message holds together from ad to landing page. Creative is assessed on what the data says, not on taste.
Do you audit Shopping campaigns and product feeds?
Yes, where retail campaigns are running. Feed quality sets the ceiling on what Shopping can do, so the feed is reviewed alongside campaign structure rather than treated as a separate technical concern.
Does this cover Amazon and other retail media?
Retail media is reviewed when it carries meaningful spend. Say what is running on the diagnostic call and it either goes in scope or it does not, with the price set accordingly.
Can you audit one platform instead of all of them?
Yes. A single-platform review is a common starting point when one channel is the concern. The trade-off is that cross-channel problems, particularly attribution and audience overlap, are harder to see from inside one platform.
Do you check whether our locations compete against each other?
Yes, for brands running paid media across a location footprint. Overlapping geographic targeting, duplicated terms across location accounts, and reporting that rolls up and hides per-location variance are all part of the review.
What does the report actually look like?
A written findings document organised by the areas above, and an opportunity plan listing each fix with an estimated dollar impact and the effort it takes. Every finding names what was observed, where, and what to do about it. You get walked through it live and every question answered before close-out.
What is not included?
No changes are made to your accounts, because this is a review rather than an engagement. It is not a creative strategy project, a media plan for new channels, or a brand exercise. If the accounts are in good shape, the report says so rather than manufacturing work.
What happens after the audit?
You decide. Your team can run the plan on its own, you can have the fixes built for you, or you can have the accounts managed on top of the rebuilt structure. The plan is yours either way.
How is this different from the free audit an agency offers in a pitch?
A pitch audit exists to win the account. This one exists to find the problems and price them, with no management contract attached. If your current setup is sound, the report says so.
When it is not the right call
Four times you should not buy an audit.
An audit is worth buying when it finds more than it costs. Sometimes it will not, and it is cheaper for both of us to say so now than to find out at close-out.
You have been live under 90 days
There is not enough history yet for the findings to be reliable. Come back when the accounts have something worth reading.
You already know the fix
If you can name the problem and just need it built, buy the build. An audit would tell you what you already know.
The findings would not pay for the work
Below a certain monthly spend the recoverable dollars are smaller than the cost of finding them. You get that answer straight on the diagnostic call.
You need a decision validated
The report says what the accounts say. If the conclusion is fixed in advance, this is the wrong engagement.
Find what is costing you before you spend another dollar.
Start with a diagnostic call. You get the right scope confirmed and access set up.