Paid media audits that show where your ad spend is leaking

Paid Media Audit and Strategy

marketFX digital helps brands identify wasted media spend, tracking issues, budget misallocation, audience overlap, creative fatigue, and campaign structure problems, across Google, Meta, TikTok, YouTube, programmatic, and CTV.

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Platforms reviewed

Every platform that touches your media plan

A paid media audit from marketFX covers every platform in your current plan, so you get one prioritized read across paid search, paid social, video, programmatic, and CTV instead of a separate opinion from each vendor.

Google Ads

Performance Max

Meta Ads

TikTok Ads

YouTube

Demand Gen

Programmatic

Connected TV

Retargeting

Paid social

Paid search

PPC, Google Ads, and Meta

PPC audit, Google Ads audit, and Meta ads audit

Whether you call it a PPC audit, a Google Ads audit, or a paid media audit, the goal is the same, which is to find out how much of your spend is producing incremental revenue and how much is quietly leaking out of the account.

Google Ads audit

For Google Ads, we review campaign structure, Performance Max and Demand Gen setup, match types and search terms, negative keyword coverage, bidding strategy, conversion actions, and how much budget is going to branded searches you would likely win anyway. Most Google Ads audits surface a mix of quick fixes that can be made the same week and structural changes that need a proper test plan.

Meta and Facebook ads audit

For Meta, we look at audience overlap between prospecting and retargeting, frequency, creative fatigue, Advantage+ settings, pixel and Conversions API setup, and whether reported conversions line up with what actually reaches your CRM.

Paid search audit across every other platform

The same review extends to Microsoft Ads, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, programmatic, and CTV, so you get one prioritized read across the whole media plan rather than a separate audit for each platform.

What we analyze

The full performance marketing stack

Everything from account architecture to incrementality, because these are the signals that decide whether spend compounds or quietly leaks.

Campaign structure

Account architecture, naming conventions, and the campaign/ad group splits that decide whether bidding signals stay clean.

Budget allocation

Spend distribution across channels, campaigns, geographies, and funnel stages, measured against contribution rather than last click.

Conversion tracking

Pixel and server-side event coverage, deduplication, conversion definitions, and parity between platforms and the CRM.

Audience segmentation

First-party lists, lookalikes, exclusions, and overlap analysis, so acquisition spend is not paying for customers you already have.

Frequency

Per-user impression and view frequency by audience and creative, including the diminishing-returns curve.

Creative rotation

Creative volume, fatigue cycles, winners and losers, and how new concepts are introduced into testing.

Keyword quality

Match types, intent alignment, negative keyword hygiene, and the share of spend going to commercial vs informational queries.

Search terms

Actual queries triggering ads: surfacing junk, brand cannibalization, and missed long-tail opportunity.

Landing page alignment

Message match, page speed, friction points, and the gap between ad promise and post-click experience.

Attribution

Model selection, lookback windows, view-through treatment, and the integrity of the numbers driving budget decisions.

Incrementality

Geo holdouts, ghost ads, conversion lift, and a defensible read on what spend is actually causing (not just correlated with) revenue.

Funnel coverage

Awareness, consideration, conversion, and retention: mapped against current spend and the gaps where pipeline leaks.

Pair this with marketing analytics and reporting to fix the measurement layer feeding every platform, or take the wider lens with full-funnel marketing audit services.

Problems we often find

The patterns that quietly cap performance

Almost every paid media audit surfaces a version of these. The cost is rarely one big leak. It is several small ones compounding across the account.

High frequency

The same audience served the same creative dozens of times, which drives up cost per action and brand fatigue with no incremental lift.

Overbroad targeting

Performance Max and broad-match campaigns running unchecked, swallowing budget into low-intent placements that never convert.

Duplicate conversions

The same action counted across multiple platforms, inflating reported ROAS and corrupting the bidding signals every algorithm relies on.

Branded search cannibalization

Paying for branded clicks that would have come through organic anyway, which inflates performance metrics while reducing true incremental revenue.

Poor acquisition vs retention separation

Retargeting and prospecting fighting for the same impressions, with no clean read on what each is actually delivering.

Low-quality search terms

Aggressive auto-expansion sending budget to irrelevant queries, and the audit usually surfaces 20 to 40% of spend going to terms that should be negatived.

Creative not matched to funnel stage

Conversion-focused creative shown to cold audiences, brand creative shown to in-market buyers, with no system for matching message to intent.

No clear testing plan

Tests with no hypothesis, no minimum sample size, and no decision criteria, so nothing learned compounds and the same questions get re-asked.

Deliverables

What you receive

You get a complete written deliverable rather than a screenshot tour, and every recommendation is prioritized and tied to a 90-day execution plan.

Paid media findings deck

An executive narrative of what we found, what it costs you, and what to do about it: built for the leadership table, not the trade desk.

Waste analysis

A line-by-line read on where current spend is going, what is incremental, and the dollar value of the waste sitting in plain sight.

Budget reallocation plan

A specific re-allocation across channels, campaigns, and funnel stages, with expected impact on CAC, ROAS, and pipeline contribution.

Channel role clarity

A clear job-to-be-done for every channel: what it is for, what it is not for, and how it interacts with the rest of the mix.

90-day test roadmap

Prioritized tests with named hypotheses, sample-size targets, owners, and decision criteria, sequenced so learnings compound.

Measurement recommendations

Conversion definitions, server-side event spec, attribution model, and the dashboards needed to govern the program going forward.

Creative and audience recommendations

Concrete creative briefs, audience structures, and exclusion logic, so execution can start the week the audit lands.

Inside every audit

• Account-by-account spend, ROAS, and CAC reconciliation
• Conversion tracking and server-side event review
• Audience overlap and frequency analysis
• Search-term and placement waste report
• Creative performance and fatigue read
• Channel role and budget reallocation model
• 90-day prioritized test roadmap

FAQ

How a PPC and paid media audit runs

We begin by confirming which platforms and accounts are in scope and requesting read only access through each platform's standard sharing tools. The first week focuses on conversion tracking, because bidding algorithms optimize toward whatever conversions they are given, and duplicated or low-value conversions distort every other number in the account. From there we review account structure, search terms, audiences, placements, creative, budgets, and landing pages platform by platform, and then step back to look at how budget is split across channels.

The final deliverable separates quick fixes your team can make immediately from structural changes that need testing, and it includes a 90-day plan with the tests, budget shifts, and measurement changes in the order we would run them.

Who a paid media audit is a good fit for

The audit is the best fit when paid media spend is large enough that fixing waste, tracking, or structure could matter more than the cost of the review, which is most often the case for ecommerce, franchise, multi location, and enterprise advertisers running several platforms at once. If your main question is whether marketing as a whole is working, rather than paid media specifically, a broader marketing audit is the better starting point.

Evidence from past work

Two of the anonymized summaries on our case studies and results page are paid media audits. A multi market consumer brand running Google Ads, Meta, and programmatic traced a three quarter ROAS plateau to account structure and duplicated conversions, and a DTC and retail brand found its rising CPA came from tracking decay, audience overlap, and slow landing pages rather than a lack of campaigns. Client names are withheld on those summaries, and past results describe specific engagements rather than a promise of future performance.

When an audit turns into ongoing management, the work continues under our paid media services, and attribution questions are handled through marketing attribution.

Paid media audits, answered

What is the difference between a PPC audit and a paid media audit?

A PPC audit usually means a review of pay-per-click search campaigns like Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. A paid media audit covers those plus paid social, video, programmatic, and CTV. Ours covers whichever platforms are in your current plan, so the name matters less than the scope you need.

What is included in a Google Ads audit?

Our Google Ads audit covers account structure, campaign types including Performance Max, keywords and search terms, negative keywords, bidding, budgets, conversion tracking, landing page alignment, and branded search spend, and it ends with a prioritized list of fixes and tests.

How long does a paid media audit take?

Most paid media audits run two to three weeks from kickoff to final deliverable. Quick-win findings (duplicate conversions, missing exclusions, obvious waste) are shared as soon as they surface so your team can act before the full report lands.

Which platforms do you audit?

Google Ads, Performance Max, Demand Gen, Microsoft Ads, Meta Ads, TikTok Ads, LinkedIn Ads, YouTube, Reddit, programmatic display and video, Connected TV, retargeting platforms, and retail media networks. The audit covers whichever combination is in your current stack.

What spend level makes a paid media audit worth it?

The economics typically work above roughly $30,000 per month in paid media spend, where the dollar value of identified waste and reallocation comfortably exceeds the audit fee. Below that, a lighter consulting engagement usually delivers more value than a full audit.

How do you measure wasted spend?

Waste is measured against contribution, not last-click. We combine search-term reports, placement reports, audience overlap, frequency curves, branded vs non-branded splits, and (where data allows) geo holdout or conversion lift tests to isolate spend that is not driving incremental revenue.

Will the audit work if our tracking is broken?

Yes, and it usually is, at least partially. A full tracking review is part of the audit. We document what is broken, what the impact is on bidding and reporting, and the specific server-side events, deduplication rules, and conversion definitions needed to fix it before the next budget decision.

Do you work with our existing media agencies?

Yes. The audit is read-only and vendor-neutral. We assess outcomes, not relationships, and share findings transparently with you and your existing partners. The deliverable shows where current work is producing measurable value and where a different approach would unlock growth.

What reporting do you recommend after the audit?

A weekly operating dashboard tied to leading indicators (spend pacing, CPMs, CTR, CVR, CAC, frequency) and a monthly executive view tied to lagging outcomes (revenue, contribution margin, blended CAC, payback). Both reference the same conversion definitions to keep numbers consistent across the business.

When should we reallocate budget across channels?

After tracking is trusted, after the channel role for each platform is defined, and after enough data exists to read incrementality, not before. Reallocating on noisy last-click data tends to swing budget toward whichever platform takes the most credit, which is rarely the same as whichever platform drives the most incremental revenue.

Request a paid media audit

We will benchmark your current paid program (spend, tracking, structure, creative, and incrementality) and return a prioritized 90-day plan to recover waste and lift performance.

Book a consultation

The audit sits inside our wider paid media and PPC management services.