Paid media audit
Find the spend your reports are hiding.
We inspect your ad accounts, landing pages, and tracking path, then return a prioritized action plan your team can execute. The average account we take over has 15 to 30% of its budget wasted on day one. The goal is simple: make that waste visible, stop it, then scale what works.
20%
budget recovered in a B2B industrial account
$105 to $29
CPL drop after a Google Ads rebuild
12.21x
ROAS from a paid social launch
Why audits exist
Waste hides inside healthy dashboards.
Platform dashboards are built to show activity, not efficiency. Clicks rise, impressions grow, and every chart keeps pointing the same direction while the budget leaks through search terms that never convert, placements that never get seen, audiences that overlap each other, and conversion events that count the wrong thing. The average account we take over has 15 to 30% of its budget wasted on day one. That is not a strategy problem. It is an inspection problem. An audit exists to make the waste visible and name it line by line before the next dollar gets spent. We recover wasted spend first, then reinvest it. That sequence is the whole business model.
Floss & Pixel is a full-managed performance marketing partner for small-to-mid Canadian businesses. We handle strategy, execution, creative, and measurement as one team, with a dedicated strategist and executor per account rather than a freelancer or VA model. We run 8+ active retainers across paid social, paid search, and SEO for clients in fashion ecommerce, luxury retail, B2B industrial, multi-location healthcare, kids franchises, real estate, property management, and AI and SaaS. Every account gets a technical audit before scaling, and we do not require long contracts. The work speaks.
The other failure mode is the report itself. Teams make scaling decisions on summaries that celebrate activity and hide the rows that matter: spend by outcome, cost by qualified lead, and wasted budget by source. If your reporting has never shown you a cut decision, it has never really been tested. Our audits apply the same standard we hold our own accounts to: every number traces to money in or money out.
What audits usually find
The same leaks show up in most accounts.
Every account is different, but the waste is rarely original. These are the findings we see most often when we open an account for the first time.
Search terms that never convert
Broad and phrase match queries buying informational traffic that never turns into customers, funded day after day because nobody reviews the search term report.
Campaigns competing against each other
Two or more campaigns bidding into the same auctions and the same audiences, raising your own cost per click instead of covering more demand.
Placements paying for impressions nobody sees
Placements that spend budget on reach with no realistic path to a conversion, reported as cheap impressions and counted as progress.
Conversions counted twice or counted wrong
Duplicate events, wrong attribution windows, and page views promoted to conversions, inflating the numbers your bidding system optimizes against.
Budgets aimed at the wrong event
Smart bidding optimizing for a lead form that sales never qualifies, instead of the qualified outcome that actually pays the invoices.
Creative fatigue left running
Frequency climbing while results drift down, with the account still funding the same assets because nothing in the structure forces a test.
What we inspect
The audit is built around decisions, not screenshots.
Every audit covers four areas. Each one ends in a decision your team can act on, not a deck of charts.
Budget leaks by campaign, audience, keyword, and placement
We pull the last 90 days of spend and outcomes and walk the account line by line. In Google Ads that means search terms buying the wrong intent, broad match expansion drifting off target, and campaigns competing against each other in the same auctions. In Meta and TikTok it means placements paying for reach nobody sees, audiences stacked on top of each other, and creative fatigue quietly raising frequency and cost. Every leak gets named with the spend attached to it, so the cut list is a number, not an opinion.
Tracking gaps between platform reports, forms, calls, and revenue
Most accounts optimize against conversions that are wrong, duplicated, or disconnected from revenue. We trace the full path: pixel and CAPI events, UTMs, form fills, call tracking, and whatever sits in your CRM or booking system. If platform dashboards disagree with business reality, the audit finds where the chain breaks. We have built custom closed loop attribution that ties an ad click to a booked showing, and the same discipline applies to any stack. You cannot scale what you cannot count.
Creative and landing page friction that is raising acquisition cost
An ad that earns the click can still lose the conversion. We review creative against the search terms and audiences it serves, then follow the visitor to the landing page: message match, load speed, form length, proof, and the one action the page asks for. Cheap traffic into a page that does not convert is still expensive traffic. The audit names the friction points that are raising your cost per lead independent of bids or budgets.
A 30 day action plan with cut, keep, test, and rebuild decisions
Findings without a sequence are just a list. The audit ends in a 30 day action plan split into four decisions: cut the spend that is provably wasted, keep the campaigns that earn their budget, test the changes with defined success criteria, and rebuild the structure where the foundation is broken. Each recommendation carries the evidence behind it and the order to execute it in, so your team can act the day the call ends.
How it works
Four steps, read only access, no obligation.
01
Send access and history
You share read only access to the ad accounts plus the last 90 days of spend and outcomes. If tracking is live we review it as is. If it is broken, that is a finding too.
02
We inspect everything
Accounts, search terms, placements, audiences, creative, landing pages, and the tracking path from click to revenue. Nothing gets optimized during this stage. The point is to map the waste first.
03
You get the findings in writing
A findings call plus a written report: the leaks with spend attached, the tracking gaps, the friction points, and the 30 day action plan with cut, keep, test, and rebuild decisions.
04
You decide what happens next
Execute the plan in house, or have us implement it. The audit stands on its own either way, and there is no obligation attached to it.
How this audit differs
The first output is a kill list, not an expansion plan.
Platform account reviews are written by the company selling the inventory. Their recommendations tend to end in more budget, more campaigns, and more reasons to keep spending inside their walls. Generic agency reviews often end the same way, with a findings deck designed to soften you up for a pitch. Ours is built in the opposite direction. An audit that does not name what to stop is not protecting your budget, so the cut list comes first and every recommendation carries its evidence. If the honest conclusion is to keep everything running and change nothing, that is what the report says.
Channel coverage
One audit across every account that touches the budget.
Google Ads
Search, Performance Max, and Display inspected for wasted search terms, structure that fights itself, and bidding strategies pointed at the wrong conversion events. If paid search is your main channel, the audit holds it to the same standard as our managed accounts.
How we run Google Ads management→Meta Ads
Facebook and Instagram campaigns reviewed for audience overlap, placement waste, creative fatigue, and signal quality. Paid social only works when the events it optimizes for match the outcomes you get paid for.
Our approach to Meta Ads management→TikTok Ads
TikTok reviewed for creative velocity, placement quality, and whether the spend is buying curiosity or intent. TikTok rewards accounts that test fast and kill faster, and the audit tells you whether yours does.
Conversion tracking
Tracking gets its own pass: Pixel and CAPI setup, UTMs, call tracking, and the bridge between platform events and actual revenue. This is the layer most audits skip and the layer where most accounts quietly break.
Proof
What recovered spend looks like.
Real client results, with the numbers as reported in our case studies.
Fashion ecommerce
The Fitzroy
12.21x ROAS on $14K of spend across Meta and TikTok. A paid social launch rebuilt around creative testing instead of audience stacking.
View the case study →Luxury retail
Johny Watches
5.47x ROAS on Google Ads and a 72% drop in cost per lead, from $105 to $29, after the account was rebuilt around buying intent.
View the case study →B2B industrial
Titan Walk-In Coolers
12.48x ROAS on Google Ads, with 20% of wasted budget recovered on day one and reallocated to campaigns that convert.
View the case study →Multi-location healthcare
Dentalook
35 dental clinics managed, 2x new patient volume, and 300+ location landing pages built to capture local intent.
View the case study →National franchise
Little Kickers
30%+ budget savings across a national franchise account with zero enrollment disruption while spend was restructured.
View the case study →Real estate
RentCorp
Custom closed loop attribution from ad click to booked showing, so the account bids on viewings, not clicks.
View the case study →Deliverables
What lands in your inbox.
Honest boundaries
Who the audit is not for.
We say no to work that does not fit, so here is the short list. If monthly ad spend is under a few hundred dollars, there is not enough data for an audit to pay for itself. Run the campaigns, gather history, and come back. If you need web design, branding, or organic social management as the primary deliverable, that is not our offering. And if the goal is a report that justifies a decision already made, you do not need an audit, you need a witness. The audit is for teams that want the truth about their spend and are willing to act on it.
After the audit
What happens if you want us to execute.
The audit is free and carries no obligation. If you want us to implement, engagements are retainers scaled by ad spend, not hourly billing. Paid ads management starts at $450 per month per channel for accounts under $1.5K in spend, and typically runs $450 to $1,900+ per month per channel as scope grows. SEO is $1,500 per month flat. Creative production is a separate add-on. We do not require long contracts, and the recovered budget usually funds the fee. If we implement, you get the same structure as every managed account: a dedicated strategist and executor on your team, one reporting standard, and monthly cut, keep, test, and rebuild decisions. Start with the audit and decide with the evidence in hand.
Common questions
What does a paid media audit inspect?
A Floss & Pixel audit inspects budget leaks, tracking gaps, creative friction, landing page friction, and the next budget decisions across Google Ads, Meta Ads, and TikTok Ads. It ends in a 30 day action plan with cut, keep, test, and rebuild decisions.
How much does the audit cost?
The audit is free. It is how we open every relationship: inspect first, then decide together whether the work is worth doing. There is no obligation attached to the findings.
Who is the audit for?
Teams with meaningful monthly ad spend, unclear efficiency, or platform reports that do not match business reality. If spend is very small, the audit will not pay for itself yet, and we will tell you that.
What do you get from the audit?
A written findings report with every leak, gap, and friction point, the cut list, the tracking repair plan, the 30 day action plan, and a findings call to walk through all of it.
Do you need to share passwords?
No. Read only access through the platforms' built in sharing is enough: Google Ads, Meta Business Manager, and TikTok all support it. If your tracking lives in Tag Manager, read access there completes the picture.
What happens to the findings if we do not hire you?
They are yours. The report, the cut list, and the 30 day plan are delivered as documents your team can execute in house. We win work by being right about the waste, not by withholding the proof.
Why recover wasted spend before scaling?
Because scaling multiplies whatever the account does. If 15 to 30% of budget is wasted at the current spend level, doubling the budget doubles the waste. Recovering the waste first means the scale up spends on what already converts. That is why every account we manage gets a technical audit before any budget increase.
Can you audit an account another agency is managing?
Yes, and that is one of the most common reasons teams request an audit. Read only access is enough, so nothing changes while the review runs. You get an independent read on the account before you renew, expand, or switch.
What if we only advertise on one channel?
The audit scales to the account. A single channel review goes deeper into that channel: structure, search terms or placements, creative, and the tracking path. Multi channel accounts add cross channel overlap and attribution to the scope.
How fast does the audit move?
The audit moves in a straight line: account access, inspection of every channel and the tracking path, then the written findings and a call. We confirm the timeline when we see the account, because an honest estimate needs to know how many channels and how much history are involved.
Start with the audit.
Send the access, get the findings, and decide with evidence. The audit is free, read only, and built to stand on its own whether or not we end up working together.