Frequently Asked Questions

A forensic review of what your ad platforms claim, measured against what your business actually recorded. I test platform numbers against analytics, call tracking, CRM records, booked actions, and revenue in scope. The output is a decision-grade answer to one question: does reported performance hold up as a business result, or only as a dashboard result. An audit tells you what is happening and where it breaks.

When reported performance stops matching sales reality. When an agency renewal or budget review is coming. When leadership needs evidence before it cuts, reallocates, or defends spend. The payoff is a faster, cleaner decision under pressure. Not every account clears the bar. If the spend is low, the data is thin, or the decision is minor, a forensic audit is not worth the cost.

Measurement that counts the wrong event, counts the same event twice, or counts shallow actions that are not real economic outcomes. Page views, thank-you-page loads, spam form fills, and duplicates logged as if they were qualified leads or revenue. The result is bad optimization built on bad reporting. Much of it is invisible inside the ad platform. It shows up only when platform data is checked against the CRM, call tracking, or booked outcomes.

Because the measurement stops at the ad or the lead form, while the actual outcome happens later in the CRM, on the phone, or offline. So platform reporting can look better than closed revenue. Some disagreement is normal. The problem is persistent divergence that changes budget decisions.

When multiple platforms or touchpoints all claim credit for the same outcome, so aggregate performance looks stronger than it is. You double-count wins and understate acquisition cost. Overlap is not always an error. Different attribution models produce it by design. The real question is whether those credit rules help you allocate capital, not whether a platform is obeying its own logic.

Platform-reported ROAS that does not hold up against downstream business results. Not fabricated data. Not an accusation of fraud. The platform reports return by its own attribution rules, and that number can be accurate on the platform and still useless for a budget decision. The real test is whether revenue, margin, and qualified outcomes move when the reported return moves. If they do not, the ROAS is describing the dashboard, not the business.

Leads that count as conversions in the ad stack but do not qualify, do not respond, do not fit the offer, or never become real pipeline. Spam, duplicates, competitors, and tire-kickers. The cost is sales drag: reps burn time disqualifying activity instead of working real opportunities. Junk is not a platform field. It has to be defined against your qualification standard and your CRM outcomes.

Because platform leads are activity and CRM outcomes are closer to business reality. The comparison shows whether reported conversions became qualified leads, booked actions, opportunities, or revenue. That is where bad lead economics stop hiding inside campaign metrics. The CRM has to be usable. If stages are inconsistent, missing, or gamed, the comparison stays weak even when the ad data is clean.

Yes. Independent verification before a renewal, budget cut, board review, or provider change. The decision stops depending on the team being evaluated to grade its own work. A verdict does not automatically prove the agency is at fault. The evidence may point to tracking failures, weak offers, sales friction, or attribution problems outside the agency's control.

The verdict is documented: screenshots, exports, platform data, and CRM comparisons where relevant. A dispute then moves from opinion to specific evidence. I clarify findings if needed. I do not run the dispute on your behalf or act as an advocate.

A credible verdict separates those causes instead of dumping everything on campaign optimization. The method checks five things: structural integrity, whether the account is built correctly; incentive alignment, who profits from the current setup; funnel health, whether leads turn into pipeline; outcome verification, whether reported conversions match real results; and capital allocation, whether the spend maps to return. You can then see whether the leak is inside the media account, in measurement, in the sales system, or across all three. The separation holds only with enough downstream data to make it defensible.

The deliverable. A written evaluation, an executive video walkthrough, a Waste Ledger, and a prioritized Do / Stop / Fix First list. You can hand it to a CFO, board, partner, or agency without me in the room. It is evidence-based and scope-based. It is not a guarantee that the same issues, the same waste, or the same outcome will show up in any other account.

Documented inefficiency in tracking, campaign structure, bidding, targeting, or spend that the verdict identifies as addressable. It is what appears fixable. It is not money returned to your account. Whether any of it is reduced depends on what you change after the verdict, how well the changes are implemented, and what constraints exist downstream. I identify the waste. Any change depends on implementation.

Yes. That is a core use case. The deliverable stays executive-usable: plain language, documented findings, and dollars tied to named causes instead of platform jargon. It is only as strong as the evidence inside it. Thin documentation or a vague scope does not survive hard-nosed stakeholders, which is why the findings are documented and the scope is set up front.

An agency audit usually comes from a firm that also wants the management contract or already has a stake in the account. An independent audit is paid to render judgment, nothing else. No percentage-of-spend upside. No bundled handoff into a sales deck. Less pressure to shape the answer around future management work. Independence does not make the verdict correct on its own. It still has to be documented, evidenced, and specific.

Yes. Identification and implementation are separate jobs. A forensic review identifies waste using read-only access, screenshots, exports, and downstream comparisons, with no in-account changes. Leadership gets a defensible diagnosis before deciding who fixes it. Until the campaigns, tracking, or funnel are actually corrected, the verdict is identified exposure, not realized improvement.

A meaningful audit needs auditable account conditions: access, ownership visibility, visibility into account change history, billing transparency, clarity on conversion-tracking ownership, and usable downstream records such as CRM or call data. If the account is agency-controlled and those conditions are missing, the audit can narrow issues, but confidence drops.

Companies spending $10,000 or more per month on paid media that need numbers able to survive a CFO, board, ownership, or agency review. This is built for operators under pressure. It is not built for low-spend accounts, early-stage teams, or anyone shopping for reassurance. Forensic work needs enough data and enough money at risk to be worth doing.

At least $10,000 per month on paid advertising. Below that, there is usually not enough volume, signal, or money at risk for the findings to change anything operationally. It is a business threshold, not a law. Some higher-complexity accounts justify review on different terms.

You pay a set price for the verdict. Not a share of your media budget. I do not earn more when your spend goes up, which removes one structural conflict. A flat fee does not make the advice correct on its own. The findings still have to be documented, evidenced, and checked against business outcomes.

Not by default. The verdict is a diagnosis, not a forced exit plan. You can use it to keep the agency, pressure the agency, replace it, bring media in-house, or pause spend while you fix the funnel. The audit is not campaign management, and it is not a disguised agency-switch pitch.

No. The audit tells you what is happening and where it breaks. It does not fix the campaigns or manage the account. Someone has to implement the findings afterward.

You decide what to do with it. There is no follow-on engagement waiting at the end: no retainer, no management contract, no pressure to hire me to fix what I found. The deliverable stands on its own as a decision instrument, whether you correct issues internally, hold your provider accountable, or reallocate budget.