---
title: "How to Audit Your Media Agency’s Value: Six Questions"
description: "Most leaks we find are nobody’s fault. An independent audit is not a vote against your agency, and we never sell media management, so there is no conflict."
url: https://marginfix.ai/insights/how-to-audit-your-marketing-agency/
lastmod: 2026-11-09
---

[Home](/) › [Insights](/insights/) › How to audit your agency without firing your agency

Working with agencies · 6 min read

# How to audit your agency without firing your agency

![Portrait photograph of Cristian Bragau](/assets/founder/cristian-bragau-2026-10.jpg) **[Cristian Bragau](/about/cristian-bragau/)**, Founder & Lead Auditor · Reviewed Nov 2026 · verified against the base of 74 audits

The short answer

Ask for evidence, not a verdict. Send six questions ahead of a budget meeting, request last month’s search terms report and the date the negative keyword list last changed, and reconcile what the platforms claim against your actual revenue. Most leaks we find are nobody’s fault, so the goal is a fix list, not a replacement.

## Start from the assumption that nobody is at fault

Most leaks we find are nobody’s fault. Platforms drift, prices go stale, flows get built once and forgotten. An independent audit isn’t a vote against your agency. Many agencies use our findings as their next quarter’s roadmap. We never sell media management, so there’s no conflict of interest.

Accounts drift for ordinary reasons. Budgets rise faster than anyone can rebuild the targeting; a campaign that worked last year keeps running on habit; the brief the agency was given still rewards the metric it rewarded at the start. The agency optimizes what it was asked to optimize. An audit checks whether that is still the thing that pays, and whether a [margin leak](/glossary/margin-leak/) sits outside the agency’s brief altogether.

## Six questions for your next budget meeting

Six questions to ask your agency: the good answer and the red flag for each

| The question | A good answer sounds like | The red flag |
| --- | --- | --- |
| “Where did last month’s budget actually go: fees, media, tools?” | A split on one page, within a day. | “It’s complicated.” The split is the report. |
| “Which campaigns would you cut if it were your money?” | Names two immediately, with numbers. | Everything is “building momentum.” |
| “What’s our blended CAC trend, not ROAS per platform?” | A chart tied to your revenue data. | They quote platform ROAS back to you. |
| “What did you test last quarter, and what failed?” | A list with results, including the losers. | Only wins. Nobody tests without failures. |
| “When did the negative keyword list last change?” | A date within the last month. | Nobody remembers. That is the answer. |
| “What would make you recommend spending less?” | A threshold based on margin, stated plainly. | Silence. Spend only ever goes up. |

**How to run it without drama:** send the six questions ahead, frame the meeting as budget planning, not an audit, and book 45 minutes. A good agency answers five of six easily, and the one they stumble on is usually where your leak lives. If the meeting turns defensive, that’s an answer too. Two artifacts to request before the meeting: last month’s **search terms report** and the **date the negative keyword list last changed**. If nobody remembers the second, that is the answer. And if all six come back clean, congratulations: you may be one of the two businesses that have claimed our guarantee.

## What an agency review usually misses

The five leak patterns, how often the 74 audits found each one, and where to look

| Leak pattern | Found in | Where to look |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Non incremental paid | 68% of audits | Branded search and retargeting spend against the demand you already own |
| Attribution inflation | 54% of audits | The revenue all platforms claim, added up, against the revenue you banked |
| Mispriced offers | 47% of audits | Landed cost and margin by product, not revenue by campaign |
| Retention leaks | 41% of audits | Failed payments, pauses and cancellations by cohort |
| Discount habits | 34% of audits | The share of orders that used a code, month by month |

Only the first two sit inside a typical media brief. The other three live in pricing, billing and the CRM, which is why an agency can run a clean account while the business behind it still leaks. [The agency’s ‘winning’ campaign was the biggest loser](/cases/the-agency-s-winning-campaign-was-the-biggest-loser/) shows the first kind: attribution credited a campaign for sales it did not drive, and the budget followed the credit. The [ROAS attribution field guide](/insights/roas-attribution-field-guide/) explains why every platform claims the same sale, and the three checks that show it.

## Check the money before the media

Before judging the campaigns, check what the budget bought. Ask for the split between media, fees and tools, and compare the media line with the invoices the ad platforms send directly. If the agency places your media on its own accounts, ask for read only access to them. If part of the budget runs programmatic, the money passes through more hands before it reaches a publisher; [how to audit your media agency’s programmatic fees](/insights/audit-media-agency-programmatic-fees/) lists the documents to ask for. A markup is not a red flag by itself; an undisclosed one is. The guide to [marketing agency markup](/agency-markup/) walks through the four fee models and the three way reconciliation.

## How to audit your media agency’s value

An agency’s value is two things you can check. The first is the media: every dollar of it bought at the price the platform actually charged, with fees shown as fees. Reconcile three numbers for the same month: the spend on the agency invoice, the spend in the agency’s report, and the spend the platform billed. They should match to the dollar once the stated fee is taken out, and any gap needs a line that explains it.

The second is the work: changes that moved blended CAC, not platform ROAS. Ask for the three changes the agency made last quarter that it believes lowered your cost per new customer, and check each against your own revenue data rather than the platform’s. An agency that can show both, media at cost and work that moved CAC, is earning its fee. The [agency markup guide](/agency-markup/) has the reconciliation workbook.

## What to do with the answers

Write down each answer and the date. Two quarters of answers tell you more than any single meeting: whether the negative keyword list now changes monthly, whether blended CAC or [MER](/glossary/mer/) is reported without anyone asking, whether anything was ever cut. Where an answer stays weak, that is the area to measure properly.

Measuring it properly means reconciling the platforms against your revenue data. You can run part of it yourself with the [marketing audit checklist](/marketing-audit-checklist/), in the order the [marketing audit process](/insights/marketing-audit-process/) sets out. An independent audit covers all five patterns in one pass, in 5 to 7 working days after kickoff, with read only access, and hands the findings to you and your agency at the same time. How that differs from an agency reviewing its own work is set out in [independent audit vs your agency’s own review](/compare/independent-audit-vs-agency-review/).

## Questions about auditing your agency

### How often should I audit my marketing agency?

Ask the six questions every quarter, as part of budget planning. A full independent audit earns its place when spend changes direction, when reported results and banked revenue stop matching, or before a new budget year. [Score yourself on 30 checks →](/marketing-audit-checklist/)

### Will an independent audit damage my agency relationship?

Rarely, when it is framed as budget planning. Most leaks we find are nobody’s fault, and many agencies use the findings as their next quarter’s roadmap. We never sell media management, so the audit has no account to win. [Independent audit vs agency review →](/compare/independent-audit-vs-agency-review/)

### What access does an agency audit need?

Read only access to the ad accounts, the analytics and the revenue source, usually the store, the CRM or the billing system. Nothing is changed in your accounts, and your agency keeps running them while the audit works. [How access and data are handled →](/security/)

[See what an evidenced finding looks like →](/sample-report/)

## More field notes

[How to audit your media agency’s programmatic fees, Working with agencies](/insights/audit-media-agency-programmatic-fees/) [The marketing audit process: 8 steps to run one on your own numbers, Audit method](/insights/marketing-audit-process/) [Involuntary churn: how failed payments leak subscription revenue, and how to win it back, Retention](/insights/involuntary-churn-failed-payments/) [How to cut wasted ad spend: six checks, in the order to run them, Paid media](/insights/how-to-reduce-wasted-ad-spend/) [How to reconcile GA4 and ad platform revenue with Shopify or Stripe, Measurement](/insights/reconcile-ga4-ad-platform-revenue/) [How to measure incrementality with a simple holdout test, Measurement](/insights/how-to-measure-incrementality/)

[Request an audit →](/book/)
 [See the benchmark](/benchmark/)