--- title: "Marketing Audit Insights: Field Notes From 74 Audits" description: "Marketing audit insights from 74 revenue verified audits: where budgets leak, why ROAS overstates returns, how to audit your agency, spend benchmarks by band." url: https://marginfix.ai/insights/ lastmod: 2026-10-13 --- Your number See this page in your own figures: industry, spend and the estimated leak. [Run the estimator →](/estimator/) [Home](/) › Insights Insights · field notes from 74 audits # Field notes from real audits. No thought leadership. Benchmark data, leak patterns and fixes, written from what the audits actually find. - Reviewed Oct 2026 - 11 guides - by Cristian Bragau - Median finding $58k a year across 74 audits - **74** audits in the corpus - **$4.5M+** margin identified - **$58k** median finding a year - **5 to 7** working days to findings Source: the [MarginFix benchmark dataset](/benchmark/), 74 published audits. 01 ## Featured The report every other guide draws on. Benchmark report · 6 min read ### [Where SMB marketing budgets leak: data from our audits](/insights/where-smb-marketing-budgets-leak/) The five leak categories we test for, ranked by average dollar impact. The most common shows up in 68% of the audits. [Read the full guide →](/insights/where-smb-marketing-budgets-leak/) ![Portrait photograph of Cristian Bragau](/assets/founder/cristian-bragau-2026-10.jpg) **[Cristian Bragau](/about/cristian-bragau/)** Founder & Lead Auditor · 17 published cases · Reviewed Oct 2026 **18.7%** median share of spend found leaking **$58k** median finding a year, per audit **68%** of audits carried non incremental paid spend [The benchmark report →](/benchmark/) 02 ## All guides 11 guides, one dataset. - /insights/roas-attribution-field-guide/Paid media · 5 min ### Your ROAS is lying to you: an attribution field guide - Why Meta, Google and GA4 all claim the same sale, and the three checks that reveal your real blended return. - Read the full guide → - /insights/how-to-audit-your-marketing-agency/Working with agencies · 5 min ### How to audit your agency without firing your agency - The independent second opinion playbook: what to check quarterly, what to ask for, and when a leak is nobody's fault. - Read the full guide → - /insights/smb-marketing-spend-benchmarks/Benchmarks · 5 min ### What good looks like at $10k to $250k a month - CAC payback, email revenue share, retargeting frequency and five more benchmarks, by industry and spend band. Healthy against flagged. - Read the full guide → - /insights/pricing-audit/Pricing · 8 min ### Pricing audit: where discounts eat your margin - Codes, thresholds, plan discounts, rebates and stale prices: where the margin goes after the list price. Mispriced offers turned up in 47% of the audits. - Read the full guide → - /insights/how-to-measure-incrementality/Measurement · 7 min ### How to measure incrementality with a simple holdout test - Geo, audience and on and off holdouts on a small budget, how to read the result in margin, and which channels to test first. - Read the full guide → - /insights/reconcile-ga4-ad-platform-revenue/Measurement · 7 min ### How to reconcile GA4 and ad platform revenue with Shopify or Stripe - Six steps from the ledger to one ratio: match GA4 by transaction ID, add up every platform's claim, read the gap. Attribution inflation turned up in 54% of the audits. - Read the full guide → - /insights/how-to-reduce-wasted-ad-spend/Paid media · 12 min ### How to cut wasted ad spend: six checks, in the order to run them - Six checks on Google and Meta in the order to run them, and when to cut, cap or test. Wasted paid spend was 22% of audited spend. - Read the full guide → - /insights/involuntary-churn-failed-payments/Retention · 12 min ### Involuntary churn: how failed payments leak subscription revenue, and how to win it back - Two billing exports, three numbers and six recovery levers in order, from the card updater to the end state. Retention leaks turned up in 41% of the audits. - Read the full guide → - /insights/marketing-audit-process/Audit method · 11 min ### The marketing audit process: 8 steps to run one on your own numbers - Eight steps from scope to readout: reconcile the claims to the ledger, test what spend caused, size and rank every finding. The median audit identified $58k a year. - Read the full guide → - /insights/audit-media-agency-programmatic-fees/Working with agencies · 10 min ### How to audit your media agency’s programmatic fees - Agency, DSP and SSP fees, the documents that expose each layer, and your working media share. Across the audits, 22% of audited spend was wasted paid spend. - Read the full guide → 03 ## The dataset What 74 audited SMB marketing budgets have in common. Every guide draws on the same 74 audits across 9 industries: a median **18.7%** of marketing spend leaking, inside an 11% to 28% band, and a median highlight finding worth $58k a year. [74 cases](/findings/) [The benchmark](/benchmark/) Cite this figure MarginFix has audited 74 SMB marketing budgets across 9 industries and identified $4.5M+ in margin. MarginFix, marginfix.ai/insights/ ## Stop reading about leaks. Find yours. One fixed fee, 5 to 7 working days, every finding tied to your own numbers. [Book the audit](/book/) [Talk to an auditor](/book/call/) Fixed fee. No retainer. NDA first. Go deeper ## Read on from the field notes - [The benchmark Where 74 SMB marketing budgets leaked, by share of spend and by industry.](/benchmark/) - [All 74 findings Ranked by annual value, $58k median, each one a real case.](/findings/) - [Glossary Blended ROAS, MER, incrementality and the other terms behind every guide.](/glossary/) - [Margin leaks The five leak patterns in depth: what each one is and how an audit finds it.](/margin-leaks/) - [What an audit costs The 2026 market ranges with sources, against the fixed fee tiers.](/marketing-audit-cost/) - [Agency markup What a normal markup is, and the contract, invoice and platform reconciliation.](/agency-markup/)