Finance-grade assurance for CFOs, controllers and procurement leaders.
Media Audit Group is an independent media audit company. Our paid media audit reconciles spend from plan to invoice to platform, verifies reported performance against business outcomes, and tests the controls and incentives behind the numbers. We do not buy media or sell software. We give finance leaders a written, evidence-based view of where the money went and what should change.
Every audit is unique, but the categories of waste rarely are. These are the recurring places where paid media leaks before it reaches a customer.
Reseller fees, platform rebates, and arbitrage layers that consume budget before an ad is served — rarely disclosed, almost never reconciled.
Programmatic spend routed through low-attention, made-for-advertising sites and apps that meet KPI thresholds without reaching real audiences.
A single sale credited by three platforms at once. Branded search, retargeting, and affiliate channels claim revenue they did not create.
Budgets pushed at small reachable cohorts. Reports show strong reach; in practice the same users are exposed repeatedly past diminishing returns.
Fee structures rewarding volume over outcomes — bonuses tied to delivery against platform KPIs that have no relationship to your P&L.
Modeled conversions presented without server-side validation. Confidence drops; the slides stay green; the cash arrives slowly, if at all.
Five practices, one engagement letter. Each applies financial-audit discipline to a specific area of your paid media programme. Read the full paid media audit overview →
We trace every dollar from media plan to invoice to execution. We verify that what you paid for is what you got—no ghost impressions, no creative swaps, no makegoods swept under the rug. And yes, we find errors. Often.
Learn more → 02No more reports filled with vanity metrics. We connect campaign performance to real business KPIs—leads, sales, margin impact—so you can see whether your media spend is actually moving the needle.
Learn more → 03Are you incentivizing the right outcomes, or just more media? We analyze fee models, bonus structures, and retained scopes to ensure your agency contracts are aligned to performance, not volume.
Learn more → 04Who’s approving the spend? Who’s watching the watchers? We review your internal governance, agency oversight, media approval workflows, and reporting cadences—so you’re not just spending, you’re steering.
Learn more → 05We benchmark your agency fees, media rates, and performance expectations against industry norms and category peers. If you decide to renegotiate or RFP, we’ll make sure you’re walking in with leverage.
Learn more →We’re not a media agency. We’re an independent media audit firm. We don’t buy media, sell software, or push dashboards. Like the financial auditors you already work with, we operate independently, objectively, and with one goal in mind: verifying that your paid media dollars are doing what they’re supposed to do.
Our team combines the rigour of traditional audit methodology with deep digital media expertise to scrutinize your media investments. Line by line, platform by platform. Whether it’s programmatic, search, social, or traditional channels, we help you see where your money is going, what’s working, what’s not, and where the leaks are.
If your media agency is doing a good job, we’ll validate that. If they’re not, we’ll show you why, how much it’s costing you, and what to do about it. Finance-grade accountability for your marketing budget.
Most firms that claim to verify paid media earn money from the platforms or agencies they’re reviewing. We don’t. The same standard your financial auditors hold — applied to advertising.
We never plan, buy, or place media. Our revenue cannot grow when your spend grows.
We accept zero rebates, kickbacks, or revenue share from platforms or ad-tech vendors.
We do not sell dashboards, tooling, or licensed analytics. The audit deliverable is a written report.
Our fee is set in the engagement letter. It does not vary with what we find or what we recommend.
Every partner and contractor signs to it. Disclosed in every engagement letter, available on request.
Findings belong to you. We do not aggregate, resell, or publish data from your engagement.
A standard audit follows a fixed structure. Scope is set in the engagement letter; the timeline rarely slips.
30-minute call to understand your media stack, agency arrangements, and audit objectives. Followed by an engagement letter, NDA, and a written scope.
Read-only access to your platforms. We pull historical performance data and gather contracts, rate cards, invoices, and reporting files. We confirm completeness before analysis begins.
We reconcile platform data to invoices and verification tools. We test buying practices, fee structures, performance metrics, and any deviations from agreed terms. Findings are quantified in financial terms.
Drafting, internal review, and a final partner-led readout. You receive a written audit report, supporting schedules, and a presentation to your designated stakeholders.
A paid media audit is an independent, finance-grade review of how a company’s paid media budget is planned, purchased, delivered, and reported. The auditor reconciles platform data to invoices, tests fee structures and agency incentives, verifies reported performance against business outcomes, and quantifies any leakage in financial terms. The deliverable is a written report a CFO or procurement leader can act on — not a dashboard.
We use end-to-end encryption, multi-factor authentication, and regularly audited data centers. Only authorized team members have access to your information, and we follow strict confidentiality protocols.
Absolutely. We integrate with all major platforms so you keep the tools you know while gaining expert oversight and enhanced reporting.
A standard audit engagement takes four to six weeks from the planning meeting to the final report, depending on the complexity of your operations and the responsiveness of supporting documentation. We provide premium audit and advisory services designed to deliver objective, independent oversight of paid media investment. As such, our engagements begin at a minimum of $100,000 USD, with most audit scopes ranging between $175,000 and $450,000 USD, depending on factors such as media complexity, number of channels reviewed, data availability, and geographic scope.
We do not buy or sell media, and we maintain no financial relationships with agencies or platforms.