To find wasted ad spend across Google and LinkedIn, check the same six things on every platform: pacing, creative, costs, results, tracking and pipeline. Start with tracking, because a broken tag makes good campaigns look bad and bad ones look fine. Then compare each campaign’s spend with the opportunities it created in your CRM, not just the leads the platform reports.
This page covers what a cross-channel paid media audit includes, where wasted spend usually hides, and why timing matters as much as the checklist. Each platform also has its own detailed checklist, linked below.
What a cross-channel paid media audit covers
A platform audit asks whether one account is set up well. A cross-channel audit asks a harder question: of all the money going out across Google, LinkedIn and Microsoft, which dollars are producing pipeline? To answer it, run the same six checks everywhere.
| Area | What to check | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Pacing and budget | Month-to-date spend against plan, by campaign; campaigns that can’t spend; budget concentrated in one campaign | Under-spending loses reach you planned for; over-spending eats next month’s budget |
| Creative | Frequency, click-through rate against each ad’s own baseline, ads that haven’t been refreshed | Tired ads cost more for less response |
| Costs | Cost per click and cost per thousand impressions against the trailing month | A spike is either a change you made, the market, or falling relevance |
| Results | Spend with no conversions, cost per lead, lead quality | Spend can continue long after results stop |
| Tracking | Conversion statuses, tag health, UTMs on every click | Every other number depends on this |
| Pipeline | Opportunities and pipeline by channel and campaign, cost per opportunity | Cheap leads that never become deals are still waste |
The point of doing this across channels is comparison. A LinkedIn campaign at $150 per lead can be a better buy than a Google campaign at $40 per lead, if the LinkedIn leads turn into opportunities and the Google leads don’t. You can only see that once spend and CRM outcomes sit side by side.
Where wasted ad spend usually hides
Waste rarely shows up as one obvious mistake. It hides in settings nobody revisits and in numbers nobody connects.
Tracking that quietly broke
A site redesign drops a tag. A form moves to a new tool without hidden fields. Conversions fall to zero while clicks carry on, and bid strategies start optimizing on nothing. On Google, a lead action set to secondary, or counting every conversion instead of one, skews bidding without any warning.
Spend that can’t reach the right people
On LinkedIn, audience expansion or the LinkedIn Audience Network can stretch a campaign beyond your target companies. On Microsoft, Search ads can serve on the Microsoft Audience Network unless the ad distribution setting says otherwise. On Google, Performance Max can shift spend into Display or YouTube placements that produce few leads.
Searches that can’t produce a buyer
Search terms reports often show spend on job seekers, students and people looking for free templates. A common starting point for B2B advertisers is to scan for words such as jobs, salary, free, template, course and login, then decide case by case.
Ads people have stopped seeing
Frequency builds quietly, especially on small audiences. Kiin’s analysis of 71 LinkedIn advertisers found engagement fell 22% after five exposures, while CPC moved about a month later. By the time cost rises, the creative has already worn out.
Leads that never become opportunities
This kind of waste is the hardest to see from inside an ad platform. Platforms count form fills. Your CRM counts deals. A campaign can hit its cost-per-lead target for months while producing no pipeline at all.
Budgets paced by the wrong rules
Each platform paces differently. Google can spend up to twice the average daily budget on a single day, with monthly charges capped at 30.4 times the daily budget, as its help page on daily overspend explains. Microsoft uses the actual number of days in the month. LinkedIn can spend up to 150% of the daily budget on a day under lifetime pacing. A single spreadsheet that applies one rule to all three will misread at least two. Our budget pacing guide covers the differences.
Why a once-a-quarter audit misses problems that start mid-month
Most audits happen on a calendar: quarterly, at a new agency’s kickoff, or before a budget review. That catches structural problems. It misses the ones that matter most for this month’s money.
Problems don’t wait for the audit. A tag breaks on the 9th. A LinkedIn ad is rejected on the 14th and its campaign stops spending. A new broad match keyword starts buying irrelevant searches on the 20th. A quarterly audit finds all three, weeks later, after the money is gone.
The cost of a problem grows with the days it runs. So the useful question isn’t “how thorough was the audit?” It’s “how many days passed between the problem starting and someone fixing it?” A quick check every morning beats a deep one every quarter for the problems that cost the most.
That doesn’t make the full audit obsolete. Structure, audiences, match types and attribution still deserve a careful review every quarter. The daily checks catch what changes in between.
Platform audit checklists
Each platform has its own rules, settings and traps. Start with the platform where you spend the most.
- Google Ads audit checklist: conversion actions (primary vs secondary, One vs Every, statuses), bidding and learning, lost impression share (budget vs rank), Quality Score, search terms, match types, responsive search ads, Performance Max and the move from Display to Demand Gen.
- LinkedIn Ads audit checklist: objectives, audience size, audience expansion and Audience Network, bids against the suggested range, pacing, frequency, creative formats, Lead Gen Forms, Insight Tag and Conversions API, and lead quality.
- Microsoft Ads audit checklist: budgets calculated on actual days in the month, Google import gaps, LinkedIn profile targeting as a bid adjustment, UET tag and conversion goals, the Audience Network and search terms.
What to look for in a PPC audit tool
If you’re choosing a tool rather than auditing by hand, a few questions separate the useful ones:
- Does it cover every channel you buy? A Google-only tool can’t tell you whether LinkedIn money is better spent.
- Does it connect to your CRM? Without opportunities and pipeline, an audit stops at cost per lead.
- How often does it check? Once on signup, weekly, or every day?
- Does it explain the fix, or just the score? A grade of 72 out of 100 doesn’t tell anyone what to change.
- What can it change, and who approves it? Some tools make changes in your accounts on their own. Others only read. Some, like PipeHalo, make a change only after a person approves it. Decide which you want before you connect.
How PipeHalo runs the audit every morning
PipeHalo is a daily paid media audit for LinkedIn Ads, Google Ads, Microsoft Ads and Reddit Ads. Every morning it runs 12 checks on your connected accounts, across pacing and budget, creative, costs, results and tracking. Connect HubSpot or Salesforce and it adds 3 more (spend with no pipeline, broken UTMs and low-quality leads), plus pipeline by channel with cost per opportunity next to spend.
Each problem lands in the Action Center, ranked by severity and the money at stake, worked out from your own numbers. It explains what’s wrong in plain English and gives “What to try” steps in Campaign Manager, Google Ads or Microsoft Advertising. With Apply turned on, you approve the fix and PipeHalo makes it, or your team makes the change itself. Either way, PipeHalo keeps checking and, for most flags, shows how the number moved over the next 14 days. Think of it as a checkup every morning, with the prescription attached.
Nothing changes in your ad accounts without your approval, and PipeHalo never changes anything in your CRM.
Every plan starts with an audit of your connected accounts and explains every problem it finds. An Ad Check shows your top 3 before you choose a plan. See the full list of checks on the features page.
Try the live demo or see plans.
Related questions
What is a paid media audit?
A review of your ad accounts that checks pacing, creative, costs, results, tracking and pipeline, to find spend that isn’t producing customers. A cross-channel audit compares Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft and other platforms on the same terms.
How do I find wasted ad spend across Google and LinkedIn?
Check tracking first, then compare each campaign’s spend with the opportunities it created in your CRM. Then look at search terms on Google, audience expansion and frequency on LinkedIn, and pacing on both.
How often should I audit paid media?
Run a full audit at least quarterly. Check tracking, pacing and spend with no results daily, because those problems cost money every day they run.