A Digital Advertising Audit is a strategic evaluation of your paid media program, including campaign strategy, platform performance, audience targeting, creative effectiveness, landing pages, measurement, attribution, and budget allocation. The goal is to identify opportunities to improve advertising performance, increase efficiency, and maximize return on advertising investment.

A PPC Audit is a type of Digital Advertising Audit focused on pay-per-click advertising. While many PPC audits concentrate primarily on Google Ads, a comprehensive Digital Advertising Audit evaluates your broader paid media ecosystem, including paid search, paid social, audience strategy, creative, landing pages, measurement, and budget allocation to understand how all channels contribute to business growth.

Not exactly. PPC traditionally refers to paid search platforms like Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. A Digital Advertising Audit takes a broader view by evaluating your complete paid media strategy, including search, social, video advertising, audience targeting, creative, landing pages, measurement, and investment strategy.

Over time, advertising programs become more complex as campaigns, platforms, audiences, and technologies evolve. A Digital Advertising Audit helps identify inefficiencies, uncover missed opportunities, validate strategic direction, and ensure advertising investments continue supporting business objectives.

Organizations investing significantly in paid media, experiencing rising acquisition costs, inconsistent campaign performance, declining return on ad spend, or preparing for growth initiatives benefit most from an objective advertising assessment. It's also valuable before changing agencies, increasing budgets, or entering new markets.

A Google Ads Audit focuses on a single platform. Fratzke's Digital Advertising Audit evaluates your entire paid media ecosystem, including Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Meta Ads, YouTube, and other advertising channels, to provide strategic recommendations that improve overall advertising performance.

Our audits commonly include Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Meta Ads, YouTube, TikTok, Reddit, Pinterest, and other paid advertising platforms. Every engagement is customized based on your advertising mix, business objectives, and target audience.

We evaluate campaign structure, account organization, audience targeting, keyword strategy, bidding, creative, landing pages, conversion paths, measurement, attribution, budget allocation, reporting, governance, competitive positioning, and overall advertising strategy. Rather than reviewing campaigns in isolation, we assess how the entire advertising ecosystem supports business growth.

Every Digital Advertising Audit includes four executive-ready deliverables:

• Benchmark Report™
• Benchmark Index™ Scorecard
• Executive Readout
• Prioritized Growth Roadmap

Together, these deliverables provide leadership with a clear understanding of current performance, measurable benchmark scores, strategic findings, and prioritized recommendations for future improvement.

The KPIs depend on your objectives but commonly include ROAS, CPA, CTR, conversion rate, CAC, impression share, quality score, lead quality, revenue contribution, and customer lifetime value. Rather than focusing on individual metrics, we evaluate how they collectively support business performance.

Absolutely. Accurate measurement is essential for effective advertising. We review conversion tracking, attribution models, reporting accuracy, offline conversion measurement where applicable, and overall data quality so leadership can confidently evaluate advertising performance.

Yes. Successful advertising extends beyond campaign performance. We review landing page messaging, user experience, calls to action, conversion paths, mobile usability, and page performance to identify friction that may be reducing campaign effectiveness.

Yes. Our Digital Advertising Audit evaluates paid social platforms such as LinkedIn Ads, Meta Ads, YouTube, TikTok, and others when relevant. We assess how each platform contributes to your overall advertising strategy and business goals.

Absolutely. Paid search and paid social often work together throughout the customer journey. Evaluating both provides a more complete understanding of how your advertising investments drive awareness, consideration, conversions, and long-term growth.

Yes. We review audience segmentation, customer lists, remarketing strategies, lookalike audiences, targeting methods, and first-party data usage to identify opportunities for better personalization, efficiency, and campaign performance.

Yes. One objective of the audit is identifying inefficiencies such as overlapping audiences, ineffective budget allocation, poor campaign structure, measurement gaps, and underperforming creative that may be limiting return on advertising investment.

Yes. Competitive benchmarking is an important part of our Digital Advertising Audit. Using an outside-in approach, we evaluate your competitors' advertising strategy, messaging, creative, landing page experience, channel mix, audience targeting, and overall market presence. We also leverage industry-leading third-party tools to analyze advertising activity, search visibility, estimated traffic, keywords, and other competitive signals.

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While we don't have access to a competitor's internal performance data, we can develop a clear understanding of their advertising strategy, identify patterns, benchmark your program against industry best practices, and uncover opportunities to strengthen your competitive position. These insights provide valuable context alongside your own performance data, helping leadership make more informed investment decisions.

Yes. We evaluate how AI-assisted bidding, campaign automation, audience expansion, creative optimization, and machine learning capabilities are being used, along with opportunities to improve performance while maintaining strategic oversight.

Absolutely. Many organizations engage Fratzke to provide an independent, objective assessment of their advertising strategy. Our recommendations complement the work of internal teams and agency partners by identifying strategic opportunities that may otherwise be overlooked.

Yes. Access allows us to objectively evaluate campaign structure, performance, measurement, and reporting. We request only the level of access necessary to complete the engagement and handle all information confidentially.

Most of the work is completed by the Fratzke team. Your involvement typically includes a kickoff meeting, stakeholder interviews when appropriate, access to advertising platforms and analytics, and participation in the Executive Readout.

Most Digital Advertising Audits are completed within 3-6 weeks depending on the size of your advertising program, the number of platforms being evaluated, stakeholder availability, and the overall scope of the engagement.

Most Digital Advertising Audits range from $5,000 to $20,000, depending on the complexity of your paid media program, the number of advertising platforms being evaluated, stakeholder involvement, and the overall scope. Every engagement includes executive-ready deliverables and prioritized recommendations designed to support future decision making.

The Fratzke Benchmark Method™ is Fratzke's five-step diagnostic methodology for objectively evaluating organizational performance. Through customer, performance, competitive, and benchmark analysis, it establishes a trusted baseline that helps leadership understand where the organization stands today before strategic planning begins.

The Fratzke Benchmark Index™ is Fratzke's proprietary scoring model that translates audit findings into an executive-friendly scorecard. Each benchmark dimension is developed using best-in-class organizations, industry KPIs, and proven best practices, with ratings ranging from Leader to Lagging. This provides an objective baseline for measuring current performance and tracking improvement over time.

Yes. Fratzke offers ongoing consulting, optimization, and execution through our Growth Engines™. After strategy has been established, we can help implement initiatives, continuously measure results, optimize performance, and adapt as business priorities evolve.

Following the Executive Readout, your organization can implement the recommendations internally, work with your existing agency partners, or continue strategic planning with Fratzke. Many organizations use the audit as the foundation for the Fratzke Guiding Light Method™, which transforms benchmark findings into strategic priorities and a practical Growth Roadmap.

Absolutely. We evaluate ecommerce advertising across paid search, shopping campaigns, paid social, product feeds, audience strategy, merchandising alignment, creative, conversion experience, and measurement to identify opportunities that improve both efficiency and revenue growth.

Most organizations benefit from a comprehensive Digital Advertising Audit every 12 to 18 months or whenever significant changes occur, such as entering new markets, increasing advertising budgets, changing agencies, adopting new advertising platforms, or experiencing declining campaign performance.

Many advertising audits focus on tactical campaign improvements. Fratzke takes a broader, business-first approach by evaluating how your entire paid media program supports organizational growth. Our objective is to establish an objective baseline, identify the highest-impact opportunities, and provide leadership with practical recommendations they can confidently act on. For organizations ready to move beyond diagnosis, the audit can become the foundation for strategic planning through the Fratzke Guiding Light Method™ and long-term execution through Growth Engines™.

A Digital Advertising Audit focuses specifically on your paid media program, evaluating platforms like Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, LinkedIn Ads, Meta Ads, and other advertising channels. It assesses campaign strategy, audience targeting, creative, landing pages, measurement, attribution, budget allocation, and overall advertising performance.

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Digital Marketing Audit Services take a broader view of your entire digital marketing strategy. In addition to paid advertising, it evaluates areas such as SEO, content marketing, website performance, email marketing, social media, analytics, customer experience, and how each channel works together to support business growth. Learn more on our How to Conduct a Digital Marketing Audit (Step-By-Step Guide).

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If your primary goal is improving advertising performance and maximizing return on ad spend, a Digital Advertising Audit is the right choice. If you're looking to evaluate the effectiveness of your overall digital marketing program, a Digital Marketing Audit provides a more comprehensive assessment.