Marketing audit: what it is, what it costs in India, and what you should get back

Most brands that ask me for an audit have the same quiet suspicion. The dashboards look healthy, the agency reports are always green, and somehow the bank account disagrees. They are usually right to be suspicious. Here is why, and what a proper audit does about it.

Ad platforms cannot grade their own homework

Say Meta shows your ad to a person on Monday. Google shows them one on Tuesday. They buy on Wednesday. Both platforms claim full credit for the same order, so your dashboards together can report two conversions for one actual purchase. Your finance team counts it once, because money only enters once.

This is structural, not a glitch. No ad platform wants to report that its ads did very little, so its measurement logic is designed to show everything working in your favour. And sometimes the platform simply does not have the full picture: Meta cannot see what Google showed the same person, and neither can see what finally closed the sale. The only place all of these truths meet is inside the business, which is why attribution can only be corrected from the business side. (I wrote a longer note on why GA4, Google Ads and Meta rarely match.)

The ROAS fixation

The most common habit I see is ROAS fixation. Teams look at platform ROAS and feel good or bad about the business, when actual ROI lives one layer deeper, in business numbers the platform never touches: margins, repeat rates, returns, discounts.

Here is the uncomfortable part. Many agencies operate in a grey area where the attribution setup reliably shows extraordinarily good numbers. It is understandable: flattering reports keep clients calm and retainers safe. The real problem is that few businesses scrutinize this, either from lack of time, lack of knowledge, or simple trust in the agency. The fix usually requires attribution changes, which is exactly the work nobody inside the arrangement is motivated to do.

I have sat in budget reviews for media systems spending more than ₹7 crore a month. The dashboards were never the real problem. The gap between the dashboards and the bank account was. A good audit goes beyond platform ROAS and asks which parts of the system cause growth, and which parts only claim credit for demand that already existed.

What a proper audit actually checks

Everything an audit touches falls into three leak zones:

Attribution. Who gets credit for a conversion, and how many times the same order is counted. This is where double counting across platforms, last-click bias and inflated view-through claims live.

Measurement. Whether conversions fire once, whether they match real business events, and whether GA4, the ad platforms and your order system can be reconciled at all. If this layer is wrong, every CAC and ROAS debate is unstable before it starts.

Targeting and spend. Where the money actually goes: new customers versus people who would have bought anyway, which regions absorb budget, and whether acquisition and retention are being read as one number when they should be separate.

I keep a standing checklist of the first things I open in any account, written up as what I check in the first 7 days of a paid media account. An audit is that same instinct, run end to end and written down.

What a marketing audit costs in India

The market ranges from free auto-generated tool reports to large consultancy engagements. My own pricing is public, so you can judge this article against it:

• ₹50,000 for businesses spending under ₹1 crore a month on media.
• ₹1,50,000 for businesses spending more than ₹1 crore a month.

The price scales with spend for a simple reason: more spend means more channels, more data and the same percentage leak costing far more rupees. At ₹1 crore a month, the audit fee is 1.5% of one month's media budget. It has to find less than half a day of one month's wasted spend to pay for itself, and leaks are rarely that shy.

I also take a small number of free audits as a goodwill gesture, entirely at my discretion, for businesses I genuinely like where the team is willing to put in the effort. If that is you, submit a request. The worst that happens is I say no.

One honest boundary: incrementality tests are not bundled into the audit fee. Designing a geo test that survives scrutiny needs rich historical business data, so tests are scoped and priced separately per business.

What you should get back

When I run an audit, the business receives three things:

• A leak map of the current pipeline across attribution, measurement and targeting: what is broken, what it distorts, and roughly what it is costing you.
• A weekly scorecard of key metrics agreed by both sides, so every future review runs on the same numbers instead of whichever dashboard looks best that week.
• A 90-day roadmap with handholding. I sit in weekly standups with your marketing team and help them execute the roadmap myself, so the findings do not die in a PDF.

If you want me to execute parts of the roadmap beyond the handholding, that is scoped separately, business to business. The audit itself stays independent on purpose.

Red flags to check before paying anyone, including me

A guarantee of a specific ROAS lift made before anyone has seen your data is a sales line, not analysis. An audit that never asks for business-side numbers (orders, margins, repeat rates) is a tool report with an invoice attached. So is one where the deliverable is a deck rather than a list of decisions. Be equally careful with free audits that exist to funnel you into a retainer; ask directly what happens after the report before you start.

And if a reviewer treats platform attribution as the final word and never brings up incrementality, they are auditing the dashboards, not your business.

Who this is for

The two pricing tiers describe the fit better than any persona: brands spending real money on media every month, whether that is ₹10 lakh or ₹1.5 crore a month, where a founder or marketing head suspects some of it is wasted and wants proof before the next budget cycle. Typical symptoms: CAC creeping up while dashboards stay cheerful, three platforms telling three different truths, and agency reports that are always, always green.

If that sounds familiar, book a call or write to [email protected]. If you want the free-audit consideration, say so and make your case.

FAQ

How much does a marketing audit cost in India?

Independent audits typically sit between ₹50,000 and ₹1,50,000 depending on monthly media spend. My own pricing is public: ₹50,000 if you spend under ₹1 crore a month on media, ₹1,50,000 above that. Free audits offered by agencies are usually sales pitches for a retainer.

What is included in a marketing audit?

A proper audit reviews the three places media money leaks: attribution, measurement and targeting. You should get back a leak map of what is broken, a weekly scorecard of agreed metrics, and a 90-day roadmap. Not a deck of tool screenshots.

How is a marketing audit different from checking my ad dashboards?

Dashboards are built by the platforms selling you the ads, and they are designed to show ads working. An audit compares what platforms claim against what your business numbers actually show, and explains the gap.

Do I also need an incrementality test?

Ideally yes, once tracking is clean. An audit tells you where the pipeline leaks. A geo-incrementality test tells you what your spend actually causes, which is the honest way to decide the right geo and spend mix. Tests are priced separately because designing one needs rich historical business data.

Can I get a free marketing audit?

Sometimes. I take a small number of free audits as a goodwill gesture, at my discretion, for businesses I believe in where the team is willing to put in the effort. You are welcome to submit a request.