How to Audit Your Agency's Media Spend

Why audit media spend?

Media budgets pass through several intermediaries, and each hop can add fees or obscure where money goes. A structured audit reveals how much of a budget became working media, whether pricing was disclosed, and whether delivery met brand-safety and measurement standards.

The goal is not to assume bad faith but to establish accountability. An audit gives an advertiser the facts to renegotiate terms, reallocate budget, or confirm that its partners are operating transparently.

What should the audit cover?

Work through the checklist below with your partner. Each item should be answerable with documentation — disclosed numbers and logs — rather than assurances. A downloadable version of this checklist is planned.

The media-spend audit checklist

• Confirm the working-media cost: the actual CPMs paid to publishers, stated separately from fees.
• Confirm all fees: agency, trading-desk, platform, and data fees, each disclosed as a line item.
• Map the supply path: which exchanges, resellers, and intermediaries each dollar passed through.
• Check for principal-based or arbitrage arrangements and whether any resale margin was disclosed.
• Review brand safety and suitability: where ads actually ran and which exclusions were enforced.
• Verify viewability and invalid-traffic filtering against agreed benchmarks.
• Reconcile reported delivery against publisher or third-party measurement.
• Confirm privacy compliance, including honoring opt-out and Global Privacy Control signals.

A downloadable version of this checklist is planned. (TODO)