Paid social audit costs: is your ad account wasting money?

Key takeaways

Paid social audit cost depends on the size of the ad account. As an indicative UK figure, a review of a small business Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn ads account takes 4 to 10 hours, about £300–£1,000. A useful audit ends with a ranked list of fixes, not a score.

• £300–£1,000 is the indicative cost of a paid social account audit.
• Broken tracking is the most common and costly finding.
• A good audit ranks fixes by the money they save.
• Commission one before changing agency or raising spend.

What is a paid social audit?

A paid social audit is an independent review of your social media ad accounts. It checks tracking, campaign structure, audiences, budgets, creative, landing pages and reporting, then recommends what to fix. It is narrower than a full social media audit, which also covers organic posting.

• Social media agency pricing in the UK
• What a social media audit costs in the UK

How much does a paid social audit cost?

Reviewing a small business ad account and writing up the findings takes about 4 to 10 hours, which is £300–£1,000 at the £75–£100 an hour implied by typical UK retainers. Larger accounts with many campaigns and platforms take longer. These are indicative figures, not a GBL price list.

• Single platform, small account: indicative £300–£600.
• Several platforms or larger spend: indicative £600–£1,000.
• Walk-through call of findings: often included.
• Fixing the issues: priced separately.

What does a paid social audit check?

A thorough audit checks whether conversions are tracked correctly, whether campaigns compete with each other, whether audiences overlap or are too narrow, how often creative is refreshed, whether landing pages match the ads and whether reports show cost per enquiry or sale.

• Pixel, Conversions API and event tracking.
• Campaign structure and budget split.
• Audience overlap and size.
• Creative age and variety.
• Landing page match and speed.

• Landing page speed: are slow pages wasting your ad spend?

When should you commission an audit?

Commission an audit when results have dropped without a clear reason, before you raise spend, before you change agency, or when you inherit an account from a previous supplier. An independent review is most useful when nobody involved has a reason to defend the current set-up.

• Paid social in-house vs agency: who should run your ads?

When is an audit not worth paying for?

An audit is not worth it for an account spending very little or only boosting a few posts. The fixes will be obvious and the audit may cost more than the waste it finds. Start with a short self-check of tracking and offer instead.

• Facebook ads versus boosted posts: which should you use?

What does this look like in practice?

A pattern we see when UK businesses ask us to review their ads: the account reports plenty of conversions, but the pixel counts page views as leads. Global Bridge Labs (GBL) checks tracking first, because every other decision in the account depends on those numbers being right.

• See client work
• Social Media Marketing for UK businesses

Audit brief checklist

Provide these to whoever audits your account.

• View access to each ad account.
• Your monthly spend and goals.
• How you count a lead or sale.
• Recent changes and when results moved.
• Who will act on the findings.

• Why agencies set a minimum ad spend, and what is fair
• Retargeting ads management: what it costs and when it pays

Next step

Tell us which platforms you advertise on and roughly what you spend. We will tell you whether an audit is worth it and what it would cover.