Magnify · Margin Max

Google Ads audit found 38% wasted spend in a DTC account

A DTC skincare and wellness brand had a respectable-looking 2.8x blended ROAS, but customer acquisition costs kept rising. Magnify's read-only 92-point audit found seven major spend leaks totaling $23,200 per month. The brand's blended ROAS looked fine at 2.8x, but the growth lead could not explain why new-customer acquisition cost kept climbing while overall ROAS stayed flat. Nobody had systematically reviewed search terms, placements, audience exclusions, or campaign structure since a previous agency handoff, and the account had gone roughly 14 months without a formal audit. Magnify connected read-only to the account and surfaced 14 failures or high-priority opportunities. The wasted-spend section alone exposed seven material leak categories. Total identified wasted spend: $23,200/month — 38% of the $61,000 monthly budget. The biggest gain came from stopping spend that had no credible path to profit, then redeploying the same budget into product groups already demonstrating strong economics. All accounts are anonymized. Brand names, exact spend figures, and identifying details have been changed or generalized to protect confidentiality. The figures below are illustrative composites built from the structure and magnitude of real Magnify engagements and typical patterns surfaced by Magnify audits.