The 5-Pattern Audit Playbook

    Find your ad waste in 30 minutes. Yourself.

    These are the exact checks we run on every nylo audit. Run them on one account, even one platform, and you will surface most of what we would flag on the call. Across 50 ecom accounts in Q1 2026, the median account leaked $37,800 per month on the five patterns below.

    Pattern 01 · Meta

    Audience saturation past the cliff

    Where to look
    Meta Ads Manager. Ad Set level. Frequency column over the last 7 days.
    Threshold
    Frequency above 5.0 with CPA up more than 30 percent week over week.
    What you are seeing
    Audiences past the cliff. Topline ROAS averages over saturated and fresh segments and hides the bleed for weeks.
    What to do
    Pause the saturated ad sets, refresh creative, expand the audience or sunset it. Reallocate roughly 30 percent of that spend to fresh prospecting.
    Pattern 02 · Google PMax

    Branded query leakage

    Where to look
    Google Ads. Performance Max campaign. Insights tab. Search categories.
    Threshold
    Any branded categories (your brand name, variants, your product names) showing as conversion drivers.
    What you are seeing
    PMax is bidding on queries that would have converted on standard Search for a few cents. Blended ROAS looks fine because the branded queries inflate it.
    What to do
    Add brand keywords to your Performance Max account-level negative list. Move that budget to standard Search where you control the bid.
    Pattern 03 · TikTok

    Creative burn caught too late

    Where to look
    TikTok Ads Manager. Individual ad video performance, day by day.
    Threshold
    CPM rising 20 percent or more from day 5 to day 7, or CTR dropping 30 percent or more in the same window.
    What you are seeing
    Creative is burning out. Best-in-class agencies catch this on day 4. The median catches it on day 8. That gap is four days of dead-creative spend per cycle, per creative.
    What to do
    Set up a day-5 review ritual for every active TikTok creative. Pause anything past the threshold. Have a replacement creative ready inside 48 hours.
    Pattern 04 · Attribution

    Conversion-lag misread

    Where to look
    Any platform with iOS traffic. Compare Friday's reported ROAS to Monday's reported ROAS for the same period.
    Threshold
    A 10 percent or more swing between Friday and Monday on iOS-heavy accounts.
    What you are seeing
    iOS attributes conversions one to seven days late. Friday's number is still settling. Pause decisions made on it are usually wrong by Monday.
    What to do
    Do not make Friday pause decisions on iOS-skewed audiences. Wait for Tuesday or Wednesday numbers. Or set your reporting window to a 7-day attribution lookback by default.
    Pattern 05 · Cross-channel

    Cross-channel cannibalization

    Where to look
    GA4. Acquisition. User acquisition. Break down by first-touch versus last-touch attribution.
    Threshold
    Same product or audience showing on Meta retargeting AND Google Shopping AND Search retargeting.
    What you are seeing
    Three channels claiming the same conversion. You are paying three times for one sale. Each channel's reported ROAS looks healthy in isolation.
    What to do
    Pause retargeting on two of the three channels for two weeks. Compare blended ROAS before and after. The channel you kept is usually doing most of the work.

    Found patterns? Get the real number.

    30 minutes with our co-founder. We run all 5 on your actual accounts, on screen, in 7 minutes. The remaining 13 are for the recovery plan.

    Patterns and median figures from our Q1 2026 audit of 50 ecom accounts. Pattern existence supported by AdAmigo 2025 (Meta saturation), Optmyzr February 2025 (PMax leakage in 91 percent of 503 accounts), and Social Operator 2025 (TikTok creative half-life).