The Google Ads Autopsy
A one-time forensic audit of your Google Ads account. We find what’s quietly spending, what it’s actually producing, and whether a single dollar of it is earning its keep — then show you exactly what to kill, fix, or reallocate.
This service exists because of a real discovery. Auditing a contractor’s analytics, we found a Google Ads campaign that had been running — unnoticed, unmanaged — since 2017. Nine years. It accounted for half the site’s traffic. Its visitors stayed an average of 3.6 seconds. It had produced zero recorded leads. Nobody had looked, because nobody was accountable for looking.
That contractor is not unusual. If anyone — an agency, a marketing person, a long-gone employee — ever set up ads for your business, there is a real chance money is leaking right now, quietly, behind a dashboard nobody opens. We published the full autopsy, data and all. This is that investigation, offered as a service.
What the autopsy covers
Every active and paused campaign — what’s running, what it costs, and how long it’s been unattended. Where the money actually goes — search terms you’re paying for that have nothing to do with your work, geographies outside your service area, devices and hours that never convert. What it actually produces — not clicks or impressions, but tracked calls and form submissions, matched against your analytics so “results” can’t hide in vanity numbers. The verdict — for each campaign: kill it, fix it (with the specific fixes), or keep it. And the reallocation math — what the recovered spend would do elsewhere, in plain numbers.
What you get
A plain-English written report — the same standard as everything we publish: no jargon, no padding, every claim traceable to your own account data — plus a walkthrough call to go through it. If the fixes are simple, the report shows you exactly how; you or anyone can execute them. No retainer required, no upsell built in. If you want help executing, that’s a separate conversation you’re free not to have.
Why flat-fee matters here
Most ads management is priced as a percentage of spend — which means the people managing your budget earn more when you spend more. We think that’s a structural conflict of interest, and it’s exactly how nine-year zombie campaigns survive. The autopsy is a flat fee with no ongoing relationship attached, so the only thing we’re selling is the truth about your account.
Common questions
We don't think we're running any ads. Should we still check?
If your business has ever worked with an agency, a marketer, or had someone “set up Google” years ago — yes. The defining feature of a zombie campaign is that nobody thinks it exists. Checking takes us a day; not checking has cost real contractors years of quiet spend.
Will you try to sell us ads management after?
No. The autopsy ends with the report and the walkthrough. Most accounts we expect to end with “kill this, here’s what the money does better elsewhere” — often that’s organic search, sometimes it’s genuinely keeping a well-built campaign. The report says what the data says.
Book an ads autopsy
$495 flat. Send your website and “ads autopsy” in the form — we’ll reply with the two access steps and a start date.
Start your project →Already have a site? Ask for the free plain-English audit — or just email jamie@foundwork.ca.