Paid Media Management That Starts With an Honest Audit

We are a paid media agency based in South Africa, managing performance campaigns across Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, programmatic media and more. Before we recommend anything, we audit what exists. Most accounts we inherit have structural problems that have been inflating CPL for months — sometimes years — without the client or their current agency identifying the cause. We fix those first. Then we scale.

Most paid media problems are structural, not budgetary.

The most common reason paid media underperforms isn't insufficient spend. It's account architecture. Campaigns bidding on the wrong terms. Conversion tracking measuring the wrong events — or counting the same event twice. Audiences built on low-intent signals. Ad quality scores dragging up costs. Landing pages misaligned with ad copy and search intent.

These are fixable problems. But they require someone willing to audit honestly before recommending anything, and to tell a client when their current account is fundamentally sound and only needs refinement — rather than a full rebuild that justifies a larger retainer.

We have taken paid media accounts where the CPL was over R1,000 and brought it to R124 in five months. We have taken accounts running at five times the target CPL and delivered results below the soft KPI within the first month of a proof of concept. In one case, a competitor's performance agency was billing against an account where the platform was actively optimising toward complaints rather than leads — because nobody had audited the conversion setup.

This is also why we do not hand off campaign decisions to automated tools before validating the data those tools are working from. AI-driven optimisation compounds whatever is already in the account — good or bad. Bad tracking fed into automated bidding produces bad outcomes at scale, faster than a human would produce them. We validate the foundation before we automate anything on top of it.

Our measure of success is always revenue — not the metrics that make a report look good. CPL, ROAS, pipeline contribution, revenue attributed. If the numbers we are reporting are not connected to commercial outcomes, we are reporting the wrong numbers.

Paid media across every channel that matters.

We manage performance campaigns across the full paid media stack — from high-intent search to full-funnel programmatic, and from digital to traditional media planning and booking. Every channel is managed to specific performance targets: cost-per-lead, cost-per-acquisition, ROAS, or impression share, depending on the objective.

Search advertising

Search advertising captures the highest-intent traffic available — people actively looking for what you sell, at the exact moment they are looking. We manage paid search campaigns across all relevant search platforms. That means Google Ads as the primary channel in most markets, Microsoft/Bing Ads for B2B audiences and international campaigns where its share is meaningful, and any other search environment relevant to the brief and the target audience.

We are Google Partners with verified capability across the full Google Ads product suite — Search, Display, YouTube, Demand Gen and Performance Max. That credential reflects demonstrated performance across client accounts, not just spend volume.

Social and interest-based advertising

Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram), LinkedIn, TikTok and X/Twitter each have distinct audience behaviours and bidding dynamics. Meta is strong for both lead generation and remarketing at volume. LinkedIn is the right choice for precise B2B targeting by job title, seniority and company size. TikTok is increasingly competitive for consumer brands targeting under-35 audiences.

We do not recommend channels because they appear on a standard service list. We recommend them because they make sense for the brief.

Programmatic media buying

Programmatic allows for precise audience targeting at scale across display, video, native and connected TV inventory — reaching defined audiences wherever they are online, not just within a specific platform's walled garden. We have managed programmatic campaigns through DSPs including DV360 and have experience with Oracle BlueKai DMP for data-driven targeting.

Media planning, booking and monitoring

Not all media buying happens through self-serve platforms. We plan, book and monitor the full media mix — from programmatic inventory to direct deals with premium publishers, and from national broadcast environments down to hyper-local placements.

On the premium end, we have booked directly with major international publishers including the Daily Mail, Sky News, BBC and others — direct buys that require relationships and process knowledge that most digital-only agencies don't have. On the other end, we have placed campaigns in local school apps, community sites, and niche vertical publications where audience density justifies a small but precise buy. We plan across the full spectrum, book wherever the brief requires, and monitor performance regardless of channel — including traditional media like OOH, SMS, radio and print.

Diagnostic first. Proposal second.

Every paid media engagement at Duly Noted follows the same sequence regardless of budget size or platform.

Step 1 — Audit

Before we recommend strategy, budget, or platform mix, we examine what currently exists. That means reviewing account structure, keyword strategy, conversion tracking, audience configuration, bidding setup, ad quality, and landing page alignment. For new campaigns with no existing account, we audit the brief, the competitive landscape, and the technical readiness of the destination — the tracking, the site, the conversion points. The audit is where most problems are found. It is not a formality.

Step 2 — Scope

Based on what the audit finds, we scope exactly what is needed — not what fills a retainer. If your Google Ads account is structurally sound and only needs keyword refinement, we say so. If your tracking is broken and scaling spend before fixing it will make performance look worse, we tell you that before you commit budget. The scope defines the work, the timeline, and the cost.

Step 3 — Build and launch

We build, configure, and launch campaigns to specification — with full tracking verified before any spend is committed. This includes conversion event validation, audience setup, creative briefing or production, and platform quality checks. We do not launch campaigns we cannot measure.

Step 4 — Optimise and report

Performance marketing is not a set-and-forget discipline. Campaigns require active management — bid adjustments, keyword pruning, audience expansion or exclusion, creative testing, and landing page recommendations. We report on the metrics that matter to your business, not the metrics that make the report look good.

What we find when we audit an existing account.

This is not a universal list — every account is different. But across the accounts we have inherited from other agencies and in-house teams, these are the issues that appear most consistently:

Platforms we manage. Credentials that verify it.

Google Partner status means our Google Ads capability has been assessed and verified against Google's performance and certification standards. It is not a badge issued for spending a certain amount — it requires demonstrated performance across client accounts.

Markets we have run campaigns in: South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Nigeria, Kenya, UAE, UK, Australia, USA.

Paid media results from real briefs.