The eight-layer audit is the one we run inside an account. This is the version for the client: what to ask an agency for, what the answer should be, and how to read it without logging in. Benchmarks are the median and good quarter across 944 accounts in Kiin Labs' 2026 panel.
The five numbers to ask for
| Ask for | Median | Good | What it tells you | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost per landing page click (spend ÷ landing page clicks) | $17.54 | $9.18 | What a visitor costs; the number the whole account runs on | A "CPC" of $2 to $5: that is LinkedIn's clicks column, which counts reactions and comments |
| Landing page CTR (landing page clicks ÷ impressions) | 0.23% | 0.38% | Whether the creative and audience fit | A "CTR" over 1% on feed ads: total CTR again |
| Cost per lead, by offer | $164 content · $343 demo | $67 · $131 | Whether the offer and format fit | One blended number; a demo lead over $600 (a single image with a demo form) |
| Account-level frequency (from the reach report, not the campaign column) | 2 to 4× a month | 1.5 to 2× | Whether the audience is being burned; campaigns report 3.5 when the account delivers 9.5 | Over 4× on an audience under 30,000 with no creative refresh |
| Share of spend on the Audience Network | 0% | 0% | Whether budget is leaving LinkedIn | Any number; $274,000 across 107 audited accounts, up to 99% of one budget |
Two more if you sell through forms or the inbox: form completion rate (10.8% content and 2.2% demo in the feed at the median; 40.7% in a message ad) and message ad open rate (42.6% median, 48.8% good) with cost per send ($0.42 median). All of these are one report away in Campaign Manager; an agency that needs a week to produce them is not looking at them.
The four settings to check yourself
You need read access to the ad account in your own Business Manager. If the account lives in the agency's Business Manager, that is the first finding: you do not own the history, the audiences or the data, and switching agencies means starting from zero.
- Audience Network and Audience Expansion. Open any ad set; both boxes should be unticked. Then in the report, Breakdown → Audience Network on/off. Any off-platform spend on a B2B account is waste until proven otherwise.
- Objective. Traffic campaigns on website visits (the cheapest visit, $11.33 on single image), thought leader ads on engagement (brand awareness only on cold audiences over 30,000), video on video views. Brand awareness used for traffic buys a $48 visit.
- Bid type. Manual bids, set low. Maximum delivery on every campaign is the setting that costs 128% more per engagement at the top of the bid range than the bottom, in the same account.
- Where the demo ask lives. A demo form on a single image in the feed: 2.1% completion, $600 a lead, 48 form opens per lead. The demo belongs in a message ad (31 to 40% completion) or behind a content offer.
Ten red flags
- The account is theirs, not yours.
- The report leads with impressions, clicks and CTR from LinkedIn's default column, and the cost per click looks four times better than the visit costs.
- One blended cost per lead that mixes downloads and demos.
- The Audience Network is on, or nobody knows.
- Brand awareness for traffic, or maximum delivery everywhere.
- A demo form on a single image in the feed still running after month one.
- No retargeting campaign after week six, or no exclusions from the demographics report.
- The same creative since launch. Engagement is down 9% after one pass of the audience and 22% after five; a small audience has seen it in 14 days.
- Leads reach the CRM late or not at all, and nobody has checked LinkedIn's 90-day retention or reconciled the counts.
- The fee is a percentage of spend, so the agency is paid more when the account is less efficient.
What a good report looks like
One page a month, in this order: spend and reach into the list with account-level frequency; landing page clicks, landing page CTR and cost per landing page click by campaign against the benchmark; leads and cost per lead by offer with the trend; form completion by format; message ad opens, sends and cost per send; engaged companies from the Companies tab and what sales did with them; opportunities and pipeline by source from the CRM; and the three changes for next month with the reason for each. Total CTR and LinkedIn's clicks can appear as an engagement line, labelled as such, never as traffic. The format we use is on the paid media page.
Five questions for the next call
- "What is our cost per landing page click, and how does it compare with the benchmark for our audience?" (The answer should be a number and a source.)
- "Which functions and titles did we exclude last month from the demographics report, and why?"
- "When was the creative last refreshed on each campaign, and what is the account-level frequency?"
- "Which companies engaged in the Companies tab last month, and who received the list?"
- "What will be different next quarter, and what number will tell us it worked?"
Stay, fix or switch
| What you find | Do |
|---|---|
| Numbers at or better than the good quarter; settings right; report readable | Stay. Ask for the next quarter's plan and leave them to it. |
| Numbers around the median; one or two settings wrong; the agency can explain each number and what changes next | Fix. Give them 90 days against this page; accounts reach the good quarter between months three and six. |
| Three or more red flags at day 90; numbers in the bottom quarter; the five numbers took a week and came from the clicks column | Switch. Move the account into your Business Manager first, export the audiences and leads, then choose with the twenty questions. |
We run this audit free on read-only access and send one page. Most accounts we audit stay with their agency with a shorter list of changes; the ones that switch usually failed the first red flag. What the first 90 days with a new agency should look like is here.