When “Optimisation” Isn’t
Algorithms chase shortcuts. Guard the business goal.
Digital platforms promise optimisation. In practice, their systems often optimise for the easiest proxy, not the outcome the business funds. The model finds shortcuts that clear its objective with minimal resistance. The dashboard improves. The underlying economics stall.
This misalignment is structural. Platforms run black-box auctions with objectives selected from a menu: clicks, video completions, app installs, form fills, purchases. Each objective is trained on historical signals inside the platform. The model is paid to hit the target it can observe quickly and at scale. Your firm measures success in contribution margin and cash flow, which arrive later and sit outside the platform’s walls. The distance between those two views is where value leaks.
Three recurring patterns drive most of the gap.
Cheap signals beat hard outcomes.
Models prefer events that fire often. They converge on clickers, coupon hunters, and habitual engagers. If the account optimises to “purchase,” the system still seeks the path of least resistance—low-value orders, heavy discounters, or repeat buyers who convert without encouragement. The CPA looks tidy while average order value falls and paid cannibalises organic demand.
Easy supply beats incremental reach.
Algorithms route spend to placements with abundant, low-friction inventory. Made-for-advertising sites, low-attention feeds, and long-tail apps meet the objective at low price points. Frequency then concentrates on a small cohort that is easy to reach again. Reported reach appears strong. Unique reach and marginal audience coverage lag.
Pacing stability beats financial control.
Systems value smooth delivery. Budgets are pushed to segments where the model can hit its target reliably. That stability is rewarded in platform KPIs and agency scorecards. It is not rewarded in the P&L when the spend falls on users already likely to buy.
These outcomes persist because incentives point in the wrong direction. Platforms monetise delivery. Agencies are assessed on attainment of platform KPIs and on-time pacing. Internal teams request budget using those same numbers. Few contracts force alignment to the firm’s economic yardsticks. Optimisation drifts toward what the model can win, not what the business needs.
The costs are material.
— Paid media crowds out organic sales as retargeting and branded search harvest existing demand.
— Average order value and lifetime value degrade when discounts and low-margin lines fill the conversion feed.
— Frequency waste increases on small reachable cohorts.
— New-to-file customer share stagnates.
The invoice gets paid on time. The financial return arrives slowly, if at all.
The beneficiaries are clear. Platforms that control the objective and grade their own homework. Intermediaries who report success against those objectives. Teams whose targets mirror platform dashboards. The losers are the advertisers who fund the chain, led by the CFO who must reconcile upbeat reports with flat unit economics.
The remedy is operational and contractual.
1) Set the right yardstick.
Define optimisation in commercial terms. Tie media objectives to margin per order, net new customer rate, or qualified pipeline value. Where those cannot be passed back in full, build proxy sets that correlate tightly with these outcomes, and refresh the mapping on a fixed cadence.
2) Control the signals.
Harden the conversion taxonomy. Separate new vs. returning customers. Flag discounted orders. Exclude low-margin SKUs from optimisation events. Strip noisy micro-events that inflate signal volume without value.
3) Limit shortcuts.
Impose frequency caps by channel and audience. Ring-fence retargeting and branded search in controlled budgets measured on incremental lift, not raw CPA. Exclude inventory classes that fail attention and quality screens, even if cost looks attractive.
4) Validate with experiments.
Run holdouts, geo splits, and time-based pauses to establish counterfactuals. Use server-side logs and privacy-safe clean rooms to deduplicate conversions across platforms. Calibrate modeled results to observed lift. Keep a standing test calendar owned by finance and procurement, not only marketing.
5) Align incentives.
Write commercial terms that reward incremental outcomes, not just delivery against platform KPIs. Tie agency fees in part to lift thresholds, data hygiene, and adherence to exclusion lists and frequency rules. Escalate breaches as control failures with remediation steps and dates.
Reporting should mirror financial control testing. Present platform-credited results next to independently verified incremental results. Reconcile the difference and assign a dollar value to optimisation drift. Track the mix of spend classified as incremental, neutral, or negative at a monthly cadence. Move budget only when evidence clears a defined threshold.
Media Audit Group implements these controls with independence. We examine objectives, tags, exports, contracts, and logs. We identify where algorithms chase shortcuts and quantify the financial impact. We convert findings into enforceable guardrails—signal taxonomies, exclusion inventories, frequency standards, and test calendars—that procurement and finance can monitor. The result is optimisation that serves the business, not the model.
For CFOs and Finance Leaders
Commission a paid media audit that tests platform optimisation against verified outcomes. Improve media efficiency by controlling signals, enforcing frequency discipline, and measuring lift. Build marketing governance that delivers advertising accountability in financial terms, not just dashboard metrics.
About Media Audit Group
Media Audit Group provides independent audits of paid media investments for corporate finance and procurement teams. Modeled on traditional financial assurance practices, the firm applies forensic accounting principles to digital advertising—tracing spend, verifying performance, and identifying structural inefficiencies across agency and platform ecosystems. Headquartered in Ontario, Canada, Media Audit Group operates internationally through a network of affiliated partners.