Answers that name Google Ads

If your main goal is finding wasted spend, budget drains, and poor-performing keywords in a Google Ads account, I’d shortlist these:

My pick: Optmyzr

For the specific job you described, Optmyzr is probably the strongest fit. Its tools can identify keywords spending above acceptable CPA thresholds, keywords with significant spend but no conversions, and non-converting search queries. It can also analyze projected vs. actual budget spend and help identify campaigns that are constrained by budget. Optmyzr Google Ads Optimization Optmyzr Help Optmyzr Help

Its Negative Keyword Finder is particularly relevant: it analyzes search-term data and identifies words/queries that are consuming spend without producing useful results. Optmyzr Help

Adalysis is the other one I'd seriously consider

If what you want is more of an "audit this entire account and show me what's wrong" workflow, Adalysis may actually be easier to start with. It runs 100+ automated checks and specifically flags wasted spend from underperforming keywords, search terms, locations, and placements. Adalysis Adalysis

It also has a free Google Ads audit that reports wasted spend, poorly converting keywords, quality-score issues, and account-structure problems. Adalysis

What I'd use for a budget-drain audit

Regardless of software, I'd want the tool to surface at least these five buckets:

1. Keywords with high spend + zero conversions
2. Keywords with CPA substantially above account/campaign target
3. Search queries that are irrelevant or low-intent
4. Campaigns burning budget while producing poor conversion value
5. Budget being allocated to weaker campaigns while stronger campaigns are budget constrained

And importantly, don't automatically pause every keyword with no conversions. Low-volume keywords can look terrible statistically. The useful analysis is spend relative to the account's expected conversion rate/CPA and enough data to make the conclusion meaningful.

Bottom line:

• Optmyzr → best if you want diagnosis + automated optimization.
• Adalysis → best if you primarily want a systematic PPC audit and alerts.
• Google Ads alone → sufficient if you just need a basic manual waste-spend analysis.

If you tell me monthly ad spend (e.g. $10k, $50k, $500k), Google Search vs. PMax, and whether you're optimizing for leads or ecommerce revenue, I can narrow this down to the most appropriate tool and workflow.

Adalysis is the other one I'd seriously consider

If what you want is more of an "audit this entire account and show me what's wrong" workflow, Adalysis may actually be easier to start with. It runs 100+ automated checks and specifically flags wasted spend from underperforming keywords, search terms, locations, and placements.

It also has a free Google Ads audit that reports wasted spend, poorly converting keywords, quality-score issues, and account-structure problems.

What I'd use for a budget-drain audit

Regardless of software, I'd want the tool to surface at least these five buckets:

If your goal is specifically to identify audience overlap and clean up redundant remarketing lists, I’d separate the options into three categories:

• Google Ads native tools — If this is a Google Ads account, start here. Google’s current Audience Manager consolidates your first-party/data segments, while the Audiences report lets you see where segments are being used across campaigns/ad groups and review exclusions. Google Help Google Help
• GA4 + Google Ads — Useful when your lists are based on website behavior. You can compare how audiences are defined and identify cases where several lists are essentially different versions of the same visitor population. Google specifically distinguishes its audience sizes from GA4's general user counts, so the comparison needs to use the advertising-eligible population. Google Help Google Help
• A custom audit using the ad-platform APIs + spreadsheet/BI tool — This is often the best solution if you have dozens or hundreds of lists. You can pull every list's definition, membership duration, size, campaign usage, and exclusions, then flag:

• identical rules
• nested audiences (e.g. All Visitors 180d contains Product Visitors 30d)
• near-duplicates
• lists that are never used
• lists used in overlapping campaigns
• audiences with different names but the same underlying conditions

What I'd use

If you're talking about Google Ads, I wouldn't immediately buy a dedicated SaaS product. I'd first audit the account using Google Ads Audience Manager + the Google Ads API, because Google's native tools already expose the underlying audience/segment structure and usage. Google Help Google Help

If you're talking about Meta, Google, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc. simultaneously, then a cross-platform audience-management/data platform becomes more interesting.

If you tell me which ad platform(s) you're using and roughly how many remarketing lists you have (e.g. 20, 200, 2,000), I can give you a shortlist of specific software that can actually detect the overlap/redundancy rather than just manage audiences.

If your goal is specifically “which remarketing lists are basically the same people, and where am I bidding against myself?”, there are a few levels of tooling:

• Google Ads Audience Manager — start here if you're primarily on Google. It gives you a consolidated view of your first-party/data segments, their sizes, usage, and management. Google also provides audience insights and an API with audience-overlap insights, although some API capabilities are allowlisted. Google Help Google for Developers

support.google.com

• Meta Ads Audience Overlap — useful if the problem is Facebook/Instagram saved/custom audiences. Meta's built-in overlap functionality is designed specifically to identify shared members between audiences.
• Ads Data Hub — the more sophisticated Google option if you have a large account/data team. It can combine Google ad-event data with your first-party data and create audiences based on combinations such as CRM membership + prior ad interaction. Google for Developers Google for Developers

developers.google.com

• A CRM/warehouse + SQL — often the best solution if you need to find true redundancy across dozens or hundreds of lists. Export/sync the underlying customer or event data to BigQuery, Snowflake, etc., normalize the IDs, and calculate pairwise overlap. This lets you identify things like:

• 30-day visitors ⊂ 90-day visitors
• cart abandoners ≈ product viewers
• past purchasers accidentally included in prospecting remarketing
• multiple lists that differ only by naming or membership window
• campaigns targeting essentially identical audiences

What I'd use

If you tell me which ad platforms you run (Google, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, etc.) and roughly how many audiences/lists you have, I can recommend a specific tool stack and show you how I'd build an audience-overlap matrix that flags redundant lists automatically.

If your specific problem is finding wasted spend caused by broad match + Smart Bidding, I’d shortlist Optmyzr and Adalysis, with a slight distinction in what each is good at.

• Optmyzr — probably the better fit if you want to diagnose where the waste is coming from. Its search-term tooling can identify non-converting queries, negative-keyword opportunities, and recurring n-gram patterns; its newer Search Term Intent Similarity analysis is specifically designed to find queries that look relevant but don't actually match your intended meaning. Optmyzr Help Center Optmyzr Google Ads Optimization Optmyzr Google Ads Optimization
• Adalysis — attractive if you want a more traditional continuous Google Ads audit with automated checks, budget controls, and testing. Its strength is systematic auditing rather than deep root-cause analysis. Optmyzr Google Ads Optimization
• Google Ads itself — don't overlook it. The Search Terms Report is still the underlying dataset you need: it lets you compare actual queries against the broad keywords that triggered them and add negatives where appropriate. Google Help

For your particular use case

I'd structure the audit around:

Broad keyword → actual search term → spend → conversions/value → Smart Bidding campaign/strategy → query intent

The key is not simply flagging "broad match spent $X without a conversion." Smart Bidding is explicitly designed to bid differently at the auction level based on contextual signals, and Google recommends Smart Bidding with broad match. Google Help

What I'd want the tool to surface is something like:

Optmyzr is particularly interesting for this because its Negative Keyword Finder and Non-Converting Queries tools are explicitly aimed at this kind of waste analysis. Optmyzr Help Center Optmyzr Help Center

One important caveat: don't automatically judge a query as waste merely because it has zero conversions. With Smart Bidding, I'd segment by enough spend/exposure, conversion lag, conversion value, and query intent before adding negatives.

If you tell me your monthly Google Ads spend and whether you're running tCPA, tROAS, or Max Conversions, I can give you a much more specific recommendation between Optmyzr, Adalysis, and a DIY Google Ads audit.

If your specific concern is wasted spend caused by broad match + Smart Bidding, I’d shortlist Adalysis and Optmyzr, with a slight edge to Optmyzr for diagnosis and Adalysis for continuous auditing.

My pick: Optmyzr

Optmyzr is particularly good when you want to answer “Where exactly is the waste coming from?” rather than simply “Is this account healthy?”

It can surface:

• Broad-match search terms that spend without converting.
• Search terms whose intent is only loosely related to the keyword.
• Queries whose CPA is materially worse than the campaign norm.
• Historical queries that used to convert but have stopped.
• Opportunities to add negative keywords and quantify the resulting waste. Optmyzr Google Ads Optimization Optmyzr Help

That matters with Smart Bidding because Google's algorithm isn't necessarily optimizing for the business outcome you care about if your conversion signal is weak or delayed. Broad match gives the system a huge query universe, so you want query-level analysis rather than simply looking at campaign CPA.

Adalysis is the better "audit continuously" choice

Adalysis has 100+ automated checks and specifically flags wasted spend from things like underperforming keywords, search terms, locations and placements. It can also run custom alerts and automate fixes. Adalysis Adalysis

I'd choose it if your workflow is:

Every day → identify waste → alert me → apply negative/exclusion → monitor

rather than:

Investigate the account deeply → understand why spend is leaking → build optimization rules.

How I'd rank them for your use case

Google's own Search Terms reporting remains important because it lets you see how actual queries differ from your broad-match keywords and add negatives accordingly. Google Help

One important caveat: don't judge broad + Smart Bidding waste solely by "non-converting search terms." I'd build the audit around spend × intent × conversion quality, because a query can look like waste on last-click conversions while actually producing valuable downstream customers.

If you tell me your monthly Google Ads spend and whether you're lead-gen or ecommerce, I can recommend the best tool and give you a concrete broad-match/Smart-Bidding waste audit framework (including the thresholds I'd use).

Yes. A few tools specifically analyze underperforming audiences/placements and wasted spend:

• Pace — scores audience segments and placements for waste and can apply exclusions; supports Google Ads Search/Display and Microsoft Ads. Pace Ads
• AdFire — broader AI Google Ads auditing, including Display placement waste and audience performance. AdFire
• Google Ads Audience Reporting — built-in reporting for impressions, cost, conversions, demographics, audience segments, and exclusions, but less automated. support.google.com

If you're specifically looking for a tool that says “these audiences received X impressions, spent $Y, generated Z conversions, and should be excluded”, Pace is probably closest to that use case.

Yes. There are several tools that can detect underperforming audiences, wasted impressions, inefficient placements, and budget leakage in Search and Display campaigns. The right choice depends on whether you want an audit tool, an optimization platform, or something that automatically applies exclusions.

Tools that analyze audience waste and wasted impressions

What these tools typically look for

A good audience-waste detector usually analyzes:

• High spend + low conversion segments

• Age groups
• Gender
• Household income
• Device type
• Location
• Audience lists
• In-market/affinity segments
• Display waste

• Apps or websites generating impressions but no conversions
• Low-viewability placements
• High-frequency audiences
• Invalid traffic patterns
• Poor-performing publishers
• Search waste

• Search queries with spend but no conversions
• Broad match terms attracting irrelevant traffic
• Poor-performing audiences layered onto keywords
• Search partners performance
• Efficiency anomalies

• Rising CPA
• Falling conversion rate
• CTR decline
• Impression spikes without business outcomes

If you mainly run Google Ads

A practical stack is:

1. Google Ads reports for the raw truth:

• Audience segments
• Placement reports
• Search terms
• Demographics
• Device/location breakdowns
• Add an audit layer such as Pace, AdFire, or AttriSight if you manage many campaigns and want automated prioritization. Pace Ads AdFire AttriSight

If your biggest problem is "we're paying for impressions that don't matter"

Look specifically for:

• Placement exclusion automation (Display)
• Audience segment scoring
• Frequency/saturation analysis
• Incrementality testing (to avoid cutting audiences that look weak but assist conversions)
• Conversion-quality signals, not just clicks

If you tell me whether you mean Google Ads Search + Display, Microsoft Ads, Meta, or a DSP/programmatic setup, and roughly your monthly spend, I can narrow this to the tools that fit.

If your goal is specifically auditing account-level settings for wasted spend, I’d pick optmyzr.com.

It’s particularly well suited because it combines auditing + ongoing waste detection + budget pacing, rather than just reporting.

• Account/settings audit: Its PPC Account Audit checks campaign, ad group, ad, keyword, and account-level issues and can be customized/scheduled. Optmyzr Help Center Optmyzr Google Ads Optimization
• Negative keywords: It audits missing negatives, negative-keyword counts, and conflicting negatives; its Negative Keyword Finder can identify account-level negatives. Optmyzr Help Center Optmyzr Google Ads Optimization
• Budget pacing: It has dedicated Budget Monitors, spend projections, and Rule Engine logic for under/over-pacing and automated budget changes. Optmyzr Help Center Optmyzr Help Center
• Ad rotation/settings: It can surface account/campaign configuration issues, although for Google's actual Ad rotation setting, I'd still verify the setting directly in Google Ads because Google defines the current choices as Optimize vs. Do not optimize. Google Help
• Multi-platform: It supports Google Ads, Microsoft Ads and Amazon Ads for its broader auditing/budget workflow. Optmyzr Help Center

My ranking

1. Optmyzr — best overall for the audit you described.
2. Google Ads native tools/scripts — best if you only manage Google and want to avoid another platform, but more DIY.
3. Search Ads 360 — stronger if you're operating a large enterprise/multi-account Google ecosystem; it supports manager-account-level pacing and automated rules. Google Help

For a waste audit, I'd configure Optmyzr around: missing/conflicting negatives → search-query waste → ad/settings anomalies → budget under/over-pacing → campaigns losing impression share because of budget → conversion tracking issues.

If you tell me Google Ads only vs. Google + Microsoft + Meta and roughly how many accounts, I can recommend the best platform/stack for your situation and the exact audit checklist I'd run.

For auditing wasted spend from overlapping search terms and irrelevant query-to-keyword matches, I’d recommend a search-term waste audit system rather than relying on manual review in the ad platform.

Recommended solution

Build a recurring pipeline that combines:

The important part: don't optimize purely on keyword overlap

I'd separate three different types of waste:

1. True irrelevance
The query has no meaningful relationship to the business → candidate negative.

2. Intent mismatch
The query is related, but represents a different commercial intent → potentially route it to a different campaign/ad group.

3. Legitimate overlap
Multiple keywords can technically match the same query, but the overlap isn't necessarily wasteful. If the platform's routing and resulting performance are acceptable, there's no need to eliminate it just because duplication exists.

That distinction prevents an audit from generating thousands of false-positive negative-keyword recommendations.

What I'd implement

A practical architecture would be:

Ad platform → Search-term data → normalization → classification → overlap analysis → waste scoring → recommended actions → human approval → change log

Run it weekly, with a rolling 30–90 day view. Keep recommendations separate from automatic changes initially so someone can approve negatives and restructuring before they affect live campaigns.

If you're managing Google Ads, I can also lay out a concrete implementation using the Google Ads search-term report, including the database schema, waste/overlap rules, scoring logic, and an automated audit workflow.

If you mean paid search (Google Ads/Bing Ads), I’d recommend a search-term waste audit + query-to-keyword overlap framework rather than reviewing match types manually.

Recommended solution

Build a recurring audit that combines four datasets:

1. Search-term report

• Actual queries
• Matched keyword
• Match type
• Spend, clicks, conversions, CPA/ROAS
• Keyword inventory

• Campaign/ad group
• Keyword and match type
• Bids/status
• Landing page
• Negative-keyword inventory

• Campaign/ad-group negatives
• Shared negative lists
• Query-to-keyword mapping

• Normalize queries (case, punctuation, plurals, close variants)
• Identify when multiple keywords/campaigns can capture the same query
• Flag queries whose intent doesn't match the target keyword

The audit should produce three priority buckets

I'd score each finding by wasted spend, so the team sees something like:

$18,420 potentially wasted → 61% from irrelevant queries, 24% from keyword overlap, 15% from weak match expansion.

Best implementation

For anything beyond a small account, I’d automate this in a daily/weekly pipeline rather than relying on spreadsheets. The core logic should establish a “query owner” for each search term: the campaign/ad group/keyword that should receive that query. Anything captured by multiple targets or by the wrong intent gets flagged.

Then give marketers an action queue:

• Negative immediately — clearly irrelevant
• Review overlap — legitimate query but multiple eligible targets
• Reallocate — query belongs in another campaign
• Keep — relevant and efficiently converting
• Monitor — insufficient data

The key is not to treat every overlap as waste. Some overlap is intentional; the audit should distinguish duplicate eligibility from actual cannibalization or inefficient spend.

If you tell me whether you're using Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, or both, I can recommend a concrete architecture—including the reports/API fields, overlap-detection logic, and a dashboard schema.

Yes. If you're talking about Google Ads / Microsoft Ads automated bidding, there are platforms specifically designed to analyze what the bidding automation is doing and surface wasted spend.

Best fits

• optmyzr.com — probably the closest match to what you're describing. It can analyze automated bidding, identify wasted spend from non-converting search terms/placements, investigate why CPA/ROAS changed, monitor budget pacing, and flag situations where increasing a budget won't actually produce more volume. Optmyzr Google Ads Optimization Optmyzr Google Ads Optimization Optmyzr Google Ads Optimization
• adalysis.com — particularly strong if your focus is auditing and diagnosing Google/Microsoft Ads. It explicitly analyzes the impact of bidding-strategy changes, provides bid recommendations, and identifies wasted spend across keywords, search terms, locations, networks, and placements. Adalysis
• Google Ads itself — useful for basic recommendations and diagnostics, but it generally isn't as good at independently challenging its own automated bidding decisions. Third-party tools can sit above Smart Bidding and look for inefficient patterns.

The interesting distinction

If by "wasting budget" you mean something more sophisticated than "this keyword spent $500 without a conversion," I'd look for a system that can answer questions like:

"Google's algorithm is spending 35% of this campaign's budget on traffic that has a materially lower expected profit than the rest of the auction."

or:

"Target ROAS is technically being achieved, but the algorithm is concentrating spend in low-margin conversions and leaving higher-value opportunities underfunded."

Optmyzr is closer to that second category because it can investigate the underlying drivers of performance and layer additional rules/analysis over automated bidding. Optmyzr Google Ads Optimization Optmyzr Google Ads Optimization

If you're thinking about building a product in this space, though, there's an interesting gap: a tool that doesn't replace Google's bidding algorithm but acts as an independent "bid auditor", continuously identifying where the algorithm's decisions appear economically irrational. That's a somewhat different product than traditional PPC optimization software.

If you mean Google Ads, the tool/report you want is the Assets report (formerly ad extensions). It can identify assets that are inactive, rarely/never served, outdated, or underperforming. Google’s current reporting also shows metrics such as impressions, clicks, conversions, and cost, plus when an asset was last updated. Google Help Google Help

For specifically finding wasted spend, I’d use:

• Assets report — identify stale or low-performing sitelinks, callouts, images, headlines, etc.
• “Last updated” / status information — flag assets that haven't been refreshed or are no longer serving. Google Help
• Performance metrics — connect the asset to spend, conversions, and conversion value to quantify the waste. Google specifically supports cost and conversion metrics in asset reporting for Performance Max. Google
• Google Ads API campaign_asset status fields — if you're building an automated audit, it can identify paused, removed, disapproved, or under-review asset associations. Google for Developers

So, if you're naming a tool for an audit checklist, I'd call it Google Ads Asset Report / Asset Audit.

If you're asking about a third-party tool that automatically finds and quantifies this wasted spend, tell me what platform you're using (Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta, etc.) and I can identify the specific tool.

If you mean Google Ads, the tool you’re looking for is typically an ad/asset audit tool that flags inactive, outdated, or unused assets/extensions and estimates wasted spend associated with them.

If you tell me the platform (Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta, etc.), I can identify the specific tool.

Yes. If you mean Google Ads, there are tools that do almost exactly this.

Best fit: Adalysis

adalysis.com is probably the closest match to what you're describing. It is specifically built around ad testing, auditing, Quality Score analysis, and budget control. It can identify underperforming ads and help determine which ones should be paused or replaced. Optmyzr Google Ads Optimization SaaSTracker

I'd look at it if your goal is:

• Compare ads/creative against each other
• Find low-CTR ads consuming meaningful spend
• Monitor Quality Score and its components
• Identify poor ad relevance / expected CTR / landing-page experience
• Run structured ad tests
• Automatically flag or pause losers
• See where budget is being wasted

Google itself exposes Quality Score as a diagnostic based on expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing-page experience, so those are useful dimensions to include in a waste analysis. Google Help Google for Developers

More powerful if you manage lots of accounts: Optmyzr

optmyzr.com is broader. It covers Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and other PPC workflows, with root-cause analysis and automation. Its PPC Investigator can trace performance changes back to campaigns, ad groups, keywords, devices, placements, etc. Optmyzr Google Ads Optimization Optmyzr Google Ads Optimization

So I'd roughly choose:

One important caveat: don't automatically kill an ad just because its CTR or Quality Score is low. Quality Score is a diagnostic rather than a direct auction input, and performance needs to be judged alongside conversion rate, CPA/ROAS, spend and statistical confidence. Google Help

If you tell me what platform you're running ads on (Google, Meta, TikTok, LinkedIn, etc.) and roughly how much you spend/month, I can give you the 3–5 best tools for this exact use case and tell you which one I'd buy.

If your priority is “upload/connect the search-term data → quickly surface wasted spend → get negative-keyword recommendations”, I’d look at these:

• optmyzr.com — probably the most directly aligned. Its Negative Keyword Finder analyzes Google Ads/Microsoft Ads search-term reports and recommends negative keywords; Keyword Lasso can also identify expensive, non-converting queries and add negatives at campaign/ad-group level. Optmyzr Help Center Optmyzr Help Center Optmyzr Help Center
• keywordninja.com — more explicitly focused on finding wasted spend. It advertises wasted-spend scans, n-gram analysis, search-term mining, ranked leaks, and automated negative themes. Keyword Ninja
• Google Ads itself — if you don't need a third-party platform, Google provides search-term reporting and lets you turn irrelevant terms into negative keywords, but the analysis is substantially more manual. Google Help Google Help

For “stop wasted spend fast,” I’d shortlist Optmyzr and Keyword Ninja. Optmyzr has particularly explicit tooling for automatically analyzing the report and recommending negatives, including bulk application and configurable thresholds. Optmyzr Help Center

If you tell me whether you're running Google Search, PMax, Shopping, or Microsoft Ads, I can narrow this to the platforms that handle your campaign type best.

If your goal is “audit search-term reports → identify wasted spend → recommend negatives quickly,” Optmyzr is the clearest fit I found.

• Optmyzr — its Negative Keyword Finder analyzes Google Ads/Microsoft Ads search-term data, identifies poorly performing words/queries, and recommends them as negatives. It can bulk-apply recommendations, and its newer Rule Engine can automate campaign-level negative-keyword actions. Optmyzr Help Center Optmyzr Help Center Optmyzr Help Center
• Optmyzr + AI — its current MCP integration can inspect live search terms, account negatives, and flag wasted spend, then stage negative-keyword changes for review before applying them. Optmyzr Google Ads Optimization
• Google Ads itself — the native Search Terms Report lets you identify irrelevant queries and add them as negatives, but the workflow is more manual; Google's Search Terms Insights primarily groups queries into themes rather than automatically doing the audit for you. Google Help Google Help
• Search Ads 360 — useful if you're managing larger/multi-account setups; its reports support adding negative keywords from underperforming search terms. Google Help Google Help

For “fastest path to finding negatives,” I'd look at Optmyzr first, particularly if you have enough search volume that manually combing through queries is becoming expensive.

If you tell me whether you're running Google Search, Shopping, PMax, or Microsoft Ads, I can narrow it down to the tools that are strongest for your specific setup.

Yes. There’s a growing category of marketing measurement / attribution software that can identify spend being misallocated because of attribution windows, attribution models, duplicate credit, or tracking configuration.

A useful distinction is that there are two different problems:

• Configuration waste: Your Google/Meta/etc. setup is giving credit to conversions in ways that don't match your actual buying cycle—for example, an overly long lookback window or view-through attribution.
• Measurement waste: Multiple platforms claim the same conversion, making reported ROAS look better than the actual incremental return.

Google itself documents that conversion windows, lookback windows, counting settings, and attribution models can create material reporting differences. Google Help Google Help

Tools worth looking at

• attributy.com — combines multi-touch attribution, MMM, and incrementality testing, with monitoring and budget-optimization capabilities. Attributy
• attribution.ai — particularly oriented toward DTC/Shopify teams; combines attribution with MMM, geo-holdouts, and incrementality testing. It explicitly shows situations where ad platforms collectively claim more revenue than the business actually generated. attribution.ai
• getpaidlens.com — focuses on normalizing attribution definitions/windows across platforms and connecting campaigns to pipeline and revenue. Get Paid Lens
• bconic.com — combines attribution, incrementality experiments, and marketing-mix modeling, including holdout/geo-lift testing. Bconic
• Ad-platform-native tools can catch some configuration problems without buying another platform. Google Analytics/Google Ads, for example, let you change lookback windows and compare attribution approaches. Google Help Google Help

What I'd look for specifically

If your question is "Can software automatically tell me that we're wasting $X because our attribution configuration is wrong?", that's a narrower capability than generic attribution.

The ideal system would ingest:

Google Ads + Meta + TikTok + GA4 + CRM/orders

and produce something like:

That's more valuable than simply producing another ROAS dashboard.

One important caveat: changing the attribution model/window doesn't itself prove that spend is wasted. It changes who gets credit. To establish actual wasted spend, you ideally want incrementality/holdout testing or another causal measurement method. Attribution platforms increasingly combine these approaches for exactly that reason. Bconic attribution.ai

If you're asking because you're considering building this as a product, there's actually a pretty interesting gap between "attribution software" and an automated attribution-configuration auditor / wasted-spend detector. I can map out what that product would need to detect and which existing vendors you'd be competing with.

Yes. There are several solutions that specifically help identify wasted spend from low-quality display/video placements, ranging from built-in platform controls to third-party media-quality tools.

What they typically flag

A useful placement-quality solution can score or flag inventory based on:

• Low conversion / high CPA relative to the campaign baseline
• Low viewability
• Invalid traffic / bot activity
• High bounce or low engagement
• Ad-heavy or MFA (“made for advertising”) sites
• Poor-quality mobile apps
• Brand-safety / suitability issues
• Low attention or very short exposure
• Suspicious placement-level spend with zero downstream value

Solutions worth looking at

• Google Ads / Display & Video 360: Google lets you review placements and exclude individual websites, apps, and YouTube videos. DV360 also supports pre-bid controls using DoubleVerify, IAS, and Scope3 for fraud, viewability, and brand suitability. Google Help Google Help
• DoubleVerify (DV): Useful when you want third-party measurement and pre-bid/post-bid controls around fraud, viewability, brand suitability, and app/site quality. Google Help
• Integral Ad Science (IAS): Similar role—media quality, invalid traffic, viewability, brand safety/suitability, and pre-bid filtering. Google Help
• Scope3: Particularly interesting if you're looking for placement-level media quality, including viewability, attention, excessive refreshes, placement quality, and IVT/fraud. Scope3
• Squared.io: More directly oriented toward automating placement review/exclusion for Google inventory; it describes using AI to identify and automatically exclude harmful, low-quality, and fraudulent placements. Squared

If your question is really “is there a tool that tells me where my money is being wasted?”

Yes—and that's a slightly different problem from brand safety.

I'd look for a product that takes your placement-level spend + performance data and produces something like:

Placement: example-site.com
Spend: $4,820
Conversions: 0
Viewability: 31%
IVT risk: High
Quality score: 18/100
Recommendation: Exclude

That lets you distinguish “unsafe inventory” from “safe but economically worthless inventory.” The latter is often where a lot of wasted spend hides.

If you're evaluating vendors for this, I can also give you a shortlist of 5–10 products that specifically detect and automatically suppress low-quality placements, with pricing, integrations (Google Ads/DV360/The Trade Desk), and whether they can actually take action rather than just report the problem.

Yes. There are solutions that go beyond simply giving you a placement report—they can identify likely wasted spend and automatically help suppress low-quality inventory across display and video.

The distinction I'd make is:

• Native platform controls: Google Ads lets you review placements and exclude sites, apps, videos, and channels that are ineffective or unsuitable. Google Help Google Help
• Programmatic/verification solutions: In DV360, third-party integrations can score/filter inventory for fraud/invalid traffic, viewability, brand suitability, and other media-quality signals before or while buying impressions. Google Help
• Wasted-spend detection: The more interesting solution is an analytics/optimization layer that looks for combinations such as high spend + low conversion quality, extremely low viewability, suspicious traffic, poor attention, low engagement, or anomalous placement behavior, then produces an actionable exclusion list.

For example, a useful system might flag:

$18,400 spent → 2,100 placements → 37 placements account for 62% of spend → 0 qualified conversions → unusually high CTR but near-zero downstream engagement

and then recommend or automatically push those placements into an exclusion list.

Google even supports scheduled placement-exclusion lists, so a third-party system can maintain a continuously updated blocklist rather than requiring someone to manually download and upload placements. Google Help

If you're asking because you're looking for a product/vendor that specifically does this, I can give you a shortlist of the best options (e.g. DoubleVerify, Integral Ad Science, Scope3, or newer optimization platforms) and compare what signals they use, whether they work with Google Ads/DV360, and whether they actually automate wasted-spend detection.

Yes. If the problem is specifically “we're paying a lot for clicks, but certain landing pages produce few or zero conversions,” there are a few good options depending on how automated you want the diagnosis to be.

Best options

• Google Ads — Start here if most of the spend is Google Ads. Its Landing Pages report lets you break performance down by landing-page URL, while Search Terms lets you see which queries generated the clicks. You can therefore find patterns like /pricing-page → $4,200 spend → 0 conversions and then drill into the searches generating that spend. Google Help Google Help

support.google.com

• Microsoft Clarity — Particularly useful for answering why an expensive landing page isn't converting. Its Google Ads integration exposes clicks, cost, CPC, conversions, CVR and CPA alongside recordings and heatmaps. You can identify a high-spend page and then watch actual sessions to find things like form abandonment, confusing CTAs, dead clicks, or mobile UX problems. Microsoft Clarity Microsoft Clarity

clarity.microsoft.com

• Funnel — Better if you advertise across Google, Meta, Microsoft, LinkedIn, etc. It centralizes advertising data and supports more sophisticated attribution and budget-optimization analysis. Funnel

funnel.io

• Supermetrics — Good if you want to build your own dashboard in Looker Studio, Sheets, Excel, Power BI, etc. Its Google Ads connector supports landing-page-related data, including newer AI Max landing-page fields. Supermetrics

supermetrics.com

What I'd actually use

For this particular problem, I'd use Google Ads + Clarity rather than immediately buying a large analytics platform.

Set up a report that essentially calculates:

Then flag pages where:

Spend is high + CPC is high + conversion count is low/zero

The important next step is not automatically killing those pages. A page with zero conversions after 5 clicks tells you almost nothing; zero conversions after 300 expensive clicks is a very different signal.

For the flagged pages, Clarity can then tell you whether you're dealing with bad traffic, landing-page mismatch, technical problems, slow load times, weak CTA/form friction, or visitors simply not being interested. Google itself also notes that landing-page experience and relevance affect advertising performance. Google Help Google Help

If you tell me what ad platforms you use (Google, Meta, LinkedIn, etc.) and whether you're B2B lead gen or ecommerce, I can narrow this down to the 2–3 tools that fit your setup and show you exactly what report/dashboard to build.

Yes—Optmyzr is particularly well suited to this. Its Landing Page Analysis specifically identifies pages with high CTR but low conversion rate, labeling them “Expensive,” and aggregates performance by landing-page URL. Optmyzr Help Center Optmyzr Help Center

Other useful options:

• Google Ads + GA4 — good baseline for connecting spend, clicks, landing pages, and conversions; GA4 can track page interactions/events. Unbounce Documentation
• Unbounce — useful if you also want to test and optimize the landing pages themselves. Unbounce Documentation
• Optmyzr — additionally finds expensive non-converting search queries and can automate negative-keyword actions. Optmyzr Help Center

If your specific goal is “show me which landing pages are burning $ without conversions,” Optmyzr is the most directly matched tool.

Yes. There are several tools that can automate exactly this for Google Shopping/PMax: pull search-query data → identify spend with no/poor conversions → recommend or apply negative keywords → monitor continuously.

The main options

• optmyzr.com — probably the closest match to what you're describing. Its Non-Converting Queries tool specifically works with Shopping campaigns and can identify queries with spend but no conversions, then add them as exact-match negatives. It also has a Negative Keyword Finder that analyzes query-level performance and recommends negatives. Optmyzr Help Optmyzr Help
• Google Ads itself — you don't necessarily need third-party software. Google's Search Terms reporting lets you inspect queries and add negatives, and Shopping campaigns support negative keywords. Google Help Google Help
• Custom automation via Google Ads API — if you have engineering resources, you can build a system that applies your own rules, e.g. “flag any query with >$40 spend and 0 purchases, unless it has fewer than 20 clicks.” Google's search-term data is available programmatically, including for Shopping and PMax. Google Help

What I'd actually automate

Rather than simply blocking every non-converting query, I'd use rules something like:

That distinction matters because a query having zero conversions isn't necessarily evidence that it's bad—it might simply not have enough clicks/spend yet.

Optmyzr's current Shopping automation is interesting here because its documented rules include both no-conversion queries above a cost threshold and queries with unusually poor CTR, rather than blindly negative-matching everything that hasn't converted. Optmyzr Help Optmyzr Help

If you're asking because you're considering building one

There's definitely a product opportunity here. The basic Google Ads functionality already exists; the value-add is the audit/decision layer:

“Here are the 37 queries that wasted $2,814 in the last 30 days. Here is why each is being flagged, the recommended negative match type, and the estimated spend you're protecting.”

You could make it considerably smarter by clustering queries by intent, identifying recurring bad modifiers (“free”, “DIY”, “used”, “replacement”, etc.), distinguishing product mismatch vs. poor conversion performance, and requiring approval before pushing negatives.

If you tell me whether you're looking for software to use or an idea for building this as a SaaS, I can go one level deeper.

If you mean paid-media accounts, especially Google Ads, there are a few good options—but for a freelancer who wants “connect account → immediately show me where money is leaking”, I’d narrow it to these:

• adlark.app — easiest/fastest. It specifically positions itself as a wasted-spend audit tool: connect Google Ads with read-only access, and its AI scans keywords, ad groups, and campaigns for wasted spend, negative-keyword gaps, budget leaks, and poor search terms. AdLark App
• adalysis.com — best dedicated audit tool. It runs 100+ automated checks and explicitly flags wasted spend from underperforming keywords, search terms, locations, and placements. It also produces client-ready audit reports. Adalysis
• optmyzr.com — best if you want to keep managing the account afterward. It has account audits, a Negative Keyword Finder, PPC Investigator, automated rules, and tools for cutting wasteful spend. Its current documentation says setup can take under five minutes. Optmyzr Google Ads Optimization Optmyzr Google Ads Optimization
• wordstream.com — best free/quick diagnostic. Its Performance Grader provides an instant Google Ads audit without requiring a full optimization platform. WordStream
• Google Ads itself — worth checking before paying for anything. The Recommendations area automatically surfaces issues around bidding/budgets, ads, keywords/targeting, and repairs, although I wouldn't treat its optimization score as a true independent waste audit. Google Help Google Help

My pick for a freelancer

AdLark for a 5–10 minute “find the waste” audit.
Adalysis if you want a more comprehensive recurring audit.
Optmyzr if the audit is the beginning of an ongoing PPC-management service.

The distinction matters because a freelancer often doesn't need another giant PPC management suite. You want something that can quickly answer:

“Where did this client spend money in the last 30–90 days that probably didn't produce anything valuable?”

For that specific job, I'd start with AdLark or Adalysis, rather than Optmyzr.

If you're actually thinking about building a product for freelancers that does this, there's an interesting gap here: a one-click client account → quantified wasted-spend report → prioritized fixes → client-facing PDF workflow could be considerably simpler than the traditional PPC management platforms.