Paid Media Agency Services to Scale Brand Growth

How do brands cut through an ad ecosystem where automation handles bidding, but creative, data, and governance still decide who wins? And what separate agencies that simply run media from those that scale growth?

These are the questions driving marketers to re-examine what paid media agencies actually do.

Platforms are consolidating targeting into black-box systems, retail media is surging as a must-have channel, and privacy laws are rewriting how data flows into campaigns. At the same time, brands expect agencies to be more than media buyers—they want partners who diagnose funnels, build creative that converts, and enforce compliance across geographies.

This guide explores the full stack of paid media services, from audits and audience strategy to retail media, attribution, and brand safety. For brands and marketers, it’s a roadmap to understanding how agencies turn budgets into growth engines.

Discovery, Audit and Strategy Development

Every paid media engagement begins with discovery. Before a single dollar is spent, paid media agencies invest in auditing the current state, mapping opportunities, and creating a testable roadmap. This phase transforms brand objectives into a structured plan that minimizes waste and sets the foundation for measurable growth.

Comprehensive Business and Market Audit

The starting point is almost always a forensic audit. Agencies dig into existing accounts, reviewing campaign structure, targeting settings, creative performance, and conversion data. Done well, audits uncover hidden inefficiencies—such as misaligned bidding strategies, bloated keyword lists, or underleveraged creative formats.

Some agencies make this their signature product. (un)Common Logic, for instance, promotes a 165-point audit spanning tracking integrity, audience segmentation, ad copy, and ROI—illustrating how granular these reviews can be.

On Amazon, PeakROAS emphasizes ACoS and search term audits to benchmark against break-even margins, while SellerMetrics offers a seven-step PPC audit focused on structure and match types. Through their in-house software, SellerMetrics has managed over $600 million in sales since 2021 for over 30 brands, with a +30% average market share increase.

For Opopop, a gourmet popcorn and snacking brand, SellerMetric's seven-step audit found poor budget optimization issues, low impressions on non-branded keywords, no PDP advertising, and poor CRO on product pages. SellerMetric then implemented an Amazon Ads strategy that would first segment campaigns by product type, keyword type, and type of targeting (automatic vs. manual).

The strategy proved successful, with Opopop sales increasing by 80%. Also, their TaCoS decreased by 40%, the share of voice increased by 120%, and conversions increased by 30%.

Gap Analysis and Channel Prioritization

Once the audit establishes a baseline, agencies move into gap analysis—mapping where campaigns succeed and where the funnel is underdeveloped. For example, a brand may have strong awareness ads but no mid-funnel retargeting, or a powerful retargeting engine but limited upper-funnel reach.

Case studies illustrate how rebalancing changes outcomes. Williams Randall worked with the University of Indianapolis to recentralize budgets and rebalance the media mix, directly tying planning decisions to enrollment targets.

Dot IT, on the other hand, highlights how data-driven channel selection produced ROI lift by shifting dollars toward proven high-return platforms. For a global consulting company, this approach drove a 25% increase in ROI within two months, boosted website traffic by 300%, doubled conversion rates, and cut cost-per-click by 70%, proving how a well-structured media plan can turn struggling lead gen into sustainable growth.

Budgeting and Flighting Frameworks

Great strategies also spell out how spending is paced. Agencies model scenarios—steady always-on spend, aggressive seasonal pushes, or flexible pacing that shifts mid-flight. Research by Keen shows how four-week flights outperform two-week bursts in driving brand equity, a finding with big implications for seasonal brands.

Execution is often supported by automated pacing dashboards. Marin’s case study demonstrates how one agency used a real-time dashboard across multiple locations to auto-pause campaigns and protect budgets, ensuring delivery matched the plan.

Goal Alignment and KPI Design

Perhaps the most important output of this phase is translating media metrics into business goals. Harvard Business School Online advises brands to align KPIs with financial and funnel outcomes, preventing the mistake of optimizing for cheap CPMs at the expense of profitability. Deloitte urges marketers to rethink KPIs around customer value, a philosophy many top agencies now adopt.

In short, this first service pillar turns brand goals into a clear media roadmap. It reduces wasted spend, creates accountability, and ensures every subsequent execution step is rooted in data and aligned with business outcomes.

Channel Execution and Optimization

Once strategy and audiences are in place, the real test of a paid media agency lies in execution. This is where budgets meet algorithms, where creative assets are pushed into the wild, and where day-to-day optimizations decide whether campaigns thrive or burn cash.

Execution isn’t just “running ads” — it’s the ongoing discipline of managing bids, reallocating spend, testing creative, and aligning placements with intent.

Launch Orchestration Across Channels

Execution starts with translating strategy into precise campaigns: naming conventions, audience maps, geo and device splits, creative variants by placement, and guardrails for pacing and bids.

From there, agencies layer retargeting, feed-driven product ads, and channel-specific tactics (e.g., YouTube sequencing, Advantage+ Shopping campaigns, Pinterest Shopping, TikTok Spark Ads) so upper-funnel exposure ladders into mid- and lower-funnel intent. The key is treating channels as a coordinated system—not siloed buys—to keep frequency efficient and move users through the journey, not just around it.

When e.l.f. Cosmetics needed to reignite growth, Tinuiti shifted from a mostly lower-funnel approach to a full-funnel, cross-channel program spanning Social, Search, Shopping, and Display.

The team stood up new channels (including Snapchat, Pinterest, and TikTok), sequenced 6–15s video creative by audience, and centralized reporting so optimizations rolled up daily. Within the first 90 days, the program produced 31M video views and 548k new users, and YoY lifts included +63% impressions, +21% new users, +20% Google SOV, and +300% Facebook SOV; a YouTube lift study reported 60% ad recall and 10% lift in awareness.

On the performance end, e.l.f. saw double-digit growth in ROAS, AOV, and revenue, plus a +38% increase in orders and +28% clicks from restructured branded search.

Why it worked:

• Channel roles were explicit. Social/video drove reach and recall, while Search/Shopping captured rising intent signaled by those upper-funnel touches. 
• Creative was versioned for placements. Short-form video was tailored by platform and sequenced to keep frequency productive, not wasteful.
• Data and pacing were centralized. Daily dashboards unified KPIs, making budget reallocation and creative swaps fast instead of quarterly.

Optimization As A Daily Habit

After launch, the work becomes continuous: trimming non-converting queries, rotating creatives before fatigue, shifting budgets to winning audience-creative combos, and tightening geo/device mixes. Mature teams also use budget-pacing models and automation to move money in-flight instead of waiting for month-end.

In a separate engagement, Tinuiti paired Google Smart Bidding with Skai’s Budget Navigator to control pacing and forecast outcomes. The result: +15% revenue, +13% ROAS, and −10% CPC for a leading retail client—evidence that disciplined budget control materially improves efficiency on top of algorithmic bidding.

What to Ask Your Agency

• Playbooks: How do you map channels to funnel stages and define pass-off rules between them?
• Dashboards: Can I see live pacing, KPI deltas by audience-creative combo, and decision logs?
• Change cadence: What gets reviewed daily vs. weekly, and what thresholds trigger budget or creative changes?
• Proof: Show a case where cross-channel orchestration increased upper-funnel signals and lower-funnel revenue, with specific numbers and time windows.

Retail Media & Marketplace Advertising

For many brands, marketplace and retail media have become indispensable growth levers—not just supplemental channels. This service pillar requires agencies to understand how to advertise within retailer ecosystems, integrate commerce signals, and measure incremental impact. Done right, retail media sits at the sweet spot of intent, reach, and attribution.

• On-site Search & Sponsored Ads: Within marketplaces like Amazon, Walmart, and others, agencies manage sponsored product, brand, and display ads. That means bidding strategies by SKU, negative keyword hygiene, budget pacing by product category, and alignment with retail catalog changes (stock, pricing, promotions).
• Offsite Extensions & Audience Expansion: To amplify reach, agencies deploy DSP or display ads using retailer audiences off-site—e.g., Amazon DSP or Walmart Connect display formats that target users based on what they browse or purchase.
• Feed Management & Catalog Health: A key task is ensuring product feeds are optimized: correct titles, images, variant mapping, exclusions of out-of-stock items, and alignment of promotions. A bad feed can bleed performance.
• Digital Shelf & Content Optimization: Retailers often rank sponsored results within their internal “search + browse” algorithms. Agencies optimize content (A+ pages, images, copy, reviews) and monitor rating/stock to ensure that ads land on optimized product detail pages.

Case Study: Stella Rising + Bondi Sands via Skai — Retail Media ROAS Lift

A strong example comes from Stella Rising’s work with Bondi Sands, powered by Skai’s portfolio tools. The agency not only managed Sponsored Ads but also scaled DSP exposure to deepen performance across Amazon. The results speak volumes: ROAS of 461%, topline revenue up 118%, and upper-funnel revenue up 1,072%. 

Key execution moves include:

• Expanding campaign count and granularity: Sponsored Ads campaigns rose from 31 to 74, DSP line items from 23 to 97.
• Using Skai’s Portfolio optimizations and Dimensions reporting, the team could layer bid strategies, ROI goals, and forecasts at scale rather than manually manage hundreds of line items.
• Continual optimization across campaign types, feeding signals from DSP exposures back into Sponsored Ads and vice versa, ensuring budget flowed into the next-best performing tactic.

This case is powerful because it shows that retail media is not a one-off “plug-in” but an integrated contributor in a multi-channel ecosystem. The ability to scale DSP + Sponsored Ads in harmony was central to lifting performance metrics at each stage of the funnel.

Why Use Retail Media & Marketplace Advertising

Retail media offers high-intent capture—users on Amazon or Walmart are already in shopping mode, so ad targeting is more qualified. It also closes the loop on measurement: you can often tie ad impressions directly to SKU sales, improving predictive modeling.

For brands, the benefits of outsourcing this to an agency include:

• Expertise in platform rules and best practices, which shift frequently.
• Access to tools and partnerships (e.g. DSPs, feed optimization platforms) agencies often have.
• Ability to run rigorous incrementality tests that many brands can’t do in-house.
• Synergies across channels, using retail media signals to inform paid search, social, and even creative direction.

If you’re vetting a partner, ask them:

• Which retailers do they operate in, and what share of client revenue comes from those channels?
• Can they show incremental lift tests or hold-out groups?
• Do they build pipelines to feed retail insights into non-retail channels (e.g. use DSP learnings to inform Google, Meta)?
• What tools or platforms do they use for feed health, catalog optimization, and scalability?

Creative & Ad Asset Production

A paid media agency’s creative team is not just a “nice to have”—it’s core to performance. In a world of automated bidding and targeting, the quality, relevance, and adaptability of creatives often determine whether impressions convert or vanish. Here's what top agencies deliver in the creative domain, and how that service ties back to media ROI.

Concepting & Copy Strategy

Agencies work with brand stakeholders to define messaging pillars, tone, and hooks that align with audience segments. This includes headline variants, primary/secondary copy, offer language, calls to action, and emotional triggers. The creative team often tests multiple copy angles (e.g. benefit-led vs. social proof vs. urgency) before committing budget.

Design & Production Across Formats

From static visuals (banners, social posts) to animated GIFs, video shorts, motion graphics, and interactive units, the agency builds assets in many sizes and lengths. They ensure each creative meets platform specifications, safety zones, and best practices for mobile vs. desktop—and that the visual language is consistent across formats.

Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) & Versioning

Agencies layer in technology so creatives can be adapted on the fly. By combining elements (images, headlines, CTAs, backgrounds), DCO enables the platform (or ad server) to swap in the combination that performs best for each user segment. This reduces manual creative churn and increases relevancy at scale.

Creative + Landing Page Congruence & Testing

High-performing paid media campaigns need alignment between what the ad promises and what the landing page delivers. Agencies often mock up landing page variants and coordinate A/B tests to ensure continuity in messaging, design, and user experience. They may also test micro elements like button color, headline hierarchy, or hero imagery.

Case Example: Elixir Digital’s Use of Dynamic Video Ads

A case that captures creative leverage is from Elixir Digital, whose experiment with dynamic video ads resulted in a 94% increase in CTR over traditional video formats.

What they did:

• Launched three variant videos for Facebook/Instagram, each with slight visual and copy differences.
• Enabled Facebook’s dynamic video ad capability, allowing the system to test and choose which variant to show each user.
• Across combined impressions, the dynamic format drove CTR to ~2.02%, whereas static video variants averaged ~1.04%. 
• They also noted that video engagement (view-through rates) sharply improved—users stayed longer watching the dynamically served creative.

This case illustrates how creative systems—beyond raw volume—can materially lift performance when tightly integrated with targeting and platform logic.

Why Strong Creative Matters

Platform signals and optimization can only do so much. If a creative doesn’t connect with the user—if it’s generic, mismatched, or uninspiring—it underperforms. Creative is the differentiator: the thing that triggers a click or converts a user.

Brands should expect the following creative guarantees from their agency:

• Scale & agility: A system (or template) to produce hundreds or thousands of variants without reinventing from scratch.
• Performance feedback loops: Attribution from creatives to cost metrics—so underperforming variants are retired early.
• Cross-format consistency: Branding, messaging, and emotional tone should persist from upper-funnel reach ads to bottom-funnel conversion units and landing pages.
• Previews & QA: Delivered proofs, device previews, motion tests, and inclusion of safe-area overlays to avoid cut-offs.

Measurement, Attribution & Experimentation

A paid media agency’s legitimacy rests on its ability to prove causation—not just correlation. This service area encompasses setting up experiments, robust attribution models, and validating what media actually drove business outcomes. As channels fragment and platforms shift, measurement becomes the anchor that keeps performance real, accountable, and scalable.

The Measurement Challenge

Most advertisers are familiar with attribution models like last-click, first-click, or linear. But these are inherently biased. They over-credit the last interaction, ignore unseen upper-funnel influence, and fail to isolate incremental lift (i.e. what would not have occurred without media).

Agencies now lean on a blend of incrementality testing, media mix modeling (MMM), and multi-touch attribution (MTA) frameworks to triangulate truth.

• Incrementality testing (e.g. holdouts, geo-experiments) isolates the causal effect of campaigns.
• MMM looks at aggregate media spend, seasonality, and macro factors across channels to estimate contribution.
• MTA attempts to assign credit across touchpoints, often using rule-based, algorithmic, or machine-learning models.

Keends, for example, argues that attribution as practiced is often “broken,” pushing agencies to adopt testing and MMM to counteract bias.

Case Example: The Oodie + Northbeam — Making Metrics Meaningful

A compelling example comes from The Oodie, which partnered with Northbeam to unify attribution across channels, execute incrementality tests, and gain real-time insights.

What they did:

• Implemented Northbeam’s unified measurement stack to stitch paid media, first-party data, and conversion behavior across geographies.
• Launched campaign-level incrementality tests to validate whether spend was truly additive.
• Broke out metrics like CAC (customer acquisition cost), ROAS, and the proportion of new vs returning customers for deeper granularity.

Impact:

• They gained confidence in which channels truly drove incremental value rather than merely reattributing conversions.
• Their team reported faster pivots across markets because they trusted the data as a single source of truth.
• The clarity allowed them to optimize global campaign mix by seeing not just which channel “performed,” but which moved business metrics.

This case is useful because it shows how agencies use real experiments—not just numbers from platforms—to validate their media assumptions.

Experiment Design & Incrementality

To make measurement credible, agencies must build a learning agenda. That includes:

• Control vs test groups (e.g., pausing spend in matched markets or audiences)
• Sufficient sample sizes and duration to reach statistical significance
• Testing buckets (e.g., creative vs channel vs budget)
• Blind periods or cold starts to isolate carryover effects

3 compelling examples of incrementality from the field:

1. Shinola (e-commerce): A geo-based holdout test on Facebook led to a 14.3% lift in conversions, revealing that last-click models underreported performance by 413%. 
2. ServicePro (local services): Exhibit a 40% incremental lift from Google Ads in controlled geographies, yielding a 400% ROI. 
3. SaaS business: Their display spend yielded only 1.2% incremental lift vs what attribution suggested, prompting a major reallocation. 

These underline how attribution metrics can mislead and how experiments reset the baseline toward real impact. You can read more about these case studies here.

Integrating MMM, MTA & Testing

A mature agency doesn’t pick one method—they blend them. For example:

• Use MTA for daily monitoring and budget decisions
• Use incrementality to validate high-risk allocations (e.g., new channel, high budget)
• Use MMM quarterly or annually to calibrate channel mix in the context of buffers, seasonality, and externalities

The goal is convergence: when all three methods point in a similar direction, confidence in shifts becomes higher.

What Brands Should Demand

When evaluating a paid media agency’s measurement offering, you should require:

• A documented learning plan with experiments mapped over time
• Case studies showing real lift tests (with numbers and duration)
• Transparency in model assumptions (e.g. how touchpoints are weighted)
• Dashboards combining MMM, MTA, and holdout results in one view
• Capability to retroactively audit “wins” (e.g., comparing reported performance vs holdout benchmarks)

Good measurement is the line that ties spend to business outcomes with integrity. Without it, your media strategy is built on shifting sands.

Conversion & Growth Operations

This is where a paid media agency closes the loop between traffic and business results. In Conversion & Growth Operations, the focus shifts from “getting clicks” to “making those clicks profitable.”

It encompasses landing page optimization, funnel diagnostics, technical tracking, QA, and integration with sales or lead systems. It’s the glue that ensures media spend actually delivers incremental, measurable outcomes.

• Landing Page & Funnel Optimization (CRO): Agencies audit and iterate on landing pages—testing layouts, forms, navigation, button copy, and trust elements. The goal is to reduce friction and improve conversion rates for visitors already qualified by ad targeting.
• Technical Setup, Tagging & Analytics Integrity: Even the best funnel is useless without valid data. Agencies manage pixel setup, server-side tagging, conversion event validation, error tracking, and data consistency across platforms (e.g., Google Analytics, GA4, data layers, CRM connection).
• Funnel Diagnostics & Drop-Off Analysis: Using session recordings, heatmaps, analytics funnels, and cohort metrics, agencies identify where users abandon (e.g., form fields, checkout steps). They then design experiments to close those leaks—whether in onboarding, payment, or cart abandonment.
• Integration with Sales & CRM Systems: To truly align media to business, agencies integrate lead or order systems with ad platforms. That ensures conversion signals aren't just superficial (e.g., lead form) but tied to downstream outcomes (e.g., sale, contract).
• Ongoing Monitoring & Alerts: Real-time dashboards, anomaly detection, and alerting help guardrails catch data breaks, performance drifts, or tracking failures. This ensures the funnel remains healthy, not just at launch.

Case Example: Fullmoon Digital — CRO Transformation for Ecommerce

Fullmoon Digital, a CRO-focused agency, landed a project where an e-commerce site’s cart conversion rate was stuck below 0.3%. Over a multi-week intervention, Fullmoon applied a structured diagnostic approach and incremental testing to lift performance.

They tested headline changes, form simplification, urgency messaging, and flow reordering. Their interventions moved the cart conversion rate from 0.3% to 1.9%, improving checkout completion and revenue yield. 

What this example illustrates: small tweaks to funnel logic, user flows, and page elements can unlock levers of growth that far exceed marginal gains in ad efficiency.

Another CRO showcase comes from HawkSEM, where one such lift project included:

• A 250% increase in conversions (for a mortgage client) through multi-step form redesigns and clearer messaging
• A 75% increase in sales demos for a software business via call-to-action and navigation simplification

These demonstrate that conversion operations are not “nice-to-have” extras—they’re often the highest-leverage area for extracting more from existing media spend.

Why This Area Separates Top Agencies

Many media agencies treat creative and buying as siloed functions—but Conversion & Growth Ops is where winners integrate media, UX, analytics, and operations into a unified system. This discipline reduces wasted clicks, supports scalability, and ensures spend uplifts cascade down the funnel.

Red flags to watch for when evaluating an agency’s conversion ops capability:

• They lack a standard audit framework (funnel maps, heatmap sessions, drop-off reporting).
• Their technical setup is opaque (no tag QA, no server-side options, no error monitoring).
• They don’t tie leads to downstream business results (i.e., disconnected from CRM or sales).
• They don’t run incremental testing over time—they launch and forget funnels.
• They lack alerting and monitoring to catch broken pages or data gaps mid-flight.

If you’re comparing agencies, request a sample CRO audit report and funnel map, ask for before/after conversion lifts, and demand clarity on how technical tracking is maintained.

Governance, Brand Safety & Compliance

Paid media agencies don’t just optimize for clicks—they also protect brand reputation, ensure campaigns meet regulatory standards, and guard against fraud. As ad platforms and regulators tighten rules, governance and safety have become a core service pillar that brands cannot ignore.

Brand Safety & Suitability Frameworks

Agencies implement pre-bid and post-bid filters to prevent ads from appearing alongside harmful or misaligned content. This often includes:

• Pre-bid controls: Excluding categories (e.g., violence, hate speech, misinformation) using programmatic tools and publisher blocklists.
• Post-bid monitoring: Tracking live placements, reporting violations, and dynamically updating exclusion lists.
• Suitability tiers: Adjusting tolerance by brand (e.g., a toy company demands stricter filters than a fashion retailer).

Agencies also monitor contextual signals—ensuring an ad for a wellness brand doesn’t appear on controversial political content, for instance. The best partners tailor safety profiles to brand guidelines, balancing reach with protection.

Compliance With Regulations & Platform Policies

From GDPR to CCPA to the FTC’s influencer disclosure rules, agencies must help brands navigate a patchwork of compliance obligations.

Common services include:

• Consent management: Ensuring ad pixels and tags respect user consent preferences.
• Disclosure enforcement: Reviewing influencer and partner campaigns to ensure #ad and #sponsored tags comply with FTC/ASA rules.
• Geographic compliance: Adapting campaigns to local requirements, such as the UAE’s Media Regulatory Office approvals or EU data retention laws.
• Platform guardrails: Keeping campaigns within the evolving policies of Meta, Google, TikTok, and Amazon to avoid disapprovals or account suspensions.

Fraud Prevention & Verification

Invalid traffic (IVT) and click fraud erode ROI and trust. Agencies typically use third-party verification partners like DoubleVerify, IAS, or Moat to block fraudulent impressions, monitor viewability, and ensure traffic is human. For high-spend campaigns, fraud audits and forensic analysis are often included in service scopes.

Example: Publicis Media & NewsGuard — Fighting Misinformation

A relevant example is Publicis Media’s partnership with NewsGuard, which integrated NewsGuard’s trust ratings into programmatic buying systems. This allowed Publicis to avoid placing ads on misinformation sites while redirecting spend toward credible publishers. The framework helped clients reduce “inadvertent funding” of low-quality domains and reinforced brand trust.

Impact:

• Clients maintained broad reach without compromising brand safety.
• Campaign reports showed measurable decreases in impressions served on misinformation domains.
• Demonstrated to stakeholders that paid media spend aligned with corporate responsibility values.

This case underscores why governance is not an afterthought: it protects both financial and reputational capital.

Why This Service Matters

Without strong governance, a single misplaced ad can create reputational backlash, invite regulatory fines, or waste budget on fraudulent traffic. For brands, outsourcing this to an agency means benefiting from:

• Specialized safety tech (verification, consent tools, blocklists)
• Cross-market regulatory expertise
• Established escalation playbooks if violations occur
• Continuous monitoring to catch issues before they scale

When evaluating agencies, ask:

• How do you define and enforce brand safety thresholds?
• Which third-party partners do you use for verification and compliance?
• Can you share a past example where you prevented or responded to a compliance/safety incident?

Top agencies don’t just deliver performance—they safeguard the conditions under which performance can be sustained.

Turning Services Into Growth Engines

Paid media agencies today are more than buyers of impressions—they are architects of growth. From upfront audits and data activation, through channel execution, retail media, and creative production, to the guardrails of measurement and compliance, each service exists to reduce waste and maximize outcomes.

The best agencies connect these services into a single operating system: a strategy informed by data, executed with precision, optimized daily, and safeguarded against risk.

For brands and marketers, the takeaway is clear: when evaluating partners, don’t just ask “what platforms do you run?” Instead, look for proof across all eight service pillars—audits, data, execution, retail, creative, measurement, conversion, and governance.

That’s where you’ll find the agencies capable of not only delivering campaigns but driving sustained, measurable business growth.

About the Author

Kalin Anastasov

Writer

Kalin Anastasov plays a pivotal role as an content manager and editor at Influencer Marketing Hub. He expertly applies his SEO and content writing experience to enhance each piece, ensuring it aligns with our guidelines and delivers unmatched quality to our readers.