Where does your ad spend leak?
Pick your industry, enter your monthly spend, and see what published cost per lead benchmarks say that budget should be producing. Everything below is an estimate from industry medians, not a promise about your account.
The calculator
Run your numbers
Median CPL for Home services: $91. Published industry survey figure.
Add this to compare your implied CPL against the industry median.
Live readout
Expected leads at the industry median
110/ mo
Estimate: $10,000 spend at the published $91 median CPL
Your implied cost per lead
Enter current leads to compare
Optional field on the left unlocks this gauge
Spend above the published median, from your numbers
$0/ mo
Your spend minus your reported leads valued at the published median CPL. Shows nothing until you enter a lead count
All medians come from the WordStream 2026 Google Ads Benchmarks: 13,474 US search campaigns, April 2025 to March 2026. Everything else on this page is computed from the numbers you entered. Your account, offer, and market will differ. Nothing here is a performance promise.
Beyond the ad account
Where the leak usually starts
The math above only looks at the ad account. In practice, wasted spend is usually the symptom of something upstream or downstream of it: data you cannot trust, demand that never reaches your ad, or a page and a follow-up that lose the visit after you paid for it. Here is what a full stack program checks, and the page that explains each one.
- Analytics and trackingIf conversion events misfire, double count, or never fire, every number above is being measured against bad data.
- Paid mediaBudget sitting in campaigns, placements, audiences, and search terms that have not produced a lead.
- SEOPaying for clicks on terms the site could be earning organically instead of renting month after month.
- AI search (AEO and GEO)Buyers who ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, or AI Overviews first. If you are not cited in those answers, the ad never gets a turn.
- Local and MapsNearby searches that get decided in the map pack and the Google Business Profile, not in the ad auction.
- CRO and landing pagesPaid clicks landing on a page that was never built for that offer, that audience, or that device.
- CreativeThe same hooks running until frequency climbs and cost per lead drifts with it, with nothing new queued to test.
- Email and SMSLeads and past customers you already paid to acquire, sitting in a list nobody contacts again.
- ReputationReview counts, ratings, and unanswered complaints that decide the click after your ad has already been paid for.
- Web design and speedSlow, unstable, or hard to use pages that lose visitors before they ever see the offer.
Which of these apply to you depends on your account, your market, and your offer. The free growth plan is where we check them against your real numbers and say which ones we would fix first, and in what order. It is a plan, not a performance promise.
Next steps
What closes the gap
The gap between your numbers and the median is rarely one big mistake. It is usually three fixable systems, and all three are covered in the free growth plan.
01
Tracking verification
Most waste hides behind conversion events that misfire or double count. Every pixel and event gets verified or rebuilt before budget decisions are trusted, which is why the free growth plan starts with a tracking audit.
Start with the tracking audit02
Budget reallocation
Once the numbers are honest, spend moves weekly from losing campaigns to proven winners. The free growth plan includes a 90 day media plan showing where your budget would go first.
See the 90 day media plan03
Creative testing
Cost per lead rarely drops without new hooks and angles tested in structured batches. The competitor teardown in the free growth plan maps the angles already working in your market.
Get the competitor teardownNone of that requires hiring anybody. The measurement half of it is the work described in conversion tracking we have verified ourselves, and the specific ways a conversion number stops being true, most of which you can check yourself in an afternoon, are catalogued in the eight ways tracking quietly breaks.
If you do want it run for you, what that costs is on the published pricing page, what you would get shown every week is on how we report and how you verify it, and the terms you would start under are in the trial and money-back terms. Nothing you have typed above is sent anywhere; the arithmetic runs in your browser and is discarded when you close the tab.
Turn the estimate into a plan.
The free growth plan replaces benchmark math with your real numbers: competitor teardown, tracking audit, and a 90 day media plan.