What a marketing economist costs

The question comes up consistently: what does this type of analysis cost?

The honest answer is: it depends on what you need. But there is a more useful way to frame the question. The cost of a marketing economics engagement is not a stand-alone number. It is a ratio. What does the analysis cost relative to what it is examining?

A business spending $10,000 per month on paid media is putting $120,000 per year into acquisition. If the acquisition model has a structural problem: a ROAS target set below margin breakeven, a campaign mix that is scaling unprofitable spend, an attribution model that is misrepresenting where conversions come from. That problem is compounding monthly. The analysis that finds it costs a fraction of one month's spend.

What the work actually involves

A marketing economics analysis is not a campaign audit in the sense of reviewing creative or checking bid strategies. The scope is the commercial model that the campaigns are feeding.

That means: CAC by channel against actual gross margin. Attribution quality: whether the conversion model reflects commercial reality or is a platform artifact. ROAS stability across time periods, spend levels, and campaign types. A scaling verdict: can the model support a budget increase, and if not, what needs to change first.

This is quantitative work. It requires access to revenue data, margin data, and the ad account. It takes time to build the models properly and to cross-reference platform data against the business's actual economics. A credible analysis cannot be done in a few hours.

The productized structure

The way I price this work is fixed and transparent, because variable pricing creates the wrong incentive. If the fee scales with the size of the engagement, there is pressure to expand the scope. Fixed pricing means the analysis is defined by what the business needs, not by what maximizes the invoice.

The Digital Economic Review covers the full commercial economics layer: CAC by channel, attribution quality, ROAS stability, and a scaling verdict. Priced at $999. Delivered in 5 to 7 business days. That is the entry point for a complete acquisition model analysis.

Individual channel audits sit below that. The Google Ads Audit covers a single account in depth: margin-adjusted ROAS by campaign type, spend allocation against unit economics, and a verdict on what the account is producing versus what the platform reports. $499. Three to five business days.

These prices are fixed because the scope is fixed. The deliverable is defined. There is no discovery phase that expands the fee.

The arithmetic of the decision

The question of whether a marketing economics analysis is worth the cost has a straightforward answer in most cases.

Take a business spending $8,000 per month on Google Ads. If 20% of that spend is in campaigns operating below margin-adjusted breakeven (conservative; in practice the figure is often higher), that is $1,600 per month going toward unprofitable acquisition. Over a year, $19,200.

The audit that finds this costs $499 in this scenario. The ratio is approximately 38:1 on the first year alone, assuming the finding is acted on. Even if the problem is half as large as that estimate, the ratio holds.

This is not a guarantee. The audit might find that the account is structurally sound and the economics hold. That is also a valuable result: it means the planned budget increase can proceed with confidence rather than on assumption.

In either case, the cost of the analysis is not the relevant number. The relevant number is the cost of not knowing.

What it is not

It is worth being direct about what this work does not include.

It is not ongoing management. The analysis is a diagnostic: a point-in-time economic assessment of the acquisition model. It does not include monthly reporting, campaign optimization, or account management. Those are separate services with separate pricing.

It is not a strategic recommendation in the brand or positioning sense. The frame is economic: are the unit economics sound, does the attribution reflect commercial reality, can the model scale. It does not cover brand strategy, content, or go-to-market positioning.

It is also not a substitute for campaign execution. If the audit finds that a campaign is structurally sound but poorly managed, the fix is execution improvement, not more analysis. The audit identifies where the constraint is. Acting on it is the business's decision.

The timing question

The most common context for this work is a business that is about to increase spend significantly, or one where the gap between platform metrics and P&L results has become hard to ignore.

Both of these represent the right time to run the analysis. Before a budget increase, because scaling a model that does not hold is the most expensive version of the mistake. After a divergence appears, because the platform data is not going to identify the cause on its own.

The analysis is faster and cheaper before the mistake compounds. Most businesses run it after.

The Digital Economic Review is the entry point for a complete acquisition model analysis: CAC by channel, attribution quality, ROAS stability, and a scaling verdict. $999, delivered in 5–7 business days. The Google Ads Audit covers a single account in depth. $499, 3–5 business days.