Digital advertising is growing rapidly, but so are the inefficiencies that come with it. According to Grasp’s latest industry report, human error in digital media buying contributes to an estimated $23 billion in wasted ad spend each year. That’s nearly 4.5% of global digital media budgets lost to manual mistakes — and most of it is preventable.
The Hidden Cost of Fat-Finger Errors
From extra zeroes in campaign budgets to misapplied targeting, human errors are alarmingly common. Self-serve platforms like DV360, Meta, and TikTok empower buyers to launch quickly, but often without checks and balances. These slip-ups can result in overspending, missed performance goals, or brand safety violations — all of which chip away at both margins and client trust.
Why Agencies Are Absorbing the Damage
Many agencies report that they often quietly absorb the cost of these errors to protect relationships and retain business. But this isn’t scalable. The more errors made, the more time and budget goes into firefighting and fixing, leaving less time for value-adding work.
Time for a Preventive Approach
Rather than relying solely on reactive QA checks or post-campaign audits, agencies are turning to preventive quality assurance tools like Grasp. These platforms provide real-time guardrails to detect issues before a campaign goes live — from budget mismatches to missing naming conventions.
With over 400 automated QA rules and deep integrations across the media tech stack, Grasp enables teams to eliminate errors at the source. The result? Campaigns that go live right the first time, saving time, money, and team sanity.
Prevent mistakes before they happen. Learn how leading agencies are using preventive QA to protect revenue and reputation.
