The Oversight Decay Rate

Oversight Decay Rate is the speed at which an unmanaged ad account loses structural integrity: wasted spend accumulates, disapproved ads pile up, tracking breaks, and budget pacing drifts. The framework treats management frequency as a decay variable, not a service level. Accounts touched weekly decay slowly; accounts left alone for two weeks show measurable drift before anyone notices. For agencies, this reframes the retainer conversation. Native platform automation absorbs bidding and budget rules, but it does not replace the human who spots a broken conversion tag or a landing page that stopped converting. A practical test: flag every client account with no structural change in the past 14 days for immediate review, then price the retainer against the oversight cadence the account actually needs. Tools like Adalysis and Optmyzr surface the decay signals through audit checks and alert rules, but the cadence decision stays with the agency.