You can audit your ad account in one hour by checking five things in order: who owns the account, whether measurement is right, who sees the ads, where the money goes, and whether ads match their pages. You do not need to be a specialist to find most big problems, since they usually sit in the basic settings and reports and not in fine detail.
Here you get 20 points for Google and Meta accounts, spread across an hour, then the order in which to fix things. Do not change anything during the audit. Take notes and decide when you finish, so you do not push campaigns back into learning by accident.
Before you start: ask for read-only access
If an outside party runs your account, ask for enough access to view it. Google has access levels including read-only, standard and admin. In Meta, permissions differ for people and partners on business assets. Prepare a sheet with a column for each point: fine, needs fixing, or don't know. "Don't know" is a finding in itself, since it is a question for whoever runs the account.
Part one: ownership and access, 10 minutes
| # | Point | Healthy state |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Account owner | The ad account is in your company's name, or under its business portfolio |
| 2 | Admin access | Someone in your company has real admin access |
| 3 | Payment method | In the company's name, with invoices visible on the platform itself |
| 4 | People and partners | No former employee or ended supplier remains |
| 5 | Measurement assets | The pixel, analytics account and GTM admin are under your company's control |
Google explains that an account a manager creates from a manager account is automatically under its ownership, though the account still owns its data and can unlink. Meta lets you give a partner full or partial access without moving the asset itself. Always start here, because everything else is lost if the relationship ends and the account goes with it.
Part two: measurement, 15 minutes
| # | Point | How to check |
|---|---|---|
| 6 | Conversion definition | The main conversion is a lead or sale, rather than a page view or button click |
| 7 | Conversion status | Review conversion setup in Google and pixel events in Meta, and confirm they are recording now |
| 8 | A test request | Send one from the page and confirm it shows on the platform and reaches sales |
| 9 | Duplicates | One lead is not counted twice through a refreshed thank-you page or a repeated tag |
| 10 | Comparison with reality | Compare last month's conversions with what your sales team recorded |
Point 10 reveals the most. If the platform says 200 leads and your team found 90, no budget decision will be sound until you understand the gap. The full setup list is in how to measure conversions after the privacy changes.
Part three: targeting, 10 minutes
| # | Point | What to look for |
|---|---|---|
| 11 | Location | In Google, the default includes people interested in the area as well as those in it, so review it if you serve one city |
| 12 | Search terms | Open the search terms report and look for phrases unrelated to your service |
| 13 | Negative keywords | Negative keywords exclude phrases such as "job" or "free" where they do not suit you |
| 14 | Audience overlap | In Meta, several ad sets do not compete for the same audience on small budgets |
Part four: spend, 15 minutes
| # | Point | What to look for |
|---|---|---|
| 15 | Spend concentration | Sort campaigns by spend for the last 30 days. Where does the most money go, and what did it produce? |
| 16 | Campaigns with no result | Campaigns, keywords or ads spending for a long time with no conversions |
| 17 | Learning limited | In Meta, an ad set is learning limited when unlikely to reach about 50 events a week after the last significant edit |
| 18 | Auto-apply | In Google, review recommendations applied automatically and make sure you know what they change |
Do not read thin data as failure. Google recommends judging Smart Bidding over periods with at least 30 conversions. A week and 5 conversions are not enough for a final verdict either way. How to work out the minimum per platform is in how to split your first ad budget.
Part five: ads and pages, 10 minutes
| # | Point | What to look for |
|---|---|---|
| 19 | Match | Open your three biggest ads on a phone. Does the page continue the ad's promise? See landing page sections |
| 20 | Ad variety | More than one message and angle, a recent date on the newest ad, and a closer look at ads unchanged for months |
The order in which to fix what you find
Do not fix everything together. Change several things at once and you will not know what made the difference, and you may push campaigns back into learning. Use this order:
- Ownership first. Fix it at once, since it does not affect campaign performance.
- Measurement second. Every later decision depends on it.
- Obvious waste. Unrelated keywords, areas you do not serve and campaigns spending with no result.
- The page and follow-up. If leads arrive and do not convert, go to why you get plenty of leads and few sales.
- Ads and tests. Once the numbers can be trusted.
Questions for whoever runs your account
- What conversion do you judge campaigns by, and why?
- Why does the platform's number differ from our sales number?
- What were your last three changes, and what happened?
- What do you plan to stop next month?
A good answer names figures and specific decisions. If you get no answers, or the person running the account refuses you view access, see red flags when hiring a marketing agency. To know what they should be providing anyway, see what media buying is and how it works.
Your next step
Book an hour this week, print the tables and start with part one. At the end, write down the three most important things to fix. If you want someone to review the result with you and run campaigns with a clear report, take a look at PlanKit's media buying service.