An ad account audit does not need special tools. This is the sequence we work through on every account we take over, roughly in order of how often each check turns something up.
Start every ad account audit with measurement
1. Compare platform conversions against your own records. Same window, same dates. If the platforms report more than your back end recorded, something is double-counting. If far fewer, something is being lost. Everything downstream of this is unreliable until it reconciles.
2. Check which conversion actions are primary. A phone call, a form fill and a thank-you page view from the same person counted three times makes an account look twice as good as it is.
3. Look at event match quality. In Meta's events manager. A Conversions API that is connected but matching poorly shows a reassuring green tick and does very little.
4. Find out when the consent banner last changed. Ask the web team and the legal team separately. A banner update is invisible to everyone except your bidding.
Then where the money goes
5. Read the search terms report. Last thirty days, sorted by spend. Every account has queries in there you would never choose. This is the highest-return hour in Google Ads and the first thing that stops when an account is on autopilot.
6. Split branded from non-branded. If they are in one report, your cost per acquisition is being flattered by people who were already looking for you.
7. Check Performance Max for brand exclusions. Without them it absorbs demand you already had and reports it as new business.
8. Check your geography. Radius targeting routinely includes places you do not serve. Those clicks convert into enquiries you decline, so they never look like a problem.
An error that makes the numbers look worse gets investigated in a week. One that makes them look better can run for a year.
Then structure
9. Count your ad sets and divide. Monthly budget ÷ cost per conversion ÷ number of ad sets ÷ 4.3. If that is under about fifty, every ad set is stuck in learning. The learning phase calculator does it for you.
10. Check the change history. Daily edits mean the account never settles. Look for someone adjusting budgets every morning.
Then creative
11. Count genuinely distinct concepts. Not variants. If three ideas have been running for four months, you have a fatigue problem whatever the numbers say.
12. Check frequency against click-through. Rising frequency with falling click-through and climbing cost per result is fatigue. One of the three on its own is noise.
Two more worth doing once a quarter
13. Open the account on a phone. Click your own ad, on mobile data rather than office wifi, and go through the whole journey to the point of enquiry. Most people running an account have never done this. It finds landing page problems no report will show you.
14. Read twenty call recordings or lead records. If you capture calls, listen to twenty. If you capture forms, read twenty. You will find at least one keyword producing enquiries you cannot serve, and usually one service people keep asking for that you do not advertise.
What to do with what you find
Fix measurement before anything else — optimising on bad data is worse than not optimising. Then waste. Then structure, once, with the reasoning written down. Creative last, because it is the slowest to change and the easiest to blame.
If you want the shorter version to work through first, ten places budget leaks covers what turns up most often. An audit is also the best possible substitute for a pitch — asking shortlisted agencies for one tells you more than a presentation.
If you would rather have someone else do this and write it up, the audit is free and yours to keep whether or not you work with us.
Questions people ask
How often should I audit my ad account?
A full pass each quarter, and a short one whenever something changes sharply. The quarterly pass catches drift; the short one catches whatever just broke.
What is the first thing to check?
Whether conversions are counted correctly. Every other number in the account is derived from that one, so an audit that starts anywhere else is measuring against a figure it has not verified.
Can I audit my own account without being a media buyer?
Most of it, yes. Search terms, placements, geography, duplicated conversions and unfollowed leads are all readable by anyone willing to look. The judgement calls about structure and bidding are where experience starts to matter.
What usually turns up?
Search terms nobody would want, placements nobody chose, conversions counted twice, geography outside the service area, and creative that stopped working months ago and was never switched off.