How to audit your own ad account in 30 minutes
Assessing an ad account does not require a specialist. Check five things: which event campaigns optimise for, whether conversions are counted truthfully, how many hypotheses were tested last quarter, where most of the budget goes, and whether the account's numbers match your own sales sheet.
Step 1. The optimisation event
Open ad set settings and find what the campaign optimises towards. For a business with sales, purchase or qualified lead are reasonable. Clicks, landing page views, reach or engagement are warning signs. If you see the latter, nothing else needs checking: money is buying metrics rather than customers.
Step 2. Whether conversions are counted truthfully
Compare last month's conversions in the account against actual orders in your own system. A 10 to 20 percent gap is normal attribution noise. A gap of several times over means tracking is broken, and every decision made on that data was made blind.
One event counted twice, or a tag firing on every step of a form. The account shows 200 conversions, reality holds 40. The algorithm then optimises on invented data and budget shifts towards campaigns that delivered nothing.
Step 3. How many hypotheses were tested
Open the ads tab for the last three months and count unique creatives and unique audiences. If the same set ran all quarter, the account is being watched rather than managed. For a small budget, a few new hypotheses a month is the working norm, and most of them should fail, because that is what testing means.
Step 4. Where the budget goes
Sort campaigns by spend. Healthy: most money in two or three combinations that deliver, the rest in tests. Unhealthy: an even split across ten campaigns, or the bulk of spend in a campaign without a single conversion.
Step 5. Reconcile against revenue
Take monthly spend from the account and the number of customers that month from your own sheet. Divide one by the other. That is your real cost per customer. Compare it with gross profit per customer. If profit is lower than cost, the advertising runs at a loss no matter how good the report looks.
FAQ
Can I audit without admin rights?
Yes, view access is enough. All five checks are read-only. If you are denied even view access to your own account, that answers the transparency question by itself.
What gap between the account and real sales is acceptable?
Up to 10-20 percent, from differing attribution models and conversion windows. A two or threefold gap means tracking is misconfigured.
How many creatives should run at once?
On a small budget, three to five active plus one or two in testing. More dilutes the data; fewer means no testing is happening.
Find out where your budget leaks
Free 30-minute audit. You leave with a verdict and three steps, even if we never work together.
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