The ad account audit checklist
Every agency transition involves an audit, and most of them start in the wrong place. Start with whether the numbers are real.
Audit in this order: conversion tracking first, because everything downstream depends on it, then wasted spend, then structure, then creative supply, then the reporting itself. Most accounts have a tracking problem that invalidates the rest of the analysis.
Run this before you take over an account, before you brief a new agency, and once a year on your own account whoever is running it.
1. Tracking, before anything else
Which conversions are counted, how they are defined, and whether duplicates exist. Compare platform-reported conversions against the finance system for one month. A twenty percent gap is normal. A gap nobody can explain means the rest of the audit is guesswork. The method is in a GA4 setup that survives scrutiny.
2. Waste
Search terms with spend and no conversions over ninety days. Placements on display that nobody would choose deliberately. Audiences overlapping so you bid against yourself. Geography spending outside the markets you serve. This is usually where the first ten percent of savings sits.
3. Structure
Brand separated from non-brand. Budgets matched to intent. Campaign count justified. Automated campaign types examined rather than trusted.
4. Creative supply
How many distinct concepts ran in the last quarter, and how often assets were refreshed. An account running the same three assets for six months is not being managed, it is being maintained.
5. The reporting
Ask to see the last three monthly reports. If every one opens with a win and none names something that failed, you are reading advocacy rather than analysis. That tells you more about the relationship than any metric in the account.
What a good audit produces
Three numbers you can act on, a list of things to stop, and a written statement of what the account would need to look like to be judged fairly in ninety days. Not forty slides.
Questions we get asked
What should a paid media audit cover first?
Conversion tracking. If the measurement is wrong, every conclusion drawn from the account is wrong with it.
How often should we audit our own ad accounts?
Annually at minimum, and always at an agency transition or a significant budget change.
Start with a Growth Audit
Every Colleviate engagement begins with an outside-in read of your brand and its competitive cluster, before we recommend a single line of spend.
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