You don't need a week and an agency to find out whether an ad account is healthy. In one focused hour you can spot most of the money leaks, and the fixes are usually simple. Here's the order we work in, and why.

Minutes 0–15: Tracking first

Every other number in the account depends on this, so check it before anything else.

• What counts as a conversion? Open the conversion settings and list every action being counted. Page views, button clicks and "time on site" are not business results.
• Which conversions drive bidding? Automated bidding chases whatever is marked as primary. If soft actions are primary, the platform is buying cheap, useless traffic.
• Do the numbers match reality? Compare last month's conversions in the platform with what the business actually received: leads in the CRM, orders, calls. A big gap means you can't trust any decision built on this data.

Minutes 15–30: Structure and budget

• How many campaigns and ad sets are running? Too many small ones split the budget so thinly that none of them learns properly.
• Where is the money actually going? Sort campaigns by spend. Most accounts have one or two campaigns eating budget with weak results.
• Is anything limited or stuck in learning? Campaigns that never leave learning usually need more budget, fewer splits or a simpler goal.

Minutes 30–45: Searches and audiences

This is where wasted spend hides.

• Google: read the search terms report. Sort by cost. You'll almost always find irrelevant searches you're paying for. Add them as negatives.
• Meta: check audience overlap and exclusions. Are existing customers being targeted with acquisition ads? Are several ad sets competing for the same people?
• Location and schedule. Is the ad showing in places or at times you can't serve?

Minutes 45–60: Creative and landing pages

• How old are the ads? Ads tire. If the best-performing ad has run for months unchanged, results are likely sliding.
• Are there genuinely different angles? Five versions of the same message is one test, not five.
• Open every landing page on your phone. Slow pages, broken forms and confusing next steps quietly kill good ads.

What to do with what you find

Write every issue down, then sort it into three groups:

1. Fix today: wrong conversions, obvious wasted searches, broken pages.
2. Test next: new creative angles, simpler structure, budget shifts.
3. Watch: things that look odd but need more data.

Most accounts improve quickly once the fix-today list is done, because the platform is finally optimising towards the right thing.

Want a second pair of eyes?

This audit is the starting point of every Signal & Skill engagement. If your team wants to learn to run it properly, on your own accounts, that's exactly what our team training covers.