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Google Ads audit
A read of your Google Ads account by someone who does not manage it, does not bill a percentage of it, and has nothing to sell you afterwards. Search, Shopping, Demand Gen, and Performance Max, measured against thresholds I will show you.
Most Google Ads accounts I open are not badly managed. They're badly structured, and they've been badly structured for long enough that nobody remembers why. Campaigns were built for a business that has since changed. Performance Max absorbed budget that used to be visible. Conversion actions were set up by an agency that left in 2023, and nobody has checked whether they still fire.
None of that shows up in a monthly report, because a monthly report compares this month to last month. An audit compares your account to what it should look like.
What the audit covers
Five areas, in the order they usually produce findings:
1. Where the money actually goes
Spend broken down by campaign type, by brand and non-brand, and by new versus returning customers. This is the single most revealing view of a Google account, and it's the one most reports omit. If a large share of your budget is buying your own brand name, your reported ROAS is flattering and your growth number is not real.
2. Search term waste
Your search terms report against your negative keyword lists, looking for spend on queries that were never going to convert. Broad match and Performance Max both widen the net a long way past your intent, and the report only shows queries that cleared a privacy threshold, so the visible waste is a floor, not a total.
3. What Performance Max is doing
Asset group performance, brand exclusions, the new-customer setting, feed quality, and the split between Shopping inventory and everything else. Performance Max reports less than any campaign type Google has shipped, so the audit reconstructs its behaviour from the signals that are exposed rather than taking the summary at face value.
4. Bidding and budget mechanics
Target CPA and target ROAS values against actual delivery, bid strategy learning periods, budget caps that throttle campaigns before they finish learning, and portfolio strategies quietly competing with each other. Also whether anyone has changed a target recently, and what happened when they did.
5. Whether the conversions are real
Conversion action setup, primary versus secondary actions, double counting across Google Ads and GA4, attribution model, conversion lag against your reporting window, and enhanced conversions status. If this layer is wrong, every other number in the account is wrong too, which is why it gets checked even when the account looks healthy.
The 10-point checklist covers the checks you can do in 30 minutes with read-only access, including the thresholds that matter.
The thresholds I check against
An audit that says “frequency looks high” is an opinion. An audit that says “frequency is 6.2 against a 4.0 ceiling” is a finding. Every observation in the report carries the number, the threshold, and where you can see it yourself:
| What gets measured | Flagged when | Where you can see it |
|---|---|---|
| Brand share of search spend | Above 25% | Campaigns, segmented by brand and non-brand |
| Search term spend with no conversions, 90 days | Above 15% | Search terms report, 90 day window |
| Budget-limited campaigns | Any, for over 14 days | Campaign status column |
| Target CPA versus actual CPA | Variance above 30% | Bid strategy report |
| Duplicate conversion actions counting once | Any | Conversions, by action and source |
| Performance Max without brand exclusions | Any, on non-brand goals | Campaign settings, brand lists |
| Conversion lag beyond reporting window | Above 20% of conversions | Conversion lag report |
These are starting thresholds, not laws. A luxury retailer with a two-month consideration cycle should breach the conversion lag line, and a business with no non-brand presence yet will breach the brand share line for good reason. The report says which breaches matter for your business and which are noise, and that judgement is the part you are paying for.
What you receive
- One channel audited in depth
- Campaign structure, targeting, and bidding review
- Spend efficiency: CPA, ROAS, and frequency
- 10 to 15 page report, prioritised
- 30 minute debrief call
- Delivered in 5 business days
- Up to 3 channels
- Full funnel, prospecting to CRM audiences
- Creative breakdown by format and audience
- Attribution review: pixels, GA4, and events
- Competitor benchmarking via ad library
- 20 to 25 page report and action matrix
- 60 minute call, 2 week email follow-up
Both tiers are payable 30% upfront and 70% on delivery. If the audit finds nothing worth the fee, I will tell you that in the debrief rather than padding the report, and the larger engagement is available as a credit instead.
Who this is for
A good fit if
- You spend €5K or more a month on Google Ads
- An agency or in-house team runs the account, and you want a second read
- Reported ROAS looks strong but new customer growth has flattened
- You're about to renew a retainer or run an agency pitch
- Performance Max took over the account and visibility dropped
Not a good fit if
- You spend under €3K a month, where the checklist will serve you better
- You want someone to run the account, not review it
- You need the audit to justify a decision you've already made
- You can't grant read-only access to the account and analytics
Common questions
What access do you need?
Read-only is enough. You add my email as a read-only user in Google Ads, plus view access to GA4 and Merchant Center if you run Shopping. I never need edit rights and I never change a live account. Access can be revoked the day the report lands.
Can you audit Performance Max?
Yes, and it's usually where the largest findings sit. Performance Max reports less detail than any campaign type Google has shipped, so the audit reconstructs its behaviour from asset group performance, search term insights, brand exclusion settings, and the new-customer split rather than accepting the campaign summary.
How is this different from the audit my agency offers?
Your agency built the account it would be auditing, so a free agency audit is a sales document for the agency doing it. I hold no media budget, take no platform commission, and have nothing to sell you afterwards except a second audit. That's the whole product.
Do you implement the changes?
No. The audit ends with a prioritised action plan that your team or your agency executes. Staying out of implementation is what keeps the finding independent. If you want the changes tracked month to month, ongoing review is available separately.
Will my agency know I commissioned this?
Only if you tell them. Read-only access shows in the account's user list, so a diligent agency may notice. Many clients share the report with their agency deliberately, because a prioritised action plan is more useful to a good agency than it is threatening.
See what is actually in your Google Ads account
A free 30 minute call, no report and no obligation. Bring your last monthly report and I'll tell you what's missing from it.
Book a free discovery call Or email e.iek@mediaaudit.digital