Meta and Google Ads account audit: what we check

An ad audit is a breakdown of what the business is already paying for every day. We open up the Meta Ads and Google Ads accounts, pull 30–90 days of data, and answer three questions: why does a lead cost what it costs, how much could it cost on the same budget, and what exactly should change in the coming week.

This isn't a "good/bad" rating or a list of generic tips. What you get is a list of the errors we found, tied to specific campaigns and ad sets, a CPL forecast, and an order of actions. You can hand the findings to your own media buyer and owe us nothing — it's your document.

The audit is done by a team that runs campaigns hands-on every day: 4 years in performance marketing, 150+ completed projects, 40+ niches, $200K+ in ad budget under management. The agency's founder is Anton Tysiachnik. The full list of what we check is in the breakdown ad account audit: 15 checklist items.

We start with the skeleton: campaign goals, number of active ad sets, audience and query overlap, budget and bid settings. Most expensive leads are born here, not in the creatives. Next we look at conversion events — whether what the account counts as a lead is actually a lead for the business.

Meta and Google break in different ways, so the checklists for each are separate. In Meta, the most common issue is audience overlap and ad sets that never leave the learning phase. In Google, it's missing negative keywords and a search terms report nobody has opened in months.

• Campaign structure: are segments split apart or mixed into one ad set
• Optimization goal: leads and purchases, or clicks, views, "maximum impressions"
• Audiences and exclusions: cold, LAL, retargeting — are they competing against each other in the auction
• Events: pixel, Conversions API, duplicate conversions, offline import
• Creatives and ads: frequency, fatigue, number of active ad combinations
• Budgets and learning: does the daily budget give the ad set enough events
• Change history: who changed what and when in the account
• Access and permissions: who owns the account, the pixel, and the data

You can set up the ad account perfectly and still get expensive leads if traffic lands on the site's homepage. We check whether the ad's promise matches the first screen, mobile load speed, number of form fields, visibility of price and offer, and whether there's a dedicated landing page for each segment.

Next comes analytics: UTM tags, GA4, where leads actually came from, how many of them reached the CRM, and how many became customers. Without this layer, the contractor can't prove lead quality, and the owner can't tell expensive traffic apart from poor handling of leads in the sales department.

If it turns out the problem is the landing page itself, a quiz, or leads getting lost between Instagram and the CRM, that's a separate track with a separate team: InSync System. Within the ad audit, we flag the problem and show its impact on CPL, but we don't sell sites or automation here.

The typical causes repeat from account to account regardless of niche or budget. None of them require more ad spend — they're all fixes within the current budget. That's why an audit often has a faster effect than raising spend by 30%.

In the Poland recruiting case, the rebuild produced this dynamic: spend even went down (€507.74 → €483.00), while the cost per interview dropped from €56.42 to €43.91, a 22.2% drop. More on the mechanics of lowering cost in expensive leads: 9 ways to lower your cost per lead.

• The campaign is optimized for clicks or traffic, not for leads
• All segments in one ad set: urgent care, routine treatment, and cosmetic services lumped together
• Double pixel and duplicate events — the algorithm is learning from phantom conversions
• Cold audience, LAL, and retargeting aren't excluded from each other and are driving up the bid
• The ad set isn't getting enough events and sits in learning for months
• Creatives haven't changed in months: frequency climbs, CTR drops, CPM climbs
• Traffic goes to the homepage instead of a dedicated landing page for the offer
• No negative keywords in Google Ads — budget is being spent on informational queries
• Leads aren't logged anywhere, so real CPL and ROAS can't be calculated

First situation — the ads are already running, money is being spent, and leads are either expensive or off-target. Second — you're not sure about your contractor: reports come in as screenshots with impressions and reach, not with the cost per lead. Third — the account was performing well, then suddenly dropped, and the reason is unclear.

A separate scenario — before hiring a new media buyer or agency. The audit shows the account's real state before the handover, so the new contractor doesn't inherit someone else's mistakes or take credit for old results. For a DIY check, there's a list of questions: how to check a media buyer — 12 questions and a report.

An audit won't work if the account doesn't exist yet and ads have never run — there's no data to review. In that case, we put together a brief and a budget estimate: see Meta Ads management and Google Ads.

The audit takes 1–2 business days. You need to grant "analyst"-level access to the Meta and Google Ads account, access to GA4 if you have it, and 10 minutes for an intro call so we know your customer value and what counts as a target lead.

If you decide to work with us after the review, the standard launch process kicks in next. The first month is the most work-intensive: this is where the structure, events, and the first creative combinations get set up. First leads usually show up on day 1–3, a stable flow — on day 14–30.

The ad account audit is free. It's our entry point into working together: you see how a contractor thinks before handing over your budget, and we see whether there's material in the account to work with. No commitments or upfront payment for the review.

Ad management costs $450–700/mo depending on the scope of work and the number of channels (Meta only, or Meta + Google Ads). The ad budget is paid separately and starts at $600/mo — the minimum needed for the algorithm to learn and for the data to become statistically significant.

The full list of work formats and pricing is on the InSync marketing services page. If you only need one channel, see Meta ads management or Google Ads separately.

A Kyiv dental network with 3 branches, 10 months of work: separate campaigns for emergency care, scheduled treatment, and cosmetic dentistry, UTM tags fed into the CRM, retargeting of site visitors. Result — 6,780 leads at a CPL of $1.5 and a budget of $10,170, a 28% conversion rate into patients, 230% ROI.

Recruiting in Poland (Kraków, Warsaw), May → June 2026. In the first week, Meta ad accounts kept getting blocked — we switched account providers and warmed them up gradually. Swapping creatives and new offers raised the lead-to-interview conversion rate from 13.43% to 16.42%: CPL €7.58 → €7.21, cost per interview €56.42 → €43.91.

Auto Vibe, an auto business in Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk, May–June 2025: the goal was 20 leads a day at no more than $2.5. We got 632 leads at a CPL of $2.5 on a budget of $1,639.02, with a reach of 214,412, a CPM of $2.73, and a CTR of 1.69%. More results are in the case studies section.

A document and a call, not generic phrases. The document includes a list of the errors found, tied to specific campaigns and ad groups, a calculation of the current cost per lead, a realistic CPL benchmark for your niche and geo, a plan of fixes ranked by impact on results, and an assessment of what you can handle in-house.

Along with that, you get an answer to the main question: is the problem in the ad account, the landing page, the offer, or lead handling. These are four different diagnoses with four different fixes, and confusing them is the most expensive mistake an owner can make, because the budget ends up raised where it shouldn't be.

To get started, message us via the contact form or on Telegram — tell us your niche, geo, and current budget. We'll take a look at your account and work out what your CPL could be.