SOP 124: Audit a Meta Ads Account
\nPerform an audit on your team or client’s ad account to reveal the low-hanging fruits and pave the way to a new media buying strategy.
\nLast Updated / Reviewed: 04/10/2025
\nExecution Time: 5-10 mins
\n🚀 Goal: To perform an audit on your team or client’s ad account to determine opportunities to improve and issues to fix.
\n🤞 Ideal Outcome: You will be able to determine what’s working and not working on the ad account and setting your next steps when you take over the account.
\n🤔 Why this is important: The results of this audit will get you acquainted with the ad account history, reveal the low-hanging fruits, and pave the way to a new media buying strategy.
\n🧐 Where this is done Inside Meta Business Suite.
\n🗓️ When this is done: After client onboarding and when the client has granted you access to their Meta Business Suite account. The result of this audit will set the foundation to your ad campaign strategy. In some cases, you may also offer the audit for free as part of the sales process/proposal.
\n👨 Who does this: The person responsible for media buying.
\n__⚠️Prerequisites or requirements: __You will need access to your client’s or your company’s Meta Business Suite and Ad Account.
\nClick here to get the most up-to-date version of this SOP
\nWhy this is important: This is so that the account is organized. Reporting and optimizing the campaigns will be less of a challenge in the future. Organizing the ad account will also improve your handover workflow in the future.
\nIdeal Outcome:
\nYou have the best Ad Account structure in place.
\nThe entire account follows a logical and accurate naming convention.
\nThe Meta Ad account should ideally follow the structure below:
\nAd Account — Each business or brand should have one ad account.
\nCampaign — Create at least one new campaign for each business objective.
\nExample:
\nSide Note: For a full rundown on how to structure an ad account, follow SOP 069: How to structure your Meta Ads Account (web version).
\nIn addition, check if the entire account follows a logical naming convention. Having a solid naming convention helps you easily identify campaigns, ad sets, and ads, which will save you time in the long run. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all naming convention, but generally, a good naming convention will help you identify it in a glance:
\nSide Note: For a full rundown on how to apply ad naming convention, follow SOP 073: How to define a naming convention to your Meta Ads Accounts and apply it efficiently (web version).
\nWhy this is important: Your ad account may be under or over-reporting, if the tracking pixel is not set up properly.
\nIdeal Outcome:
\nMake sure the Meta Pixel is installed and firing correctly:
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You can now view all the utm parameters for all the landing pages in the ad campaign.
\nMake sure all URLs include the appropriate UTM parameters, for example:
\nThis ensures your campaign performance can be accurately tracked in Google Analytics. Without UTM tracking validation, you might miss valuable data on where your traffic is coming from and how users interact with your site.
\nWhy? Meta requires verified domain ownership to help manage link editing privileges and ensure campaign attribution works correctly, especially for events using URL parameters.
\nDue to iOS 14 privacy changes, Meta limits data tracking unless conversion events are configured and prioritized. Without this setup, your campaigns may not optimize for the desired actions on your website.
\nWhy this is important: To identify suboptimal ad set targeting and find new audience opportunities to target.
\nIdeal Outcome:
\nBefore You Begin:
\nAre the audiences targeting the same demographic and interests as the customer persona?
\nIf the audience targeting doesn’t reflect the customer persona, check how it is performing (I.e. if the objective is revenue, check the return on ad spend (ROAS)), even though the audiences might not match the customer personas, they might be worth keeping, if they’re hitting your performance KPIs.
\nIf your KPI is the ROAS, you can check it by heading to the current account ad set.
\nRefer to the column “Website Purchase ROAS”.
\n\nHead to the current account ad set.
\nHover over the ad set name and click “Edit”.
\nNote: General rule of thumb for audience reach:
\nCheck if the current ad set or campaign structure differentiates targeting between cold and warm audiences. (Your ad sets should not mix cold and warm audiences)
\nFor step-by-step instructions on how to create cold and warm audiences, refer to SOP 074: How to select your Meta Ads Targeting (web version)
\nNote: You can check the audience targeting by referring to the \"Create new audience\" and \"Custom audiences\" section of the ad set setting.
\nIf it’s a cold ad set, make sure the targeting excludes existing customers so the ad budget is not wasted on them.
\nNote: Some ad sets DO NOT need to exclude customers. For example, a remarketing campaign to upsell would need to include existing customers in the targeting. It’s best to first check the name of the ad campaign to understand its objective before making significant changes to the ad set targeting.
\nWhy this is important: To identify suboptimal ad copy and creatives and to find new opportunities to improve on current ads.
\nIdeal Outcome:
\nCTA — Does each ad have a clear, distinct, and strong call to action?
\nExample:
\ni.e each ad can be differentiated via benefit, unique selling proposition (USP), pricing, audience, etc.
\nExample:
\nCheck if the ad messaging matches the landing page. For example, if the ad asks the user to sign up for a free e-book, then the landing page should reflect the same message.
\nCheck the quality ranking score for each ad. There are 5 possible values for the quality ranking score:
\nIdeally, the quality score should be at least average. If the ad scores are below average, refer to Meta guidelines on how to overcome a low ad quality score.
\nWhy this is important: This step is to help you identify low performing ad campaigns, ad sets, or ads which you can then consolidate or optimize for better results.
\nIdeal Outcome:
\nUsually, you would like to see most of the budget going towards the most profitable campaigns. If you have campaigns that are not performing well but a considerable budget is being delivered, it can indicate an opportunity for improvement.
\nNote: You should also perform this step at the Ad Set and Ad level (not just at the campaign level) to determine if the current budget has been optimally spent.
\nReview the current Cost per Result on Ad Sets. Which Ad Set brings you the lowest cost per conversion? Sort the Ad Sets by “Amount Spent” and determine which Ad Sets have the lowest cost per result and are making the most efficient use of the budget.
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