Before you hire an agency, let one go or take your ads back in-house, you need to know what state the account is in. Not whether last month was good, but whether the foundations are sound: who owns the account, whether the numbers tell the truth, and whether anyone is making decisions. This 35-point checklist covers a one-off audit in seven areas, with what good and bad look like for each.
- An audit is a one-off look at the whole account before a big decision. A health check is the short routine you run every week after that.
- Start with ownership and tracking. If you don't own the account, or the numbers are wrong, nothing else in the audit can be trusted.
- Then check structure, audiences, creative, budget and reporting.
- You need admin access to Ads Manager, Events Manager and your business portfolio settings, and about an afternoon.
- A tidy account can still lose money. Judge the result on cost per customer against what a customer is worth.
An audit is not a health check
Our weekly Facebook ads health check is a 20-minute routine: is the tracking still firing, which ad sets are spending without results, is the creative wearing out. It assumes the setup is right. An audit tests that assumption. You run it once, when something big is about to change, and it looks at the things a weekly check never touches, like who owns the account and how the tracking was built.
| One-off audit | Weekly health check | |
|---|---|---|
| When | Before you hire, fire or take over | Every week |
| Time | About an afternoon | About 20 minutes |
| Looks at | Ownership, tracking setup, structure, audiences, creative, budget and reporting | Tracking still firing, spend against results, fatigue, overlap and the landing page |
| Output | A list of what's wrong, most expensive first | One change for the week |
Work through the seven areas in order. Each item is something you can check yourself with admin access.
1. Account and ownership
- The ad account, the Pixel and its dataset, the Facebook Page and the Instagram account all sit in your own Meta business portfolio. Meta keeps an ad account in the portfolio it was created in, and a dataset can't be transferred, so this decides what you keep if you ever leave.
- At least two people in your business have full control of the portfolio. Meta recommends two active people, so one lost login can't lock you out.
- Agencies and freelancers are added as partners, with the access they need, rather than as individuals you can't see.
- Nobody has access who shouldn't: former staff, old suppliers, or people who haven't logged in for 90 days, which Meta's security guidance says to remove.
- Ad spend is billed to your own payment method, so you see exactly what Meta charged.
2. Tracking: Pixel, Conversions API and event quality
- The events that matter, a lead, a booking or a purchase, fire once for each real action. Submit a test and watch it arrive in Events Manager.
- The Conversions API sends the same events from your server, with a matching event ID, so Meta counts each one once instead of twice.
- Server events cover most of what the Pixel sees. Meta suggests Conversions API events should reach 75% of Pixel events, a ratio it calls event coverage.
- Event Match Quality is checked. Meta scores each server event from 0 to 10 on the customer information sent with it, and email and click ID count most.
- Purchases and bookings are sent when the payment or booking is confirmed, not from a page load, and carry a value so Meta can report return on ad spend.
- Campaign tags and ad click IDs are saved on every lead and order, so you can match customers back to ads.
3. Campaign structure
- Every campaign optimizes for what you sell, a lead, a booking or a purchase, not clicks, reach or engagement.
- Ad sets aren't stuck in Learning limited, the status Meta gives ad sets unlikely to get about 50 optimization events in the week after a significant edit.
- Similar ad sets are combined rather than split thin. Meta's own advice is to avoid high ad volumes and combine similar ad sets.
- Locations or offers with different economics have their own campaigns, so a weak one can't hide inside a blended number.
- The account's activity history shows real decisions in the last month, not a campaign left alone for a year.
4. Audiences
- Hard limits, such as location and minimum age, are set as audience controls, with everything else left as suggestions, as Meta's guide to audience controls and suggestions explains.
- Existing customers are excluded where you only want new ones. In Advantage+ audience, custom audience exclusions always work as controls.
- Ad sets aren't competing for the same people. When they would, Meta enters only one in the auction; its overlap tool compares up to five audiences.
- Customer lists and website audiences are current, and built in your own ad account rather than shared from someone else's.
5. Creative
- New ads have launched in the last 90 days. A handful in a year means nobody is testing.
- Results are read ad by ad, not just by ad set, and the winners are feeding the next batch.
- Frequency and click-through rate are watched for signs that an ad is wearing out.
- Underperforming ads are checked against Meta's ad relevance diagnostics, which only appear once an ad has 500 impressions.
- The ad's promise matches the landing page or form it sends people to.
6. Budget and bidding
- Budget sits with what produces results. Sort by amount spent and check the cost per result of each campaign and ad set.
- Each ad set has enough budget to reach about 50 results a week, or the structure has been consolidated so it can.
- Budgets change in steps, not leaps. Meta says a large budget change can send ad sets back into the learning phase.
- Cost or bid controls, if used, aren't set so low that the ads barely deliver.
- Someone knows your break-even return on ad spend, so the budget is judged against your margin.
7. Reporting
- The report leads with leads, bookings or sales, and what each one cost.
- The attribution setting is stated and kept the same month to month. Ads Manager can compare settings side by side, from 1-day view to 28-day click.
- Ads Manager's numbers are checked against your CRM, booking system or bank for the same months.
- You can export the history yourself. Ads Manager's reporting window reaches back 37 months.
- Instant-form leads sync to your CRM or email, because Meta only keeps them downloadable for 90 days.
What good and bad look like
| Area | Good | Bad |
|---|---|---|
| Ownership | Everything in your portfolio, two people with full control, agencies as partners | The ad account or Pixel in the agency's portfolio, or one person holding every login |
| Tracking | Pixel and Conversions API, deduplicated, matching your own sales | Leads or sales counted twice, or far more than you can find |
| Structure | A few campaigns, each optimizing for a sale or lead, with recent changes | Engagement or traffic campaigns, Learning limited everywhere, nothing changed in months |
| Audiences | Broad, with hard limits as controls and customers excluded | Many small overlapping ad sets competing for the same people |
| Creative | New ads every few weeks, read ad by ad | The same few ads for months, with frequency climbing |
| Budget | Concentrated on what works, changed in steps | Spread thin, or a big increase after every dip |
| Reporting | Cost per lead or sale, one attribution setting, checked against your books | Reach, impressions and engagement as the headline |
Our audit standard, built on the Meta guidance linked in each section above.
What an audit can't tell you
When we took over a two-site climbing gym's Meta ads from another agency, the setup side of this list would have passed. The tracking worked and the campaigns were optimizing for sales. Everything a checklist would look for was in place. What failed was the decision-making: one always-on sales campaign, with 16 ads in total, had long since stopped learning and was returning £0.82 for every £1 spent.
Eight months after we took it on, the account returns £2.99, on a third less spend. That's why the structure and creative sections ask about dates and counts, not just settings. An audit tells you whether an account can work. Someone making decisions every week is what makes it work, and the health check is how you see whether that's happening.
What to do with the results
Fix ownership and tracking first, because every other number depends on them. Then rank the rest by what it's costing you. If the audit points at your agency, raise it with them before anything else: seven signs your ads agency is wasting your budget shows how to have that conversation. If you've already decided to move, how to switch Facebook ads agency without losing your data covers the handover, and the audit becomes the baseline you judge the next agency against. If the Conversions API is missing altogether, start with our Conversions API setup guide.
Questions people ask
What is a Facebook ads audit?
A one-off review of a whole ad account: who owns it, whether the tracking is accurate, how the campaigns are structured, which audiences and creative are running, where the budget goes, and what the reports show. It tells you whether the account can work before you make a decision about who runs it.
How often should I audit my Facebook ad account?
In full, before a big decision, such as hiring an agency, letting one go or taking the account back, and about once a year otherwise. Week to week, a short health check is enough.
How long does a Facebook ads audit take?
About an afternoon for a small account, if you have admin access to Ads Manager, Events Manager and your business portfolio settings. Testing tracking on the website can add time.
Can I audit my account without admin access?
Only partly. You can read the campaigns and results with lower access, but checking ownership, partners and Events Manager needs full control of your business portfolio. If an agency won't give you that for your own account, that's a finding in itself.
What's the most common problem an audit finds?
In the accounts we see, broken or double-counted tracking and an account nobody has changed in months come up most. The first makes every number unreliable, and the second loses money slowly enough that no single month looks bad.
Does a clean audit mean my ads are working?
No. An audit checks the foundations. In the account behind our handover case study, everything a checklist would look for was in place, and the sales campaign was still returning £0.82 for every £1 spent. Judge results on cost per customer against what a customer is worth.
Who are you not the right fit for?
We're not the right fit if you're looking for the lowest price, if your offer hasn't sold yet without ads, or if you can't commit a real ad budget alongside the fee. We'll tell you that on the first call.
Want a second pair of eyes on your account? Book a strategy call and we'll go through the checklist with you, inside your own account.
