Paid Ad Account Health Checker

You should do a full account audit at minimum once per quarter. More frequently - monthly - if you are actively scaling spend, launching new campaigns, or if performance has shifted unexpectedly. An audit is especially important before increasing budget significantly, since structural problems that are tolerable at $5k/month become expensive at $50k/month. Think of it like an oil change: you do not wait until the engine fails.

The most common issues in Meta ad accounts are audience overlap between ad sets, too many ad sets splitting budget below the learning phase threshold, and tracking setup problems like missing purchase events or misconfigured conversion windows. On the creative side, most accounts run 1-2 ads when they should be running 4-6 per ad set to give the algorithm real options. Broad targeting with strong creative is consistently underutilized compared to over-segmented interest stacking.

The most common Google Ads issues are broad match keywords without negative keyword coverage, poor search term report hygiene, ad groups with too many unrelated keywords diluting Quality Score, and conversion tracking gaps. Smart Bidding strategies are often applied before the account has enough conversion data for them to work properly - typically you need at least 30-50 conversions per month per campaign before switching to a CPA or ROAS target.

Signs that account structure is hurting performance include: campaigns stuck in Learning or Learning Limited status for more than 7 days, ad sets spending under $5-10 per day, more than 5-7 active campaigns without clear objective separation, and budget fragmentation where no single campaign generates enough conversion signals. A good rule of thumb: each active ad set should be getting at least 50 conversion events per week for Smart Bidding to work properly.

Tracking is the feedback loop your ad platform uses to optimize delivery. If conversion events are misconfigured, firing multiple times, or not firing at all, the algorithm optimizes based on wrong signals. Common problems include double-counting purchases, attributing revenue to the wrong campaign due to overlapping attribution windows, and not passing conversion value data which prevents value-based bidding. Always cross-check your ad platform reported revenue against your actual CRM or Shopify revenue monthly.