A Facebook ads audit checks six things in order: tracking, account structure, audiences, creatives, budgets and results. Start with tracking, if conversions aren’t recorded correctly, every other number is misleading. Then hunt for the usual leaks: overlapping ad sets, tired creatives, buyers who aren’t excluded and budgets spread too thin.
The 60-minute audit plan
| Minutes | Area | Goal |
|---|---|---|
| 0 to 10 | Tracking | Can Meta see your conversions correctly? |
| 10 to 20 | Structure | Is spend concentrated enough to learn? |
| 20 to 30 | Audiences | Are you reaching the right people without overlap? |
| 30 to 40 | Creatives | Are your ads fresh and on-brand? |
| 40 to 50 | Budgets & bidding | Is money going to what works? |
| 50 to 60 | Results & fix plan | What to fix first? |
1. Tracking (10 minutes)
- ☐ Pixel fires on key pages (view, add to cart, checkout, purchase / lead).
- ☐ Conversions API is set up and deduplicated with the Pixel (shared
event_id). - ☐ Event Match Quality is healthy for Purchase and Lead events.
- ☐ Ads Manager conversions roughly match your store or CRM.
Fix first if anything here is broken. Guide: Conversions API & Event Match Quality.
2. Account structure (10 minutes)
- ☐ Each campaign has one clear objective.
- ☐ No more ad sets than your budget can feed, each needs enough conversions to exit learning (Meta cites about 50 optimisation events in 7 days).
- ☐ Naming is consistent so you can read reports quickly.
- ☐ Old, paused clutter is archived.
3. Audiences (10 minutes)
- ☐ No heavy overlap between ad sets competing for the same people.
- ☐ Purchasers and existing leads excluded from prospecting and retargeting.
- ☐ Retargeting split by recency (0 to 7, 8 to 30 days…).
- ☐ Audiences aren’t too small (high frequency) or stale.
4. Creatives (10 minutes)
- ☐ Each ad set has 3+ active creatives with different angles.
- ☐ Fatigue check: frequency rising + CTR falling + CPA rising on the same ad? Refresh it. (How to fix fatigue)
- ☐ Formats for every placement (1:1 or 4:5 feed, 9:16 Stories/Reels).
- ☐ No policy risks (restricted claims, before/after issues in sensitive categories).
5. Budgets & bidding (10 minutes)
- ☐ Budget concentrated on proven winners, not spread evenly.
- ☐ No ad set spending with zero results for days.
- ☐ Recent budget changes were gradual (around 20%), not huge jumps.
- ☐ Bid strategy matches the goal (lowest cost vs cost cap vs ROAS goal).
6. Results by objective (10 minutes)
Judge each campaign by the result it’s optimising for:
| Objective | Judge by |
|---|---|
| Sales | Purchases, ROAS, CPA |
| Leads | Leads, cost per lead, and lead quality |
| Engagement | Post engagements or messages |
| Awareness | Reach, cost per 1,000 people reached |
Then write a fix plan sorted by impact, and change one thing at a time.
Automate the audit with Spotnxt
Spotnxt’s AI Campaign Audit runs a full health check in about 60 seconds: summary, diagnosis, tracking, audience and creative review, a fix plan and a geography performance map. For a deeper look, the Forensic Audit marks every check as passed, needs attention or broken, with evidence, next steps and a downloadable report. And Campaign Overview shows the right number for each objective, never a fake “0 conversions” on a lead or engagement campaign.