Most campaign audits happen too late — after wasted spend, missed leads, or a client asking why results dropped. A proactive audit process changes that. Here's how to use Campaignly's audit tool to surface gaps before they become problems.
What the Audit Tool Actually Does
Campaignly's audit tool runs a structured diagnostic across your active campaigns — Google Ads, Meta Ads, and local SEO signals — and flags issues by category and severity. It's not just a health score. It produces a prioritized list of specific problems with context on why each one matters.
Think of it less like a report card and more like a checklist from someone who's reviewed thousands of campaigns. The output is actionable, not decorative.
The tool pulls live data from your connected accounts, so the audit reflects what's actually running — not cached snapshots. That matters when you're managing campaigns that change frequently.
Running Your First Audit
Start from the Campaigns dashboard. Select the client account you want to audit, then hit Run Audit in the top right. You can audit a single campaign or the full account — start with the full account if you haven't done this before.
The audit takes 60–90 seconds depending on account size. While it runs, you'll see it checking across several categories:
- Campaign structure — ad group organization, keyword grouping, match type distribution
- Bidding and budget — bid strategy alignment, budget pacing, impression share loss
- Ad creative — ad strength, missing headlines, RSA asset variety
- Audience and targeting — audience exclusions, location targeting, demographic gaps
- Tracking and conversion setup — tag health, conversion actions, attribution settings
- Local signals (if connected) — Google Business Profile completeness, review response rate, NAP consistency
Each category gets flagged as Good, Needs Attention, or Critical. Critical items are ones that are actively costing you — missing conversion tracking, campaigns running to the wrong location, zero impression share due to budget constraints.
Reading the Results Without Getting Overwhelmed
The audit will surface more than you expect the first time. That's normal. Don't try to fix everything at once.
Filter by Critical first. These are the campaign gaps that are bleeding performance right now. A common one: conversion tracking set to "every conversion" instead of "one per click" on lead gen forms — which inflates conversion counts and distorts your optimization signals.
Next, look at the Needs Attention flags. These are usually structural issues — things like all keywords in one ad group, broad match without Smart Bidding, or RSAs with fewer than five unique headlines. They're not emergencies, but they compound over time.
Each flagged item has an expand arrow. Click it and you get three things:
- What was found — the specific issue in plain language
- Why it matters — the downstream impact on performance
- What to do — a concrete fix, sometimes with a direct link to the relevant setting in your ad platform
That third piece is where Campaignly saves real time. You're not googling "how to fix impression share loss" — the answer is right there.
Turning Audit Results Into Client Conversations
The audit isn't just a tool for your own workflow — it's a client communication asset.
Export the audit report as a PDF from the top right of the results screen. The exported version is clean and readable — designed to share with a client, not just an internal team. It groups issues by category, uses plain language, and includes a summary section at the top showing the overall account health score and top three priority fixes.
Use this for onboarding new clients. Running an audit on their existing account during a sales conversation is one of the fastest ways to demonstrate expertise and build trust. You're showing them problems their current agency missed — with receipts.
For existing clients, build a monthly audit into your reporting rhythm. A quick audit before you send the monthly report catches anything that shifted during the month — bid strategy changes that silently switched, ad schedules that reset, budgets that hit limits without triggering alerts.
Common Gaps the Audit Catches That People Miss
A few patterns show up consistently across accounts:
Location targeting set to "presence or interest" instead of "presence only." This lets Google show your ads to people who are interested in your client's location but not physically there. For local businesses, this wastes budget on people who will never walk in or call.
Missing negative keywords at the campaign level. The audit checks whether your campaigns have any negatives applied and flags accounts running without them. For a plumber running broad or phrase match, this is critical — they're likely showing for job listings, DIY tutorials, and competitor brand searches.
Google Business Profile with unanswered reviews. If you have the local signals connection enabled, the audit picks this up. Review response rate affects local pack rankings, and most clients don't know that. It's an easy win to highlight.
Conversion actions that exist but aren't applied. This one is subtle — a conversion action is set up correctly in Google Ads, but it's not attached to any campaign. The audit flags orphaned conversion actions so you can actually use them.
Ad schedules running 24/7 without data to support it. If a client's business is only open Monday–Friday 9–5, running ads at 2am Saturday usually means wasted spend on leads nobody will answer. The audit cross-references business hours (pulled from GBP if connected) and flags the mismatch.
If you're managing more than two or three client accounts, running audits manually — even with a good checklist — is slow and inconsistent. Campaignly's audit tool makes it systematic.
Try the audit tool on your next client account at Campaignly — the first audit usually finds at least one issue worth fixing before your next report goes out.