SOP 124: How to Audit a Facebook Ads Account

Goal: 
To perform an audit on your team or client’s ad account to determine opportunities to improve and issues to fix.

Ideal Outcome: 
You will be able to determine what’s working and not working on the ad account and setting your next steps for when you take over.

Prerequisites or requirements: 

You will need access to your client’s or your company Facebook Business Manager and ad account.

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.

Where this is done: 
Inside Facebook Business Manager.

When is this done: 
After client onboarding as long as the client has granted you access to their Facebook Business Manager 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.

Who does this: 
The person responsible for media buying.

Why this is important: So that the account is organized, that 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.

Ideal Outcome:

• You have the best Ad Account structure in place.
• The entire account follows a logical and accurate naming convention.

The Facebook Ad account should ideally follow the structure below:

Ad Account — Each business or brand should have one ad account.

Campaign — Create at least one new campaign for each business objective.

Example:

Campaign #1: Increase Brand Awareness

Campaign #2: Lead Generation

Campaign #3: Sales Promo

• Ad Set — Each ad set serves a specific audience or interest. Example:

Ad Set #1: Men who are interested in Nike.

Ad Set #1: Women who are interested in Nike.

• Ad — Each ad serves a different marketing angle or headline. Example:

  Ad #1: A $499 Parisian handbag for $59 - Check it out.

  Ad #2: Handmade Parisian handbag built with love <3 - Check it out.

Side Note: For a full rundown on how to structure an ad account, follow SOP 069 (web version): How to structure your Facebook Ad Account.

Check if the entire account follows a logical naming convention.

Having a solid naming convention helps you easily identify campaigns, ad sets and ads more easily 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 in a glance:

1. 1. • Campaign — What is the campaign about and its objective.

      • Adset — What is the target audience, device, and demographics.

      • Ad — What is the key messaging in this ad.

Side Note: For a full rundown on how to apply ad naming convention, follow SOP 073 (web version) - How to apply a naming convention to your Facebook Ads Account.

Why this is important: Your ad account may be under or over reporting if the tracking pixel is not set up properly.

Ideal Outcome:

• Facebook pixel is firing in the right pages and sending the right data.
• Destination URL’s UTM parameters are set up and are tracking properly.
• Domain ownership verified.
• Conversion events are set up, prioritized, and triggered accurately.

Make sure the Facebook Pixel is installed and firing correctly:

Install the Facebook Pixel Helper Chrome plugin.

Compile a list of URLs of the website you’re auditing:

• Home page
• Landing pages
• Sales pages
• Other relevant pages

For each URL on the list

Check if the Facebook Pixel is installed and firing correctly by following the “QA the Facebook Pixel” section: SOP 005 (web version): Install the Facebook Pixel on your site.

Check if the conversion tracking is set up correctly by following the “Check if conversions are tracking properly” section of SOP 017 (web version): Setting up Facebook Conversion Tracking.

Review UTM parameters:

Compile a list of all landing page URLs from your ads. You can export all the landing page URLs by

1. Log in to Ads Manager .

2. Select the campaign, click “Reports”, and click “Create Custom Report”.

3. On the right panel where you can customize the pivot table, insert “URL Parameters”.

You can now view all the utm parameters for all the landing pages in the ad campaign.

Make sure all URLs include the appropriate UTM parameters, example:

• utm_source=Facebook
• utm_medium=ppc
• utm_campaign=lead-generation

Check if they are being logged properly to Google Analytics by following the “Check your UTM URLs” section of: SOP 006 (web version): Creating UTM URLs to Track Your Campaigns.

Domain ownership verification

Make sure you have completed the domain ownership verification process by following SOP 097 (web version): Verifying ownership of your domain in Facebook Business Manager.

Conversion events prioritization

With the release of ios 14, you won’t be able to optimize your campaign unless Make sure the conversion events are set up. Follow SOP 098 (web version) if it’s not set up.

Why this is important: To identify suboptimal ad set targeting and find new audience opportunities to target.

Ideal Outcome:

• Identify audiences to keep or remove based on performance.
• Identify new cold or warm audiences to add to your strategy.

Request the customer persona deck from your marketing manager or the client for the current website.

Review the current audiences being targeted:

Are the audiences targeting the same demographic and interests as the customer persona?

If 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.

If your KPI is the ROAS you can check it by heading to the current account ad set .

Refer to the column “Website Purchase ROAS”

Check if the ad set audience reach is too broad or too narrow.

Head to the current account ad set .

Hover over the ad set name and click “Edit”

1. General rule of thumb for audience reach:

   Cold Audience: 200,000 to 5,000,000 people potential reach. Warm Audience: Depends on the list/pixel used to create the warm audience targeting.

   Review audience segmentation

   Check 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)

   Cold audience — Target people based on interest, demographics, location, and behaviour.

   Warm audience — Target people who have previously interacted with your website or brand.

   For step-by-step instructions on how to create cold and warm audiences, refer to SOP 074 (web version): How to select your Facebook Ads Targeting

   Note: You can check the audience targeting by referring to the audience section of the ad set setting.

 If it’s a Cold AdSet make sure the targeting excludes existing customers so the ad budget is not wasted on them.

Note: 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.

Why this is important: To identify suboptimal ad copy and creatives, and to find new opportunities to improve on current ads.

Ideal Outcome:

• Identify ads without distinct clear call to action
• Identify redundant ad/creatives to remove.
• Identify ads with mis-match landing page messaging.
• Identify ads with low quality scores and action steps to improve.

CTA — Does each ad have a clear, distinct, and strong call to action?

Example:

• • • Buy now and get 50% off

    • Limited time offer. Get your free ebook

    • Order a hand-made T-Shirt now.

Check if each ad has a unique marketing angle.

i.e Each ad can be differentiated via benefit, unique selling proposition (USP), pricing, audience etc.

Example:

• • • Sign up for a free ebook today.

    • Sign up for a limited-copy ebook today.

    • Get this ebook for just $5.99.

Check if the ad messaging matches the landing page. For example, if the ad asks the user to sign up for a free ebook, then the landing page should reflect the same messaging.

Check the quality ranking score for each ad. There are 5 possible values for the quality ranking score:

• • • • Above Average

      • Average

      • Below Average (Bottom 35% of ads)

      • Below Average (Bottom 20% of ads)

      • Below Average (Bottom 10% of ads)

Ideally the quality score should be at least average. If the ad scores are below average, refer to Facebook guidelines on how to overcome low ad quality score.

Why 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.

Ideal Outcome:

• Identify Campaigns, Ad Sets, and Ads with the lowest performance (high CPA, low ROAS, low conversions, etc)
• Create a plan to lift results.

Review current Ad Spend distribution by sorting the campaigns by “Amount Spent” and identify the high-spending campaigns along with their return on ad spend (ROAS) or Cost per Action (CPA).

Usually 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.

Note: 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.

Review 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.

Action steps you can take based on your findings:

• • Reduce budget / pause Campaigns, AdSets or Ads that have a subpar performance.

  • Divert budget from Campaigns, Ad Sets or Ads that are not performing to ads that seem to be performing better.

  • Gradually increase the budget for Campaigns, Ad Sets, or Ads that seem to be performing above your target.

  • Consolidate Campaigns or Ad Sets that are performing well. You can do that by creating a new Campaign or Ad Set that incorporates the audiences, budget and distinct creative from the ones that that you want to consolidate.

  • Alternatively, you can also run a Split tests on the best performing Ad sets / Campaigns.