An audit that only looks at the ad account can only find problems in the ad account. In our experience the largest recoverable losses are usually somewhere else: a duplicate listing splitting reviews on a hero SKU, a reseller holding the buy box at 40% off, a forecast that puts your best product out of stock in week three of Q4.
Here is what we check, in the order we check it, and what each item is actually looking for.
1. The ad account
Start here, but do not stop here.
Campaign structure and spend
- Branded, non-branded and competitive spend separated and budgeted independently
- Match types split so keyword harvesting is actually possible
- Negatives maintained on a schedule, not dumped in once at launch
- Placement modifiers set from account data rather than category defaults
- Dayparting tested against actual conversion-by-hour
- Auto campaigns feeding manual ones, not competing with them
- Budget caps not silently throttling the best campaigns by mid-afternoon
- Sponsored Brands and Display running distinct roles, not duplicating Sponsored Products
The first item finds most of the money. When branded search is folded into a blended target, the account drifts toward buying back customers who were already yours. Split the three and the picture usually changes materially.
2. Conversion
Traffic is the expensive half. Conversion is the half nobody looks at.
Listings and content
- Conversion rate by SKU against category benchmark, not against last month
- Variation and parentage structure — is the range split across listings that should be merged?
- Duplicate listings under wrong UPCs, especially on hero SKUs
- Review count and rating trend per parent, and whether reviews are pooling correctly
- First three images carrying the argument, not just showing the product
- A+ or Premium A+ present on revenue-carrying SKUs
- Backend keywords populated and not duplicating the title
- Copy written for how retail search reads listings now, not keyword-stuffed
Merging a split range is frequently the highest-return change available in a catalogue. On one supplements account, merging two size variants under a single parent and rewriting it took the post-merge conversion rate to roughly 30–35%.
3. Channel control
If you do not control the buy box, every dollar of ad spend is a subsidy to whoever does.
Resellers, pricing and account health
- Every seller on every listing mapped, with prices, over time
- Buy-box ownership percentage by SKU across a full week, not a snapshot
- MAP policy existing, distributed, and actually measured against
- DTC pricing checked against MAP — brands undercut themselves more often than you would think
- Trademark complaints and policy violations open against the account
- Brand Registry status and whether it is being used for anything
- Policy-violating reviews on hero SKUs, and whether anyone is reporting them
The prices matter more than the count. A reseller at MAP is a distribution partner. A reseller at 40% off, buying from your own DTC site, is an arbitrage that will not stop until the arbitrage stops working.
4. Supply
Inventory and forecasting
- Weeks of cover on every revenue-carrying SKU, today and projected
- Stockout history over twelve months and what it cost in rank
- Restock limits and whether they are binding going into Q4
- AWD or buffer strategy for subscription SKUs specifically
- Sister-SKU plan so subscriptions survive a line running thin
- Inbound lead times against the promo calendar
Stock is a marketing problem. A stockout on a subscription SKU does not cost you a month of orders — it cancels subscriptions, and those do not come back on their own.
5. The economics
Everything above feeds this.
| What to establish | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Contribution margin per SKU, after fees and returns | Sets the CAC ceiling. Without it, every target is arbitrary |
| True Portfolio CAC, branded search excluded | Usually two to four times blended CAC |
| Lifetime value by cohort, if the product repeats | Decides what you can afford to pay for a customer |
| Return rate by SKU | A 15% return rate turns a profitable campaign into a losing one |
| Organic versus paid revenue split | Tells you whether growth is bought or built |
| Total ACoS, not just ACoS | The only version that counts organic sales |
What good output looks like
A written document, ordered by expected return, that states for each finding: what is wrong, roughly what it is costing, what the fix is, and how long the fix takes. Not a deck of screenshots.
You should be able to hand it to your current agency and have them act on it. If an audit is only useful to the agency that wrote it, it was a pitch.
Common questions
How long should a proper audit take?
One to two weeks with full account access. Anything delivered in 48 hours is a campaign export with commentary — useful, but not an audit of the channel.
Do we need to give an agency account access for an audit?
For anything meaningful, yes — read access to Seller or Vendor Central, the Ads console and Brand Analytics. An audit built only from external scraping can see your listings and your competitors, but not your margins, your returns or your subscriber churn.
What should we get at the end?
A written document listing what is wrong, what it is costing, and what the fix is, ordered by expected return. If it arrives as a slide deck of screenshots with no ordering, ask what they would do first and why.
Should we pay for an audit?
Paid audits are reasonable and often better, because the agency has no reason to shade the findings toward an engagement. We do ours free before quoting, which is a different trade-off — either can be honest.