The Ultimate PPC Audit Guide for Marketing Agencies in 2024 + Checklist

Audits might sound boring, but if you’re still auditing campaigns like it’s 2023, you’re already behind. A solid audit separates campaigns that crush it from those that crash and burn.

You’re here because you’re juggling clients and want their campaigns to pull their weight. Or maybe your performance has flatlined. Whatever the reason, you’re in the right spot.

This guide isn’t about basic tweaks or quick fixes. We’re talking advanced strategies that will transform how you approach PPC audits. You’ll learn:

• How to make AI work for you, not against you, in campaigns
• New conversion tracking methods that don’t rely on third-party cookies
• Targeting techniques that balance precision with privacy
• Budget optimization strategies that squeeze value from every dollar

If you’re ready to stop playing catch-up and start leading the pack, keep reading. Your agency’s success in 2024 depends on mastering these audit techniques. Let’s dive in and give your clients the results they deserve.

Setting Clear, Achievable Goals for Your PPC Audit

Before diving into data, figure out your endgame. Vague goals like “make it better” won’t cut it in today. That’s like telling a chef to “make the food taste good” – it’s not a recipe for success.

Nail down specific, measurable targets with your client (or yourself). Consider:

• Boosting conversion rates
• Reducing cost per acquisition
• Increasing return on ad spend (ROAS)
• Expanding market share
• Enhancing brand awareness

When setting clear goals for your PPC campaigns, it’s important to balance strategies across the funnel. According to Sophie Fell, Director of Paid Media at Two Trees PPC,

For upper-funnel awareness-driving activity, content forms such as images, videos, etc., work well across the majority of platforms. Most platforms have options to create campaigns towards awareness and reach objectives, and prioritize reach and impressions over engagement, clicks, or conversions.

At the top of the funnel, impressions and awareness should be the priority rather than conversions.

On the other hand,

PPC is incredibly strong in driving lower funnel objectives such as conversions – whether that be newsletter sign-ups, sales, or lead generation.

Make sure your audit reflects these funnel-specific strategies for maximum effectiveness.

Read our interview with her here.

Pro tip: If your client gives you unrealistic goals, push back. You’re the expert – show them what’s possible and which metrics matter in today’s PPC world. Your expertise is why they hired you.

AI-Driven Campaign Structures

Google Ads Performance Max

Performance Max campaigns do it all, but are they doing it right? Check how AI spreads your budget. Is it favoring one channel when your audience is elsewhere? Guide it in the right direction.

Performance Max Audit Checklist:

Keep an eye on these in your Performance Max campaigns:

1. Are your asset groups actually relevant, or just a mishmash of stuff?
2. Do your audience signals make sense, or are they sending mixed messages?
3. Do your conversion goals line up with what the business actually wants?
4. Is your budget spread across channels effectively, or is it playing favorites?
5. Have you set up negative keywords properly, or are you attracting every Tom, Dick, and Harry?

Pro Tip: Give the AI clear signals about your audience. It’s smart, but it’s not a mind reader. The more info you provide, the better it can target your ads. Think of it like giving directions to a friend – the more specific you are, the less likely they are to end up in the wrong place.

Meta Ads (Facebook & Instagram)

Over in Meta land, the AI is getting pretty clever with its Advantage+ shopping campaigns. But here’s the thing – it’s only as good as the info you feed it. Make sure you’re giving it plenty of juicy product details and audience signals to work with.

Audit checklist for Meta Ads:

• Product catalog optimization
• Audience signal diversity
• Creative asset variety
• Campaign budget optimization settings
• Cross-platform performance (Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network)

TikTok Ads

The TikTok algorithm is hungrier than a teenager after soccer practice. It wants content, and lots of it. Check if you’re giving it enough variations to play with. Static images? Videos? Text overlays? The more you give it, the better it can optimize.

TikTok audit focus:

• Content diversity
• Trend alignment
• Music selection and licensing
• Hashtag strategy
• Influencer collaboration performance

New Ways to Track Conversions

With third-party cookies gone, we need creative conversion tracking. Focus on these areas:

First-party data is gold today. Collect it everywhere – website visits, app usage, customer chats. It’s like a puzzle; every piece completes the picture.

E-commerce folks, scrutinize your enhanced conversions. Are you passing back all crucial details like order value and customer info? This data fuels AI-driven campaign optimization.

Find Your Audience When Privacy Comes First

Precision targeting is key. With tighter privacy rules, we must be smarter about reaching our audience.

Key Targeting Strategies to Review:

• First-party audience segmentation techniques
• Effective use of Google’s Topics API
• Custom audience targeting on social media platforms
• Advanced contextual targeting methods
• Emerging targeting options (e.g., attention-based targeting)

Social media targeting has evolved. Forget broad categories like “women who like shoes.” Now, it’s “women who viewed red high heels recently, didn’t purchase, but engaged with a shoe-related Instagram story.” Specific? Yes. Effective? Absolutely.

Advanced Audience Targeting in a Cookieless Era

It’s less about casting a wide net and more about using a precision laser. With privacy regulations tighter than ever, we’ve got to get smart about how we find and reach our audience.

Key targeting strategies to audit:

• First-party audience segmentation
• Google’s Topics API implementation
• Custom audience creation on social platforms
• Advanced contextual targeting
• Emerging options (like attention-based targeting)

On social media, it’s all about creating super-specific custom audiences. Forget broad targets like “women aged 25-34 who like shoes.” Now it’s about finding the “women who viewed red high heels in the last 30 days, abandoned their cart, and then engaged with an Instagram story.” Creepily specific? Maybe. Effective? You bet.

Next-Gen Ad Formats and Creatives

Your ads aren’t just competing with other ads – they’re up against every piece of content on the internet. Your creative needs to be scroll-stopping good. Here’s what to look for:

Don’t sleep on ad customizers. These are more powerful than ever. Price, inventory, location, weather – you can tailor your ads based on pretty much anything. It’s like having a personal ad writer for each potential customer.

Smart Bidding and Budget Allocation

This is where the magic happens. Get your bidding and budget right, and you’ll squeeze every last drop of ROI from your campaigns.

Audit these areas in your bidding strategy:

1. Automated bidding strategy selection
2. Performance targets (CPA, ROAS) accuracy
3. Budget fluidity across campaigns and platforms
4. Seasonality adjustments
5. Auction-time bidding signal use

Cross-channel budget optimization is huge. Your customers don’t live in silos, so why should your budgets? Look for tools that can help you optimize spend across Google Ads, Facebook Ads, TikTok Ads, and wherever else your ads are running.

See How Your Platforms Work Together

No platform is an island. You need a bird’s-eye view for true optimization.

Cross-platform analysis checklist:

• Cross-platform measurement tool effectiveness
• Comprehensive attribution model accuracy
• Frequency of cross-platform impact testing
• Inter-channel data flow efficiency
• Multi-touchpoint customer journey mapping

Use tools tracking conversions across channels. Compare costs and returns across platforms to optimize spend.

Identify and eliminate self-competition from overlapping or conflicting targeting.

Determine which platforms deliver most value at each customer journey stage for smarter budget allocation.

Create Ads People Want to See

Your ads compete with everything from cat videos to viral TikToks. Make your ads thumb-stopping good. Here’s how:

Dynamic Creative Power

Dynamic creative is your ad’s chameleon-like superpower. In 2024, it’s not just swapping headlines; AI creates entire new ad variations on the fly.

Maximize dynamic creative:

1. Provide diverse assets (headlines, descriptions, images, videos)
2. Allow learning time for underperforming ads
3. Regularly review AI creations for quality and brand alignment

Success story: An eco-friendly cleaning product saw a 40% CTR boost using weather-based dynamic messaging.

Video Ads That Engage

Static video ads are passé. Think interactive: choose-your-own-adventure styles, shoppable content, mid-video AR try-ons.

Video ad must-haves:

• Captivating first 3 seconds (hook viewers fast)
• Interactive elements encouraging engagement
• Sound-off optimization (still crucial)
• Vertical formats for mobile platforms

AI and Human Teamwork in Ads

AI isn’t just optimizing ads; it’s creating them. But AI is a tool, not a replacement for human creativity.

Effective AI content use:

1. Let AI draft initial ideas
2. Human creatives add emotional depth
3. A/B test AI vs. human-created ads
4. Use AI for large-scale content personalization

The goal? Relevant, not robotic. AI helps personalization, but humans keep it personable.

Make Every Dollar Count Bidding and Budgeting

In PPC, your budget should work overtime. Let’s squeeze maximum performance from every dollar.

With rising costs in paid search, here’s Omar Salah, Paid Search Account Director at Assembly Global said about getting the most value from their PPC budget.

He gave use two advice:

The first point is that search is a sink-or-swim environment. Search is an auction-based platform, and if we don’t take every advantage we can get, then we will lose out. As more competitors enter the landscape, CPC’s will inflate and costs will rise, therefore we need to work smarter and not harder. Give Google a reason to give you an advantage, be that through general account hygiene or leaning into AI tools that allow you to focus on the right auctions at the right time. One of the key reasons I enjoy this channel so much is that best practice is consistently evolving and does so to grab these advantages so test if they work and scale up if they do. The other bit of advice I have is to focus on the assignment. Ultimately, cheap CPCs and higher CTRs don’t mean much if they don’t lean into your overarching objectives. You shouldn’t mind higher CPCs or lower impression share if it means you’re conserving your budget and bidding more aggressively on higher-value auctions. Have one KPI and use that as your sole goalpost.

Read the entire interview with Omar Salah here.

Automate Your Bidding (But Stay Sharp)

Manual bid adjustments? That’s so last decade. Automated bidding is the name of the game now, but don’t think you can just set it and forget it. Here’s how to stay on top of your game:

1. Check your performance weekly. Look for weird spikes or dips – that’s where you’ll find gold.
2. Adjust for seasons. Your AI needs to know about your business cycles.
3. Play around with different strategies. Try tCPA, tROAS, Maximize Conversions – see what works best for each campaign.
4. Feed your AI the good stuff. Clean, rich data leads to smarter decisions.

Pro Tip: For those high-stakes campaigns, write a custom script for extra-precise bid control. Your clients will love the results.

Move Your Money Where It Matters

Your customers jump between platforms faster than a cat on a hot tin roof. Your budget should be just as nimble.

Set up rules to shift your budget based on what’s working. Is TikTok crushing it while Facebook flounders? Move that money, pronto.

But hold up – before you shuffle that cash, make sure you know which channel really deserves the credit. That’s where attribution modeling comes in handy.

Time of day matters too. Make sure your ads show up when your audience is actually paying attention. No use shouting into the void at 3 AM (unless that’s your thing).

Keep an eye on the big picture. You can’t optimize what you can’t see, so get a unified view of all your platforms.

Plan Ahead with Data (No Crystal Ball Needed)

Forget fortune tellers, we’ve got data. Here’s how to see into the future (kinda):

1. Build a forecasting model that factors in more than just your PPC data. What’s happening in your industry? What are your competitors up to?
2. Use machine learning to spot subtle patterns you might miss.
3. Play “what if” with your data. What happens if a big competitor enters the market? What if Google changes its algorithm again?
4. Set up alerts for when things go off track. The sooner you know, the faster you can fix it.

This isn’t just about saving a buck. It’s about making every dollar you spend pack a punch. Your clients are counting on you to turn their ad spend into cold, hard results. With these strategies, you’ll be the PPC wizard they can’t live without.

Turn Data into Stories That Matter

Great performance is meaningless if you can’t communicate it. In 2024, reports should tell stories, not just dump data.

Get Smart Insights

Identify insights, then add interpretation for business context.

Effective insight format:

• Observation: “CTR increased 15% this month”
• Significance: “Our new ad copy is resonating with the audience”
• Action plan: “Apply these learnings to other campaigns for overall improvement”

Build Dashboards Clients Love

Static reports are outdated. Today’s clients need interactive dashboards that offer real-time insights and actionable data. Focus on these key areas:

Show PPC Data in Clear Ways

Try these data visualization techniques:

Use visual representations to simplify complex PPC data. Effective visualizations help clients grasp performance metrics quickly and intuitively. Here are some data visualization techniques you can use, along with specific PPC-related examples:

1. Heat maps: Show keyword performance across campaigns Example: Create a heat map of click-through rates (CTR) for different keywords across various ad groups.
2. Scatter plots: Compare CPC against conversion rates Example: Plot each keyword’s Cost Per Click (CPC) against its conversion rate to identify high-performing and underperforming keywords.
3. Tree maps: Display budget allocation across ad groups Example: Visualize how your total PPC budget is distributed among different campaigns and ad groups.
4. Line charts: Track performance metrics over time Example: Show the trend of impressions, clicks, and conversions over the past 12 months.
5. Bar charts: Compare performance across different segments Example: Display Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) for different device types (desktop, mobile, tablet).
6. Pie charts: Illustrate the share of different elements Example: Show the distribution of ad spend across different platforms (Google Ads, Facebook Ads, LinkedIn Ads).

Choose visualizations that clearly communicate your key metrics and insights. Avoid overly complex or gimmicky designs that might confuse rather than clarify.

Conclusion

PPC audits are your competitive edge. They’re not periodic checkups, but the backbone of continuous improvement.

Implement a multi-tiered audit framework: daily metric checks, weekly ad group analysis, and monthly strategic reviews. Integrate auction-time bidding insights and cross-channel learnings to stay ahead.

As privacy regulations tighten, focus on extracting maximum value from first-party data. Develop sophisticated segmentation strategies that comply with evolving standards.

In PPC, stagnation equals obsolescence. Your ability to synthesize data, predict trends, and proactively optimize will define your agency’s success in an increasingly complex digital ecosystem.

Make this advanced audit approach your norm. It’s not just about fixing issues—it’s about predictive optimization and strategic foresight.

Your PPC audit is complete. Now it’s time to turn insights into action using Swydo’s PPC reporting tool:

1. Highlight critical KPIs: Focus on CPC, ROAS, and CTR to show campaign value.
2. Tell a data-driven story: Use visuals to make complex metrics understandable.
3. Tailor your report: Adapt content for different audiences, from marketing teams to C-suite.
4. Provide actionable recommendations: Guide stakeholders on next steps for improvement.
5. Use a PPC audit dashboard: Monitor KPIs in real-time for ongoing optimization.

Ready to maximize your PPC returns? Start by creating your customized PPC report now!