Overview
A PPC account audit turns messy paid account exports, settings, naming, budget controls, coverage gaps, and risk items into a prioritized fix list. This playbook gives a paid media manager a durable audit table and summary document so monthly account health reviews do not live across scattered spreadsheets and agency checklist copies.
Use it when a paid account has grown through launches, experiments, handoffs, or platform changes and the team needs a calm read on what deserves attention first. The scope stays practical: review evidence, rank risks, and prepare fixes for human approval rather than editing campaigns automatically.
Why you should prioritize PPC account fixes
Paid accounts get noisy over time. Campaign names stop explaining what they control, budgets drift away from business priorities, tests stay half-open, and coverage gaps hide behind yesterday's reporting table.
Google's own campaign settings guidance recommends names that clearly describe campaign themes, which matters because weak naming makes reporting and operations harder to trust (Google Ads Help). Search-term and performance exports also reveal the real queries, spend, and conversion evidence behind account decisions, not just the keywords or assumptions the team started with (Google Ads Help).
The value of this playbook is continuity. The first run installs the audit workspace before analysis begins, then every finding has a place to live: severity, confidence, source, owner, status, recommendation, and review date. That makes the next monthly review faster and keeps old risks from being rediscovered as if they were new.
Step-by-step
- 1Confirm the brand, platforms, account exports, markets, business goal, and any protected areas such as brand campaigns, active experiments, regulated claims, or priority geographies.
- 2Review the supplied account exports, workspace tables, screenshots, and notes for structure, settings, naming, budget controls, tracking coverage, search or audience waste, campaign coverage, and obvious operational risk.
- 3Add each qualified finding to the PPC account audit table with the account area, evidence, source, severity, confidence, likely impact, effort, owner, status, and recommended next action.
- 4Rank the fix list by expected impact, urgency, confidence, and effort so quick control fixes are separated from bigger strategic decisions such as restructures, budget moves, or landing-page work.
- 5Update the audit summary with the executive readout, source gaps, assumptions, top risks, quick wins, and decisions that need a paid media manager's review.
- 6Use the audit table and summary to scan open high-risk findings, owner gaps, stale review items, and resolved issues during monthly reviews.
Frequently asked questions
Does this require Google Ads or Meta Ads access?
No. The minimum workflow can start from non-sensitive exports, screenshots, existing workspace tables, or source notes. If a platform connection is available later, Juno can use it for read-only context, but the playbook does not require a non-default integration to install.
What does this replace?
It replaces a narrow PPC account audit checklist or agency audit workbook: the recurring place where account-health issues, source evidence, priorities, owners, and status decisions are maintained. It does not replace an ad editor, campaign builder, or full media management platform.
How often should the audit run?
Run it once for a cleanup pass or choose the monthly cadence for recurring account-health reviews. Monthly works well when paid accounts change often enough that naming, budget controls, tracking, and coverage gaps can drift.
What makes a finding audit-ready?
Each finding should tie back to account evidence and a paid media risk, such as wasted spend, reporting confusion, missing coverage, measurement uncertainty, or operational friction. Low-confidence issues should stay in review instead of being treated as approved fixes.
