The Advertising Audit feature in Lebesgue allows you to scan your ad accounts for critical mistakes and optimization opportunities. This tool helps ensure that your ad spend is allocated effectively by identifying inefficiencies in your Facebook and Google Ads campaigns.
Below, we’ll break down what aspects of your advertising performance are analyzed, highlighting the specific checks available for Facebook Ads and Google Ads.
What We Are Testing For: Facebook Ads vs. Google Ads
Facebook Ads:
For Facebook Ads, the audit focuses on ensuring your campaigns follow best practices, optimizing budget distribution, and reducing inefficiencies that can lead to high costs and poor performance. Key areas tested include:
Audience Budget Split – Determines whether your budget allocation between prospecting and retargeting aligns with best practices.
High Retargeting CAC – Checks if your retargeting costs are disproportionately high, indicating inefficient budget allocation.
Existing Customers Exclusion – Verifies if you're excluding previous buyers from prospecting campaigns to prevent wasted ad spend.
Too Many Ads Per Ad Set – Identifies inefficiencies caused by too many active ads in a single ad set, leading to budget dilution.
Ad Fatigue – Analyzes the frequency at which users see your ads, helping to prevent overexposure and declining performance.
Conversion Tracking – Ensures Facebook is correctly tracking your conversions to prevent inaccurate optimization.
Automatic Placements – Checks if you're utilizing Facebook's auto-placement feature to get the best reach at the lowest cost.
Multiple Active Ad Accounts – Detects if you have overlapping ad accounts bidding against each other, which can drive up CPM.
View-Through Conversions – Evaluates how many of your conversions are passive (i.e., from people who saw but didn’t click your ad) and whether they’re inflating performance metrics.
Advantage+ Campaigns – Ensures you are leveraging Advantage+ campaigns properly with correct audience segmentation.
Optimization Strategy – Reviews whether your campaigns are optimized for conversions, especially purchases, to drive maximum ROI.
Copy Testing – Checks if you're testing enough ad variations each month to maintain ad performance and prevent fatigue.
Audience Targeting for Retargeting Ads – Ensures that retargeting ads are not using interest-based targeting, which can reduce efficiency.
Retargeting Ads Running – Confirms if your account has active retargeting campaigns, which are crucial for driving repeat customers.
Google Ads:
For Google Ads, the audit ensures your campaigns are structured efficiently and your bidding strategies align with your business goals. Key areas tested include:
Multiple Conversion Tracking Events – Identifies if multiple conversion events are tracking the same purchase, leading to inflated performance metrics.
Shopping or Performance Max Campaign Setup – Evaluates whether your Google Shopping or PMax campaigns follow best practices.
Display Campaign Efficiency – Checks whether your display campaigns are delivering cost-effective conversions.
Bidding Strategy – Ensures that your bidding method aligns with your objectives, preventing wasted ad spend.
Keyword Efficiency – Reviews if your keywords are performing well or if adjustments are needed to improve CTR and conversions.
Negative Keyword Usage – Determines if you’re filtering out irrelevant search queries to prevent wasted ad spend.
Retargeting Audience List – Confirms whether your Google Ads retargeting list is active and properly segmented.
Conversion Value Tracking – Ensures you're accurately tracking the value of your conversions to measure ad effectiveness.
Facebook Ads-Specific Audits
Facebook Ads are unique because they rely on ad sets, audience targeting, and budget allocation strategies. The audit tests focus on these areas to ensure that your campaigns are well-structured and optimized for performance.
Common Facebook Ad Mistakes Identified
1. Audience Budget Split
Issue: Your budget is not properly distributed between prospecting and retargeting ads.
Why It Matters:
Prospecting should receive the bulk of the budget (~70-85%) to drive long-term growth.
Businesses that invest more in prospecting tend to have lower Blended CAC, making acquisition more sustainable.
2. Too High Retargeting Ads CAC
Issue: Retargeting ads cost significantly more per conversion than prospecting ads.
Why It Matters:
Retargeting ads should be efficient, as they target warm audiences who are more likely to convert.
If the CAC is too high, it's a sign that budget should be reallocated toward prospecting to maintain growth.
3. Not Excluding Existing Customers
Issue: Your Facebook ads are being shown to users who have already purchased your product.
Why It Matters:
This wastes ad spend and doesn’t contribute to new customer acquisition.
Businesses that exclude previous buyers from prospecting campaigns tend to have an 18% lower Blended CAC.
4. Too Many Ads Per Ad Set
Issue: Your ad sets contain too many active ads, making budget allocation inefficient.
Why It Matters:
Running too many ads within one ad set prevents Facebook from efficiently allocating budget to the best-performing ads.
Businesses that optimize this see up to a 10% lower CPM and a 30% higher ROI.
5. Ad Fatigue
Issue: Users are seeing your ads too frequently, reducing effectiveness.
Why It Matters:
High ad frequency leads to audience saturation, higher CPM, and lower ROAS.
Ideal ad frequency:
Prospecting: Below 4
Retargeting: Below 11
If frequency is too high, rotate new creatives to maintain engagement.
6. Conversion Tracking Issues
Issue: Facebook is tracking conversions inaccurately, leading to misleading performance data.
Why It Matters:
Poor conversion tracking results in Facebook optimizing for the wrong users.
Businesses with broken conversion tracking experience a 30% higher CPM, making advertising more expensive.
7. Automatic Placements Not Used
Issue: Your ads are limited to specific placements rather than letting Facebook optimize automatically.
Why It Matters:
Auto placements can reduce costs and increase reach, with businesses seeing:
85% ROAS for manual placements
128% ROAS for automatic placements
Facebook’s AI distributes your ads to the lowest-cost, highest-performing placements.
8. Multiple Active Ad Accounts
Issue: You have multiple ad accounts competing against each other.
Why It Matters:
This causes self-bidding, which can increase CPM by 20%.
Redundant accounts overreport conversions, making ad performance look better than it is.
9. View-Through Conversions
Issue: A high percentage of conversions are view-through, meaning users saw but didn’t click the ad before purchasing.
Why It Matters:
View-through conversions indicate that other channels may have contributed to the sale.
If more than 20% of conversions are view-through, it can inflate ROAS and give a false sense of ad effectiveness.
10. Advantage+ Campaigns Not Used
Issue: No active Advantage+ campaigns found in your account.
Why It Matters:
Advantage+ campaigns use AI to automate targeting and creative selection, improving efficiency.
Not using them can mean missed opportunities for reducing CAC and optimizing retargeting spend.
11. Optimization Strategy Issues
Issue: Your campaigns are not optimized for conversions, especially purchases.
Why It Matters:
Businesses optimizing for purchases rather than clicks see up to 400% higher ROI.
If campaigns aren’t set up properly, Facebook might target low-quality traffic, hurting long-term growth.
12. Lack of Copy Testing
Issue: You’re not testing enough ad variations.
Why It Matters:
Running new copy reduces ad fatigue and increases engagement.
Successful ecommerce brands test 7 new ad variations per month to maintain CTR and ROAS.
13. Retargeting Ads Not Running
Issue: Your account has no active retargeting campaigns.
Why It Matters:
Retargeting is crucial for driving repeat sales and maximizing lifetime value.
Without retargeting, you're leaving money on the table by not re-engaging warm audiences.
Google Ads-Specific Audits
Google Ads audits focus more on campaign structure, keyword efficiency, bidding strategy, and conversion tracking to ensure that your budget is spent efficiently across different ad types.
Common Google Ads Mistakes Identified
Multiple Events Track Conversions
Checks if multiple events are tracking the same conversions, causing Google Ads to overreport.
Why it matters:
Google may double-count conversions, leading to misleading performance reports.
Overreported conversions can cause the algorithm to overbid, wasting ad spend.
Shopping or Performance Max Campaign Issues
Tests whether your Shopping or Performance Max campaigns are set up correctly.
Why it matters: Performance Max campaigns require proper asset grouping and audience signals to work efficiently to drive effective automated sales growth.
Bidding Strategy Mistakes
Evaluates whether your bidding strategy is aligned with your campaign goals.
Why it matters: Choosing the wrong bidding strategy (e.g., manual vs. automated) can increase CPC and reduce profitability.
Display Campaigns Efficiency
Tests whether your Display campaigns are using the correct targeting methods.
Why it matters: Display campaigns need audience exclusions to avoid wasting money on irrelevant traffic.
Number of Ad Accounts
Why it matters: Having multiple ad accounts leads to self-bidding, driving up CPM by 12% and reducing profitability.
Keyword Efficiency
Ensures that your keywords are relevant and not wasting budget on low-converting search terms.
Why it matters: Using broad match without exclusions can lead to clicks from low-intent users, driving up CPC and CAC.
The audit identifies underperforming keywords where CAC is at least 4x the average order value, suggesting businesses turn them off or add them as negative keywords.
Using Negative Keywords
Checks whether negative keywords are being used effectively.
Why it matters: Without negative keywords, ads may appear for irrelevant searches, wasting budget. The audit ensures negative keyword lists are in place to improve ad performance.
Conversion Value Tracking
Evaluates whether conversion value tracking is properly set up.
Why it matters: Without proper tracking, Google can’t optimize ads for revenue-based goals, leading to inefficient ad spend and poor bidding decisions.
Retargeting Audience List Issues
Tests whether retargeting lists are correctly integrated with your campaigns.
Why it matters: Without proper audience segmentation, you lose out on high-intent traffic that could convert at a lower cost.
The audit ensures that retargeting lists are properly set up to avoid wasting budget on previous customers instead of acquiring new ones.
Why Use the Advertising Audit Feature?
Saves Time & Effort – Instead of manually reviewing your campaigns, the audit instantly highlights optimization opportunities.
Reduces Wasted Ad Spend – Helps reallocate your budget to higher-performing campaigns.
Improves Overall ROAS – By fixing inefficiencies and avoiding common pitfalls, you ensure that every ad dollar is maximized.
Ensures Algorithm Optimization – Meta and Google algorithms work best with clean, structured data. Avoiding errors allows them to optimize more effectively.
Custom Recommendations – Each mistake includes a clear "Why is it important?" section so you can take immediate action.
Key Differences Between Facebook Ads & Google Ads Audits in Lebesgue
Feature | Facebook Ads | Google Ads |
Budget Allocation Audit | Prospecting vs. Retargeting split | Bidding Strategy (e.g., Manual vs. Automated) |
Ad Structure | Ad set issues, ad fatigue, ad volume per ad set | Campaign structure (Performance Max, Shopping, Display) |
Conversion Tracking | Excluding existing customers | Multiple conversion event tracking issues |
Audience Targeting | Prospecting & retargeting audience split | Keyword efficiency & negative keyword usage |
Optimization Checks | Retargeting ads running, ad account consolidation | Conversion value tracking, campaign bidding efficiency |
By using Lebesgue's Advertising Audit, you ensure that your campaigns—whether on Facebook or Google—are running as efficiently as possible. It’s a powerful tool to reduce costs, improve performance, and maximize ROAS without needing to manually check each campaign setting.
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