Facebook Ads Audit: Complete Guide to Understanding and Optimizing Your Advertising Campaigns

Every advertiser’s fear is not fully exploiting the potential of Meta ads. For this reason, when you prepare to present a Facebook Ads Audit on a client’s advertising account, you must be clear about which data to analyze, what works, and what you need to address to optimize ROI.

With your updated and detailed report, you can look the client straight in the eye and have the confidence of someone who has left nothing to chance. Let’s get started!

Start Collecting Data for Your Facebook Audit

When it comes to Facebook Ads Audit, data is at the center of everything. To start, you need to know which data are the most important and which ones you should analyze.

First, go to the Facebook Ads Manager to which the client will have given you access, of course. Once inside, you’ll be in the advertiser’s paradise, surrounded by all possible and imaginable data on campaign performance, audience demographics, placements on Facebook, Instagram, Audience Network, and Messenger, as well as costs and budget.

Let’s see what are the most important metrics you need to analyze

I didn’t specify this before, but today we’re dealing with a potential audit of a Meta advertising account that has historical data and therefore sponsored ads to reason about.

The “other possibility was that the” account was new and no ads had ever been run, but we’re not interested in that. Let’s get back to talking about data present in the archives and how to use them to deliver a quality audit to clients.

1. Overall Campaign Performance

The fundamental metrics for evaluating the overall performance of campaigns are:

1. Impressions, total number of times your ads have been viewed.
2. Coverage or reach, the number of unique people who have seen your ads.
3. Frequency, average number of times a user has seen your ads.
4. CTR, clicks users have made on the ads.
5. CPC, average cost to get a click on your ads.
6. Conversions, how many users have responded positively to the “requested action and have completed a purchase, signed up for the newsletter, downloaded a file.”
7. Cost per conversion, CPA.
8. Return on advertising spend, ROAS, that is, how much profit each euro invested in Facebook advertising has generated.

2. Audience Segmentation

Knowing the people to whom you address advertising messages is fundamental for presenting a Facebook Ads Audit, and to do this, you must segment them meticulously. The first metric to analyze when preparing an audit and segmenting the audience is that of demographic data (age, gender, education, income, and geographic location).

You then need to know in detail the interests that unite them and how they behave online, what their habits are, and what they are most attracted to.

User Behavior

If you want to intercept target users, you need to know how they move online, what are their habits, what convinces them and what doesn’t. Yes, it’s true, it’s a meticulous control but necessary for a proper Facebook audit!

The metrics to analyze are:

1. The bounce rate, which tells you the percentage of users who visited your landing page but abandoned it immediately.
2. The average time users spent on your landing page.
3. Page view frequency, which is the average number of pages users visited on your website after clicking on your ad.

Conduct a “thorough analysis of the” Facebook ad account

1. Verify campaign settings

Let’s dive into the Facebook Ads Audit and start with campaign settings. First of all, you need to check that the set objectives are aligned with the company’s business goals, or the Facebook ads will be useless and counterproductive.

Campaign objectives can be:

1. Increase brand awareness (notoriety).
2. Increase traffic to the website (traffic).
3. Increase interactions (messages).
4. Lead generation (contacts).
5. App promotion and sales.

At this point, you need to verify that the budget assigned to each campaign is adequate for the objectives and monitor how it’s being spent. Certainly, the first thing to do if you see that some campaigns are giving better results and others aren’t, is to redistribute the budget accordingly.

Now that you’ve checked objectives and budget, focus on the results and verify the most important metrics we’ve already encountered in the previous paragraph such as CTR, CPC, CPA, and return on ad spend (ROAS).

Always compare campaigns with each other and identify which is performing better and which is achieving the objectives. For example, if the campaign objective is to increase sales but the campaign has generated few purchases, you need to ask yourself a question, and quickly!

2. Check ad sets

From the top, the campaigns, we metaphorically descend to the ad sets. Meta offers several placements for ads: Facebook feed, Instagram, Audience Network (to reach users even outside Facebook, on partner apps and sites) and Messenger.

You can also, and I strongly recommend it, rely on Meta’s machine learning and select Advantage+ Placements. Facebook’s algorithms, which know more than the devil, in a good way of course, will do everything!

Check which placements are getting better results in terms of CTR, CPC, and conversions and distribute the budget. Also check that copy and images are correct in terms of format, call to action, dimensions, for each placement.

Once this is done, you’re at the point in your checklist where you need to focus on the target audience, to understand if the one the ad set is referring to aligns with the campaign objectives. Here too, you need to analyze each segment of the audience and see which is responding better to the ads and act accordingly, modifying the audience that doesn’t convert, maybe with a lookalike or the Advantage+ Audience, which Meta finds for you with its highly refined algorithms.

Finally, check if the texts, formats, images of the ads are effective, which ones have an impact on the audience and which go unnoticed. Don’t forget A/B tests to experiment with new strategies.

3. Analyze individual ads

After campaigns and ad sets, now it’s time to do a good check on individual ads, which are nothing more than the messages and images that the audience will see. To understand if and which ads work:

1. Check the CTR, which is the percentage of people who click on the “ad compared to the total number of people who see it. The higher the percentage, the more the message is appreciated by the audience it targets. And if the CTR is low? Quickly take action and review the text and images of the” ad!
2. Monitor the CPC for each ad, so you can maintain a balance between cost and performance and not waste budget.
3. Finally, always keep an eye on the CPA (cost per conversion). Comparing the CPAs of different ads will help you understand which ones guarantee a good ROI and which ones need a good change in terms of images, copy, or even funnel. No Facebook audit can do without it, trust me.

For Your Facebook Ads Audit, Evaluate the Campaigns: Target and Message Consistency

Is the target audience for the advertising messages the right one? Are the ads consistent with the brand and the audience?

Before publishing anything on the web, including Facebook, you need to ask yourself who you’re addressing and if you’re doing it in the right way. Imagine you want to promote a new model of men’s mountaineering shoes.

Well, it’s not very difficult to understand that the message and “image should be created for men, certainly sporty, who love the mountains. If the” audit shows that the sponsored post is set for a female audience over 65, passionate about the sea and batida de coco, if I were you, I’d give myself a few good, even if only in thought, hammer blows to the teeth!

Analyzing demographic data such as age, gender, geographic location, interests, behaviors, creativity, and consistency of ads is an activity that, as a good marketer, you must do often to avoid making blatant mistakes.

Evaluate the Bidding Strategy Based on Objectives

To reduce costs and maximize return on “investment, optimize the bidding strategy based on the campaign objectives. Let’s say the client for whom you’re preparing the” audit has an e-commerce site and their goal is to increase sales.

The bidding strategy will be chosen between conversion bidding (CPA), which allows you to pay only when the conversion is completed, Dynamic Ads to automatically show the most relevant products to users who have already visited the website, or added products to the cart but haven’t completed the purchase.

Finally, remarketing campaigns to reach users who have shown interest in the products but haven’t made a purchase yet.

Optimize Costs and Budget

In your Facebook Ads Audit, you must also include A/B tests to evaluate which ads perform better. Always monitor the daily and monthly budget to ensure it’s being spent effectively. Set a maximum limit for bids (bid cap) to avoid spending too much on individual conversions!

Check Campaign Performance on Different Placements

Start by analyzing the results of the placement on the Facebook Feed, the most popular. If the CTR, CPC, and CPA metrics show good engagement and conversions at reasonable costs, great, this placement is the right choice for the campaign you’re analyzing! The same exact verification procedure for Instagram Feed and Stories.

Facebook’s Audience Network extends the reach of ads to a network of partner apps and websites, while Messenger allows you to communicate more directly with your audience. In this case, you need to analyze the conversion metrics and the cost per acquisition. Now you’re ready to move on to the next step of your Facebook Audit.

Create reports and monitor Facebook campaign performance

Make the best use of analytics tools to obtain detailed data

The only way to optimize Facebook campaigns and maximize ROI is to create detailed and frequent performance reports. To do this, Meta provides you with some analytics tools such as Facebook Ads Manager and Facebook Pixel, which I’ll discuss in more detail in another paragraph. Now, I want to explain what you need to do to create data reports.

Start by being clear about what the campaign objectives are (sales, lead generation, interactions, awareness, etc.) and, based on the objectives, select the metrics and customize the report columns in Facebook Ads Manager.

Segment the data as much as possible, for example by placement, desktop or mobile device, target audience, or creative. You can use graphs or tables to get a clear overview of performance, based on the metrics you’ve selected.

Always optimize advertising campaigns and leave nothing to chance

To get the most out of sponsored content and not waste money unnecessarily, you need to optimize campaigns and, since the focus of “this article is auditing a client’s account”, prepare to show your client what you’re made of and how you can, with data and reports in hand, make advertising campaigns profitable.

The important thing is to immediately distinguish, thanks to key data and metrics, what works and what needs to be adjusted. If, for example, an ad isn’t performing as expected, try changing the visual, copy, or call to action. Use quality images or videos, engaging texts, and clear offers to attract the audience’s attention.

Speaking of audience, segment it as much as possible and eliminate all those segments that are not on target and focus on others that, on the contrary, interact and show interest.

Shift the budget that has been allocated to campaigns that aren’t giving the expected results to others that are showing positive results.

To avoid risks, I advise you to trust and rely on machine learning and automations that Meta provides thanks to Advantage+, to refine your ads.

Never forget to make modifications and A/B tests

The world of advertising is like a sea constantly moved by currents. You can’t stand still and be subject to events, but you must swim to get where you and your business objectives want to go.

There’s no magic potion to get real results, just a lot of goodwill and many tests! That’s right, only by creating different ad creatives, call to actions, different target audiences and testing what works and what doesn’t, can you take advantage of Facebook ads. And know that this optimization process is never-ending, endless, like the song by Gino Paoli and Ornella Vanoni.

Let’s see what Facebook’s analytics tools are

As promised, here I am to talk more in-depth about the analytics tools that Facebook offers to always have a critical look at performance and proceed with optimization. I won’t dwell on the fact that you must use these tools for your Facebook Ads Audit (you’ve already understood that by now) and to manage advertising accounts professionally and not like your cousin does.

1. Facebook Ads Manager

It’s the ultimate tool for creating, managing, and monitoring advertising campaigns on Meta. It provides a ton of metrics depending on the objectives and gives you the ability to create super detailed reports for all your needs.

There’s really a lot to explore, and to avoid getting lost among the infinite options, you need to go through it thoroughly. You’ll see that with a bit of practice, you won’t feel like the Minotaur trapped in the labyrinth anymore, but you’ll rediscover yourself as the valiant Theseus who enters the labyrinth, slays the Minotaur, and escapes victorious with his beautiful Ariadne!

2. Facebook Pixel

Thanks to this tool, you can track the actions users take on your website after they’ve interacted with your Facebook ads. The Facebook Pixel is very useful because it provides data on precise actions, such as purchases or sign-ups. You can delve deeper into user behavior by tracking specific events, like page views, cart additions, and purchase completions.

The data obtained allows you to optimize campaigns, review targeting, create custom audiences, and lookalike audiences based on user activities on the website.

What are the questions a good advertiser should ask to conduct an audit and evaluate Facebook advertising campaigns

You’ve learned to identify the metrics to analyze and how to create data reports, but that’s not enough. To present a truly comprehensive Facebook Ads Audit and, most importantly, one that’s useful for optimizing campaigns, you need to question and know how to interpret all the material at your disposal, or it will remain just a useless pile of numbers.

Call them questions, think of it as a checklist, an action plan, whatever you want, just learn to leverage graphs, tables, and percentages.

Always start with the established objectives and ask yourself if they have been achieved, verifying and comparing metrics. If not, you need to understand why, check ad copy and images, review targeting, and modify the strategy.

Another point to always keep clear is whether you’ve properly defined the targeting of campaigns and if the messages are reaching the audience. Analyze demographic data, interests, and behaviors, and if you notice that ads are reaching an off-target audience, I’d say you need to make changes and fast!

Ad texts and images play a fundamental role; they must be consistent with the brand and attract the attention of the audience you want to reach. Ask yourself if copy and visuals are working, and if the ads aren’t generating the desired engagement, run A/B tests and experiment as much as possible.

And again, never lose the desire to critically ask yourself which placements are performing better and which bidding strategies are achieving better results.

Finally, the question of questions, the one that has always made those in our line of work without much experience tremble. What can you do to optimize the campaign based on the collected data? This is where the marketer’s true mettle shows, recognizing the problem and knowing how to address it and what actions to take to solve it.

Conclusions

What do you think, do you feel more confident in tackling a Facebook Ads Audit on a client’s account and generating data reports? I hope so, even though it’s willingness and practice that will make the difference. However, just by acquiring the right knowledge and making the most of the advice I’ve given you in this practical guide, you’re on the right track to harness the full potential of advertising campaigns and achieve business objectives while maximizing return on investment.

If you don’t feel ready yet, we at Qreativa can help you, as we have a lot of experience with advertising. Contact us for a free consultation and start achieving real and measurable results.