Ad Account Audit Checklist: Audit a Prospect Across Platforms

An ad account audit checklist is the fastest way for an agency to show a prospect what it would fix before the contract is signed. A good pitch audit looks at every platform the prospect buys on, checks the same seven areas on each one, then checks how the platforms add up together. This guide walks through the whole process: getting access safely, the per-platform checks, the cross-platform checks most audits skip, how to score findings and how to present them in a way that wins the account.

If the prospect is a DTC brand heading into a busy season, our DTC ad account audit before peak season goes deeper on that timing. This article is about the agency side: auditing someone else's accounts, across platforms, as part of a pitch.

Quick answer

To audit a prospect's ad accounts across platforms, get partner access with the lowest permission level each platform offers, agree the scope in writing, then check tracking, structure, budgets and bidding, audiences, creative, account health and naming on every platform. Finish with cross-platform checks against the shop's own orders, score each finding on impact and effort, and present one page of findings, a few quick wins and a 90-day plan.

Wevion connects Meta, Google, TikTok, Taboola, Snapchat and Outbrain through their official APIs and syncs them into one view about every 15 minutes. For a pitch audit, that means you can see a prospect's platforms side by side in their own workspace instead of stitching exports together by hand.

Get access the right way

A pitch audit starts with access, and the way you ask for it tells the prospect a lot about how you will treat their business. Never ask for a password or a shared login. Every major platform has a partner or manager flow built for exactly this situation, and using it keeps the prospect in control of who sees what.

Meta. In Meta Business Suite, the prospect adds your agency as a partner and shares the ad account, pixel or dataset with you. Meta's help page on giving a partner access to business assets explains that the prospect needs your business portfolio ID, and that only people with full control of their business portfolio can share assets with partners. Partners can get full control of an asset or partial access, which is limited to specific tasks. For an audit, ask for partial access only.

Google Ads. You send a link request from your manager account, and the prospect accepts it. Google's guide to linking accounts to your manager account shows the request is made from Sub-account settings using the prospect's Customer ID, and is accepted from the Managers tab under Access and security. If you would rather not link at all during a pitch, the prospect can add one of your people as a user instead. Google's access levels page lists Admin, Standard, Read only, Email only and Billing, and read-only users can view campaigns and run reports without editing anything.

TikTok. The prospect adds your Business Centre as a partner. TikTok's help article on inviting partners says an admin can add a partner by Business Centre ID or ad account ID, then choose the accounts and assets to share and set their permissions.

For Taboola, Snapchat and Outbrain, ask the prospect for the same principle: a named user or partner seat with the lowest role that shows reporting. For more on the mistakes agencies make here, see 7 agency ad account permission mistakes, and for a worked example of onboarding without passwords, read how one agency onboarded client accounts without sharing a Meta login.

Set the scope before you start

Scope protects both sides, so write it down before you open a single account. Agree the date range (the last 30 to 90 days covers most pitches), the platforms and accounts in scope, whether you will see the shop or analytics data, and the date the audit will be delivered. State plainly that you will make no changes, and that you will remove your access when the pitch ends unless asked to stay.

Ask the prospect three questions up front, because the answers shape every finding:

1. What does a good result look like for you: revenue, profit, leads or something else?
2. Which number do you trust most today, and where does it come from?
3. What have you already tried that did not work?

Per-platform checklist

The same seven areas apply on every platform, even though each one names things differently. Work through them in order, because tracking problems make every later number unreliable.

Tracking and conversions

Tracking comes first because every other finding depends on it. Check which conversion events exist, which one each campaign optimises for, and whether the primary event matches the business goal from your scoping questions. On Meta, look for a pixel and a Conversions API setup sending the same events. On Google Ads, check whether each conversion action counts every conversion or one per click: Google's conversion counting page recommends every conversion for sales and one conversion for leads. A lead account counting every conversion inflates results quietly. On TikTok, check the pixel events and which one the ad groups optimise towards.

Account structure

Structure tells you how the account was built and whether it still matches the strategy. Look for many small campaigns splitting a modest budget, duplicate campaigns targeting the same people, and old test campaigns still spending. Note the campaign objectives in use and whether they match the goal.

Budgets and bidding

Budget and bid settings decide where money actually goes, which is often not where the prospect thinks. Compare each campaign's share of spend with its share of results. Check bid strategies and targets against recent performance: a cost cap far below what the account achieves can starve delivery, and one far above can waste it.

Audiences

Audience checks look at who the ads reach and who they exclude. Check exclusions of existing customers in prospecting, the age of customer lists and lookalike sources, and how much spend goes to retargeting compared with new customers.

Creative

Creative review covers volume, age and variety. Count active ads per ad set, note how long the top spenders have been running, and check whether formats suit each placement. Flag ads with falling results and rising frequency as likely fatigue. Our guide to diagnosing underperforming client campaigns has a quick daily routine for this.

Policy and account health

Account health problems can stop an account overnight, so they rank high even when spend is small. Check for disapproved or limited ads, account quality warnings, billing issues and spending limits close to being reached.

Naming

Naming looks cosmetic but decides how fast anyone can read the account. Check whether campaign, ad set and ad names follow a pattern that includes market, objective and audience, and whether UTM parameters are present and consistent. Our article on consolidating UTM naming across client campaigns covers a fix you can put in the 90-day plan.

Cross-platform checks

Cross-platform checks are where a multi-platform audit earns its value, because each platform only grades itself. A prospect running Meta, Google and TikTok has three dashboards that each claim credit, and none of them is built to tell you about the others.

Audience overlap. List who each platform targets. If Meta retargets site visitors, Google runs remarketing and TikTok retargets the same visitors, the prospect may be paying three times to reach one group of people.

Double counting. Add up the conversions every platform reports for the same period and compare the total with the orders or leads the business actually received. When the platform total is clearly higher, several platforms are probably claiming the same sale (why platform conversions add up to more than your orders). Check the attribution settings on each platform before you draw conclusions, and say plainly in the audit that platform totals overlap. Our explainer on first-touch vs last-touch attribution helps frame this for the prospect.

Blended results against shop data. Divide total ad spend across all platforms by the orders in the shop for the same period to get a blended cost per acquisition, and divide shop revenue by total spend for a blended ROAS. Compare these with the figures the platforms report. If the gap is large, budget decisions based on platform figures alone are probably wrong, and that is often the single most persuasive finding in a pitch.

This is the part of the audit where one view of every platform saves the most time. In Wevion, cross-channel analytics puts the six platforms side by side, and profitability analytics, in beta, brings in Shopify or WooCommerce orders so you can compare platform claims with real sales. For the bigger picture on running several platforms together, see our guide on how to manage ads across multiple platforms.

Score and prioritise findings

Scoring turns a long list of observations into a short list the prospect can act on. Give every finding two scores from 1 to 3: impact (how much money or risk is involved) and effort (how hard it is to fix). Keep the evidence for each one: a screenshot, a figure or a setting.

High-impact, low-effort items become quick wins. High-impact, high-effort items become the spine of the 90-day plan. Low-impact items go in an appendix so the summary stays sharp.

Be careful with language. Where data is missing or you cannot confirm a cause, call it a question to investigate rather than a fault. Prospects notice when an agency overstates problems to win the work.

Present the audit

The best pitch audits are short at the front and detailed at the back. Build the deliverable in three parts.

One-page summary. Three to five findings, each with one sentence of evidence and one sentence on likely impact. Open with the cross-platform finding if you have one, since it is usually the one the prospect has never seen.

Quick wins. A short list the client can act on straight away, with or without you. Giving these away builds trust and shows you are confident there is more value to add.

90-day plan. Month one fixes tracking and account health, month two restructures campaigns and budgets, and month three scales creative testing and sets up regular cross-platform reporting. Tie each step back to a finding.

Once the prospect signs, the audit becomes your onboarding document. Our guide to building a repeatable client onboarding kit shows how to turn it into a standard first week.

Audit ethics

Ethics matter most when you hold access to a business that is not yet your client. Follow a few firm rules on every pitch.

• Read only. Use the lowest access level each platform offers, and change nothing, even an obvious error. Report it instead.
• No shared logins. Never ask for or accept a password. Partner and manager access exist so nobody has to.
• NDA if asked. Offer to sign one before access is granted, and treat every figure as confidential.
• Remove access. When the pitch ends, remove your access, or ask the prospect to, and confirm in writing.
• No poaching data. Never reuse what you learn in one prospect's account for another client.

In Wevion, workspaces keep each client or prospect separate, with its own ad accounts, stores and reports, and team roles range from owner to read-only viewer, granted workspace by workspace. That makes it simple to give a junior analyst view-only access to one prospect and nothing else.

Run your next audit in one view

Wevion helps you run cross-platform audits faster by putting all six platforms, your shop data and your team's roles in one place. Wavo, the AI copilot, answers questions on the connected account data and proposes changes that only happen once they are approved. Try it on your next pitch with a 14-day free trial on the Pro plan, no card needed. Start your free trial.

Key takeaways

• Get access through partner and manager flows with the lowest permission level, never a shared login.
• Check the same seven areas on every platform, starting with tracking.
• Compare the sum of platform conversions with the shop's real orders to catch double counting.
• Score findings on impact and effort, then lead with three to five on one page.
• Turn the audit into a 90-day plan and, once signed, into your onboarding document.

Sources (checked 22 October 2026): Meta, give a partner access to business assets, Google Ads, link accounts to your manager account, Google Ads, access levels, Google Ads, conversion counting, TikTok, invite partners.