TheAuditThatAuditsItself
Every agency offers a "free audit". It's the industry's standard sales tool. Send us your Google Ads access, and we'll tell you what's wrong.
The problem is structural: the audit is designed to sell a service, not to find the truth. And once you understand that incentive, you start seeing the pattern everywhere.
An audit that always finds problems isn't an audit. It's a sales pitch with a spreadsheet attached.
The anatomy of a sales audit
Most agency audits follow the same template:
- Run a script or tool that flags common "issues" - broad match keywords, missing negative keywords, low Quality Scores, incomplete ad extensions
- Package the output into a PDF with the agency's branding and a severity score
- Present it on a call with language like "significant opportunity" and "quick wins"
- Close with a proposal that conveniently addresses every issue the audit found
The audit never says "your account is actually well-managed". It never says "the issues we found are minor and don't justify a switch". It never says "your current agency is doing a reasonable job given the constraints".
Because if it said any of those things, there'd be no sale.
How to spot a sales audit
- It focuses on tactical hygiene, not commercial impact. Missing sitelinks is not the reason your profitability is declining. But it looks alarming in a red-flagged audit report
- It doesn't reference your P&L or margins. An audit that talks about wasted spend without understanding your margin structure is guessing about what "wasted" means
- Every finding conveniently leads to a service the agency sells. If the audit found 12 problems and the agency happens to solve all 12, it's a sales document
- It was delivered within 48 hours. A meaningful audit of a complex account takes time. If it arrived in two days, it was generated by a tool, not an analyst
- It doesn't acknowledge what's working. Every account has things that are working well. An honest audit says so. A sales audit only shows problems
What a real audit looks like
A genuine audit is uncomfortable in both directions. It tells you what's broken, but it also tells you what's fine. It tells you where the opportunity is, but also where you're already close to optimal.
- It starts with your commercial context. Margins, return rates, seasonal patterns, cash flow constraints. Without this, everything else is speculation
- It quantifies the impact of each finding. Not "you have broad match keywords" but "these broad match terms drove £12,000 in spend with 0.3x POAS over the last 90 days"
- It tells you when the answer is "don't change anything". Some campaigns are performing well. The audit should say so
- It distinguishes between structural issues and cosmetic ones. Missing ad extensions is cosmetic. A campaign structure that blends 60% margin products with 12% margin products is structural
- It's willing to conclude that you don't need a new agency. The hardest thing for an auditor to say is "your current setup is fine". But sometimes it's the truth
This is why we built our audit process to include P&L analysis and commercial context before we even open the ads account. The account data is meaningless without the commercial framework around it.
The test
Next time an agency offers you a free audit, ask one question:
"Has your audit ever concluded that a prospect's account was well-managed and didn't need you?"
If the answer is no, it's not an audit. It's a funnel step.