Ad account audit for a new client: read the history before you change anything

What should an ad account audit for a new client check?

An ad account audit for a new client checks five areas: tracking, structure and settings, automations, recent changes and results. Do it before your first edit, because every change you make on day one mixes with the last changes of the previous team.

Use this table as the order of work. Tracking comes first: if conversions are wrong, every other number in the audit is wrong too.

The same areas apply to Meta Ads: check the pixel or dataset and the events used for optimization, then the activity history, then automatic placements and Advantage+ settings. The difference is in the history: Meta does not publish how long its activity history is kept, so export what you need on day one.

Why should the audit start with the change history?

Because the change history tells you what the account looked like a month ago and who moved it to where it is now. Settings show you the current state; only the history shows the decisions and automations that produced it.

In Google Ads, open Campaigns, then Change history. Google shows the past 2 years there; older data isn't available. You can filter by date range, by type of change, such as budget or keyword edits, and by campaign or ad group. The user column shows the e-mail address for edits made in the interface, and names such as “Google Ads system”, “Google Ads API” or a tool's name for automated and API changes.

What to look for in the last 90 days

• Bidding strategy and target changes. A new Target CPA or Target ROAS, or a switch between strategies, explains many sudden moves.
• Budget jumps. Large increases or cuts, and on which campaigns.
• Conversion changes. New conversion actions, an action moved between primary and secondary, or a changed value.
• Changes you didn't expect. Entries made by the system, the API or a script that nobody on the client side remembers.
• Clusters. Many edits on one day often mark a restructure or a rushed fix before the handover.

Two limits matter. Google states that not all account-level settings changes are listed, and that changes made by Google representatives may be missing. Through the Google Ads API, change_event queries cover only the past 30 days, with at most 10,000 rows per query. The history also never tells you why a change was made, so ask the previous team or the client for the reasons behind the big ones. The Google Ads change history guide explains each column.

How do I check conversion tracking in an inherited account?

Open Goals, then Summary, and read the “Tracking status” of every conversion action before you look at performance. A broken or duplicated action makes CPA, ROAS and Smart Bidding decisions unreliable.

1. Open Goals and Summary
2. Read the Tracking status
3. Troubleshoot with Tag Assistant
4. Confirm which actions are primary

Google lists statuses such as “Unverified”, “Tag inactive”, “Needs attention” and “No recent conversions”. The last one is not always an error: Google notes it might mean no paid ad clicks led to conversions in the last 7 to 14 days. “Tag inactive” and “Needs attention” often point to a tag that isn't found on the site, enhanced conversions setup issues or a wrong conversion ID or label.

For an action with a problem status, hover over the status and select “Troubleshoot” to open Tag Assistant. Enter a landing or home page, connect, trigger the conversion on the site and select “Finish”. If the site uses Google Tag Manager, you may need “Debug live version” first. After a successful test the action shows “No recent conversions” and then “Recording” once conversions arrive.

Then check which actions are primary. Primary actions count in the “Conversions” column and can drive bidding; secondary actions appear only in “All conversions”. An inherited account with a newsletter sign-up set as primary next to purchases will bid toward the cheaper action. Note every action, its status and whether it is primary in your audit file.

Which automations can change an inherited account without you?

Auto-applied recommendations, automated rules and scripts can all edit the account after you take over. Find each one in the audit, decide whether it stays, and write the decision down.

• Auto-applied recommendations. Open Recommendations, then Auto-apply settings. The History tab shows when each recommendation was first turned on, how many times it was applied in the past week and when it was last applied. To see who opted in, look up the user in Change history. Read more in Google Ads auto-applied recommendations.
• Automated rules and scripts. Look for entries in Change history that come from a tool or the API instead of a person, then find the rule or script behind them.
• Third-party tools. Bid tools, feed tools and reporting connectors with write access. Ask the client which ones still have access.

Turning an automation off is itself a change. Log it with the date and the reason, because results can move in the following days and you will want to know whether that was the cause.

How do I isolate which change caused a shift after the takeover?

Put every change from the weeks before and after the takeover on one timeline, rule out tracking first, then test one hypothesis at a time. Takeovers are hard to read because the old team's last edits, your first edits and the platform's automations all land in the same weeks.

1. List the previous team's changes from Change history, with dates.
2. Add the automations you found, and the site, tracking and CRM changes the client tells you about.
3. Mark the day the metric moved and keep only the changes that came before it.
4. Check tracking first, then test the closest change: revert it, or compare campaigns that were and weren't touched.

Example: in your first week, the client's marketing lead asks why leads fell 25% the month before you started. Change history shows the previous agency switched the main campaign to Target CPA on a Monday, and an auto-applied recommendation added keywords on Wednesday. The client's web team says two required fields were added to the contact form on Thursday. Leads fell from Friday, in Meta as well as Google Ads, so you test the form first: it is the only change that touches both channels.

With every change on one timeline, the form edit on Thursday sits right before the drop next to the Google Ads edits, and the answer to the client takes minutes instead of a week. In Changeline, Google Ads changes are imported from a read-only connection, with the last 30 days on the first connection, and the team logs site, tracking and Meta changes on the same timeline. For the full method, see marketing root cause analysis.

How do I record a baseline before my first change?

Write down the state you inherited as one dated entry, then log every change you make from that day on. The baseline is your reference when the client asks what you changed and what it did.

Keep the baseline in a marketing change log that belongs to the client, not in a personal spreadsheet. A marketing change log template gives you the columns: date, platform, what changed, owner and reason.

Then hold structural changes for the first week. Fix broken tracking at once, because nothing else can be judged without it, but leave bidding, budgets and structure until you have read the history and the client has seen the baseline. If access and ownership are still moving, follow the agency handover checklist first.