Checklist for your campaigns
This is the working checklist behind every audit we run. It won't catch everything, but if even a few of these are "no" in your account, there's margin on the table.
Brand vs. acquisition is separated
Two campaigns, two ROAS numbers, never one blended average.
Bidding targets reflect real margin
Cost-of-sale or Target CPA set per category, not one blanket ROAS goal.
Consent & server-side tracking is live
Consent Mode and Enhanced Conversions configured, not just installed.
Budget reflects seasonality
Pacing is planned around known peaks, not flat 365 days a year.
Bidding targets are current, not stale
Target CPA/ROAS reflect today's margins, especially with Google's Aug 2026 bidding recalibration.
Marketing jargon, decoded
No definitions require a marketing degree. If a term shows up in the checklist above or anywhere in the full guide, it's here.
ROAS Return on Ad Spend
Revenue earned per dollar spent on ads. A ROAS of 5 means $5 in sales for every $1 spent. It ignores margin: a high ROAS on a low-margin product can still lose money.
CAC Customer Acquisition Cost
What it actually costs, in ad spend, to win one new customer: a more honest number than ROAS because it isolates spend against genuinely new business rather than repeat or brand traffic.
COS Cost of Sale
Ad spend as a percentage of revenue: the inverse of ROAS, but easier to set per-product because it maps directly onto margin. If a product margins at 30%, its ad spend needs to stay well under that 30% to be profitable.
Smart Bidding
Google's umbrella term for automated, machine-learning-based bid strategies (Target CPA, Target ROAS, Maximize Conversions/Value) that set bids per auction using signals a human couldn't track manually.
Performance Max
A Google Ads campaign type that runs across Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Maps and Discover from a single campaign, using AI to decide where and to whom to show ads based on the assets and goals you provide.
Advantage+
Meta's suite of AI-automated campaign tools (Shopping Campaigns, Creative, Audience) that reduce manual targeting and creative decisions in favor of algorithmic optimization across Facebook and Instagram placements.
Andromeda
Meta's ad retrieval system: the first step in deciding what you see. It narrows tens of millions of candidate ads down to a shortlist of about a thousand before Meta's ranking models pick what actually gets shown.
Enhanced Conversions
A Google Ads tracking method that supplements standard tracking with hashed first-party data (like a customer's email or phone number), recovering conversions that cookie loss or ad blockers would otherwise hide.
Meta Pixel & Conversions API (CAPI)
Two ways Meta learns about actions on your website: the Pixel tracks from the visitor's browser; CAPI sends the same events directly from your server. Using both together recovers data that browser privacy settings block from the Pixel alone.
Consent Mode
Google's framework for adjusting tracking behavior based on a visitor's cookie consent choice, required for compliant advertising measurement in the EU/EEA and UK.
GA4 Google Analytics 4
Google's current analytics platform, built around events rather than sessions, and the standard data source for importing conversions into Google Ads.
Curious what your own account would show?
We'll run it through this exact checklist. You'll see exactly where budget is working, where it's leaking, and what to fix first.
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