A PPC audit for a private label brand works through six stages in order: account structure, search term flow, negative keyword hygiene, bid and placement data, target setting by product stage, and a written fix list ranked by expected impact. Any service that skips straight to bids is guessing.
The short version
- Structure before bids. Bid changes on a broken campaign structure only redistribute the waste.
- Search terms are the audit. Where money flows against which queries tells you more than any dashboard summary.
- Stage matters. A launch product and a mature product should never be judged against the same efficiency target.
- The fix list must be ranked. Expected impact against effort, in writing, with an owner per item.
- Every finding must be checkable. If you cannot verify it in your own console, it is opinion.
The six stages, in order
PPC waste is structural before it is tactical. Money leaks through how campaigns are organized long before it leaks through individual bids, which is why the order of these stages is not optional. Each stage has a gate. If the account fails the gate, fixing later stages first is wasted motion.
- Account structure. Every campaign should map to one intent: one product family, one match strategy, one goal. The gate: can the auditor say what each campaign is for in one sentence. Accounts organized by date of creation rather than intent fail here, and most do.
- Search term flow. Pull the search term report for 60 to 90 days and trace where spend actually went. The gate: the top twenty spending terms are either converting or already negated. This stage finds more recoverable money than every other stage combined.
- Negative keyword hygiene. Check when negatives were last added and whether broad campaigns are protected from queries the brand can never win. The gate: negative lists exist, grow weekly, and are shared across campaigns where they should be.
- Bid and placement data. Review top-of-search versus rest-of-search performance and whether bid adjustments follow the data or a hunch. The gate: placement multipliers can be defended with numbers from the account itself.
- Targets by product stage. ACoS targets should change with the product's stage: aggressive during launch when the goal is rank and reviews, efficient at maturity when the goal is profit. The gate: the auditor states a launch number and a maturity number for your account. A single blended target across the catalog means nobody has thought about it.
- The ranked fix list. Everything above compresses into a written document ordered by expected impact, each line carrying the metric it should move and the date to check it. The gate: you could hand this list to a freelancer and get most of the value without hiring the auditor.
We run this exact sequence on every new account, produce it in writing within 48 hours, and charge nothing for it, because it doubles as our own decision about whether the account is one we can help.
What a PPC agency will not tell you
An auditor who will later be paid as a percentage of your ad spend has a quiet incentive problem: every dollar of waste they find is future revenue they lose. That is the single most useful question to ask a PPC audit service, how will you charge me after the audit. Our answer is a flat fee, published tier by tier on the pricing page, which means a recommendation to cut spend costs us nothing to make.
The other omission is seasonal. Audits run right after a peak period always look alarming and audits run in a quiet season always look fine. A fair service reads 60 to 90 days of data and says so, rather than letting a two-week snapshot tell whichever story sells the retainer.
Related answers
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Get the six-stage audit run on your account free, in writing, within 48 hours, from Flapen.
