Agency Report Auditor.
Tick what's in your current monthly report. We'll score how much of it is vanity vs. revenue, and what to ask instead.
This self-check scores your current marketing agency's monthly report against a fixed checklist of 14 report-line items — 10 classed as vanity metrics, 4 as revenue metrics — and returns both a score and the specific questions to ask your agency next.
No login or report upload required — every item is a tick-box against your own report.
Google Ads account audit: 10 checks before you trust the report
Conversion actions and primary/secondary settings
Enhanced conversions / offline imports
Search terms review
Agency report auditor, in depth
The supporting detail behind each section of this page, by topic. 4 topics
The 10 checks
- Conversion actions and primary/secondary settings — only one or two actions should be set as primary; everything else is secondary. If every lead action is primary, Smart Bidding is optimising to the noise.
- Enhanced conversions / offline imports — a lead-gen account without enhanced conversions or offline-conversion imports is reporting on form fills, not closed business.
- Search terms review — recent weeks of actual search terms matched by broad and phrase match. Irrelevant terms burning spend is the single most common finding.
- Brand vs non-brand split — brand terms are cheap and convert well; folded into the account total they inflate every blended ROAS. Report the two separately.
- Performance Max asset and search-theme hygiene — PMax asset groups need actual assets (not placeholders), negative keyword lists at account level, and search themes that match the business, not generic category words.
- Location settings ("presence" vs "presence or interest") — "presence or interest" quietly serves ads to people searching about the location, not people in it. For local service businesses this is usually a leak.
- Auto-applied recommendations — if turned on, Google is editing campaigns outside the agency's or client's decision. Switch off for lead-gen accounts.
- Account ownership — the client should own the Google Ads account (not the agency's MCC in a way that can't be released). If the agency owns the account, you lose the history and tracking when they leave.
- Change history — the Change History log shows who did what, when. A quiet log means nothing is being managed; a chaotic log means no coherent plan.
- Budget-limited campaigns — campaigns capped by daily budget are leaving search-impression share on the table. Check the "Lost IS (budget)" column for the real ceiling.
For the search-terms deep dive, see the Google Ads search terms report guide; for how we run accounts to this standard, see Google Ads.
- Cite this
- shakalakaa (Plixitt Solutions). “Agency Report Auditor Tool.”
- https://shakalakaa.my/tools/agency-report-auditor · Updated 2026-10-16
- Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- shakalakaa (Plixitt Solutions). "Agency Report Auditor Tool." https://shakalakaa.my/tools/agency-report-auditor. Updated 2026-10-16. Licensed under CC BY 4.0.
The 4 that actually matter
- Cost per qualified lead (or booked consultation) — not raw leads.
- Conversion rate through the funnel — lead → qualified → consult/quote → sale.
- Cost per acquisition vs. customer value — the only metric that tells you if the whole thing is profitable.
- Return on ad spend / attributed revenue — the number your accountant cares about.
Part of the paid media toolkit: one of 14 free tools organised by workflow stage — plan the budget, forecast the CPL, check the creative, verify tracking, audit the report.
This is the same framework behind our full vanity-metrics audit guide, and the same reporting standard we hold our own client accounts to — see MY & SG ad benchmarks for the figures we report against.
What makes a metric "vanity"
A metric is vanity when it goes up without your bank balance following. The test: if this number doubled, would revenue move? Each metric is defined in our marketing metrics glossary.
For most reach, impressions, likes and follower-growth reporting, the honest answer is no — they're diagnostics at best, decoration at worst, for a business whose actual goal is leads or sales rather than brand awareness.
Google Ads account audit: 10 checks before you trust the report
Brand vs non-brand split
Performance Max asset and search-theme hygiene
Location settings ("presence" vs "presence or interest")
Auto-applied recommendations
Account ownership
Change history
Budget-limited campaigns
Keep exploring
Frequently asked questions
Is my marketing agency doing a good job?+
Start by auditing what your monthly report actually leads with — if the first page is reach, impressions, likes and follower growth, that's a report optimised to impress, not to inform.
What are agency report red flags?+
The clearest red flag is a report that never mentions cost per qualified lead or return on ad spend at all, substituting reach/impressions/engagement as the headline numbers instead.
What questions should I ask my agency?+
Ask for cost per qualified lead, the conversion rate at each funnel stage, cost per acquisition vs customer value, and attributed revenue or ROAS.
Are vanity metrics always useless?+
No — reach matters for brand-awareness campaigns specifically. The problem is when they replace revenue metrics as the headline result for a lead/sales campaign.
Is my marketing agency doing a good job?
Start by auditing what your monthly report actually leads with — if the first page is reach, impressions, likes and follower growth, that's a report optimised to impress, not to inform.
A report worth paying for leads with cost per qualified lead, funnel conversion rate, cost-per-acquisition vs customer value, and attributed revenue or ROAS.
What are agency report red flags?
The clearest red flag is a report that never mentions cost per qualified lead or return on ad spend at all, substituting reach/impressions/engagement as the headline numbers instead.
A second red flag: raw lead count reported without a qualification or close-rate breakdown, since unqualified leads inflate the number while wasting your team's time.
More questions (2)
What questions should I ask my agency?
Ask for cost per qualified lead (not raw lead count), the conversion rate at each funnel stage, cost per acquisition measured against actual customer/case value, and attributed revenue or ROAS tied back to campaigns. If your agency can't produce these numbers, that itself is the answer.
Are vanity metrics always useless?
No — reach matters for brand-awareness campaigns specifically, and metrics like engagement rate are legitimate diagnostics for creative performance. The problem is when they replace revenue metrics as the headline result for a campaign whose actual goal is leads or sales, not awareness.