A weekly ad account review in ten minutes

What should a weekly ad account review cover?

Seven things, in this order: spend against budget, conversions and cost per conversion against last week, whether tracking still fires, what people searched for, how often the same people saw the same ad, which ads were disapproved, and who changed what. Each check compares the last seven days with the seven before. The order matters because a broken tag makes every later number wrong.

Ten minutes is realistic for one account on one or two platforms once the views are saved. The first run takes longer, because you are building those views.

1. Is spend pacing to budget?

Compare what each campaign spent over seven days with seven times its daily budget. A campaign far under budget has stopped serving or is bidding too low. A campaign at budget every day may be losing auctions it could win. On Google Ads, the Status column says Limited by budget when that happens.

Do this per account, in the account’s own currency. Adding up spend across accounts in different currencies gives a number that means nothing.

2. Did conversions or cost per conversion move?

Set the date range to the last 7 days and turn on the comparison to the previous 7. In Google Ads the date picker has a Compare switch; in Meta Ads Manager the date range menu has a Compare option too. Read conversions and cost per conversion at campaign level.

A move under 20% on fewer than 30 conversions a week is usually noise. Above that, find which campaign carries most of the change before you touch anything. A drop spread evenly across every campaign points at tracking, which is the next check.

3. Is conversion tracking still firing?

This is the check that saves the most money, because a broken tag makes automated bidding optimise toward nothing. Each platform shows when it last received a signal:

• Google Ads: Goals → Conversions → Summary. Each conversion action has a status. No recent conversions means Google has seen the tag but recorded no conversion in the last 7 days.
• Meta: Events Manager → Data sources, pick the pixel, and read the Overview tab. Each event shows as active or inactive, and the Diagnostics tab lists problems Meta has found.
• LinkedIn: in Campaign Manager, Analyze → Conversion tracking → Data sources, filtered to Insight Tag. No recent activity means the last signal arrived more than seven days ago.

4. Which search terms took money this week?

On Google Ads, open Campaigns → Insights and reports → Search terms for the last 7 days, filter to zero conversions and sort by cost. A weekly pass only needs the top ten. You are looking for new phrases: the ones that arrived after a match type change or a new campaign. The full wasted-spend procedure covers the monthly version and how to choose a negative keyword’s match type.

Meta, LinkedIn and ChatGPT Ads have no search terms report. On LinkedIn the closest weekly check is cost per lead by job title or seniority, in the demographics view of a campaign.

5. Is any ad shown too often?

On Meta, add the Frequency and Cost per result columns at ad level. The warning sign is both rising together over two weeks. Rising frequency with a steady cost means a small audience, which is not a problem yet. On LinkedIn, B2B audiences are small, so the same people see the same creative sooner: watch click-through rate per creative for a fall in the second half of the period.

6. Was anything disapproved?

A disapproved ad does not raise an alarm. It stops serving, and the campaign spends its budget on what is left.

• Google Ads: Tools → Troubleshooting → Policy manager lists every ad and asset with a policy status.
• Meta: filter the Ads tab by delivery. A rejected ad shows Rejected in the Delivery column.
• ChatGPT Ads: the account, the brand and each ad are reviewed before anything serves. An ad with no impressions this week is a review question first.

7. What changed in the account?

Read the change log last, because it explains the rest. On Google Ads it is Campaigns → Change history, which keeps two years of changes with who made each one. On Meta, select a campaign, ad set or ad and open Activity history from the side panel. A budget cut on Tuesday explains a pacing gap on Wednesday. A bid strategy change explains a week of unstable cost.

What should you write down each week?

One line per account. Without it, next week’s review cannot tell a trend from a bad Tuesday.

• Spend, conversions and cost per conversion, with last week beside them.
• Anything a check flagged, and what you decided to do about it.
• What you changed, so next week’s change history has a reason attached.
• What you chose to leave alone, and the date to look at it again.

How to run the weekly review with an AI assistant

Six of the seven checks are reads. With your accounts connected to Adako, an MCP server for Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads and ChatGPT Ads, your assistant runs them from a few questions, and reads cost nothing on any plan:

Show me campaign performance for the last 7 days against the 7 before it, and tell me which campaign accounts for most of the change.

Which conversion actions recorded nothing this week?

Which search terms spent money this week and never converted?

Which Meta ads have rising frequency and a rising cost per result?

Each platform page lists what the assistant can read there: Google Ads, Meta Ads, LinkedIn Ads and ChatGPT Ads, where it reads the review verdict on each ad. The change log stays a job for the platform’s own interface.

Whatever the review turns up, a fix arrives as a proposal: a pause, a negative keyword or a budget change, with the exact fields that move. Nothing reaches the platform until you approve it.

Can the weekly review run on its own?

Partly. On the Pro plan and above, Adako can email a weekly brief on the day and hour you choose: the last 7 days against the 7 before, per account. Monitors cover the checks that should not wait a week. Each one is a rule evaluated once a day, such as cost per conversion above a ceiling or spend rising faster than its baseline. A monitor emails you when it fires, and if you gave it an action it proposes the pause or the budget cut for you to approve.

The brief replaces the reading. The judgement stays with you: whether a 25% drop on a quiet week is worth acting on is a question about your business.

The short version

• Compare the last 7 days with the 7 before, every week, on the same day.
• Check tracking before you believe any result.
• Pacing, results, tracking, search terms, frequency, disapprovals, change history.
• Write one line per account, including what you left alone.
• Hand the reads to an assistant or a brief; keep the decisions.