A Meta ads audit for the system underneath the ads.
Meta’s delivery now runs on automation. We check whether it is getting the right signals: Conversions API and match quality, attribution after the 2026 changes, Advantage+ settings, AI creative edits and the data limits that hit health and supplement brands.
A Meta ads audit checks whether Meta’s automated delivery is working from accurate signals and the right settings: conversion tracking, attribution, Advantage+ campaign and audience setup, creative enhancements and data restrictions. Ours is free, covers Facebook, Instagram and Reels, and ends with a walkthrough call. The line-by-line account review, from structure and learning phase to targeting and creative fatigue, is our Facebook ads audit; the free audit covers both.
What we check in a Meta ads audit
Meta’s system decides who sees which ad, at what price, based on the signals your account sends it. These are the ten checks we run on that system, and what each one costs when it is wrong.
| Area | What we check | What it costs when it is wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Pixel and Conversions API | Both sources firing, purchases deduplicated by event ID, events and values sent | Missed or double-counted purchases feeding the algorithm |
| Event Match Quality | Match quality score per event, which customer parameters are sent | Fewer conversions matched to ads, so weaker optimization |
| Data-source category | Health and wellness category, Core Setup, restricted standard events | Purchase optimization blocked without anyone noticing |
| Attribution | Standard versus incremental model, windows, the 2026 link-click change | Results that cannot be compared month to month |
| Reconciliation | Ads Manager purchases against Shopify orders and blended revenue | Scaling on numbers the bank account does not show |
| Advantage+ campaigns | Legacy Advantage+ shopping campaigns migrated, budget, placements | Old campaigns that can no longer be edited through the API |
| Advantage+ audience | Which controls are hard limits and which are suggestions | Spend reaching people you meant to exclude |
| Advantage+ creative | Which AI enhancements are switched on for live ads | Edits to your ads, and claims in them, that nobody approved |
| Creative diversity | How many genuinely different concepts the account runs | Too little variety for Meta to match ads to people |
| Incrementality | Incremental attribution, lift tests, new versus returning customers | Credit for sales that would have happened anyway |
Updated October 2026 for Meta’s click attribution change, the legacy Advantage+ shopping campaign sunset and the April 2026 Conversions API update.
Is Meta getting clean conversion signals?
Meta optimizes toward the conversions it can see. In April 2026 it reported that advertisers with a Conversions API setup for web events saw an average 17.8 percent lower cost per result than those without, and launched a one-click setup for it (Meta). We check that the Pixel and the Conversions API are both sending purchases, and that the two are deduplicated with a shared event name and event ID so one order is not counted twice (Meta for Developers).
Then match quality. Event Match Quality is a score from 0 to 10, based on the customer information sent with each event and the share of events Meta can match to an account; it is calculated from the last 48 hours of data, and Meta ranks email and click ID as the highest-priority parameters (Meta Business Help). A purchase event with a low score is a purchase Meta struggles to credit to the right ad.
Some older setup advice is now out of date. Advertisers no longer need to prioritize eight conversion events per domain, the Aggregated Event Measurement tab has been removed, and domain verification is no longer required to configure events (Meta Business Help). Audit checklists written before that change still send people looking for a screen that no longer exists.
Are health or supplement data restrictions blocking your purchase events?
This is the check most Meta audits miss, and the one that matters most for supplement, wellness and CBD brands. Meta may assign a website to a data-source category, and its Health and wellness category explicitly includes health-related products and services (Meta Business Help). Depending on the category and region, Meta can apply Core Setup, which strips custom parameters and everything after the domain from URLs it receives, restrict specific mid- and lower-funnel standard events, or restrict all events (Meta Business Help).
Meta notifies affected advertisers by email and in Events Manager, but the notice is easy to miss. When purchase or add-to-cart events are restricted, campaigns optimizing for them lose the signal they depend on, and results drop for no visible reason in Ads Manager. We check the category and restriction status of your data source, which events are affected, and whether the campaign objectives still make sense with the events Meta can use.
CBD brands carry a second layer. Meta’s policy requires active LegitScript certification and written authorization from Meta, allows targeting only in the United States and only people 18 or older, prohibits health or medical claims, and limits products to 0.3 percent THC or less (Meta Transparency Center). We read live ads against that policy before anything else, because a rejected account costs more than any optimization saves. Our supplement and CBD marketing pages cover how we run those categories.
Can you still compare this month’s results with last year’s?
Meta changed what counts as a click. In March 2026 it began redefining click-through attribution for website and in-store conversions to include only link clicks; shares, saves and other clicks moved into a renamed engage-through bucket, and the video engaged-view threshold dropped from 10 seconds to 5 (Meta). Reported click-through conversions can fall after the change with no change in real sales.
Ads Manager now offers standard and incremental attribution models. Standard settings are 1-day or 7-day click, 1-day view and 1-day engage-through, and Meta warns that ad sets using different attribution models cannot be compared in the overview table (Meta Business Help). Separately, the Ads Insights API stopped returning 7-day view and 28-day view windows from January 12, 2026 (Meta for Developers), which changed what many third-party dashboards show.
We document which model and window each campaign uses, mark where the 2026 changes break a trend line, and reconcile Ads Manager purchases with Shopify orders and blended revenue for the same days. The decision to scale or cut should rest on the numbers that match the bank.
Are your Advantage+ campaigns set up the way Meta now builds them?
In February 2025, Meta renamed Advantage+ shopping campaigns to Advantage+ sales campaigns and introduced a streamlined setup; a campaign counts as Advantage+ when it uses Advantage+ audience, Advantage+ placements and Advantage+ campaign budget together (Meta). Legacy Advantage+ shopping campaigns are on the way out: from Marketing API v25.0, and for all API versions from May 19, 2026, they can no longer be created, duplicated or updated through the API (Meta for Developers). Accounts that still run them, or tools that manage them, need a migration plan.
Inside Advantage+ audience, most targeting inputs act as suggestions. Location, minimum age, language and custom audience exclusions stay hard controls (Meta for Developers). We check that those are the controls set, and that past purchasers are handled the way the campaign’s goal requires.
Meta’s opportunity score sits on top of all this, and Meta reported a 5 percent median decrease in cost per result for early adopters of its recommendations (Meta). We treat it as an input. Each recommendation gets checked against margin and new-customer revenue before it goes on the list.
Is your creative built for Andromeda, and what is AI changing on it?
Meta’s ad retrieval system, Andromeda, matches ads to people from the creative an account supplies. Meta calls creative diversification the best lever for finding new audiences (Meta), and its published best practice is to launch new ads weekly, keep at least 20 diversified ads in Advantage+ shopping campaigns, and put 20 to 30 percent of ad budget toward testing new ones (Meta). Diversified means different concepts, people, formats and angles. Twenty colorways of one video count as one idea.
The same automation can edit the ads you run. Since Marketing API v22.0 in January 2025, Advantage+ creative enhancements are individual opt-ins, such as text overlays, visual touch-ups, text improvements and showing relevant comments (Meta for Developers). We list which enhancements are on, ad by ad. For a supplement or CBD brand this is a compliance check as much as a performance one: an AI text improvement that adds a health claim is still your claim.
Where Meta’s system stops: incrementality and the landing page
Meta can tell you which ads were present before a purchase. It cannot tell you on its own how many of those purchases would have happened anyway, or how many visitors the landing page lost. We look at the incremental attribution model where it is available, the share of spend reaching existing customers, and the gap between Meta’s reported revenue and new-customer revenue in Shopify.
Then we follow the click. We check message match between ad and page, mobile load time, the product page and the checkout, because that is the half of the funnel we fix ourselves. At the same spend and the same clicks, a 30 percent lift in landing page conversion rate cuts cost per acquisition by about 23 percent. Model it with the conversion rate calculator, or see our landing pages for paid traffic.
How the free audit works
The audit is free, commits you to nothing, and never changes your account.
Request
Tell us your site, your monthly Meta spend and what feels off, using the form below. It goes to Andrew directly.
View-only access
Add Parah Group as a partner on the ad account with permission to view performance, plus Events Manager access.
Review
We run the ten checks above, reconcile Ads Manager with Shopify, and review the pages your ads send traffic to.
Walkthrough call
We walk you through the measurement gaps, the settings to change and the first tests we would run, ranked by impact.
Audits are led by Andrew Cowan, Parah Group’s founder, a former brand-side CMO with close to 15 years of buying social media ads. Findings come as a ranked list of specific changes, for example a purchase event deduplicated incorrectly, a restricted add-to-cart event behind a campaign optimizing for it, or text improvements switched on across a supplement brand’s live ads. Each is marked as a Meta setting, a tracking fix or a page fix. If you want us to run the account afterwards, see our Facebook ads agency.
Numbers our clients said we could publish.
Meta ads audit FAQs
01What is the difference between a Facebook ads audit and a Meta ads audit? +
Facebook and Instagram ads both run in Meta Ads Manager, so the two overlap. We use our Facebook ads audit for the line-by-line account review and this Meta ads audit for the system underneath: tracking, attribution, Advantage+ settings and data restrictions. The free audit covers both.
02How do I know if my Conversions API is working correctly? +
Check three things in Events Manager: that purchases arrive from both the browser and the server, that they are deduplicated with a shared event ID, and that Event Match Quality for the purchase event is healthy. Then compare Meta’s purchase count with Shopify orders for the same days.
03Can supplement or CBD brands still optimize Meta ads for purchases? +
It depends on how Meta categorizes your data source. Meta can restrict mid- and lower-funnel events for sites in its Health and wellness category, and notifies affected advertisers in Events Manager. The audit checks your status and whether your campaign objectives still fit the events Meta can use.
04Why don’t my Meta conversions match Shopify? +
Meta credits conversions within its attribution windows, including view-through and engage-through, while Shopify counts orders. Since March 2026 click-through attribution counts only link clicks, so Meta’s numbers can shift with no change in sales. We reconcile the two for the same days during the audit.
05Is Advantage+ better than a manual campaign structure? +
Meta reports lower average costs from its streamlined Advantage+ setup, and for many DTC accounts it is the right default. It works best with clean conversion signals, diverse creative and the right hard controls. The audit checks whether your account gives Advantage+ what it needs before you hand it more budget.
06Is the Meta ads audit free? +
Yes. There is no fee and no obligation. We walk you through the findings on a call, and you can act on them with your own team, your agency or us.
07What access do you need for a Meta ads audit? +
Partner access to the ad account with permission to view performance, access to Events Manager, and your Shopify order totals for the same period. We never need permission to edit campaigns.
Other audits we run
Facebook ads audit
Structure, learning phase, targeting, creative fatigue and the pages behind your Facebook and Instagram ads.
Google Ads audit
Tracking, Performance Max, search terms, the Shopping feed and the pages behind the clicks.
Pinterest ads audit
Tag and Conversions API, catalogs, Performance+ and the path from save to purchase.
Snapchat ads audit
Snap Pixel and Conversions API, bidding, catalog ads and mobile landing pages.
Check what Meta is learning from.
Send us your site and your monthly Meta ad spend. We will review the measurement, the Advantage+ setup and the pages behind the ads, free and with no obligation, and walk you through what we find on a call.