Existing campaigns carry history, settings, tracking choices, and business assumptions made by previous teams. Before taking responsibility for them, a new manager needs to understand what is running, what is measurable, and what could create avoidable risk.
1. Account ownership and access
Confirm that the business controls the Google Ads account, Meta Business Portfolio, billing relationship, analytics properties, website, domains, and relevant tracking tools. Access should be granted through proper business permissions rather than shared passwords.
2. Conversion tracking and data confidence
Review the conversion actions used for bidding and reporting. Check whether forms, calls, purchases, bookings, and imported outcomes fire correctly; whether duplicate actions exist; and whether less meaningful events have been marked as primary.
Where possible, compare advertising-platform totals with the website, CRM, e-commerce system, or another business record. Exact agreement is uncommon, but large unexplained differences can change the interpretation of the whole account.
3. Campaign and budget structure
Map active and paused campaigns by objective, product or service, location, audience, and budget. Identify overlap, fragmentation, shared budgets, portfolio strategies, and campaigns with too little data to support independent optimisation.
4. Targeting and traffic quality
For search, examine search terms, match behaviour, negative keywords, locations, networks, and intent. For paid social, examine audience definitions, exclusions, placements, creative fatigue, and whether prospecting and existing-customer activity are being interpreted separately.
5. Ads, assets, and destination experience
Check whether advertisements accurately represent the offer, follow platform and industry requirements, and lead to relevant working pages. Review mobile usability, page speed, form behaviour, message consistency, and what happens after an enquiry.
6. Bidding, settings, and change history
Understand why the current bidding strategies and settings were selected. Review recent changes, automated recommendations, experiments, account-level exclusions, attribution settings, consent implementation, and any scripts or third-party tools affecting delivery.
7. Performance in business context
Platform averages alone can hide important differences. Break results down by campaign purpose and business priority, then consider lead quality, sales outcomes, capacity, margin, seasonality, and changes in the offer or website.
A useful account review separates immediate risks, required repairs, reasonable improvements, and optional tests. It should also state what cannot yet be concluded because the evidence is incomplete.
When the standard transition needs additional work
Normal monthly management assumes the account is sufficiently understood and safe to operate. At Adsyntiq, Activation covers the standard transition review before management begins. Additional remediation may be necessary when tracking is unreliable, the structure needs substantial repairs, account ownership is unclear, or several campaigns need rebuilding.
The provider should explain this work and quote it before making material changes. A low monthly fee should not be used to hide a significant one-time recovery project.
What happens after the review
The outcome may be a standard transition within Activation, a limited set of agreed corrections, a separately scoped repair project, or a recommendation not to proceed. The right answer depends on the state of the account—not on hiding extra work inside a monthly fee.