Built by Y Combinator and Techstars backed team
For owners spending $500–$5,000/mo on Google Ads

See what’s leaking budget in your Google Ads campaign

Connect your account, pick one campaign, and we’ll show you two things: where your budget’s leaking, and which ads are quietly bringing leads you should be paying more for. The free read counts every leak and unlocks the biggest one — before you pay anything.

Get the breakdown
🆓 Free read💳 No card📞 No calls🔒 Read-only access
🔒 Google’s official OAuth · we can’t change anything in your account · revoke in 1 click from your Google Ads settings
Don’t want to connect your account? Email us a CSV export instead →

Two things we’ll probably find for you

Every audit looks at both sides — what’s costing you money and what’s leaving leads on the table.

Money you’re losing now

Clicks you’re paying for that aren’t selling anything

  • Broad-match keywords pulling in searches that never convert
  • Bids on terms that look related but don’t fit your business
  • Tracking firing twice — so your “cost per lead” is half of what it really is
  • Old ads still running at the wrong bid
Typical recovery for accounts $500–$5k/mo$250 – $600/mo back in your budget
Leads you’re missing now

Ads that are quietly working — and getting starved of budget

  • One ad group with a higher conversion rate, buried under loud bad ones
  • Mobile vs desktop — usually one is winning and being capped
  • Search terms already converting that you haven’t bid on yet
  • Times of day or locations where your cost per lead drops 40%+
Typical lift from redirecting that recovered budget+15–30% more leads, same total spend

What’s in the full audit

The free read counts every leak and unlocks the biggest one. The paid audit is the full picture: an 8-tab Excel workbook — every campaign, ad group, keyword, and search term in your account, with a ranked 7-day plan. Click through the tabs to see what’s inside.

X
Apex_Plumbing_Google_Ads_Audit.xlsx
Sample audit · composite of real plumbing-account audits · “Apex Plumbing”, Phoenix · 30-day window · $2,184 spend · Health Score 52/100
Sample preview
1Overview
2Performance
3Campaigns
5Keywords
6Wasted Spend
7Hidden Wins
87-Day Plan

Overview dashboard

Sheet 1 of 8

4 headline KPIs vs prior 30 days, full campaign table with verdicts, top-converting keywords, and the reallocatable-spend number. Read this first — every other sheet drills down from here.

Total spend
$2,184
−0.8%
Conversions
49
+19.5%
CTR
3.35%
+0.13pp
CPA
$44.58
−17.0%
CampaignStatusSpendConvCPA
Emergency Plumbing – PhoenixScale$98422$44.73
Water Heater ServicesFix bidding$61218$34.03
Drain Cleaning – BroadRestructure$4517$64.42
Brand – Apex PlumbingScale$1372$68.43
Reallocatable spend over the next 30 days: $570. 8 actions, ~2½ hours of work, moves budget from waste into high-CPA campaigns. Full plan on Sheet 8.

Performance Snapshot

Sheet 2 of 8

Account Health Score (0–100), your KPIs vs industry benchmarks, what’s working vs needs attention, and projected 30-day targets if recommendations are implemented.

52/100
Account Health Score
Moderate — clear leaks, easy wins
Functional but allocation-inefficient. CPA $44.58 is within the $50 home-services benchmark, but the average masks Drain Cleaning at $64.42. Conversion rate (3.81%) sits below the 5–10% home-services benchmark.
✓ What’s working
  • Emergency Plumbing — $44.73 CPA, best in account
  • Brand campaign — healthy 2.81× ROAS-equivalent CPC
  • Strong long-tail: [emergency plumber phoenix]
  • CPA trend improving: −17% vs prior 30 days
✕ Needs attention
  • Drain Cleaning: $64.42 CPA, 21% of spend, broad-match
  • 16 wasted queries ($212 spend, 0 conversions)
  • 8 keywords with $168 spend, 0 conv — pause or move
  • Best campaigns budget-capped at 18% and 5%

Campaign Breakdown

Sheet 3 of 8

Per-campaign verdict and a budget reallocation matrix — exactly where to move money next month. Each campaign also gets a written deep-dive: current state, root cause, recommendations, expected impact.

CampaignCurrentRecommendedVerdict
Emergency Plumbing – Phoenix$984$1,184 (+$200)Scale
Water Heater Services$612$612 (flat)Fix bidding
Drain Cleaning – Broad$451$250 (−$201)Restructure
Brand – Apex Plumbing$137$240 (+$103)Scale
Sample deep-dive — Drain Cleaning: 21% of spend, only 7 conversions. $64 CPA, 44% above account average. Campaign was set up with broad-match keywords expecting Google’s match algorithm to filter intent — it didn’t. Cut budget in half, pause 6 broad-match keywords, restart with exact-match in 60 days.

Keyword Breakdown

Sheet 5 of 8

Every keyword with action (Scale / Fix / Pause), bid Δ%, match-type change, and rationale. Plus 7 suggested long-tail expansions with target CPC.

KeywordMatchSpendCPAAction
[tankless water heater install]Exact$164$23.46Bid +10%
[emergency plumber phoenix]Exact$158$31.68Bid +10%
[water heater replacement]Exact$139$27.72Bid +5%
"tankless water heater cost"Phrase$100$50.05Move to exact
clogged drainBroad$128$64.20Pause
drain snake rentalBroad$72No convPause
+ 13 more keyword rows in the full file

Wasted Search Terms

Sheet 6 of 8

Every wasted query in the last 30 days — classified by intent (DIY, job-seeker, out-of-area, cost-research) with the exact negative keyword to add.

Total wasted spend in last 30 days
$212.20
Search querySpendIntentNegative to add
how to fix clogged drain youtube$28.40DIY tutorial-youtube
drain snake home depot price$21.80Price-shopping-home depot, -price
water heater repair diy$18.40DIY intent-diy
scottsdale plumber$15.40Out-of-areageo exclude
free plumbing advice$14.60Freebie-seeker-free
plumber salary phoenix$11.20Job-seeker-salary
+ 10 more wasted-query rows in the full file

Hidden Wins

Sheet 7 of 8

Search terms quietly converting through loose phrase/broad match. Promote them to exact match to lock the value — and find leads you didn’t know you were earning.

Search queryConvWhy it mattersAction
water heater emergency repair phoenix4 (22% rate)High-intent + urgency + geoAdd as [exact] in new ad group
north phoenix plumber 24 hour3 (21% rate)Geo + time-qualifiedAdd as [exact], geo-targeted RSA
hot water heater replacement cost phoenix3Pricing transparency → qualified leadsAdd as [exact] with price in copy
licensed plumber phoenix az2 (18% rate)Trust-signal queryAdd as [phrase], feature license #
garbage disposal repair phoenix2Different service vertical, mis-attributedNew ad group: Garbage Disposal

Your 7-Day Action Plan

Sheet 8 of 8

8 actions ranked by estimated $ recovered/month, with time-to-do and priority. Do the top 3 (P0) and capture most of the upside in under an hour.

1
Add 47 negative keywords to Drain Cleaning – Broad. 16 wasted queries identified.
+$212/mo
25 min
P0
2
Tighten match types: 6 broad → phrase, 5 phrase → exact
+$165/mo
20 min
P0
3
Pause 8 zero-conversion keywords ($168 of spend, 0 conv)
+$168/mo
10 min
P0
4
Promote 5 hidden-win search terms to exact-match
+leads
30 min
P1
5
Add Scottsdale + Tempe to geo-excluded locations
+$25/mo
15 min
P1
6
Reallocate +$200/mo from Drain Cleaning → Emergency Plumbing
+leads
10 min
P1
Total recoverable spend across 8 actions
$570/mo · ≈ 2½ hrs of work
Fixing it takes about 2.5 hours. 8 ranked actions on Sheet 8 — do the top 3 and you capture most of the $285/mo.
📊 Review this exact audit (Excel)

Real account, real numbers — client name anonymized.

What changes after the audit

The same Phoenix plumbing account from the sample audit below — what its Google Ads dashboard showed before, and 30 days after the 7-day plan. Same budget.

1 · Before the audit
Google Ads · All campaignsLast 30 days
Search — Plumbing PhoenixEnabled
Cost
$1,092
budget $1,100/mo
Conversions
24
calls + form fills
Cost / conv.
$45.51
Conv. rate
3.73%
What the dashboard doesn’t show: ~$285/mo of this is going to DIY searches, job-seekers and out-of-area clicks.
2 · 30 days after the fixes
Google Ads · All campaignsLast 30 days
Search — Plumbing PhoenixEnabled
Cost
$1,100
same budget
Conversions
28
+4 leads · +17%
Cost / conv.
$38.70
−15%
Conv. rate
4.75%
+1.0pp
Waste cut, budget moved to the ads that already convert — not a dollar of extra spend.

Numbers from the sample audit’s 30-day plan. Your account will be specific.

See it first. Decide after.

No card upfront. You see what we found, then decide whether the full audit is worth it.

STEP 01

Connect Google Ads

Read-only access via Google’s standard OAuth flow. Takes about 30 seconds. We never see your password and we can’t change anything in your account.

STEP 02

Pick a campaign, get the read

You pick the campaign you want audited. In about 5 minutes you see how many issues we found and what they cost you per month — plus the #1 leak unlocked in full, with the dollar amount attached. The rest stay locked until you decide.

STEP 03

Decide if it’s worth $69

Pay $69 and every finding unlocks instantly in your browser. A PPC specialist then reviews your audit and emails the final version — an Excel workbook with the 7-day plan — within 2 hours. If we can’t show you at least 3 things worth fixing, full refund.

Your options for a Google Ads audit

Side-by-side on what actually matters — not feature lists nobody reads.

 
Marketing agency
$500+
10–14 days
Freelancer
$100+
2–5 days
Free preview before paying
AI does the data work, a specialist does the thinking
PPC specialist reviews every audit before delivery
Custom to your account (not a checklist)
Money-back if it’s not useful
No retainer pitch after
Specific dollar impact on every finding
Why we can do this for $69AI handles the data side — 30 days of campaigns, search terms, ad assets, conversion settings. The stuff that would take a strategist a few hours to pull and sort. A PPC specialist takes it from there: looks at what the AI found, cuts anything that doesn’t apply to your account, and writes the audit. That part is about 60–90 minutes per account. That’s what $69 covers.
PPC
Every audit is reviewed and signed off by a senior PPC specialist before it reaches you.[Name Surname], [9]+ years running Google Ads for local services and ecommerce — the person who throws out anything that doesn’t apply to your account.

Questions people ask

What do I actually see for free?

Three things: how many issues we found in your campaign, what they cost you in total per month, and the single biggest leak unlocked in full — with the exact dollar amount and what’s causing it. The remaining findings stay locked. It’s enough to tell whether the full audit is worth $69 to you; it isn’t enough to fix the campaign — that’s the paid part.

What access do you need to my Google Ads?

Read-only, via Google’s standard OAuth flow. We never see your password, and the access doesn’t let us change anything in your account. You can revoke it in one click from your Google Ads settings whenever you want — including the moment you’ve got your audit.

I don’t want to give OAuth access. Is there another way?

Yes. You can export your campaign data from Google Ads (Campaigns → Download → CSV) and email it to us. The audit takes a bit longer that way — 48–72 hours instead of an instant unlock — but the report you get is the same. Email us at contact@contera.ai and we’ll send instructions.

What if the audit doesn’t find anything useful?

If we can’t show you at least 3 things worth fixing in your account, reply to the email with the Excel report and say so. Full refund. We mean it — we’ve refunded before. If your campaign is genuinely clean, that’s good news for you, and we’d rather give the $69 back than argue about it.

Who’s actually doing the work?

A combination — and we’re upfront about it. The data pulling and the analysis run on our AI pipeline (the same one we use for our retained clients). It’s fast, and it doesn’t miss the obvious stuff. But the AI doesn’t ship your audit. A PPC specialist on our team reviews every finding before it goes out — throws away anything that doesn’t apply to your account, sharpens the recommendations, and writes the final summary in plain English. That’s the part you actually read.

Why this matters: a pure agency audit costs $500+ because a senior strategist did all the analysis manually. A Fiverr audit is $25 because nobody actually reviews it. We sit in the middle — AI does the heavy lifting so a real specialist can spend their 60–90 minutes on the thinking, not the data dumping.

How much do clients typically recover or earn from this?

It varies a lot by account size and how messy things are. For an owner spending $1,500/mo, we usually find $200–$500/mo in recoverable waste — plus 3–8 leads a month that were being misrouted, dropped at a broken form step, or paid for but never tracked properly. For a $3k/mo account, those numbers roughly double. For accounts under $500/mo the numbers tighten — there’s just less budget to leak. Most accounts make the $69 back inside 1–3 months. If yours is the exception, the refund applies.

My budget is small — under $1,000/mo. Is this still worth it?

Honest answer: probably yes, but the dollar impact will be smaller. A $69 audit that finds $200/mo in waste pays back in under 4 months. If your spend is under $300/mo, the math gets thin — book a free 20-min call instead and we’ll tell you whether it’s worth it for your size.

I have more than one campaign. Do I need separate audits?

After you connect, we see how many campaigns you’re running and show you both prices on the spot: one campaign for $69, or the whole account for $199 — every campaign, one combined workbook and plan. For most small accounts the biggest issues live in one or two campaigns, so starting with one is a fine choice too.

Not ready to connect Google Ads?

Two easy ways to look before you decide.

Option 1 · Sample by email

See a finished audit first

Leave your email and we’ll send a sample — the same Excel workbook we’d build for your account, so you know exactly what you’d get.

One sample file and a link to your free read. No spam.

Option 2 · Quick call

Not sure an audit fits your account?

Hop on a free 20-minute call. We’ll look at your account live and tell you if an audit makes sense for your situation — and if it doesn’t, we’ll tell you that too. No pressure, no upsell.

Free, no pitch — pick any slot.

Stop paying for clicks that don’t sell. Find ones that do.

Connect Google Ads, pick a campaign, see what we’d find. Pay $69 only if it’s actually useful.

Get the breakdown
Free read Takes ~5 minutes No credit card Money-back if we can’t show you 3+ things worth fixing