Sponsored ads accounts rarely break all at once. They drift. A campaign gets duplicated for a sale and never cleaned up, a negative keyword list stops being maintained, a hero product goes out of stock while its ads keep spending, and a budget cap runs out by mid-afternoon every day without anyone noticing. Each problem is small. Together they quietly decide how much of your retail media spend is doing real work.
In short: a retail media audit checks eight areas in order: account structure and naming, keyword and targeting hygiene, bids and budgets, product detail page readiness, brand store and Sponsored Brands creative, offsite and DSP setup, measurement settings, and reporting and governance. Work through the checklists below network by network, note every gap with an owner and a date, and fix the issues that waste spend before the ones that only limit growth.
1Account Structure and Naming
Structure decides what you can control. If several product lines share one campaign, you can't give the high-margin line more budget without also funding the rest. Start the audit here, because problems in structure make every later section harder to fix.
| Check | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Campaign split | Campaigns are split in a way that matches how you make decisions: by brand, category, product line or SKU group. |
| Keyword separation | Branded, generic and competitor keywords sit in separate campaigns so each can have its own budget and goal. |
| Naming convention | Every campaign and ad group follows one written naming convention that shows network, objective, targeting type and product group. |
| Old campaigns | Old, duplicated and paused campaigns are archived or clearly labelled, not left mixed in with live ones. |
| User access | Named logins only, with no former staff or agencies still holding admin rights. |
| Campaign goals | Each campaign has a stated goal, such as return on ad spend, new-to-brand customers or share of voice, that someone could look up. |
2Keyword and Targeting Hygiene
This is where most wasted spend is found. Shoppers search in ways nobody predicts, and automatic and broad targeting will follow them, for better and worse. Regular search term review is the single most valuable habit in Sponsored Products and search ads management.
| Check | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Search term reviews | Search term reports are reviewed on a regular schedule, and converting terms are harvested into exact-match keywords in manual campaigns. |
| Harvested terms | Harvested terms are added as negatives in the source campaign so the two campaigns don't compete for the same search. |
| Negative keyword lists | Lists exist for irrelevant terms, wrong product types and searches that spend without converting. |
| Match types | Used deliberately: broad and phrase for discovery, exact for proven terms with tighter bids. |
| Product and category targeting | Excludes your own lower-priority products where they would cannibalize a hero SKU. |
| Auto campaigns | Still running for discovery, but with their own budget so they can't crowd out proven campaigns. |
| Competitor targeting | Reviewed against results, not left running out of habit. |
3Bids and Budgets
A campaign that runs out of budget by early afternoon is invisible during some of the best shopping hours, and the account's daily totals won't show it. Check pacing at the hourly level where the network allows it.
- Budget caps are checked for campaigns that regularly run out of budget before the end of the day.
- Budgets are split by priority, so hero and high-margin products are funded first.
- Bids reflect margin and stock, not a single target applied across the whole account.
- Dayparting or bid schedules are in place where the network supports them and the data shows clear patterns by hour or day.
- Placement modifiers, such as top-of-search adjustments, are set on purpose and reviewed against results.
- Monthly and quarterly pacing is tracked against the plan, with a clear rule for moving budget between campaigns and networks.
- Budgets for sale events and promotion days are planned in advance rather than raised in a rush on the day.
4Product Detail Page and Digital Shelf Readiness
Ads send shoppers to the product page; the page has to close the sale. If it can't, better bidding won't help. Audit the pages behind your highest-spending ads first, then work down the list. Our brand store and digital shelf management service runs these checks continuously.
| Check | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Titles | Clear, accurate and include the terms shoppers use, without stuffing. |
| Images | Cover the product, its scale, key features and pack contents, and meet each retailer's requirements. |
| Enhanced content | Content such as A+ content is published and current. |
| Ratings and reviews | Monitored, and products with weak ratings are reviewed before their ad spend is increased. |
| Stock | Monitored, and ads pause automatically or by rule when a product goes out of stock. |
| Buy Box status | Tracked on marketplaces where it applies, because losing it can stop ads serving or hand the sale to another seller. |
| Prices and promotions | Shown on the page and match what the ads say. |
5Brand Store and Sponsored Brands Creative
Brand formats build recognition before the shopper searches, but they age quickly when the range changes. Check that the creative still matches what you sell. Our Sponsored Brands and display ads team handles this alongside spec QA.
- The brand store reflects the current range, with no discontinued or permanently out-of-stock products.
- Store pages are organized the way shoppers browse, such as by need, category or bestseller.
- Sponsored Brands headlines, logos and featured products are current and approved.
- Landing pages for brand ads point to the most relevant store page or product set, not always the home page.
- Brand video and display creative meet each network's specs and have been checked on mobile.
- Creative is refreshed on a schedule, and older variants are retired once they stop performing.
6Offsite and DSP Setup
If you buy offsite through Amazon DSP or another retail DSP, audit it with the same care as onsite. Offsite settings are easy to set once and forget. Our guide to offsite retail media on CTV, social and DOOH covers channel choices in more depth.
| Check | What to look for |
|---|---|
| Audiences | Each line item has a clear audience, such as category buyers, competitor buyers or lapsed buyers, with the definition written down. |
| Frequency caps | Set per line item and reviewed across channels. |
| Brand safety and inventory | Brand safety, viewability and inventory settings are applied and documented. |
| Pixels and tags | Pixels and measurement tags fire correctly on every landing page. |
| Recent purchasers | Offsite campaigns exclude, or deliberately include, recent purchasers based on the objective. |
| Stock | Offsite products are checked against stock, just like onsite ads. |
If you are a retailer auditing your own network rather than a brand account, the same thinking applies to inventory, pricing and advertiser setup; that is the focus of our retail media network operations work.
7Measurement, Reporting and Governance
The last section decides whether you can trust the results of everything above. Most measurement problems aren't errors; they are inconsistencies, such as different attribution windows on different networks, that make results impossible to compare.
- Attribution windows are known for each network and noted on every report that compares them.
- New-to-brand metrics are tracked where the network offers them, alongside return on ad spend.
- At least one incrementality or sales lift test has been run, or is planned, for your largest spend.
- Clean room access, such as Amazon Marketing Cloud, is set up if your spend and questions justify it. Our clean rooms and attribution service covers setup and analysis.
- One report brings every network together using shared definitions for spend, sales and return.
- A weekly optimization review and a monthly business review are on the calendar, each with a named owner.
- Changes to bids, budgets and structure are logged so results can be traced back to decisions.
For more on the measurement side, see our guide to clean rooms, incrementality and attribution. If you run several networks, our article on running ads across multiple retail media networks covers how to keep governance consistent between them.
Working through this checklist takes time, but every item you fix keeps paying back, because these are the settings every future campaign inherits. If you would rather have an experienced team do it, our retail media management services start with exactly this review. Request a free retail media audit and we'll show you where spend is wasted and where growth is waiting.
