The biggest mistake new advertisers make: checking ad reports every hour for the first week, then never again after month two. The right cadence is steady — and depends on what's actually changing on each timescale.
Daily — under 5 minutes
The "is anything on fire" check. Your job is to spot the catastrophe, not optimize the campaign.
- Are ads running? Most platforms show "No impressions in last 24h" warnings. Disapprovals, suspended accounts, and budget exhaustion all show up here.
- Did spend pace as expected? If you budgeted $100/day and spent $10, something blocked delivery. If you spent $300, your daily budget got blown — check campaign-level pacing.
- Did anything error out? Suspended ad? Failed payment? Tracking pixel firing zero events?
That's it. Don't change bids, don't pause campaigns, don't add keywords daily. The platforms need 7 days minimum to learn.
Weekly — 30-60 minutes
The optimization session. Pick a recurring time (Monday 9 AM) and stick to it.
- Search Terms report (Google). Add 5+ negatives, promote 1-2 search terms to exact-match keywords. Full guide.
- Per-campaign performance. CPA over the last 7 days — which campaigns are above target? Below? Adjust budgets accordingly.
- Ad creative refresh. Pause the worst-performing ad in each ad group. Write a new variation to test.
- Audience insights. Mobile vs desktop, age groups, geographies. Adjust bid modifiers if one is much better.
- Landing page metrics. Bounce rate, time on page, conversion rate. Spike anywhere?
Resist the urge to make 20 changes. Make 3 confident ones. Watch them next week.
Monthly — 2-3 hours
Strategic review. Zoom out from "what to change in the campaign" to "is this whole approach working?"
- CPA and ROAS by platform. Compare Google to Meta to Microsoft to Nextdoor. Reallocate budget toward the winners.
- Cumulative LTV vs CAC. Are the customers you've acquired the last 90 days renewing / repeating at a healthy rate?
- Top-of-funnel vs bottom-of-funnel split. Is too much spend going to retargeting (cheap, looks good, not incremental) vs cold acquisition?
- Audience saturation. Frequency capped? Impressions plateaued? Time to expand to new audiences or new platforms.
- Conversion tracking audit. Pull total conversions from each platform, compare to your CRM/Stripe. Are the numbers within 20% of each other? If not, tracking has drifted.
- Big campaign decisions. Should this campaign even continue running next month? Is there a new angle / offer to test?
Quarterly — 4-8 hours
The "should we even be doing this" review. Once a quarter:
- Recompute LTV across cohorts.
- Audit account structure — are campaigns still themed correctly?
- Test a new platform you've been resisting.
- Run an incrementality test on your highest-spend channel.
- Refresh creative across all campaigns. Old ads decay.
Reporting to your team / clients
If you're an agency or a marketer reporting to leadership, package monthly summaries:
- Top-line: Spend, conversions, CPA, revenue (if applicable).
- Breakdown: By platform.
- Trend: Last 3 months side by side.
- What changed: Decisions you made and why.
- What's next: Tests / changes planned for next month.