Look at impression shares first. If there is loss to budget or rank, then there is room to improve in most cases. Look at the ad copy itself and the data feed if you have access. Look at the auction insights to see where competitors fall. Make sure ad extensions are in place and re-marketing audiences.

If any of this is missing, then there’s room for improvement.

When we’re meeting with new clients or brands that are considering working with us, we do a super thorough audit–at no cost–and it becomes very clear where we can make improvement. We sit down with the brand for 90 minutes and go through all the pieces.

Every audit is different because every product offering and audience is different. But we do the audits for free because we’ve found it’s a great way for people to get a sense for our thinking, our approach and see instant spots for improvement.

Customers do not follow a simple path to purchase anymore, and online shoppers are more sophisticated than ever with much more information available to them for comparison shopping and reviewing products and companies. Because of this, e-commerce brands must understand and evaluate every channel that could play a role in a conversion path and then harness the power of a good attribution model such as first click to take full advantage of bidding opportunities for shopping and non-brand.