How the check works

What we read

You download reports from each ad platform and save them as CSV files. The check opens them in your browser, in a sealed part of the page that cannot connect to the internet. Nothing is uploaded.

If a needed column is missing, the check stops and names it. Rows it cannot read are counted and named. They never count as zero spend.

Amazon Ads

• Daily campaign report (spend). Needed: Campaign Name or Campaign Id; Date (or Start Date and End Date); Spend.
• Campaign history shows on screen only. Amazon has no file for it, so Amazon changes cannot be checked yet.
• Search term report (waste check). The check needs: Campaign Name; Date (or Start Date and End Date, or Date range); Customer Search Term; Targeting (or Target ID); Clicks; Spend; 7 Day Total Orders (#). It accepts the console’s other names for these.
• If you build Amazon’s newer custom report, tick these. Needed: Date range, Campaign ID, Campaign name, Target ID, Targeting match type, Search term, Clicks, Total cost, Purchases. Recommended: KENP read, Sales, Budget currency. That report has no keyword column, so duplicate keywords aren’t checked.
• In the older report, needed: Campaign Name, Customer Search Term, Targeting, Clicks, Spend, Orders (7 or 14 day), and Date (or Start Date and End Date). Recommended: Campaign ID, Ad Group Name, Match Type, KENP Read, Country or Marketplace, Sales, and Currency.
• Bulk sheet (waste check): the “Sponsored Products Campaigns” tab, saved as CSV. Needed: Entity; Campaign ID; Campaign Name; Keyword Text; Clicks; Spend; Orders. A bulk sheet does not say which dates it covers, so the check uses the From and To dates you enter.

Meta Ads Manager

• Spend report, broken down by day. Needed: Campaign ID or Campaign name; Amount spent; Day (or Reporting starts and Reporting ends). A row covering several days is skipped and named.
• Activity history (changes). Needed: Date and time; Changed by (or Actor Name); Activity (or Translated Event Type). Old and new budget or bid values are read only when the text says “from X to Y”.

Google Ads

• Campaign report, segmented by day. Needed: Campaign ID or Campaign; Day; Cost.
• Change history. Needed: Date & time; User; Changes. A Tool or Client type column helps tell a person from automation.

Step-by-step help for downloading each report

How each line gets its answer

• Allowed: the record shows the action or the day’s spend followed every rule that applies, and the evidence is complete. Allowed means allowed by your own rules.
• Not allowed: the record shows this agent broke one of your rules.
• Can’t tell: evidence is missing or incomplete, or we cannot tell who acted. We say why.
• Not checked: a person or the platform’s own automation made the change, so none of your agent’s rules apply to it. It is still listed.

Who did it

• A change counts against an agent only when the record names a login or tool that you linked to that one agent, and the platform records it as an agency login or a software tool.
• A login you linked to two agents is shared: Can’t tell.
• No name in the record, or a login you did not link to any agent: Can’t tell.
• The platform records a person or its own automation: Not checked. If you linked that same login to an agent, it is Can’t tell instead.
• We never count a campaign’s spend against an agent just because the campaign uses AI.

The rules

• Caps on budgets it sets: setting a daily or monthly budget above your cap is Not allowed. Money at risk is the new budget minus the cap.
• Raises that need your OK: a budget or bid raised by more than your percentage, or from zero. When the record of what you approved is known, such a raise without your OK is Not allowed. The free check has no place to enter your approvals, so on your own files these lines are Can’t tell, with the size of the raise. The made-up sample assumes your approvals are known.
• Off-limits campaigns: acting on one is Not allowed. Spend on one is Not allowed when the record shows this agent did it, and Can’t tell when the record does not say.
• Where it may run: acting outside your countries is Not allowed. A record that does not say where is Can’t tell.
• Daily and monthly caps on spend: every day (or month) of the period gets a line. Spend within the cap is Allowed only when the spend report covers the whole day (or month) and every row names a campaign in your currency. Otherwise it is Can’t tell.
• Spend over a cap is Not allowed only when this agent alone set the budgets in force at the start of that day, no budget changed during it, the change history covers it, and those budgets add up to more than your cap. Otherwise it is Can’t tell. Money at risk is the spend minus the cap.
• Each agent this period: Not allowed if any line is. Can’t tell if the change history does not cover the whole period, if any of its lines is Can’t tell, or if a change we could not attribute may be its. Otherwise Allowed.

The statement also counts the actions it saw: by your agents, by people, by the platform, and “could not tell who”.

Waste: worth a look

An AI tool can follow every rule and still spend on campaigns that never sell. For Amazon Sponsored Products, the check reads your search term report or bulk sheet and lists five kinds of spend worth a look, each with the money, the rows behind it and one suggested next step:

1. Spend with no sales: a campaign, keyword or target spent at least your no-sale threshold with no orders. Paused rows are left out.
2. Cost per sale above your break-even: spend is more than your break-even times the orders. It needs at least 2 orders: one sale says too little.
3. Same keyword in several campaigns: the same keyword and match type spends in more than one campaign in one marketplace. They may compete for the same searches. The money is the spend of every copy except the one that did best.
4. Search term with no sales: a customer search term cost at least your threshold across campaigns with no orders. The step is to add it as a negative.
5. Outside your marketplaces or products: a campaign runs in a marketplace or advertises a product you did not list.

Too early to tell

A line is “Too early to tell”, never “Worth a look”, when:

• the report covers fewer days than your window (14 days unless you change it), or does not say which dates it covers;
• the rows have fewer than 10 clicks;
• some rows for that campaign could not be read;
• your reports disagree on its sales, for example one shows orders the other does not;
• Kindle Unlimited pages were read, because orders alone do not show those sales;
• you said your books are in Kindle Unlimited and no report with a KENP Read column covers those dates;
• we cannot tell which marketplace it ran in, or two campaigns share its name;
• the chance of bad luck is too high (below).

The bad-luck test

Some clicks with no sale can be plain chance. So a no-sales line is worth a look only when bad luck is an unlikely explanation.

• Your usual sale rate is p = (orders + 1) ÷ (clicks + 31), from all the campaigns in your files, by marketplace, and by product when the line is about one product.
• The +1 and +31 are a cautious starting point worth about 1 sale in 31 clicks (statisticians call it a Beta(1, 30) prior). A few hundred clicks of your own outweigh it.
• The chance of n clicks with no sale at that rate is (1 − p) multiplied by itself n times.
• Worth a look only when that chance is 1 in 20 or less. Otherwise the line is too early to tell, and says the odds.
• If unreadable rows could change your usual rate, the line is too early to tell.

Example from the sample: at about 1 sale per 20 clicks, 70 clicks with no sale is about a 1 in 34 chance, so it is worth a look. At the same rate, 16 clicks with no sale happens about 1 in 2 times, so it is too early to tell.

Kindle Unlimited

Page reads are sales that orders do not show. Keep the KENP Read column in your search term report. Without it, page reads do not count as sales, and the statement says so at the top of the waste section. If you tick “My books are in Kindle Unlimited”, sales-based lines without that column are too early to tell.

What we never do

• Change a campaign, bid or budget, or pause anything.
• Move, hold, approve or block money.
• Ask for your passwords or upload your files.
• Guess who acted, or fill in missing data.
• Let an AI model decide an answer, or use a hidden score.
• Promise a return on spend. Whether spend was worth it is your call.

See it on made-up data

The sample statement is the free check’s own output for an invented business and an invented book seller. Every name and number is made up.

Spotted a difference between this page and the check? Write to hello@billevera.com.