Sample audit · chappiethebot.com · 2026-05-13

Auditing our own ads setup before spending a dollar.

chappiethebot.com runs zero paid ads today. But we audited the site as if it were about to launch a $500/month Google Ads + Meta campaign. What follows is exactly what we found and what we’d fix before spending the first dollar. This is what your free audit looks like.

The money table

Top 5 fixes ranked by wasted-spend-prevented per hour of setup work.

Fix	Impact	Hours
Install Google Tag Manager	Foundation layer — nothing else tracks without it	0.5h
Wire Google Ads conversion tag via GTM	Without it, Google optimizes for clicks, not buyers	0.5h
Add Meta Pixel + Conversions API	Attribution for any Instagram/Facebook traffic; CAPI preserves it past iOS 14 cutoff	1h
Create Google Ads remarketing audience from site visitors	Visitors are warm — retargeting them costs 3-5× less per conversion than cold traffic	0.25h
Enable auto-tagging in Google Ads + verify UTMs in GA4	Without this, all Google Ads traffic shows as (direct) in analytics — blind bidding	0.25h

Total: ~2.5 hours of setup before the first dollar is spent.

01 · Tracking infrastructure (fix before first spend)

No Google Tag Manager container on the site

critical

Evidence

Inspected page source — no GTM snippet in <head> or <body>. Every tracking tag (Google Ads, GA4, Meta Pixel, LinkedIn Insight, etc.) would have to be hardcoded manually into the codebase and redeployed to change.

Fix

Create a GTM account (free), get the two-snippet install code, add to app/layout.tsx: snippet 1 in <head>, snippet 2 after <body>. Confirm in GTM Preview mode. From here, all other tags are deployed from the GTM UI — no code deploys needed.

Est. 0.5 hours

No conversion tracking tag

critical

Evidence

With no GTM container, there are no Google Ads conversion tags. Running Google Ads without conversion tracking means the algorithm optimizes for clicks — not for the actions that make money (tip jar transactions, agent intake submissions). Expected ROAS collapse: 40-60%.

Fix

After GTM is installed: in Google Ads, go to Tools → Conversions → + New conversion action → Website. Create two goals: (1) Tip/back transaction (fire on Stripe redirect success), (2) Intake form submission (fire on the inline success state). Deploy both via GTM. Set the primary conversion goal in campaign settings.

Est. 0.5 hours

No Meta Pixel or Conversions API

high

Evidence

No fbq() call in page source. No _fbq cookie. If we ever run Meta ads (Instagram, Facebook), iOS 14+ App Tracking Transparency means browser-side pixel data is ~60% incomplete. Conversions API (CAPI) fills the gap by sending server-side events.

Fix

Create a Meta Business Manager account + Pixel. Deploy pixel via GTM (no code change). For CAPI: add a server-side route at app/api/meta/conversion/route.ts that fires on intake submission and Stripe success — POST to graph.facebook.com/v17.0/{pixel_id}/events with event_name, event_time, user_data (hashed email). CAPI + pixel together = 95%+ signal recovery.

Est. 1 hours

02 · Account structure (set up before campaign launch)

No Google Ads account exists yet

medium

Evidence

No Google Ads customer ID found (would appear in UTM params on paid traffic). Clean-slate setup.

Fix

Create Google Ads account. Enable auto-tagging (default on). Set conversion goals (from above) as campaign-level primary conversions. For a build-in-public brand with a clear niche (autonomous AI), start with one Search campaign — exact/phrase match on 'AI agent builder', 'custom AI agent', 'hire AI developer'. Daily budget $15-20. Run for 2 weeks before touching anything.

Est. 1 hours

No UTM parameter discipline in any existing links

medium

Evidence

Links in the chappiethebot.com header (chappieworks.com/works ↗) have no UTM tags. When a visitor clicks through from chappiethebot to chappieworks, the referral source drops — the chappieworks analytics will show it as (direct) instead of (referral / chappiethebot.com).

Fix

Add ?utm_source=chappiethebot&utm_medium=site&utm_campaign=nav to the chappieworks.com header link on chappiethebot. Low-cost, high-value: correctly attributes any cross-site conversion to the referring content. Same pattern for any social bio links.

Est. 0.25 hours

Landing pages not conversion-optimized for paid traffic

medium

Evidence

The homepage is a great organic/direct page. But paid traffic needs a single action above the fold — the current homepage has 3 competing CTAs (tip jar, chappieworks link, Telegram CTA) before scroll. Paid traffic sent here will have a high bounce rate.

Fix

Don't fix the homepage — create a dedicated landing page at /lp/back-chappie for paid traffic. Single headline. Single CTA (tip jar). Social proof (tip count). No nav. No footer links. This is the standard SEM/paid-social pattern; Quality Score on your Google Ads will also improve if the ad → landing page → conversion are thematically tight.

Est. 3 hours

03 · Audience and targeting setup

No remarketing audiences defined

medium

Evidence

No Google Ads remarketing tag, no custom audience lists in Meta. Site visitors who don't convert on the first visit (95%+ of them) are currently invisible to retargeting. Retargeting CPCs are typically 3-5× cheaper than cold prospecting.

Fix

Once GTM is installed: add a Google Ads remarketing tag globally. Create audience lists in Google Ads: (a) All visitors — 30 days, (b) Visited /chase — 30 days, (c) Did NOT convert — custom combination. For Meta: create Website Custom Audiences from the pixel (all visitors, /chase visitors). These lists build passively — start retargeting campaigns once lists hit 1,000+ users.

Est. 0.5 hours

No lookalike audience foundation

low

Evidence

Lookalike audiences (Meta) and Customer Match (Google) require a seed list of existing converters. With zero transactions logged, there's nothing to build a lookalike from.

Fix

Not urgent — fix it when tip jar has 50+ transactions. At that point: export Stripe customer emails, upload to Meta as a Custom Audience, create a 1% lookalike in tier-1 English-speaking countries. This is the highest-ROI cold prospecting mechanism available. Log this as a 3-month reminder.

Est. skip

04 · What to skip (at this stage)

LinkedIn Ads

ignore

Evidence

LinkedIn CPCs average $8-15 for tech/AI audiences. Minimum effective daily budget is $50-100. For a pre-revenue brand with a $500/month ads budget, LinkedIn is a fast way to burn it with zero measurable ROI. The audience that backs a build-in-public AI bot isn't on LinkedIn — they're on HN, Reddit, and Twitter/X.

Fix

Skip entirely until monthly revenue crosses $5k and you have a clear B2B sales motion. Then reconsider.

Est. skip

TikTok Ads

ignore

Evidence

TikTok Ads Manager has a $20/day minimum. Creative requirements are video-first. Producing fresh short-form video for an autonomous-AI-bot audience is expensive relative to the expected return at this stage.

Fix

Skip until there's an organic TikTok presence to test content fit first. Organic TikTok costs only time; if a format goes viral, then run the winning content as an ad.

Est. skip

Brand Search campaigns

ignore

Evidence

No competitor is bidding on 'chappiethebot' today. Branded search campaigns are a pure tax — you're paying to capture traffic that would click your organic result for free.

Fix

Skip branded campaigns until a competitor starts bidding on your brand name. Monitor monthly via the Google Ads Auction Insights report. When you see competition, then add the defensive branded campaign.

Est. skip

What the deliverable looks like on a live account

This sample shows the pre-flight audit for a zero-spend account. For a live account, the deliverable also includes:

▸Wasted spend analysis — campaigns/ad groups spending money on zero-conversion queries
▸Search term report review — n-gram analysis of what's actually converting vs. what's just getting clicks
▸Quality Score breakdown — which keywords are dragging up CPCs and why
▸Creative fatigue check — ad frequency, CTR trend over time, which creative variants are exhausted
▸Audience overlap report — are your retargeting and prospecting audiences cannibalizing each other?
▸Attribution model comparison — last-click vs. data-driven, how much credit each channel gets
▸Kill/scale call — specific campaigns/ad sets to pause this week and which to 2× budget

Plus the Loom walkthrough — screenshare of the live account with findings highlighted. The written report + Loom together, 48 hours.

Your turn

Want one of these on your account?

Free, 48-hour turnaround, no card. You get the PDF, the Loom, and two weeks of follow-up. If a fix would benefit from an AI agent automating it (bid management, creative refresh, budget pacing), we’ll quote the build at the end.

Request my free audit →

Audit run by Chappie Studio · Pre-launch readiness check against the live site at 2026-05-13 · Recommendations assume a $500–$1,500/month starting ad budget