How to Find Every Budget Leak in Your Meta Ads in 15 Minutes
Meta will spend your budget on 55 year olds if you let it.
It will keep running a fatigued creative for weeks after it stopped converting. It will dump 30% of your
spend into Audience Network placements your customers never click.
It does this quietly. At the campaign level, ROAS looks fine. So you move on.
The average ecommerce brand loses 20-30% of their Meta budget this way.
Most media buyers miss it because they aren't dicing deep enough. A full account audit takes over an hour. So
it doesn't happen.
AI does it in 30 seconds.
You can now connect Claude directly to your Meta Ads account in under 2 minutes. In the next 15 mins you'll
have a complete report on every leak in your account.
- 1. The Overview - Find campaigns that quietly stopped working
- 2. The Audience Leaks - Find who you're paying to reach but never buys
- 3. The Creative Leaks - Find ads that fatigued weeks ago and are still running
- 4. The Placement Leaks - Find where Meta is dumping your budget
- 5. The Action Plan - Ranked list of leaks with estimated monthly waste
Below is the exact setup and every prompt in the sequence.
1. Connect Claude to Meta Ads (2 minutes, one time)
1. Create a free account at pipeboard.co
2. Click Connect Meta Ads Account and sign in with Facebook
3. Go to claude.ai and open Settings → Connectors → Add Connector
4. Name it "Meta Ads" and paste this URL: https://mcp.pipeboard.co/meta-ads-mcp
5. Authorize your Facebook Ads account
6. Open a new Claude chat and type: "Show me all my Meta ad accounts"
See your accounts? You're in.
Requires Claude Pro ($20/mo). Pipeboard is free for 30 tasks a month. OAuth connection,
same tech as "Sign in with Facebook." Revoke access anytime.
2. The 15-Minute Budget Leak Audit
Run these in order. Each prompt builds on the last.
Copy & paste this prompt →
Analyze my entire Meta ad account for the last 14 days.
I want a full health check. Look for:
- Campaigns with declining ROAS vs. the previous 14-day period
- Campaigns stuck in the learning phase still spending budget
- Campaigns with zero or near-zero conversions in the last 7 days
- Any campaign where spend is accelerating but ROAS is dropping
- Budget distribution issues - is spend concentrated on campaigns that aren't delivering?
Sort everything by severity. Flag the biggest problems first.
You're not acting yet. You're mapping the battlefield.
Copy & paste this prompt →
Now go deep on audience performance across my top 5 campaigns by spend. Find every
audience leak. Look at:
- Age brackets: which age groups are spending with zero or low conversions?
- Gender split: is one gender converting at significantly higher cost?
- Geography: which countries, regions or cities are eating budget with no conversions? Flag anything spending
over $50 with zero purchases.
- Audience overlap: are any ad sets competing against each other in the same auction?
- Broad vs custom audiences: which are actually converting and which are just spending?
For each leak, tell me the estimated monthly waste at current spend rate.
This is where most founders are shocked. Meta will spend across every age group if you let it.
Copy & paste this prompt →
Now audit every active ad for creative performance issues. Find every creative wasting
budget. Look for:
- High frequency ads (above 3.0) - same people seeing the same ad repeatedly
- Low CTR ads (below 0.8%) that have spent over $100
- Ads where CTR is declining week over week - early fatigue signal
- Ads still in the learning phase burning budget before Meta can optimize
- Any ad that was your top performer 30+ days ago but has dropped 40%+ in CTR since
For each creative leak: the ad name, current spend rate, estimated monthly waste, and recommended action -
pause, refresh, or test a new angle.
Most brands have 2-3 zombie ads running right now. This finds them.
Copy & paste this prompt →
Break down my spend and performance by placement across all active campaigns. Find
every placement leak. Show me:
- ROAS and CPA by placement: Facebook Feed, Instagram Feed, Stories, Reels, Audience Network, Messenger
- Which placements are spending over $100 with zero or near-zero conversions?
- What % of my total budget is going to Audience Network?
- Are there placements where CPM is high but conversion rate is low?
Flag any placement eating more than 10% of budget with below-average ROAS. Give me the monthly waste estimate
for each.
Audience Network is the biggest quiet drain. Most brands don't even know it's on.
Copy & paste this prompt →
Compile everything into a prioritized action plan. I want:
1. A ranked list of every leak found, from biggest monthly waste to smallest
2. For each leak: the exact action to take (pause, exclude, reallocate, refresh)
3. Total estimated monthly waste across all leaks
4. The three highest-impact changes I should make in the next 24 hours
Format it as a clean action list I can hand to my media buyer or work through myself.
This is your audit report. Screenshot it. Send it to your team. Work the list top to bottom.
3. What to Do With the Results
You'll likely find 3-5 leaks. Here's how to triage:
- Pause immediately: Any placement or audience spending $50+/week with zero conversions
- Pause this week: Fatigued creatives with frequency above 3.0 and declining CTR
- Reallocate budget: Move spend from underperforming campaigns to your top 1-2 performers
- Exclude and narrow: Age brackets and geographies with zero purchase history
Run this audit every single month.