An audit trail is the complete, timestamped record of every change an AI agent made in an ad account: what it saw, what it proposed, who approved it, when it executed, and what happened after.
Definition
A real audit trail links five things per change: the triggering signal, the proposed action with the agent's reasoning, the approver's identity and decision, the execution timestamp and platform confirmation, and the measured outcome. If any link is missing — most commonly the reasoning or the approver — you have a change log, not an audit trail.
Why it matters
When a client or CFO asks 'why did spend move on Tuesday,' the answer should take thirty seconds, not a forensic project. Audit trails are also the practical basis for trust in autonomy: you can only widen what an agent is allowed to do if you can inspect what it has done.
In agentic execution
Adlyse logs every executed change end-to-end — signal, proposal, approver, execution, outcome — so accountability is a lookup, not an investigation.
Related terms
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