How to Choose a Google Ads Agency: The Questions to Ask Before You Sign

Why this decision is harder than it should be

Most Google Ads agency websites look identical: a stock photo of a dashboard, a claim about ROI, a form asking for your email before you can see anything real. There’s very little to actually compare a prospective agency against until you’re already on a call with them — and by then you’re talking to whoever is best at sales, not necessarily whoever is best at managing an account.

That matters because the two skills aren’t the same, and the person who runs the pitch call is often not the person who’ll be inside your account making bidding, budget and keyword decisions six months from now. The sales process is designed to build confidence quickly; the account management process is what actually determines whether your budget is spent well. Confusing one for the other is how businesses end up in a contract that looked great on the call and delivers very little afterwards.

The fix is to go into that call with a fixed list of questions and actually listen to how specifically they’re answered. A good agency or consultant will answer every one of these directly, with no hedging. A weaker one will talk around the question, redirect to a case study, or give you an answer that sounds confident but tells you nothing concrete. This article is that list — the same questions I’d want a prospective client to ask me.

Who actually manages your account day-to-day

• Ask by name — who, specifically, will be logging into your account and making changes week to week? Not ‘our team’ — a name.
• Ask about their experience level — is this person junior and newly trained, or senior with years of hands-on management? Big agencies commonly sell you on the founder or a senior strategist in the pitch, then hand day-to-day execution to a junior once you’ve signed.
• Ask how many other accounts that person manages — a specialist juggling twenty-plus accounts has far less time per account than one managing a handful.
• Ask what happens if that person leaves — is there a handover process, or does your account effectively restart with someone new?

Reporting cadence and what you'll actually see

• Ask how often you’ll get a report, and whether it’s a real conversation or an automated PDF nobody reads.
• Ask what the report actually covers — spend and conversions is the bare minimum. Does it explain what changed in the account, why, and what’s planned next?
• Ask for a sample report before you sign, not after. If they can’t show you one (anonymised, from an existing client), be cautious.
• Ask whether you can request an ad-hoc call outside the scheduled reporting cycle if something looks wrong, or whether you’re locked into a fixed monthly slot.

Contract length, notice period, and how they charge

• Ask the exact contract length and the exact notice period to leave. Get it in writing, not verbally on a call. A confident agency that genuinely delivers results has no reason to lock you into a long minimum term — the work should be what keeps you, not the contract.
• Ask exactly how the management fee is calculated — a flat monthly fee, a percentage of ad spend, or a hybrid. Ask what happens to the fee as your spend grows or shrinks.
• Ask whether there’s any markup on your actual ad spend, or whether every pound you budget for ads goes straight to Google with the management fee charged separately and transparently.
• Ask what’s included in the fee versus what’s billed as an extra — landing page changes, tracking setup, creative, additional campaigns.

Ask to see a real audit — and read how they talk about problems

Before you commit, ask whether they’ll run an audit of your current account (or a competitor’s public ad activity, if you’re new to Google Ads) as part of the pitch. What matters isn’t just what they find — it’s how honestly they talk about it. Be wary of anyone who tells you everything is broken and only they can fix it; that’s a sales tactic, not a diagnosis. A genuinely useful audit will tell you plainly what’s working, what isn’t, and won’t manufacture urgency where none exists. If an agency can’t or won’t tell you your account is doing fine in places, they’re selling, not advising.

It’s also worth asking what they’d flag as a red flag in someone else’s account management — tracking gaps, unclear conversion definitions, campaigns left untouched for months, broad match with no negative keyword strategy. Someone who genuinely knows the platform will answer this instantly and specifically. Someone who doesn’t will speak in generalities.

Ask, too, whether the audit findings come with a prioritised list of fixes or just a list of problems. A list of problems is easy to produce and mostly serves the pitch. A prioritised list — what to fix first, what can wait, and roughly why — tells you they’re thinking about your budget the way they’d think about their own.

Weigh the answers, not just the pitch

None of these questions are trick questions — they’re the basic terms of a working relationship, and any agency or consultant worth hiring should answer them plainly, without prompting a second or third follow-up. If you come away from a call having had to chase down a straight answer on contract length, account ownership, or who’s actually doing the work, treat that as information in itself.

It’s also worth noticing the shape of the whole conversation, not just the answers to individual questions. Did they ask about your business, your margins, and what a genuinely qualified lead or sale looks like to you — or did the conversation stay entirely on their side, focused on their process and their results? An agency that’s going to manage your account well usually wants to understand what you’re actually trying to achieve before they start talking about how they’ll do it.

I’ll answer all of the above directly on a call, including the parts that don’t flatter a sales pitch — where my model doesn’t suit you, or where your current setup is actually fine as it is. That’s deliberate: I only take on accounts where I can genuinely add value, and I’d rather tell you that upfront than after you’ve signed.