15 Questions to Ask a Google Ads Agency Before You Sign

Finding a Google Ads agency is easy. The hard part is telling, in the first call, whether they treat your ad budget as money that has to earn something back or as a sum that wants managing. Every pitch deck looks good. The difference only shows once you ask specific questions and listen closely to what comes back.

The 15 questions below to ask a Google Ads agency are sorted into three themes: who owns what, how results are measured, and how the account is actually run. For each one you’ll find what a useful answer sounds like and how to spot a red flag. They apply to freelancers just as much as to agencies, so to me as well.

How to get the most out of the list: send the questions before the call, and you’ll get considered answers instead of improvised ones. Have the answers on access, contract term and billing written into the proposal. One weak answer is not a reason to walk away. If an agency dodges the questions on access and measurement, though, it is.

1. Questions to ask a Google Ads agency: who owns what

Before campaigns come ownership and money. Mistakes here are expensive, because they usually only surface at the end of the relationship.

Question 1: Who owns the Google Ads account, GA4 and Tag Manager?

• Good answer: every account is in your company’s name, you have admin access, and the payment profile is in your name. The agency works as an invited user or through a link to its manager account.
• Red flag: “We’ll set the account up on our side.” Or you only get read-only access. Without your own admin access, your entire account history depends on how cooperative the agency still is when you part ways.

Question 2: What stays with me if we part ways?

• Good answer: campaigns, ad copy, images, audience lists, conversion actions and the Tag Manager container stay where they are. The handover process is in the contract, with a deadline.
• Red flag: campaigns or copy count as “agency know-how” and disappear when you cancel. Just as risky is a server-side tracking container running in the agency’s cloud account when nobody has agreed what happens to it after the contract ends.

Question 3: How long am I tied in, and how do I get out?

• Good answer: cancellable monthly, or a short trial period with a clear end date.
• Red flag: a twelve-month minimum term that renews automatically. An agency that believes in its work doesn’t need that lock-in. I don’t have a minimum term, by the way, so feel free to hold me to the same standard.

Question 4: How do you bill, and what do you earn if I spend more?

Every billing model creates an incentive. A fixed fee rewards efficiency, a percentage of ad spend rewards spending more, and a success fee rewards whatever was defined as success. None of them is wrong, but you should know which incentive is built into your contract.

• Good answer: the agency names the incentive in its own model without being asked and explains how it handles it.
• Red flag: the fee is tied to ad spend, and the first recommendation is “increase the budget”, with no calculation behind it. The same goes for click costs billed through the agency’s own invoice, where you can’t see how much of it actually reaches Google.

Whether management pays off at your budget at all is something you can work out yourself beforehand. The maths is in Is a Google Ads agency worth it?

Question 5: Who exactly works on my account, and how many accounts does that person manage?

• Good answer: a name, that person’s experience, an honest number of accounts and a plan for holidays and sick leave.
• Red flag: “Our team takes care of it.” Or the person in the pitch is not the person who later works in the account. Ask directly whether the person on the first call is also the one making changes in the account.

2. How do you measure success? Questions on tracking and goals

Smart Bidding optimises for the signal you give the account. If an agency stays vague on measurement, every success figure that follows is a guess. That’s why these five answers carry the most weight.

Question 6: What counts as a conversion for me, and which ones drive bidding?

• Good answer: the agency asks back what a business result means for you: an enquiry, an appointment or a sale. It separates primary conversion actions, which feed the bid strategy, from secondary ones, which are normally only there for observation. Small signals such as scroll depth belong in the second group at most.
• Red flag: “We track everything.” A dozen conversion actions are marked as primary, or a page view counts as a success. The bid strategy then learns to deliver more of whatever counts as success but does little for your business.

Question 7: How does the account learn which enquiries were actually good?

• Good answer: there is a fixed route by which your sales team’s assessment flows back into the account, for example via offline conversion import from the CRM. At low volumes, a regular review is enough to start with: which enquiries were a fit, which were spam?
• Red flag: cost per lead is the only target, and nobody asks what became of the leads. Cheap enquiries that never turn into orders are the most expensive kind.

Question 8: How do you handle consent, and what gap is left in the numbers?

• Good answer: the advertising and analytics tags only load after consent, Consent Mode is set up, and the agency can explain which share of conversions is missing or modelled by Google.
• Red flag: “We measure 100 percent.” Or tags that store or read information on the device before consent. In Germany, Section 25 of the TDDDG only allows that without consent in narrow exceptions, and an agency that ignores this shifts the risk onto you.

The free tracking check shows you in a few minutes which trackers and which consent tool are built into your website. Whether the tags really only fire after consent is something a test in the browser settles afterwards.

Question 9: Which number decides after 90 days whether we carry on?

• Good answer: a concrete limit, such as the maximum cost per qualified enquiry, derived from your margin and your close rate. Plus a statement of what happens if that limit isn’t met.
• Red flag: “Google needs time to learn”, with no end date. Learning periods exist, but they don’t last six months.

Question 10: What does a monthly report from you look like?

• Good answer: the report shows cost per qualified enquiry or revenue, what was changed that month and why, and what’s planned next.
• Red flag: impressions, click-through rate and the optimisation score are sold as success. An account can reach an optimisation score of 100 percent just by applying or dismissing all of Google’s recommendations. A score of 95 percent therefore doesn’t prove that your account makes money.

The quickest test in the first call: ask for an anonymised monthly report from an existing client and the list of changes from that same month. Those two documents tell you more than any presentation: whether work was done, what it’s measured against, and whether someone can justify the changes.

3. How do you work in the account? Questions on the day-to-day

Once ownership and measurement are settled, it comes down to craft. This is where you see who really steers an account and who just works through the platform’s suggestions.

Question 11: What do you do in the first 30 days, and what do you explicitly not do?

• Good answer: first comes a review of measurement, search terms and settings. After that, changes are made one at a time and documented, so their effect can be traced. An existing account with history is kept.
• Red flag: “We’ll rebuild everything” before anyone has looked at the account. A new account without good reason throws away data your money has already paid for.

Question 12: Which automation do you use, and what do you switch off?

Smart Bidding, Performance Max, broad match keywords and automatically created assets can work. But they need clean signals and someone who keeps an eye on them.

• Good answer: the agency explains under which conditions it uses which automation and names settings it checks by default, such as Search Partners, the location option “Presence or interest” and auto-applied recommendations.
• Red flag: “Performance Max will sort it out.” Or auto-applied recommendations are switched on and nobody knows. Then Google changes your account without anyone being accountable for the change.

The settings check shows you in two minutes, without account access, which of these settings might be costing you money right now.

Question 13: How often do you look at my search terms?

• Good answer: on a fixed schedule that suits the size of the account, with a rule for which negative keywords are agreed with you, for example when they affect one of your services.
• Red flag: you’ve never seen the search terms report, only a keyword list. Keywords are what the agency books. Search terms show the real searches your ads appear for and get clicked on.

You can also export a search terms report yourself and have it sorted in the account check, without giving anyone else access to the account.

Question 14: Who signs off ad copy and the claims on the landing page?

• Good answer: you sign off the promises. Every number, price and service in the ad also appears on the page it leads to.
• Red flag: ads promise discounts, deadlines or services you don’t offer. Or automatically created copy runs unchecked. You’re the one dealing with disappointed prospects then, not the agency.

Question 15: When would you tell me that Google Ads isn’t worth it for me?

• Good answer: the agency names conditions, for example too little search demand, too thin a margin or a budget that is too small relative to the fee. Ideally it has already talked a prospect out of it once and can explain why.
• Red flag: supposedly there’s no case in which Google Ads doesn’t pay off. Whoever agrees to every account is selling management, not results. I’ve written up the honest version for small accounts in Google Ads freelancer for small budgets.

Already working with an agency? Then the same 15 questions make a good annual review. If several answers come back evasive, you’ll find the warning signs and a handover checklist in Google Ads freelancer vs agency. Before you cancel, an independent Google Ads audit can clarify whether the problem lies with the management or with the offer and measurement.

The bottom line

• Have the answers on account ownership, contract term, handover and billing written into the proposal. Verbal promises are hard to prove when you part ways.
• The measurement questions carry the most weight. Anyone who can’t explain what bidding is based on and how good enquiries get back into the account is optimising for numbers nobody has checked.
• Check documents, not slides: a real report, a change log, a search terms report.
• A good agency asks you at least as many questions in the first call as you ask it. If it only listens and then offers a package, it doesn’t know your business yet.
• Already working with an agency? The same questions help you check it: How do I know if my Google Ads agency is doing a good job?

Have a proposal on the table and not sure about it? In a free intro call I’ll go through these points with you against your specific case. If the proposal is good, I’ll tell you that too. Book a free intro call.

FAQ

How many agencies should I compare?

Two or three are usually enough. More important than the number is that they all get the same questions. Only then can you lay the answers side by side instead of comparing presentations that each agency built around its own strengths.

What do I do if an agency won’t answer the questions?

That is already an answer. Questions on account ownership, billing and measurement don’t touch any trade secrets. An agency that puts you off until later here is unlikely to become more open after you’ve signed.

Do the questions apply to freelancers too?

Yes, without exception. With freelancers one more question comes in: who takes over during holidays or illness, and how quickly? It’s the same question 5, just with a different weighting.