How to Choose a PPC Agency Without Getting Burned

Strategy · 5 July 2026 · 8 min read

Most businesses that come to us have hired an agency before, and the story is usually the same: strong first month, a slow drift into silence, a monthly PDF full of impressions, and no clear answer to whether the spend produced profit. This article is deliberately written against our own short-term interest, because a client who chooses well — even if they choose someone else — is a better outcome than one who churns in four months.

Ask who actually touches the account

The person in the pitch is frequently not the person in the account. Ask directly: who will be in the account weekly, how many other accounts do they manage, and can I speak to them before signing. A specialist carrying eight to twelve accounts can do genuine work. One carrying thirty is triaging.

Insist on owning your assets

• The Google Ads account should be created under your own account ID with the agency granted manager access — not owned by the agency.
• The same applies to Meta Business Manager, Google Analytics, Tag Manager, Search Console and the Business Profile.
• Ad creative, landing pages and tracking configuration built during the engagement should be yours to keep, in writing.
• If an agency resists this, the resistance is the answer. Account ownership is the leash used to prevent clients leaving.

Interrogate the reporting before you sign

Ask to see a real (anonymised) monthly report from a comparable client. Look for cost per qualified lead, not cost per lead. Look for a written commentary explaining what changed and why. If the report is a dashboard export with impressions, clicks and click-through rate at the top, you are buying a screenshot service.

Understand the fee model you are agreeing to

• Percentage of ad spend: simple, but rewards the agency for spending more regardless of return. Acceptable with a cap and a performance clause.
• Flat monthly retainer: predictable and aligns to work done, but check what happens when spend doubles.
• Performance-only: attractive, but usually comes with attribution disputes and a strong incentive to harvest brand traffic.
• Hybrid retainer plus bonus on qualified pipeline: our preference, because it pays for the work and rewards the outcome.

Contract terms worth negotiating

Push for a 30-day rolling agreement after an initial 90-day period. Ninety days is a fair minimum — tracking, build and a learning phase genuinely take that long — but a twelve-month lock-in with a 90-day notice period protects the agency, not you. Also confirm in writing who pays for media (pay platforms directly wherever possible, on your own card) and what happens to the data on exit.

Red flags

• Guaranteed positions, guaranteed lead volumes or guaranteed ROAS quoted before seeing your margins.
• Refusal to name the specific channels and campaign types they will run and why.
• 'Proprietary AI technology' presented in place of an explanation of the actual strategy.
• No questions about your close rate, average order value or sales process during the first call. An agency that never asks about margin cannot set a sensible target.
• Case studies with percentages but no absolute numbers. A 400% increase from two leads to ten is not a case study.

Green flags

Good signs are unglamorous: they ask for CRM access before quoting, they tell you which channel not to run, they set a target cost per acquisition derived from your own margin, they explain what could go wrong, and they are specific about the first 30 days. An agency willing to say 'paid search is not right for you yet, fix your Business Profile first' is one worth keeping.

Whoever you choose, write down in month zero what success looks like in month six, in absolute numbers, and agree how it will be measured. Almost every unhappy engagement we have inherited failed at that step rather than in the auction.

More insights

• Performance Max, Honestly: When It Works, When It Wastes Money
• Conversion Tracking That Survives an Audit: A Step-by-Step Setup
• The Landing Page Audit We Run Before Increasing Anyone's Budget