# Red Flags When Hiring a Google Ads Agency > Eight red flags to spot before you sign with a Google Ads agency, in the pitch, the proposal and the contract, and the question that exposes each one. Source: https://snowballcreations.com/red-flags-when-hiring-a-google-ads-agency/ Author: Max Sinclair Published: 2026-10-14 Updated: 2026-10-14 --- **Key takeaways** - The red flags that matter are visible before you sign: in the pitch, the proposal and the contract. That is the cheapest moment to catch them. - The biggest one is ownership. If the Google Ads account won't be created in your name with someone on your side as an admin, stop there. - A guaranteed result, a plan to scale spend fast or a proposal that is all setup tells you how the account will be run once the pitch team has gone home. - One red flag is a question worth asking. Two or three is a no. The clearest red flags when hiring a Google Ads agency are the ones you can see before you sign. They want the account in their own name. They promise a number before they've opened your data. They never ask what a customer is worth to you. Their case studies count brand searches as growth, the proposal is all setup and no management, they plan to double your spend and then some by month two, their strategy is the Google rep's strategy with a logo on it, and they want a long contract signed this week. Any one of those deserves a question; two or three, and I'd keep looking. I've sat on both sides of this. I run an agency and I've audited a great many accounts other people built, and the problems in those accounts were nearly always visible in the original pitch if anyone had known where to look. If you're still deciding whether to hire anyone at all, start with [should I use a paid ads agency](/should-i-use-a-paid-ads-agency/). If you've decided, here is where to look. ![Diagram of eight red flags when hiring a Google Ads agency, grouped into the pitch, the proposal and the contract](/images/blog/red-flags-when-hiring-a-google-ads-agency-stages.svg "Eight warning signs, sorted by the stage of the sale at which you can spot them.") ## Whose name the account will be in Before anything else, ask whose name the Google Ads account will be created under and who will hold admin access. The right answer is your business, with at least one person on your side as an admin and the agency added through its manager account. An agency that wants to build inside its own setup and "hand it over later" is showing you the most expensive red flag on this list. The reason sits in Google's own permissions. Google's page on [access levels in a Google Ads account](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9978556?hl=en-GB) (read 14 October 2026) shows that only admins can give account access, change access levels and unlink manager accounts. If nobody at your company is an admin, you can't remove the agency without its help, and the same page notes that an account with only one administrator may lose access to its tags if that person becomes unavailable. The same goes for everything around the account: the Merchant Centre feed, the analytics property, the tag container. If you leave in two years, the history in those accounts is what lets the next person start from your data rather than from nothing. An agency confident of keeping you doesn't need your account as a hostage. If you already have an agency and want to check what you've got, we've written about [the audit to run before renewing](/paid-ads-audit-before-renewing-your-agency/). ## A guaranteed result before anyone has opened your account An agency that guarantees a return on ad spend, a cost per lead or a top position before it has seen your account is guessing out loud. It doesn't know your margins, your conversion rate, your competitors' budgets or whether your tracking works, so the number in the pitch is a sales number, not a forecast. Our own rule is simple: no guarantees, ever. Google is not keen either. Its [third-party policy](https://support.google.com/adspolicy/answer/6086450?hl=en-GB), which covers every agency that buys or manages Google advertising for clients, lists guaranteeing top placement on Google as an example of a false, misleading or unrealistic claim (read 14 October 2026). An agency that opens with a promise Google itself names as misleading has told you how it sells, and probably how it reports. What a good agency offers instead is what it would test first and how it would know. In the way we run accounts, stage one is finding the fit: a wide range of A/B tests across targeting, messaging and creative to see which roads lead anywhere. Nobody can promise where that ends up. You can ask exactly what will be tested in month one and what would count as a result. ![Two co-founders of a UK software company talking across a table by a window before hiring a Google Ads agency](/images/blog/red-flags-when-hiring-a-google-ads-agency-body-1-hero-01.jpg) ## They never ask what a customer is worth to you A pitch that is all about the agency and never about your numbers is a red flag on its own. To run Google Ads properly an agency needs your gross margin, your average order value or lifetime value, and what a qualified lead is worth, because those numbers set what it can afford to pay for a click. An agency that doesn't ask will optimise towards whatever is easiest to count. For SaaS and B2B, that is usually form fills. Students, job seekers and free-tool hunters fill in forms too, and an account fed raw conversions will cheerfully buy more of them. How we run accounts: lead quality sets the strategy, and conversion tracking, including offline conversions from your CRM back into Google, is in place before a pound is spent. If "offline conversion tracking" never comes up in the sales process for a B2B account, raise it and watch the reaction. The questions a good agency asks you on the first call: - What is your gross margin, average order value or customer lifetime value? - Which conversions actually turn into revenue, and how would we know? - Where do leads or orders live after the click: Shopify, a CRM, a spreadsheet? - What is already working in your marketing without ads? - How much can you spend per platform each month without it hurting? An agency willing to say no is a good sign, by the way. We turn people away when the product hasn't found its market, when nothing else in their marketing works yet, or when there's less than £2,500 a month per platform to spend, because ads are the most expensive way to find any of that out. The detail is on our [SaaS paid ads agency](/saas-paid-ads-agency/) and [homeware paid ads agency](/homeware-paid-ads-agency/) pages. ## Case studies that count brand searches as growth Ask any agency whether the results in its case studies include brand search. People who type your company name into Google already know you, so those clicks convert cheaply and well, and folding them into the headline numbers can make an ordinary account look extraordinary. An honest case study separates brand from non-brand, or at least tells you which one you're looking at. The gap is not small. In our own research, [Stop Chasing Cheap Clicks](/cpa-vs-cpc-are-cheap-clicks-better/), across eight B2B accounts and about $2.67m of Google Search spend over two years, brand CPA was $25.76 against $147.09 (471% higher). It's why we keep brand campaigns separate and small, about 5% of a SaaS budget, and never count brand conversions as growth. So ask for the non-brand numbers, on their own, over the whole relationship. An agency that changes the subject has probably been selling clients their own brand name back to them. More on that in [the problem with a Google Ads brand campaign](/google-ads-brand-campaign-problem/). ## A proposal that is all setup Read the proposal for what happens after launch. If most of the pages describe the build (campaign structure, keyword research, ad copy, tracking) and the ongoing work is one line about "optimisation and monthly reporting", you are buying a setup with a subscription attached. The setup is a fraction of the job. The money in a Google Ads account is made in the weeks after launch: search terms read and negatives added, bids and budgets moved, ads tested, products that stopped selling pulled out of the spend. We run weekly, monthly and quarterly lever checks on every platform, and that cadence is what a client is paying for. A campaign nobody checks is a campaign Google runs for itself. Ask what, specifically, the agency will do in week six; if the answer is vague, the account will be too. The other half of that question is who does the work. Whether the senior person from the pitch ever touches your account is its own subject, covered in [who actually runs your paid ads account](/who-actually-runs-your-paid-ads-account/). ![A small UK homeware brand's stockroom, a ceramic lamp being packed into a box](/images/blog/red-flags-when-hiring-a-google-ads-agency-body-2-hero-01.jpg) ## A plan to more than double your spend in a month An agency that proposes scaling your budget fast, before it has a month of data, is planning to buy the worst traffic on offer. Google will spend whatever you give it; the question is what it buys with the extra. We never more than double an account's spend inside a single month, and we scale on impression share and volume rather than on one good week. Here's that rule from the £2,500 a month minimum we work with. At the very fastest it allows, month one is £2,500, month two at most £5,000, month three at most £10,000, and £20,000 is month four at the earliest. Most accounts go slower, because a ceiling is not a target. A proposal that has you at £20,000 in month two is two doublings ahead of the ceiling, and the account usually pays for it in cost per acquisition. ![Bar chart of the Google Ads spend ceiling under the doubling rule, against an agency proposal reaching £20,000 in month two](/images/blog/red-flags-when-hiring-a-google-ads-agency-spend-ceiling.svg "How far ahead of a safe ramp an aggressive proposal is, month by month from a £2,500 start.") Watch the incentive behind it too. An agency whose fee rises with your spend has a reason to recommend more spend, so ask how the fee is set and what happens to it if they tell you to spend less. Our guide to [what a PPC agency costs in the UK](/ppc-agency-cost-uk/) covers how fees are usually structured. ## The Google rep's playbook with an agency logo on it If the plan in the proposal reads like the recommendations tab in your Google Ads account, you'd be paying an agency to pass on advice you already get free. Google's reps are friendly and some are good, but their advice is written for Google's revenue rather than your margin. Broad match everywhere, Performance Max for everything, auto-applied recommendations switched on: that is the platform's preferred setup, not a strategy. Ask what match types they default to and why. Ours is phrase match by default, exact for brand and almost never broad. For e-commerce, ask how they'd run Shopping: we start with Standard Shopping and run Performance Max as an experiment beside it, split by price tier, rather than handing the whole catalogue to an automated campaign on day one. You needn't agree with our defaults, but you do need an agency with defaults of its own that it can explain. We've written more on [undoing Google ad rep advice](/google-ad-rep-advice-sucks-how-to-undo-it/). ![A product shoot in a UK furniture studio, a photographer lighting an oak chair on a grey backdrop](/images/blog/red-flags-when-hiring-a-google-ads-agency-body-3-hero-02.jpg) ## A long contract, and pressure to sign it today A twelve-month lock-in from day one, or a discount that expires on Friday, tells you the agency expects to keep you on the contract rather than on results. Google's third-party policy lists putting undue pressure on an advertiser to sign up or stay with an agency as untrustworthy behaviour (read 14 October 2026). For comparison, our terms are fees from £1,749 per platform per month, a three-month commitment, then one month's rolling notice, and a minimum ad spend of £2,500 a month per platform. Three months is long enough for the first round of testing to say something, and short enough that we have to keep earning the account after that. Whatever agency you choose, the notice period should be something you'd be comfortable using. ## Two red flags is a no Before you sign, ask the eight questions this piece is built on: whose name the account is in, what gets tested first, what a customer is worth, what the non-brand numbers are, what happens in week six, how fast spend will rise, which defaults they'd use, and how easily you can leave. A good agency answers all of them quickly and doesn't mind being asked. If two answers come back vague, take that as your answer. The point of all this is a relationship long enough to compound. Hairpin, a UK furniture brand on Google Shopping, has had 8x ROAS, £5m in sales from £627k of ad spend over five years with us, and none of that came from the setup. It came from someone checking the account every week. That's how we run [Google advertising](/google-advertising-agency/) for every client. If you'd like a second opinion on a proposal in front of you, or on the account you already have, [ask us for a free account audit](/get-in-touch/). ## Frequently asked questions ### Should a Google Ads agency show its management fee separately from my ad spend? Yes. Google's third-party policy, read on 14 October 2026, says an agency that charges a management fee separate from the cost of Google Ads must tell new customers in writing before the first sale and show that the fee exists on invoices. If a proposal blends spend and fee into one number, ask for the two apart. ### What should an agency's monthly report show about my Google costs? Under Google's third-party policy (read 14 October 2026), where a monthly performance report is required it must include costs, clicks and impressions at account level, and the cost shown must be the exact amount Google charged, excluding the agency's own fees. Admin access to your own account lets you check those numbers yourself. ### Can I contact Google directly if I have concerns about my agency? Yes. Google's third-party policy (read 14 October 2026) requires agencies to give you the customer ID for your Google Ads account when you ask, so that you can contact Google directly about a third-party partner. An agency that will not tell you your own customer ID has answered a bigger question than the one you asked. ### What does linking my account to an agency's manager account let it do? According to Google's help page on access levels (read 14 October 2026), once you accept a link to a manager account, its admins can receive notification emails and manage your campaigns. If that manager account also has ownership, its admins can edit user access, managers and product links in your account too. Keep an admin of your own either way. ### How long should I give a new Google Ads agency before judging it? Long enough for the first round of testing to finish. We ask for a three-month commitment, then one month's rolling notice, because the first stage is finding which targeting, messages and creative work. At the three-month mark, judge whether they can explain what they learned and what they changed, not only the return.