# What do you check before signing with a Google Ads agency? > Six checks, from the calculator to the contract, in the order you will meet them. Source: https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/blog/how-to-choose-a-google-ads-agency Author: Nash Marketing Labs, a paid media agency (Google Ads, Meta Ads, TikTok Ads, LinkedIn Ads). Date: 2026-10-14 --- **You have three proposals on the table and all three ask for 10% of your spend.** At €40,000 a month, that fee is €4,000 a month. Your margin pays it. How much extra you have to sell to cover that fee is the first check, and it is a division that almost never comes done in the proposal. There are six checks in total: one with the calculator, two with your Google Ads account open, two in the call and one before you sign. ## Today, with the calculator: turn the fee into revenue Proposals write it three ways: a percentage of spend, a flat monthly fee, or a flat fee plus a variable share tied to a result. The shape does not matter: put it in euros per month, subtract what you pay today for the same work, and divide the result by your gross margin. With the numbers above and a 45% gross margin: 4,000 divided by 0.45 is €8,889. That is what you have to sell on top every month just to pay the fee. If you already pay another agency, count only the difference. Going from €2,500 to €4,000 is €1,500 more a month: 1,500 divided by 0.45 is €3,333. Now change the margin. At 25%, that same €1,500 forces you to sell €6,000 more. The agency charges you the same in both cases. That is why the price in the proposal means nothing without your margin next to it. With that number in front of you, two questions get answered fast and save arguments in month three: - **What happens to the invoice if I halve my spend next month?** A fee that is a percentage of spend goes down with you, and a flat fee stays put. Both are defensible, but you want to know which one you signed before a slow month arrives. - **What is inside the price and what gets billed separately?** Creative, the product catalogue, landing pages and measurement fixes. If measurement is broken, fixing it is the first job of month one: ask whether that is included. When the price is a percentage of spend, raising budget also raises the invoice. That can make perfect sense. What it demands is taking the decision about how much to spend with a number that does not come from the platform, which is what the fifth check is about. ## Today, with your account open: who owns the account Your Google Ads account has a ten-digit number at the top of the screen. What matters is who owns that account and everything connected to it. Go to **Admin > Access and security** and look at the list of users and at the linked manager accounts, which are the accounts an agency uses to reach its clients. If the account belongs to the agency and you log in as a guest, everything stays on their side the day you part: the performance history the algorithm used to learn who your buyers are, the lists of people who have already visited or bought, and the tags that count conversions. The new account starts learning from zero, with your budget paying for that learning a second time. What has to be in your company's name, with an administrator of yours: - **The Google Ads account.** The agency comes in with management access from its own side. They work, and you do not depend on anyone to log in. - **The conversions.** They live inside the account, under **Goals > Conversions**. If the account is not yours, neither are they. - **The Google Analytics account that stores your website data** and the tag manager, the box where your measurement code lives. If they sit in an agency account, on exit day someone has to go into your site and change code to keep measuring. - **The product catalogue** Google shows your items from, if you sell online. It is the piece that takes longest to get approved again if it has to be rebuilt. Ask it straight, and get the answer in writing: _if we part a year from now, what do I take with me and in how many days?_ ## Today, with your account open: who has touched it in 90 days You can run this one this afternoon, and it does two jobs: it judges whoever runs your account today and it tells you what to ask of whoever comes next. In your account, go to **Tools > Change history**, set the range to the last 90 days and filter by user. You get a list with date, user and what changed. Count two things: **how many separate days have changes** and **how many different users show up**. An account moving tens of thousands of euros a month with changes on three days of the quarter has been left alone. The opposite shows up in the same list: daily changes to what a freshly launched campaign offers to pay per click, which is the fastest way to stop any decision from ever proving anything. With the list in front of you, the question for the new agency is specific: _who will work on the account, by name, and how many accounts does that person handle?_ Ask about the person who will open your account on Tuesday morning. ## In the call: ask for the month that went wrong Every proposal carries a case that went well. A case says little without three numbers beside it, so ask for them: - **The exact period and what it is compared against.** Say they show you "+180%": against a month with the account paused it does not mean what it means against the same month last year. - **How much was spent.** Say the case claims a ROAS of 8, that is, eight euros of revenue the platform credits itself per euro spent. Getting that on €2,000 a month and getting 3.5 on €60,000 a month are two different jobs, and yours looks like the second one. - **Where the revenue figure comes from.** If it comes from the Google panel, it is what Google credits itself; if it comes from the store or from the books, it is what reached the bank. The distance between those two numbers is usually large, and where it comes from is explained in [why Google Ads and GA4 conversions don't match](https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/blog/google-ads-vs-ga4-conversions). And then the question that actually sorts them: **tell me about an account where it did not work**. What happened, which month they saw it, what they did and how it ended. Anyone running large accounts has several of those and tells them without flinching, because this is a job with bad months. That answer shows more of the process than three success stories in a row. ## In the call: which number decides how much you spend This check is about how the work will be done from month one, and it is the one that moves the most money: **which number will we use to decide whether I raise or cut budget?** If the answer is account ROAS, something is missing. The platform calculates that number on the sales it credits itself, and it goes up precisely when you are left with the demand you already had: your brand, people coming back, and ads shown to people who already visited your site. Answers that survive the next question mention one of three numbers: your margin, total business revenue divided by total advertising spend, or the cost per customer that comes out of your sales records. If you want your own answer before the call, there are two shortcuts. The [minimum profitable ROAS](https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/blog/minimum-profitable-roas) takes two minutes with your margin. And total business revenue divided by total advertising spend, the number that depends on no platform, is explained in [MER vs ROAS](https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/blog/mer-vs-roas). ## Before you sign: month one and the exit The first job of month one is checking that what Google Ads records as a conversion really is a conversion. It orders everything that comes after it, and the full pass is in [how to audit a Google Ads account yourself](https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/blog/how-to-audit-google-ads-account). One example of what shows up in that pass: under **Goals > Conversions**, every conversion has a count column with two options, "One" and "Every". If your form is set to "Every", somebody who submits it twice counts as two contacts, and Google learns to look for people who submit twice. Fixing it pushes every number in the account down on day one and up in month two. Ask whether they expect to find things like that, and what they would do about them. That is why the honest calendar is longer than it looks: month one goes on fixing measurement, month two is the first month measured properly, and month three is the first one you can judge, against the same period last year and with your real revenue beside it. The same thing happens at a smaller scale inside each month: a change to what a campaign pays per click proves nothing until enough conversions pile up for the difference to stop being chance, and the fewer conversions a month your account has, the more weeks you wait. Three things that go in writing, because they are the ones argued about when it is already late: - **The notice period to leave** and what happens to the month in progress. - **What gets delivered every month**, from which data source and on which day. - **Who keeps the accounts, the tags and the data** on exit day, and how long it takes. Ask in writing for the process, the cadence and who owns the data: those can be committed to. A ROAS or a position in Google also depends on your site, your catalogue and who bids against you that month, so if someone guarantees you one, ask them to write it into the contract with the consequence next to it. ## Frequently asked questions ### How much does a Google Ads agency charge? It depends on scope: how many accounts and markets it covers, whether measurement has to be rebuilt, and whether creative and the product catalogue are included. The figure that matters to you is how much extra revenue it forces you to find: the fee in euros per month, minus what you pay today for that work, divided by your gross margin. Ask for the price in euros and ask what is left out. ### What happens to my history if I change agency? It stays with you if the Google Ads account belongs to your company and the agency comes in with management access. If the account belongs to the agency, the performance history, the audience lists and the conversion tags stay on their side, and the new account learns from zero on your budget. Check it before you sign, and check whose name the Google Analytics account and the tag manager are in too. ### How long until I see results after changing agency? The first full month you can judge is the third, because month one goes on fixing measurement and month two is the first one measured properly. Judge it against the same period last year, with your real revenue beside the platform panel. ### What should I ask for in the first meeting? Four concrete things: the price in euros per month and what it includes; the name of the person who will work on the account and how many accounts they handle; an account where it did not work and what they did; and which number they will use to decide budget. If you also give them read-only access to your account, what they come back with in a week is the best evidence you will get before signing. ### Should they guarantee results? What can be signed is the process: what gets reviewed every week, what gets delivered every month, from which data source, and whose name the accounts are in. If someone guarantees a revenue figure or a position in Google, ask them to write it into the contract next to what happens if it is missed. ## More resources - [Your Google Ads agency says ROAS 6. What about your margin?](https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/google-ads-agency) - [Your account scores 94% on optimisation. What about sales?](https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/google-ads-audit) - [How to audit a Google Ads account yourself](https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/blog/how-to-audit-google-ads-account) - [What is the minimum profitable ROAS (and how to calculate yours)](https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/blog/minimum-profitable-roas) - [MER vs ROAS: which metric to use and when](https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/blog/mer-vs-roas) - [Why Google Ads and GA4 conversions don't match](https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/blog/google-ads-vs-ga4-conversions) --- Contact: https://www.nashmarketinglabs.com/en/request-audit - Your performance plan: concrete actions to improve your account, no commitment.