20 questions to ask a Google Ads agency before signing

The agencies that disappoint do so for reasons that were visible in the sales process. The point of a structured question list is to surface those reasons before you sign, not after. Use this alongside our complete buyer's guide and our red flags list.

Team and ownership (questions 1–5)

1. Who specifically will run our account day to day, and what is their seniority?

Want: a named individual, 3+ years on accounts in your size range, available on the next call. Red flag: "team approach" without a named lead.

2. How many accounts does that person manage today?

Want: 8–12 for boutiques, 15–25 for network agencies. Anything above 25 means a thin layer of attention. Anything below 6 might mean they are too junior to be trusted with the load.

3. What is the strategist's tenure at your agency?

Want: 2+ years. Tells you they are stable. Anyone with 6 months tenure may have inherited the pitch but won't be there in a year.

4. Who is the backup if the strategist is on holiday or leaves?

Want: named backup, briefed on the account during onboarding, available to take a meeting. Reveals whether the agency has thought about continuity.

5. Is any work on our account done outside your company — subcontracted, white-labelled, or offshore delivery?

Want: full disclosure. "Our senior team only" is fine. Anything evasive is a deal-breaker. See red flag 5.

Strategy and process (questions 6–10)

6. Walk us through the first 30 days. What happens in weeks 1, 2, 3, 4?

Want: week 1 access + audit, week 2 tracking validation + first plan, week 3 first changes shipped, week 4 first weekly report against baseline. Vagueness here predicts vagueness later.

7. What is your cadence in a normal week — how often do you actually touch our account?

Want: bid adjustments and search term review weekly minimum, larger optimisations every 2–4 weeks, strategy reviews monthly. AI-managed services touch daily.

8. Show us a redacted audit you delivered for a similar client.

Want: structural findings, tracking findings, prioritised fix list, opinions about what to fix first. Tells you whether the audit is a real exercise or a template.

9. What is your stance on Performance Max — when do you use it, when do you restrict it, when do you turn it off?

Want: a nuanced answer that depends on the account. A blanket pro or anti position is a sign they haven't worked through enough accounts.

10. Which parts of your workflow are AI-assisted and which are human?

Want: a thoughtful breakdown. Search term mining, ad copy generation, anomaly detection are commonly AI-assisted in 2026; strategy and account structure remain human. An agency that pretends nothing has changed is selling a 2019 service.

Tracking and reporting (questions 11–14)

11. What is your tracking validation process in onboarding?

Want: explicit conversion audit before any optimisation. GA4 + Google Ads import, enhanced conversions check, server-side tagging review, value validation for purchases. Half of the accounts we audit have a tracking issue; the agency that misses it will optimise on broken data.

12. What KPIs will we agree on in writing, and how do they map to our business outcomes?

Want: KPIs that ladder up to revenue or pipeline, not stop at CPA. The agency should push to understand your gross margin or sales cycle. See KPIs that actually matter.

13. How will we see what you are doing without scheduling a call?

Want: shared change log, weekly dashboard, full Google Ads access. If the answer is "we send a monthly PDF," you are flying blind for 29 days at a time.

14. Show us a sample monthly report for an account our size.

Want: revenue or pipeline first, CPA/ROAS second, diagnostic metrics third, activity metrics last. Three pages of opinion, not 12 pages of charts. If they can't show one in the pitch, they don't have one.

Commercials and contract (questions 15–18)

15. What is your pricing model and your fee for our spend tier?

Want: published or clearly explained. Hidden pricing means price discrimination. See our pricing breakdown.

16. What is your minimum contract length and what is the termination clause?

Want: 3-month initial term, then 30-day rolling, symmetric notice in both directions. Anything beyond 6 months on a fixed term is the agency protecting itself, not aligning with you.

17. Confirm in writing: we own the Google Ads account, Merchant Center, conversion tracking, and any audiences or scripts created during the engagement.

Want: yes, in writing. Non-negotiable.

18. What happens to our data on day 1 after termination — what gets exported and in what format?

Want: a defined list of artefacts delivered within 7 business days. Reports, working files, ad creative, keyword lists, audience definitions.

Ending the relationship (questions 19–20)

19. What would make you fire us as a client?

Want: specifics. "Unrealistic CPA targets we both know cannot be hit." "Constant priority changes." "Scope creep into channels we do not run." An agency that has never fired a client won't push back when you are wrong.

20. What's something we said during discovery that you disagree with?

Want: a real disagreement, politely framed. An agency that nods at everything in the sales call will nod at everything for 12 months. That is order-taking, not partnership.

How to score the answers

For each agency, score each question 0–2:

• 0 — the answer was evasive, vague, or contained a red flag.
• 1 — the answer was acceptable but generic; no clear edge.
• 2 — the answer was specific, opinionated, and tied to your situation.

Out of 40 points, anything above 32 is a strong candidate. Anything below 26 is a no. Anything in between is a maybe — the deciding factor is usually the answer to questions 1, 17, and 20.

Questions to ask the agency's references, not the agency

When you call references — and you should call at least three — these are the questions that give you the truth, not the polished version:

1. How long have you worked with them, and would you sign again today?
2. Who is your strategist, and how often has that person changed?
3. What's the longest you've waited for an answer to a question?
4. What's something they got wrong, and how did they handle it?
5. Has the fee gone up since you signed, and if so, was the reason fair?
6. If you were starting again today, what would you do differently in the contract?

The first question filters for genuine satisfaction. The fourth filters for honesty about mistakes (every agency makes them; the difference is how they own them). The sixth surfaces contract pain points you can pre-empt.

What to do with the answers

Take notes in real time. Send a written follow-up after each call summarising the answers and asking the agency to confirm. "To confirm what we discussed: our strategist will be [Name], cadence will be weekly, our initial term is 3 months, we retain account ownership. Please confirm by reply." If the agency cannot confirm in writing what they said on the call, that is the answer.

Most of the questions above feel mundane in the moment. Six months in, when something goes wrong, the answers — or the absence of answers — are what will determine whether you fix the relationship or replace it.

Where Logitelia fits

The reason we wrote this list is because we run a managed AI alternative to traditional agencies and we welcome the same scrutiny. Logitelia's Growth Team publishes pricing, names the senior operator on every account, keeps account ownership with you, and runs a live activity log instead of a monthly PDF. If you want to interview us against this 20-question list, book a call. Bring all 20.

Interviewing well is half the work of choosing well. The questions above are the ones that consistently separate the agencies you should sign from the ones you shouldn't.