By: Graham Ettedgui – Director of Marketing, Paid Media
A client told me once that switching agencies felt like a divorce, except she didn’t get to keep the house. In her case, the “house” was three years of conversion data, a working audience list, and a campaign structure that knew her business. The old agency kept all of it, because it was never really hers to begin with.
That conversation has stuck with me for years, and it’s why I’m writing this. Most of what’s published on “how to choose a Google Ads agency” reads like it was written by someone trying to rank for the phrase, not someone who’s sat across the table from a business owner who got burned. So, here’s the version I’d actually tell a friend.
What You’re Actually Paying for in 2026
Ten years ago, an agency’s value was mostly manual labor; someone sitting in the account adjusting single keyword bids, building out keyword lists, excluding placements one by one. A lot of that is gone now. Smart Bidding and Performance Max have swallowed most of the manual levers, for better or worse.
So, what’s left? Honestly, the more important stuff.
- Strategy: Making sure the campaign is optimizing toward the right goal in the first place.
- Good Data: Feeding your account good data is the one thing people underestimate the most.
- Creative: Writing creative that doesn’t sound like it was written by an AI.
- Experience & Historical Knowledge: Knowing your account well enough to tell the difference between “the platform changed something” and “we messed something up.”
If an agency’s pitch still centers on manual bid management and keyword-level tweaking as their core value, that’s worth noticing. Those things matter, but they’re not where the leverage is.
Nobody Warns You About Account Ownership
This is one of the first things I’d ask about. Most agencies manage client accounts through a Google Ads Manager Account, which is completely normal. The important question is who controls the underlying Google Ads account.
You should have full administrative access to your own account, use your own billing, and be able to keep the account if you change agencies. That means your conversion history, audience data, campaign structure, and performance history stay with you.
The red flag is when an agency creates or controls the account in a way that prevents you from taking it with you later.
Ask directly: “Will we have full administrative access to the Google Ads account, and will we retain the account and all historical data if our relationship ends?”
If the answer is vague, conditional, or “we’ll transfer it later,” I’d keep looking.
On Pricing & My Bias
NordicClick mostly runs flat retainers, not percentage-of-spend. So, take the next paragraph with a grain of salt. The math on percentage pricing genuinely rubs me the wrong way, and I don’t think it’s just self-interest.
A 15% of spend fee is if an agency does its job so well that your account needs less budget to hit the same numbers, their revenue goes down. An agency billing 15% on a $50K/month budget makes $7,500. Shrink that budget to $35K because you’re now more efficient, and they’re making $5,250. Nobody wants a pay cut for doing good work, so guess which direction most percentage-fee agencies lean when a budget conversation comes up.
That doesn’t mean every agency on a percentage model is acting in bad faith. Plenty aren’t. But it’s a structural tension that a flat fee just doesn’t have.
| Model | Roughly what you’ll pay | The tradeoff |
| Flat monthly retainer | $1,500–$8,000/mo | Predictable, but ask exactly what’s included — hours, deliverables, who’s doing the work. |
| % of ad spend | 10–20% of budget | Simple math, but the incentive tension described above is real. |
| Hybrid (base + %) | $1–3K base + 5–10% | The most common middle ground for mid-market accounts right now. |
| Performance-based | Lower base + % of results | Sounds ideal, rarely executes cleanly. Attribution fights are common. |
For a business spending somewhere in the $5,000–$20,000/month range on ads, budget somewhere around $2,500–$6,000/month for management. Meaningfully below that, and you’re probably getting junior-level execution with someone senior’s name on the proposal.
Things That Should Make You Raise An Eyebrow
Guaranteed results before an audit. Nobody can promise you a specific ROAS or cost-per-lead without having looked at your account, your tracking, your landing pages, and your competitors first. If someone hands you a number on the first call, that number was invented to close you, not calculated from your data.
Reports that lead with clicks and impressions. Those metrics are easy to move without helping your business at all — you can raise CTR with clickbait ad copy that never converts. What you want reported is cost per lead, cost per acquisition, and ideally, some connection to actual revenue. If two months in, you’re still getting a wall of impression data with no mention of what it cost you to get a customer, push back.
Long contracts before you’ve seen anything work. A 12-month lock-in with no results to point to yet is a red flag dressed up as “commitment.” The agencies confident in their own work don’t need to trap you; month-to-month or a short initial period is the norm right now, and for good reason.
Vague answers about Performance Max. PMax eats a huge share of most accounts’ budgets today, and it’s also the easiest place for an agency to hide behind a black box. “We use PMax to scale” is not an answer. Ask about asset group structure, brand exclusions, and how they’re feeding it conversion signals. If they can’t get specific, they probably haven’t looked closely either.
Nobody mentions conversion tracking in the first conversation. This is the one I care about the most. The whole bidding algorithm is only as good as what it’s told counts as a “win.” If an agency isn’t asking about your tracking setup (enhanced conversions, offline imports from your CRM, if your revenue values are accurate) before they’ve even started, they’re skipping the foundation.
Questions Worth Asking
These tend to surface real answers instead of sales-speak.
- “Who specifically will be working on my account?” — you want a name, not “our team.”
- “Will we have full administrative access to the Google Ads account, and will we retain the account and its historical data if our relationship ends?”
- “Walk me through what you check before a conversion tracking setup is considered done.”
- “What would make you tell us Google Ads isn’t the right move for our business?” — a good agency has an answer to this.
- “If the data says we should spend less, will you tell us?”
- “What’s gone wrong on an account before, and how did you handle it?” — nobody’s record is perfect, and the ones who claim it is are the ones I’d worry about.
Read Case Studies Like A Skeptic
Every agency has a slide with a big percentage on it. “212% increase in conversions!” Cool — from what baseline? Going from 3 conversions to 9 is a 200% increase and means almost nothing at scale. Ask for the actual numbers.
Also ask how long it took. The first 60–90 days on almost any account tend to show improvement just because the starting point was usually a mess. The real test is whether that agency was still delivering at month 14.
The Short Version
| Feels right | Feels off |
| Your account, your login, your billing | Everything lives under their agency account |
| They ask about your business before pitching anything | Straight into a budget recommendation with zero context |
| Reports built around CPL, CPA, revenue | Reports built around clicks and impressions |
| Month-to-month or a short trial period | 12-month contract, no results yet |
| Can name the actual person managing your account | “Our team” every time, no specifics |
| Asks about conversion tracking before anything else | Tracking comes up as an afterthought, if at all |
If you’re in the middle of evaluating agencies right now, we are happy to talk through it. Schedule a discovery call with me and my team.
Common Questions We Get Asked
How much does a Google Ads agency actually cost? Realistically, $1,500–$8,000/month depending on model and account size. Most mid-market businesses land in the $3,000–$6,000 range. If someone quotes you under $1,000/month, that’s a huge red flag. Ask who’s really doing the work.
What’s the single biggest red flag? Your account is living under their ownership instead of yours. Everything else on this list matters, but that one determines whether you own your own data when the relationship ends.
Can an agency guarantee results? No — not honestly. Too much is outside their control: the auction, your competitors, seasonality, your landing page, your pricing. Anyone guaranteeing a number before auditing your account is guessing, or straight up lying.
Should I just manage it myself instead? If you’ve got someone in-house with real Google Ads chops and the bandwidth to stay on top of it weekly, maybe. Past a certain spend level, though, the cost of a mediocre in-house effort usually outweighs a solid agency’s fee.
How long before I know if it’s working? Give it 60–90 days at minimum before drawing conclusions. My general rule is that things take ~2 months to even start analysis after a major change. Smart Bidding needs a real batch of conversions to learn from. Anyone promising dramatic results in the first two weeks is selling you something, not managing an account.
Need an agency you can trust to help your business reach your goals? NordicClick can help.
Curious how NordicClick approaches paid media? Learn more here.