Who Should I Trust With My Ads, and How Do I Choose an Agency?
Choosing an ad agency is the riskiest decision in digital: what you’re handing over isn’t a design but your money, directly. Letting someone else steer a budget that leaves your card every month takes trust. 🔐
Short answer: one rule eliminates most candidates — the account must be in your name and you must see the spend on your own card. Then look at the report: no conversions and no cost figures means no management.
Below: the trust filters, the questions for the meeting, the red flags and the contract clauses. Method, not luck. 🎯
What’s the first rule of handing over?
In choosing an ad agency, this clause outranks everything else.
How do I measure trust?
Everyone has claims; few have trails.
Can I see reference accounts?
Ask for a conversation with a reference, not a screenshot. Two questions suffice: did reports arrive regularly, and did cost per conversion fall over time? The second reveals whether the account was genuinely managed.
What should I ask in the meeting?
The meeting is the candidate’s exam, not yours.
Three critical questions
1) Whose name will the account be in, and how will I pay for spend? 2) Which work happens each month, and how often? 3) Which number defines success — what’s the 90-day target? A candidate answering these crisply knows the job; one who dodges will dodge in the reports too. 📋
What are the red flags?
Some signals aren’t negotiable.
What belongs in the contract?
Three clauses protect you.
The three protective clauses
One: account and data ownership with the business. Two: the fee model and scope (which work, how often). Three: an exit clause — notice period and transfer of access. A client asking for these three isn’t difficult; they’re experienced. Fee models are compared in the fee article; quick answers in the 18-questions hub. 📜
📝 Field Notes
Some businesses reaching us can’t get their account back from a previous agency: it was opened in the agency’s name and years of conversion data stayed there. The new account starts learning from zero and the first months run expensive. A single clause prevents that loss entirely. 🔑
📖 Quick Glossary
Account ownership: the ad account registered to the business. Manager access: the permission letting an agency run the account. Cost per conversion: ad spend divided by enquiries won. Template report: a report whose content never changes month to month.
⚡ Quick Summary
First rule: account in your name, spend on your card. 🔐 Reports need four lines: conversions, cost, work done, plan. Position guarantees are technically wrong. Put ownership, scope and exit into the contract.
🎯 Next Step
Run us through the same filters: your account stays yours, you see the spend, and the report arrives in four lines. The quote page is open; scope on the Google Ads consulting page. ✅
Frequently Asked Questions
Sık Sorulan Sorular
Your business’s. The agency works with manager access while ownership stays with you. That way, on the day you part, the account, historical data and learning stay with you. Data accumulating in an agency’s own account is their asset, not yours. 🔑
Because whoever sees it, controls it. In models where ad money is paid to the agency in a lump, you can’t know how much actually reached the platform. That’s the foundation of transparency: spend on your card, management fee invoiced separately. 💳
Everything. A good report has four lines: conversion count, cost per conversion, work done, next month’s plan. An agency sending stacks of clicks and impressions is reporting activity, not outcome. How to read them: the profitability article. 📊
They’re a minimum signal, not a guarantee. A badge proves panel knowledge, not understanding your business. The real question: can they explain how customers in your sector decide to buy? 🎖️
In advertising, position is decided instantly by bid and relevance, so guaranteeing it is technically wrong. And the right goal isn’t position but profitable conversion. When you hear the guarantee, the conversation is over. 🚩
Opening the account in their own name, refusing to share spend breakdowns, launching campaigns without conversion tracking, and sending the same template report every month. All four build dependency rather than management; the stories sit in the burned-budget article. 🚫
Open a new account in your own name and request a transfer of access; where possible ask for ownership of the existing account to be transferred. Serious agencies treat this as routine, and stalling is itself enough data for your decision.
It’s common but carries a conflict: the agency earns more as you spend more, while your goal is the same result for less. Hourly or flat models remove that conflict entirely.
Not if the account is in your name: structure, data and learning stay put and only the manager changes. If the account belongs to someone else, you start from zero. The difference comes down to exactly that clause.