Questions to Ask Your Current PPC Agency Before You Renew
For business owners and marketing leads who already pay a PPC agency and want a sharper monthly or quarterly review. Twenty questions that pressure test tracking, spend, testing and results, plus the answers that should worry you.
The questions
Open any question for the note
Who on your team is actually in my account each week, and how many hours does that add up to?
Why ask it
The people who pitched you are often not the people running the account. Named individuals and an hours figure tell you whether you are buying senior attention or a junior running a checklist.
Which platforms and campaign types are we running right now, and what share of spend does each get?
Why ask it
Most clients cannot answer this about their own account. A clean breakdown by platform and campaign type reveals whether spend is concentrated somewhere nobody has questioned in months.
What are the first three numbers you check when you open my account?
Why ask it
This exposes what they actually optimize for. If the answer is clicks, impressions or click through rate rather than cost per acquisition or revenue, you are paying for traffic instead of customers.
Walk me through last month's spend: where did the money go and what came back?
Why ask it
A good manager can narrate the month from memory, including the week something went sideways. Hesitation or a scramble for the dashboard suggests they are only touching your account when a report is due.
How is your fee calculated, and what happens to it if my ad spend drops?
Why ask it
A percentage of spend model quietly pays them to grow your budget rather than your profit. Knowing the mechanics tells you where their incentives stop matching yours.
Which actions are we counting as conversions, and how is each one tracked?
Why ask it
Inflated results usually trace back to a loose conversion definition, such as counting page views, phone clicks or form starts. Get the exact list so you know which reported wins represent real revenue.
How much of the conversion volume in my report is modeled or estimated rather than observed?
Why ask it
Platforms now fill privacy gaps with modeled conversions, and agencies rarely volunteer the proportion. A specific answer separates a partner who understands the data from one who reads whatever the dashboard prints.
What is our target cost per acquisition or ROAS, and how did we arrive at that number?
Why ask it
A target should trace back to your margins, close rate and customer lifetime value, not to whatever the account happened to do last quarter. If they cannot show the arithmetic, nobody is managing to profit.
What percentage of spend goes to branded keywords, and what would we lose by cutting them?
Why ask it
Branded search flatters every report because those buyers were already looking for you. Their answer, and whether they have ever tested pausing brand terms, shows if the headline numbers are earned or borrowed.
Can we go through the search terms report together and see what we are paying for that we do not want?
Why ask it
Live screen sharing of raw search terms is the fastest audit available and it cannot be dressed up in advance. Junk queries still collecting spend point to an account on autopilot.
What tests are live right now, and when will each one have enough data to call?
Why ask it
Real optimization looks like a small queue of running experiments with dates attached. Vague talk about ongoing testing usually means nothing structured is in flight.
How much of the account runs on automated bidding, broad match or Performance Max, and what control did we give up for it?
Why ask it
Automation can work well, but it hides placements, queries and audiences. You want to hear that the tradeoff was a deliberate choice with guardrails, not a default someone accepted.
What creative, copy, feed or landing page work do you need from me, and what is stuck waiting on us?
Why ask it
Plenty of underperforming accounts are blocked on the client side. Asking directly surfaces the bottleneck and shifts the conversation from blame to a shared list with owners.
What happens after the click, and who owns the conversion rate of the landing pages?
Why ask it
Traffic quality and page quality are usually split between two parties, so both can disqualify themselves when results dip. Settle ownership now, before the next flat month.
Which competitors are outbidding us, on which terms, and does it actually matter?
Why ask it
You learn whether they monitor the auction landscape or only their own dashboard. The second half of the question also tests their judgment, since chasing every rival is a good way to burn budget.
What has not worked in the last six months, and what did you change as a result?
Why ask it
An agency with nothing to report here is either not experimenting or not being straight with you. Specific failures followed by specific changes are the strongest evidence of active management.
If my budget were cut by thirty percent tomorrow, what would you turn off first?
Why ask it
This forces a ranking of every campaign by real value, which is a ranking they should already have. The first items they name are the ones you are probably wasting money on today.
Where would an extra twenty percent of budget go, and at what point does more spend stop paying for itself?
Why ask it
Any agency will happily take more money, so the useful part is whether they can name a ceiling. Acknowledging diminishing returns signals someone thinking about your profit rather than their invoice.
What would you do differently in this account if it were your own money and you were not billing me?
Why ask it
The question gives them permission to say something that costs them revenue, such as consolidating campaigns or dropping a channel. Whatever comes out is usually the most honest advice in the meeting.
Who owns the ad accounts, conversion tracking and historical data, and what does a handover look like if we leave?
Why ask it
Agencies that run campaigns inside their own accounts can take years of learnings and history with them when the relationship ends. Confirm ownership and an exit process in writing while everyone is still friendly.
Getting Real Answers From Your PPC Agency
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before You Get on the Call
Pull the numbers yourself first
Log into Google Ads, Meta and your analytics tool and note total spend, conversions and cost per conversion for the last three months. Walking in with your own figures turns the meeting from a presentation into a conversation, and any gap between your numbers and the agency deck is worth an explanation.
Define success in your own currency
Decide what a lead or sale is worth to you using close rate, average order value and margin. Without that figure you cannot tell a good cost per acquisition from a bad one, and you will end up arguing about click through rates instead of profit.
Send the questions two days ahead
Share the four or five questions you most want answered, especially the search terms review and the conversion tracking list. You are not trying to catch anyone out. You want them to arrive with real data rather than improvise, and how they prepare is itself informative.
Ask for view access to everything
Request read only access to the ad accounts, tag manager and analytics property if you do not already have it. Hesitation on a view only request is one of the clearer warning signs in this business.
Answers That Should Worry You
- Reporting that leads with impressions, clicks or click through rate, and only reaches cost per acquisition when you push for it.
- Results that look strong until you strip out branded search, remarketing and existing customers.
- No named person you can identify as the day to day owner of the account.
- A search terms report full of irrelevant queries that have been spending for weeks.
- Conversion counts that include page views, scroll depth or form starts alongside genuine sales.
- A refusal to give you administrative or view level access to accounts running on your money.
- Campaigns held inside the agency's own ad account rather than yours.
- No test has concluded in the last quarter, and none is scheduled.
- Every question about a flat month is answered with algorithm changes, seasonality or your landing pages.
What a Useful Monthly Report Contains
- Spend, conversions and cost per acquisition by campaign, with the prior month and same month last year alongside.
- Branded and non branded search separated so growth is not mistaken for demand you already had.
- A plain language note on what changed in the account and why, not just what the numbers did.
- Results of tests that concluded, including the ones that lost.
- A short list of next actions with owners and dates, including the items waiting on your side.
- Revenue or pipeline data reconciled against your own CRM, not only platform reported conversions.
Deciding Whether to Stay or Move On
Give a fix window, then hold it
If the review surfaces real problems, agree on three specific changes and a date, usually sixty to ninety days out, and write down the metric that will tell you it worked. Open ended second chances tend to run for a year.
Commission an outside audit before you switch
A one off paid audit from an independent consultant costs far less than a bad agency transition and often tells you whether the problem is the agency, the tracking or the offer itself. Sometimes it saves the relationship.
Secure the assets before you give notice
Confirm you hold administrative ownership of the ad accounts, conversion tags, remarketing audiences and creative files while the relationship is still cordial. Account history has real value, and rebuilding audiences and learning periods from scratch can set performance back a quarter.