What Should Your Google Ads Agency Deliver for Your Brand?

When we take over a Google Ads account, the first week is mostly working out what's already there. Who set it up, what it's counting as a conversion, and why it's bidding on searches the business doesn't want. After enough takeovers, the same problems kept coming up. So we wrote them down, and turned them into the checks we'd want any brand to run on its agency, including us.

What a Google Ads agency should deliver: the short answer

Eight things. Each one can be checked in about five minutes.

1. 1An account you own, and written terms for leaving.
2. 2A conversion list someone has audited.
3. 3Your CRM feeding qualified and closed leads back to Google.
4. 4Brand searches kept apart from new demand.
5. 5Search terms and negative keywords managed every week.
6. 6Targets set from your margin, with a review date.
7. 7A report that says what changed, why, and what's next.
8. 8The truth about what's holding results back outside the ad account.

What we found in 10 Google Ads accounts we took over

We went back through audits, handover notes and emails for 10 Google Ads accounts we inherited from other agencies or in-house teams between 2024 and 2026. They span ecommerce, travel retail, financial education, construction, automotive, surveying and leisure. The counts below are accounts where the issue was written down, not a rate for the whole market.

Some of what we expected to find didn't show up. We found no case of tracking set up under the previous agency's own login, no documented Search Partner waste, and no damage from auto-applied recommendations. So we haven't claimed them.

The 8 things to check

1. You own the account, and you know how to leave

Expect the account to sit under your business and run on your card, with the agency given access through its own manager account. Expect written exit terms too: notice period, a handover meeting and an export of your performance history.

How to check it: go to Admin, then Access and security, and make sure someone at your company is an admin. Ask for your customer ID. Google's third-party policy says agencies must give it to you on request.

What we found: 2 of 10 had access problems. In one, admin rights sat on a former staff member's email, and the client had to go through Google to remove them.

2. Your conversion list has been audited

Google's bidding works towards whatever is set as a primary conversion. Expect every conversion action to be listed, with a reason why each primary one is primary, and duplicates and micro-events like page views set to secondary.

How to check it: open Goals, then Summary. Count the primary actions. Then compare last month's reported purchases or leads with your real orders or CRM.

What we found: in 3 of 10 accounts, bidding chased the wrong event. One travel retailer had five purchase actions set as primary, and the only one recording real purchases was set to secondary. A financial education business had 50 conversion actions. We cut it to 8, and cost per lead on its flagship course fell 55%.

3. Your CRM tells Google which leads were real

If you sell on leads, Google only knows what a form fill looks like unless you tell it more. Expect enhanced conversions for leads or offline conversion import, so qualified and closed leads go back to Google. Expect consent mode set up if you have traffic from the EEA or UK.

How to check it: look for an imported or CRM source in your conversions list. If you sell B2B and there isn't one, Google is optimising for form fills.

What we found: 2 of 10 had no offline import at takeover. For a construction business, we scoped a CRM sync from scratch.

4. Brand searches are kept apart from new demand

People who search your name were probably coming anyway. If those searches sit inside Performance Max, return on ad spend looks better than the new business it's bringing in. Expect brand in its own campaign, Performance Max brand exclusions used on purpose, and your store or CRM revenue reported next to platform ROAS.

How to check it: ask what share of Performance Max conversions came from searches for your own name. If nobody can tell you, the ROAS is unproven.

What we found: 3 of 10 mixed brand into Performance Max or Search. When we took brand out of one ecommerce Performance Max campaign, its ROAS fell from about 26 to about 11, while store revenue held within 2% at similar spend. The account looked worse. The business didn't change.

5. Search terms and negatives are managed every week

Expect a weekly search term review, a structured negative keyword list, and campaigns split by intent and location so services and sites don't bid against each other.

How to check it: open the search terms report for the last 30 days and sort by cost. Are the top 20 terms things you sell?

What we found: 5 of 10 had negative gaps or broad-match bleed, including competitor brand searches spending with zero conversions. 3 of 10 ran different services or locations in one campaign. We build negatives in seven groups: competitors, irrelevant themes, informational searches, wrong products, bargain seekers, marketplaces and job seekers.

6. Targets come from your margin

Expect your cost per acquisition or ROAS target to be worked back from what a customer is worth to you after costs. Expect a date the target was last reviewed, and a learning budget for every new campaign.

How to check it: ask what your target is based on. Since 17 August 2026, budget-limited target CPA and target ROAS campaigns deliver to the target you set rather than beating it, so a stale target now costs you volume. Our own modelling showed up to 50% less volume for the same spend in the worst case.

7. The report says what changed, why, and what's next

Google's policy sets the minimum: monthly cost, clicks and impressions, Google's exact cost without fees, and fees disclosed in writing. A useful report goes further: what changed, why, what the agency will do next, what it needs from you, and your real revenue or qualified leads next to Google's numbers.

How to check it: read last month's report. Can you tell what the agency will do differently this month? If not, it's a data export.

8. They tell you what's outside the account

Expect the agency to name the constraint even when it isn't in their scope: the landing page, the offer, how fast leads get a call back, or whether Google Ads is the right channel at all.

What we found: 3 of 10 were held back by the site, with homepage-only landing, no reviews or guarantees, or slow lead routing. In one, the previous agency had been running YouTube awareness for a business that needed high-intent search.

What isn't a deliverable

• A Partner badge. Partner status needs a 70% optimisation score, USD $10,000 of spend over 90 days and half the strategists certified. The score rises when recommendations are applied or dismissed. Google calls it an estimate and doesn't say it tracks results.
• A guarantee. Two of the three top-ranking service pages lead with money-back or work-for-free promises. Ask what the guarantee is measured on. If it's Google's own conversion count, see check 2.
• Activity. Number of changes made isn't progress. New campaigns need time on stable settings before Smart Bidding can learn.
• ROAS on its own. ROAS that includes your own brand searches mostly counts customers who were already coming.

What Google requires, and what's best practice

Where we've got it wrong

We've lost performance history on older accounts when access moved after a client left. Exit terms and a history export are now part of how we start.

Our own automated monthly report is data only. The commentary happens in the monthly meeting. We're adding it to the report.

And when we took brand out of Performance Max for a client, we didn't explain the trade-off well enough. The account looked worse, the brand negatives were removed, and they had to be put back. The number was right. The conversation came too late.

So, what should your Google Ads agency deliver?

An account you own, conversions that match real sales, brand kept separate, targets from your margin, and a report that tells you what's next. Run the eight checks. If an agency can't pass them, the badge on its website won't help.

That's the standard we hold our own Google Ads management to. See how it plays out in our case studies, or read why Meta ads are costing more if you run both channels.