How to Vet Your Ads Agency: 10 Questions to Ask and Signs Your Budget Is Being Wasted

Why it’s hard to judge an ads agency

Advertising is an auction run by algorithms, with dozens of settings. An agency can always blame weak results on seasonality, competitors, or the algorithm "still learning" — and sometimes they’ll be right. So instead of judging individual numbers, judge how they work: what they count as a result, how they make decisions, and how transparent they are.

A good agency won’t necessarily deliver record numbers in month one. But they can always explain what’s happening with your money in terms of sales, not clicks.

10 questions to ask your agency

Bring these to your next meeting. The point isn’t to catch anyone out — it’s to understand how the work actually gets done.

1. What does a customer cost us right now — not a lead? A good answer is a specific number and where it came from. Red flag: "We’re responsible for leads; what happens next is up to your sales team."

2. What’s the most we can afford to pay per lead, and how did you get that number? A good answer ties back to your average sale, margin, and close rate. Red flag: "The going rate in your industry is about X."

3. What action are the campaigns optimized for? A good answer: leads or purchases — ideally qualified leads. Red flag: clicks, reach, or video views when what you need is sales.

4. Where does your sales data come from? A good answer: your CRM, or from you. Red flag: "From the ad platform" — which takes credit for more than actually happened.

5. Who owns the ad account? The right answer: your business does, and the agency works through access you grant. If the account is in the agency’s name, you’ll lose your history and setup when you part ways.

6. What did you change last month, and why? A good answer: two or three specific decisions, with the reasoning and the result. Red flag: "We optimized the campaigns," with no details.

7. What didn’t work? A good agency will calmly walk you through ideas that failed — you can’t build ads that work without testing some that don’t. If "everything is working," chances are nobody’s testing anything.

8. Which ads are performing best right now, and why? A good answer: specific ads, with lead or sales numbers. Red flag: an answer that’s only about CTR and "engagement."

9. What would you do with 30% more budget? A good answer: a plan for where the money goes and what result to expect. Red flag: "We’ll just raise the budget and you’ll get more leads."

10. Besides the ads, what’s holding back our sales? A good agency looks at the bigger picture: your website, how fast leads get a response, your offer. If they’ve never asked what happens to your leads after the ad, that’s a warning sign.

Signs your ad budget is being wasted

One sign is a reason to ask questions. Three or four at once are a reason to get an independent review.

• Reports show clicks, reach, and cost per click — but no sales or customer acquisition cost.
• You don’t have access to your own ad account, or it’s registered to the agency.
• Campaigns keep getting relaunched, and no one can explain how the previous ones did.
• The same ads have been running for months, with no new ideas.
• Every problem gets the same fix: "increase the budget."
• You were promised specific results before any work began.
• Your website and sales team get blamed for everything, with no data to back it up.
• Ad links aren’t tagged with UTMs, so your analytics can’t show where leads came from.
• Reports arrive late, or only when you ask for them.
• Cost per lead keeps dropping, but sales aren’t going up.

The biggest red flag: your agency can’t tell you how much money the ads brought in. Everything else is secondary.

Who should own your ad account

Your ad account, Business Manager, pixel, analytics, and CRM should all be in your business’s name. You give your agency access — and you can take it away. Every major platform works this way: Meta, TikTok, and Google all let you add a partner to your account without handing over ownership.

If the agency owns the account, switching providers means losing your campaign history, the data the algorithms have learned from, and your audiences. The new agency has to start from scratch — and you pay for that learning phase all over again.

How to audit your own ads in an hour

Ask your agency for view-only access to the ad account — a good agency will grant it without hesitation. Then work through this list:

1. Campaign objective. If you need sales but the campaigns are set to traffic or reach, the algorithm is doing exactly what it was told: bringing you clicks, not buyers.
2. Date of the last changes. If nothing in the campaigns has changed in months, no one is managing them.
3. Frequency. If the same people are seeing your ads six to eight times or more, they’re tired of them and the money is being wasted.
4. Number of ads. One or two ads per campaign is too few to test ideas; dozens of near-identical ones aren’t great either.
5. CRM check. Compare the number of leads in the ad account with your CRM for the same month. A big gap means either a tracking problem or a lot of junk leads.
6. The customer journey. Tap your own ad on your phone and submit a lead. Notice how easy it is — and how long it takes for someone to call you back.

What’s normal and what isn’t

Choosing a new agency: what to watch for in the first meeting

If you’ve decided to switch, the same principles will help you avoid making the same mistake twice. In the first meeting, pay attention to what they ask you:

• They ask about your unit economics. Average sale, margin, how many leads turn into customers. Without those numbers, no one can tell how much you can afford to pay for ads.
• They ask what happens after a lead comes in. Who follows up, how quickly, and where leads are stored.
• They don’t promise specific numbers before reviewing your account. An honest specialist can give you benchmarks, not guarantees.
• They explain how they’ll report to you. How often, with which numbers, and where you’ll see sales.
• They suggest starting with a test. A limited budget and a clear criterion for whether to continue.

A warning sign: they spend the meeting talking about themselves, their "secret settings," and how much ad spend they’ve managed — and ask nothing about your business.

What to put in the contract

• Ad accounts, analytics, and all data belong to your business.
• How often reports arrive, in what format, and which numbers they must include.
• What’s included — setup, management, ad creative, tracking — and what costs extra.
• Who approves budget changes, and how.
• How to end the engagement: how much notice is required and what gets handed over.

These terms aren’t about distrust. They save both sides a lot of stress when something doesn’t go to plan.

Agency pricing models: pros and cons

There’s no perfect model. What matters more is that, whatever the model, your agency reports on sales and customer acquisition cost.

What to do if you still have doubts

Don’t cancel the contract right away: switching agencies always costs time and another learning phase for your campaigns. Start by talking through the questions above, then give them two to four weeks to fix things, with clear criteria: what customer acquisition cost works for you and what reports you expect.

If you want an outside perspective, get an independent review. That’s what a free ad audit is for: I review your ad account, tracking, and what happens after someone becomes a lead, then show you what’s working and what’s wasting budget. You can hand the findings to your current agency — or use them to choose a new one.

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