Ask the agency to prove five things before you sign: your business will own the advertising and tracking assets, success will be measured against qualified business outcomes, every fee and pass-through cost is visible, the people and testing process are named, and you can leave with your data and account history. Put the answers, access rights, deliverables, billing disclosures, notice period, and handoff duties in the contract rather than relying on a sales call.
Start with the outcome you are buying
A PPC engagement is not simply the purchase of clicks. Decide what the advertising must produce for your business, then ask the agency to connect its work to that result. A useful opening question is: “What business outcome will you optimize for, and how will we verify it?”
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- For a lead-generation business, the outcome may be qualified leads, booked appointments, or opportunities accepted by sales.
- For ecommerce, it may be sales revenue, cost per acquisition (CPA), or return on ad spend (ROAS).
- For a longer sales cycle, it may be a pipeline or closed-revenue measure imported from the CRM rather than a web-form submission.
Have your current definition of a good lead, sales stages, average order value, margins, service area, and capacity available for the discovery call. The agency cannot propose a meaningful target if it has not understood what happens after a form is submitted or a call is answered.
Who owns the accounts, data, and tracking?
Ownership is the first contract question because an account that contains years of performance history, audiences, conversion signals, and billing information is a business asset. Ask these questions verbatim:
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- Who owns the Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, Meta, analytics, tag-management, call-tracking, audience, and landing-page assets?
- Will our business hold administrator access from day one, with your team linked through its manager account?
- Which email address and billing profile will be the administrator and payer?
- If the relationship ends, what data, history, audiences, tags, landing pages, creative files, and documentation will be exported, in what format, and by what date?
A good answer keeps the assets in accounts controlled by your business and gives the agency delegated access. The agreement should say that the client owns advertising accounts, analytics properties, tracking assets, audiences, and data; this approach is also recommended in Fieldtrip Agency’s contract guidance.
Ask the agency to demonstrate the access model during onboarding. You should be able to sign in, see the account, and remove or change the agency’s permissions without waiting for its approval. If an agency insists that it must own the account, ask what happens to historical data and active campaigns when you leave. Refusal to provide administrator access is a material risk, not a minor administrative preference.
How will conversions and lead quality be measured?
Do not accept “we will track conversions” as a complete answer. Ask the agency to document the conversion event, the source of the event, the rules used to count it, and the business result it represents.
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Ask whether the primary KPI is qualified leads, sales, CPA, revenue, or ROAS. Secondary indicators such as impressions, clicks, click-through rate, and form fills can help diagnose performance, but they should not replace the outcome you pay the agency to improve.
Specify the conversion and qualification rules
- What exactly counts as a conversion: a submitted form, a connected call, a booked meeting, a purchase, or an opportunity accepted by sales?
- How are duplicate submissions, spam, repeat callers, refunds, cancellations, and test transactions removed?
- How is a lead marked qualified, and who supplies that status?
- How will CRM stages or offline sales be sent back to the advertising platform?
Require a written data flow showing the ad click, analytics event, tag or call record, CRM record, and final sale. That exposes gaps such as a form that fires a conversion even when validation fails.
Agree on attribution and its limits
Ask which attribution model and lookback windows will be used, whether platform-reported and analytics-reported conversions will differ, and how cross-device, consent, phone, and offline activity affect the numbers. The contract should identify the reporting source used for the KPI and explain how discrepancies will be handled; otherwise two parties can quote different “cost per lead” figures and both appear correct.
Inspect a real report before signing
Request a recent sample report with spend, conversions, cost per conversion, revenue or lead quality, period-over-period trends, explanations, and next actions. Google’s third-party policy requires transparent cost and performance reporting; it states: “When sharing your Google advertising cost data with customers, report the exact amount charged by Google, exclusive of any fees that you charge.” Read the current policy at Google Ads third-party policy. Your contract should therefore show the exact media charge separately from the agency’s fee.
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Ask the agency to choose a billing model and list every included deliverable. Common structures are flat fee, percentage of spend, hybrid, and performance-based. None is automatically better; the risk comes from an undefined base, hidden minimums, or work that appears only on an invoice.
| Fee structure | Questions to settle | Contract detail to require |
|---|---|---|
| Flat management fee | What monthly work and spend range does the fee cover? | Deliverables, service limits, revision rules, and the process for changing the fee. |
| Percentage of spend | Which spend is included, and is the percentage calculated before or after credits and adjustments? | The calculation base, billing date, minimum fee, and treatment of budget increases. |
| Hybrid | Which part is fixed and which part changes with spend or performance? | Both formulas, thresholds, and examples of the monthly invoice. |
| Performance-based | What verified outcome triggers payment, and how are attribution disputes resolved? | The KPI definition, data source, qualification rules, caps, and payment timing. |
Have the proposal label media spend separately from management fees. Ask whether you pay Google directly, whether the agency adds any markup, and whether platform credits are passed through. The agency should identify these possible extras in writing:
- Initial setup or account rebuild.
- Ad copy, design, video, or other creative production.
- Landing-page design, development, hosting, and revisions.
- Feed work, product-data maintenance, or catalog fixes.
- Conversion, tag-management, and call-tracking implementation.
- Reporting or dashboard software.
- Testing that exceeds the standard scope, emergency work, or work outside agreed hours.
Also ask whether there is a minimum ad spend, a minimum monthly fee, a separate fee for additional markets, and how prices can change. Stackmatix’s PPC-agency questions likewise recommends documenting the fee structure and extra costs. Platform policies, partner availability, and agency pricing can change, so verify the final proposal and current platform documentation before execution.
Who will operate the account and what happens in the first 90 days?
Meet the actual operator
Ask to meet the person who will manage the account daily, not only the salesperson or strategist. Ask about that operator’s experience with your industry, funnel, geography, and spend level. The proposal should name a backup, say whether any work is outsourced, and state the response-time commitment for routine questions and urgent issues.
Demand a staged onboarding plan
Ask what happens during the initial audit and in the first 30, 60, and 90 days. A credible plan identifies the current-account review, tracking validation, campaign restructuring (if needed), launch dependencies, and the decisions that require your approval. It should distinguish work the agency controls from work that depends on your website, CRM, legal review, inventory, or sales team.
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Make testing concrete
Ask which hypotheses will be tested across keywords, ads, audiences, bids, budgets, landing pages, and creative. For every test, require a stated hypothesis, the variable being changed, the success metric, the time or volume needed for a decision, and the action if the result is inconclusive. “We optimize continuously” is not a test plan. Confirm who approves new claims, offers, landing-page changes, and budget shifts.
What will reporting and communication look like?
Agree on a reporting cadence that matches your sales cycle and spend. The contract should state when reports arrive, who attends review meetings, which dashboard or source is authoritative, and how recommendations become approved changes.
- Report contents: exact media spend, conversions, qualified leads or sales, CPA or ROAS, revenue where available, trends, material changes, test results, and next actions.
- Data source: identify the platform, analytics, call-tracking, CRM, or offline-sales source behind each KPI.
- Recommendation process: state whether the agency can make routine changes autonomously and which changes require written approval.
- Escalation: name the contact for tracking failures, billing disputes, policy disapprovals, outages, and spend anomalies.
- Access: ensure the client can view the live platforms and historical reports rather than receiving screenshots only.
Ask how the agency will alert you if conversion tracking breaks, spend accelerates unexpectedly, ads are disapproved, or lead quality falls. A report that arrives on time but omits explanations and next actions is activity reporting, not management.
How long are you committed, and how do you leave?
Read the term and termination language as carefully as the pricing page. Ask:
- What is the initial term, and does the agreement renew automatically?
- What notice period applies to cancellation, and can either party pause work?
- Is there an early-termination fee, and how is it calculated?
- What happens to prepaid fees, unused creative work, and campaigns during notice?
- Who owns work product and data created during the engagement?
Put an offboarding sequence in the contract
- Confirm the termination date and the campaigns or budgets that must be paused.
- Export account history, audiences, tags, conversion settings, landing pages, creative files, keyword and change logs, and reports in the agreed formats.
- Transfer or recreate billing, domains, forms, call numbers, feeds, and integrations that were administered by the agency.
- Provide a final performance report explaining open tests, pending policy issues, and scheduled changes.
- Hold a handoff meeting with your incoming team or replacement agency.
- Revoke the agency’s users, manager links, API tokens, tag access, and other credentials after you verify the transfer.
Ask how many business days each step takes and who is responsible. Stackmatix’s guidance identifies contract length, notice, penalties, retained data, and continued account access as points to settle before signing. A workable exit protects your continuity even when the relationship ends amicably.
Compare proposals on the same seven axes
Use one scorecard for every agency. Record the answer, the supporting document, and the person accountable; do not score a promise that is absent from the proposal or contract.
| Comparison axis | Evidence to request |
|---|---|
| Client ownership and administrator access | Account list, administrator roles, manager-account connection, and written export and handoff terms. |
| Measurement quality and lead qualification | KPI definitions, conversion and deduplication rules, CRM or offline-sales connection, attribution model, and lookback windows. |
| Total cost and fee transparency | Separate media invoice, management formula, minimums, markups, pass-through charges, and excluded work. |
| Named operator and communication | Day-to-day operator, backup, reporting cadence, response time, and escalation contact. |
| Testing and optimization process | First-30/60/90-day plan, test hypotheses, decision criteria, approval rules, and change log. |
| Relevant evidence | Case studies or references that match your industry, funnel, geography, and spend level; ask what was actually measured. |
| Term, notice, and offboarding rights | Initial term, renewal, pause and termination rights, export deadline, final report, handoff meeting, and credential revocation. |
Red flags that should stop or slow the signature
- The agency owns the account or will not provide administrator access.
- Reports lead with impressions and clicks while omitting qualified leads, sales, CPA, or revenue.
- The team cannot explain exactly how a conversion is counted, deduplicated, or qualified.
- Media spend and management fees are blended, marked up, or described as “all-in” without a precise breakdown.
- The salesperson cannot identify the day-to-day operator, backup, or escalation path.
- The proposal guarantees a position or return before the agency understands your business, sales process, and tracking.
- The agreement imposes a long lock-in without a workable termination right or data-handoff clause.
One awkward answer does not automatically disqualify an agency; a refusal to document the answer does. Ask for a revised proposal, then check that the contract language matches the revised promise. If ownership, measurement, fees, staffing, or exit rights remain vague, keep interviewing.
A final pre-signature check
Before signing, have the agency and your internal owner initial a single schedule containing the account list, administrator users, KPI definitions, attribution settings, report sample, fee formulas, excluded costs, named staff, response times, testing plan, term, notice, termination, export format, export deadline, and credential-revocation procedure. Save copies of the proposal, sample report, access invitations, and every approved tracking specification in your own company storage. This paper trail turns a sales conversation into an enforceable operating agreement and preserves your ability to change providers without losing the history that makes future optimization possible.
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