The short answer Ask to see the account before you sign, and ask who owns it. A real Google Ads agency will name their optimization score, show you search terms reports, and hand you admin access on day one. Google Partner status requires $10,000 in 90-day spend and a 70% optimization score. What actually drives the number You.
The short answer
Ask to see the account before you sign, and ask who owns it. A real Google Ads agency will name their optimization score, show you search terms reports, and hand you admin access on day one. Google Partner status requires $10,000 in 90-day spend and a 70% optimization score.
What actually drives the number
You are buying two things at once, and they should be priced separately on the proposal.
- Media. Set by the auction, not by the agency. WordStream’s 2026 benchmarks, from 13,474 US search campaigns, put the average cost per click at $5.42 and average cost per lead at $66.69. Legal averages $9.87 per click and $131.63 per lead. Restaurants average $2.05 and $30.57.
- Management. OuterBox’s 2026 pricing analysis reports percentage-of-spend fees “commonly land around 10% to 20% of monthly media spend, often with a minimum management fee,” with flat retainers of $1,500 to $5,000 at $5,000 to $25,000 in monthly spend.
- Credentials. Google’s Partner requirements are specific: a minimum 70% optimization score, $10,000 in ad spend across managed accounts over 90 days, and at least 50% of account strategists certified in Google Ads. Premier Partner status is limited to the top 3% of participating companies in a country each year.
- Complexity. Ecommerce feeds, multi-location, offline conversion imports and long B2B sales cycles all add real hours. So does Performance Max, which needs conversion data before it stops guessing.
A percentage-only fee has a built-in conflict: the agency earns more when you spend more. A flat retainer has the opposite conflict: they earn the same whether they work or not. Hybrid, with a flat base plus a performance component tied to qualified leads rather than spend, removes both.
The questions to ask on the first call, and the bad answers
| Ask this | A good answer sounds like | A bad answer sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| Who will own the Google Ads account? | “You do. We work inside your account under our manager, and you keep admin” | “We run everything through our MCC, it’s simpler that way” |
| What is your manager account optimization score? | A number, and an explanation of which recommendations they deliberately ignore | “That metric isn’t meaningful” with no number offered |
| How often do you review the search terms report? | Weekly, with negative keyword lists shown as a deliverable | “Our platform handles that automatically” |
| What counts as a conversion, and how is it tracked? | Revenue events, call tracking, and offline conversion imports from the CRM | Form views, page views, or “clicks and impressions” |
| What is your fee at $5,000 spend versus $50,000? | A published structure with a stated minimum | A percentage with no cap and no explanation of what changes |
| Show me one account you manage in my category | A screen share with names redacted, live in the interface | A PDF deck with rounded percentages and no dates |
How to tell which applies to you
Use this rule: if they will not open a live Google Ads interface during the sales process, they are not going to open it for you afterward either.
Slides can say anything. A live account shows spend, conversion actions, search terms and quality signals in the same view. Any agency confident in its work will screen share for five minutes with client names hidden.
Second rule: match the agency to your spend level. At $2,000 a month in media you are best served by a small, senior team that touches the account weekly. At $50,000 a month you need feed management, creative production and analytics as distinct functions. Paying enterprise rates for a small account buys you a junior analyst and a monthly PDF. Paying small-shop rates for a large account buys you neglect.
Third rule: ask what happens in the first sixty days. Google reports that more than 80% of Google advertisers use automated bidding, and automated bidding needs conversion volume to learn. An agency that promises a lower cost per acquisition in week two either does not understand that or is planning to bid only on your brand name.
What we’d do
TACK™ is a Google Partner, founded in 2009, based in Sherman Oaks with studios in Northridge, and has run 2,500+ campaigns across 15+ industries. Engagements start at $5,000 a month. What we insist on before spending a dollar of your media:
- Your account, your ownership. We link our manager to your account. You keep admin. If you leave, you keep every conversion action, audience and historical benchmark.
- Conversion tracking rebuilt first. Calls, forms, qualified leads and, where the sales cycle allows, closed revenue imported back from your CRM.
- Search before Performance Max. Build signal on queries you can read, then expand into automated inventory once the data is real.
- Landing pages in scope. Most cost-per-lead problems are page problems. That work sits with paid media and CRO together, not in separate silos.
- Weekly, not monthly. Search terms, negatives, budget pacing and bid strategy reviewed weekly. Reporting monthly. See our capabilities for how the reporting stack fits together.
Common mistakes
Letting the agency build the account inside their own manager. Google’s documentation states a client account can have only one owning manager, that ownership is transitive up the chain, and that the client can unlink an owning manager. If you never had admin, the exit costs you years of conversion history and audience lists you cannot rebuild.
Paying a pure percentage of spend with no floor on performance. When the fee is 15% of media, the fastest way for an agency to increase revenue is to talk you into a bigger budget. Tie at least part of the fee to qualified leads.
Firing on cost per click. A cheaper click that converts worse is a more expensive customer. Judge on cost per qualified lead and closed revenue, which is exactly why the WordStream benchmark study publishes cost per lead alongside cost per click.
The bottom line
The right paid media partner shows you a live account, gives you ownership on day one, prices media and management separately, and reports on qualified leads rather than clicks. The wrong one hides the account inside its own manager and sends a PDF.
If you want a second opinion on the account you already have, book twenty minutes: talk to an expert, or call 310-620-1141.
Sources
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