Hiring someone to run your Google Ads is mostly a trust decision. You’re handing over a budget, your customer data and, often, a big share of your new business. And most business owners don’t have a way to judge whether the person across the table knows what they’re doing.
Good questions fix that. They don’t need to be technical. They just need to make the other side explain how they work, in plain terms, before you sign anything.
Below are the 14 questions I’d ask if I were hiring someone to manage my own account, with why each one matters and what good and worrying answers sound like. They work whether you’re talking to an agency, a freelancer or a consultant. If you’re still deciding between those, I covered that in Google Ads freelancer vs agency.
A fair note: a single weak answer doesn’t make someone a bad choice. Plenty of solid agencies have a policy you might not love. Look at the pattern.
Ownership and access
1. Who will own the Google Ads account?
Why it matters: the account holds your history: years of conversion data, search terms, what worked and what didn’t. If the account belongs to the agency, you can lose all of it when you leave.
Good answer: “You own it. If you don’t have one yet, you create it (or we create it under your business email), and we’re added as users or link our manager account to it.”
Red flag: “We run all clients in our own account.” Some agencies do this for billing reasons and hand accounts over without fuss, so ask directly what happens to the account and data if you leave.
2. What access level will you need, and will I keep admin access?
Why it matters: Google Ads has five access levels. Admin has full control, including managing user access and unlinking manager accounts. Standard can edit campaigns, Read-only can view campaigns and run reports (Google Ads access levels).
Good answer: “We need Standard or Admin to do the work. You keep Admin, always.”
Red flag: reluctance to let you have any access at all, or “you don’t need to log in, we’ll send reports.” You may never log in, but you should be able to.
3. Will you give me my account’s customer ID?
Why it matters: with your customer ID you can contact Google directly about your own account. Google’s third-party policy requires partners to “provide your customers with the customer IDs for their Google Ads or AdWords Express accounts when requested” (Google third-party policy).
Good answer: “Of course, here it is.”
Red flag: any hesitation. This one isn’t optional.
Contract and fees
4. How long is the contract, and how do I cancel?
Why it matters: Google Ads usually needs a few months to settle, so a minimum term isn’t automatically bad. But you should know exactly how to get out.
Good answer: a clear term (month-to-month, or a defined minimum) and a simple notice period in writing.
Red flag: a long lock-in with cancellation fees, auto-renewal you only find in the small print, or vague answers about notice.
5. What exactly do you charge, and is my ad spend separate?
Why it matters: the fee you pay the manager and the money you pay Google are two different things, and you should see both clearly. Google requires third parties that charge a management fee to “inform new customers in writing before each first sale and disclose the existence of this fee on customer invoices” (Google third-party policy).
Good answer: “Our fee is X a month (or Y% of spend). Your ad spend is billed by Google to your card, and you’ll see Google’s invoices yourself.”
Red flag: a single bundled number (“$3,000 a month all in”) with no split between fee and ad spend. If you want to sanity-check the fee itself, I broke down typical pricing in how much a Google Ads consultant costs.
6. Do you mark up ad spend or charge any other fees?
Why it matters: when ad spend flows through the agency’s billing, you can’t easily see how much of your “budget” actually reached Google. Setup fees, reporting fees and tool fees also add up.
Good answer: “No markup. Google bills you directly.” Or, if they bill you for spend, they show you the Google invoice so you can compare.
Red flag: “We don’t share Google’s invoices,” or extra fees that only show up after you sign.
Who does the work
7. Who will actually work on my account each week?
Why it matters: the person who sells you the service and the person who runs it can be different. That’s normal at agencies. What matters is that you know who it is.
Good answer: a name, their experience, and how you’ll reach them. Bonus points if you can meet them before signing.
Red flag: “Our team” with no name, or a different answer every time you ask.
8. How many accounts does that person manage?
Why it matters: attention is finite. Someone handling a very large book of clients can only spend so much time in yours.
Good answer: a straight number and a description of what they do in your account each week or month.
Red flag: refusing to say, or “it doesn’t matter, it’s mostly automated.” Automation helps, but someone still has to check search terms, tracking and results.
Tracking and reporting
9. How will you track conversions, and how will you check they’re accurate?
Why it matters: in my experience, broken or misleading tracking is one of the most common problems in the accounts I audit. Google Ads can track website actions, calls from ads, calls to the number on your site, and offline sales you import (Google Ads conversion tracking). If the wrong things are counted (page views, duplicate form fires, calls under 10 seconds), Google’s bidding optimizes for the wrong thing.
Good answer: “First we audit what’s tracked now. Then we set up tracking for real leads or sales, test it, and agree with you what counts as a conversion. If possible, we connect it to what happens after the lead.”
Red flag: “Google handles that,” or a report full of “conversions” that don’t match the calls and forms you actually got.
10. What will reports show, and how often?
Why it matters: a report can be busy and still tell you nothing. You want to see what you spent, what you got, what it cost per lead or sale, and what changed.
Good answer: a regular schedule, numbers tied to your business (leads, sales, cost per lead, return on ad spend), and a plain explanation of what was done and what’s next.
Red flag: reports built around impressions, clicks and “reach” with no link to leads or revenue, or reports that arrive only when you chase them.
11. How do we communicate between reports?
Why it matters: problems don’t wait for the monthly call. A tracking break or a spike in spend needs a quick reply.
Good answer: a named contact, a reply-time expectation, and a channel you’ll actually use.
Red flag: support only through a ticket system, or “your account manager will reach out at the next scheduled review.”
Credentials and results
12. Are you a Google Partner or Premier Partner, and what does that mean?
Why it matters: these are verified statuses, not just badges on a website. Google Partner status requires meeting minimums for optimization score, ad spend across managed accounts and certifications. Premier Partner is for companies in “the top 3% of participating companies within a given country (determined annually),” based on factors like client growth, client retention and annual ad spend (Google Partner status).
Good answer: they explain it honestly and send a link to their listing in the Google Partners directory so you can check.
Red flag: claiming status that isn’t in the directory, or presenting it as a guarantee of results. It’s a good signal, not a promise.
13. Can I see results from a business like mine?
Why it matters: a law firm, a med spa and an online store need very different setups. Relevant experience shortens the learning curve.
Good answer: real case studies with specific numbers and context (what changed, over what period), and an honest “we haven’t done exactly your niche, but here’s the closest” when that’s the case.
Red flag: only logos, vague “we increased leads” claims with no detail, or guaranteed results. Nobody controls your website, your prices, your competitors or how fast you call leads back. Promises of a specific ROAS before they’ve seen your account should worry you.
Leaving
14. What happens when we stop working together?
Why it matters: the best time to agree on the exit is at the start, when everyone is friendly.
Good answer: “You keep the account, the campaigns, the conversion tracking and all the data. We remove our access or unlink our manager account, and hand over anything else we set up, like tag manager containers and analytics.” Google is clear that admins on the client account “can terminate the relationship with the manager account at any time by unlinking their account from the manager account” (About manager accounts).
Red flag: “The campaigns are our intellectual property,” or tracking that lives only in the agency’s own tools so it breaks when they leave.
Quick checklist
Before you sign, you should be able to tick all of these:
- I own the Google Ads account and keep Admin access
- I have my customer ID
- I know the contract length and how to cancel
- The management fee and ad spend are clearly separate, with no hidden markups
- I know who works on my account and how to reach them
- Conversion tracking will be checked and tied to real leads or sales
- Reports will show cost per lead or sale, not just clicks
- Partner status is verifiable in Google’s directory
- I’ve seen relevant case studies with real numbers
- The exit plan is agreed in writing
How I answer these
Since you might ask me the same questions, here are my short answers. You own the account and all the data. Management starts at $750 a month, your ad spend is paid directly to Google, and there are no contracts. I’m a Google Premier Partner, a status Google gives to the top 3% of participating companies in each country, and I’ve been doing this for 7+ years across 50+ industries, with more than $10M in ad spend managed. You get a recorded Loom video every two weeks and a live client dashboard, and you can see real results on my case studies page, such as Radiance MedSpa cutting cost per lead from $142 to $89 and Bennett and Fitzgerald increasing client leads by 30%.
If you already have someone running your ads and want an independent check on the answers you got, my Google Ads audit costs $120: a recorded video and a PDF within 3 business days. Pricing for ongoing work is on my pricing page, and what’s included is on my Google Ads management page.