Choosing a performance marketing agency? Use this 7-point checklist to find one that delivers real ROI — and spot the red flags. By DXDasia.
Quick answer: Choose an agency that sets up ad accounts in your name, proves its conversion tracking against your real sales, reports platform costs separately from its fee and never guarantees rankings or ad positions. Google's third-party policies require cost transparency and fee disclosure, so treat any agency that resists these basics as a red flag.
Most agency pitches sound the same: data-driven, transparent, focused on ROI. The differences that decide whether your money is safe sit underneath the pitch, in who owns the ad accounts, whether the conversion data is real, what the contract lets you take with you, and what the reports leave out. Google and Meta both publish rules and guidance on exactly these points. This checklist is built on those official sources, plus what we see when we inherit accounts from other agencies.
Ownership. Your Google Ads account, Meta ad account, analytics, tag manager and pixel or dataset should sit in your name, with the agency given access, never the other way round. Everything else on this list can be fixed later; lost account history cannot.
Google's own advertiser guide to working with third parties lists "account setup requirements" among the things to watch: "The third party agency must set up a separate Ads account for you to represent you fairly." In practice that means an account under your business, linked to the agency's manager account.
Google's access levels page explains why the details matter. Only Admin users can grant access and change access levels, and Google warns that "if your account has only one administrator, you may lose access to your tags if that user becomes unavailable." Keep at least one Admin login inside your company. Be aware too that a manager account "can also be given ownership of a client account", which lets it manage user access (Google Ads Help). Check under Admin, then Access and security, who is listed as owner.
Meta's rules make the creation step critical. If an ad account is created inside a business portfolio, "it will permanently be a part of that portfolio. This means the ad account can't be deleted or transferred" (Meta Business Help). If an agency creates your ad account inside its own portfolio, you can never take it, or its history, with you.
The correct set-up is for your business portfolio to own the ad account, Page and dataset, and to give the agency partner access. Meta lets you grant full control or partial access, and notes that even a partner with full control "cannot share the business asset with another business", because only the owning organisation can.
Ask for a live demonstration, not a screenshot. A real enquiry or purchase should appear once, as the right conversion, in each ad platform and in your own records, and the agency should explain which actions the bidding system is optimising towards.
This matters because the platforms optimise to whatever you tell them is a conversion. Google separates "primary" actions, which are used for bidding, from "secondary" actions, which are "for observation only", and warns that misconfiguring them "can prevent Smart Bidding from optimizing effectively" (Google Ads Help). An account that counts page views or button clicks as primary conversions can report an excellent cost per conversion while generating no business.
A strong agency will also push to connect your sales outcomes back to the platforms. Google's offline conversion imports exist because an ad often "starts a customer down a path that ultimately leads to a sale in the offline world", and Google says advertisers adding first-party data to imported conversions "saw a median 10% increase in conversions". On Meta, lead ads optimised with a CRM connection and the qualified-leads goal "saw 21% lower cost per quality leads" in a test with 567 advertisers in January 2025 (Meta Business Help). Meta also says that from April 2026 the qualified-leads goal is no longer available for new campaigns without a Conversions API integration.
On an Indian D2C food and handicrafts store we manage, Meta's reported purchases ran roughly 30% above the store's actual orders. Judged on platform numbers alone, that account's purchases would have been overstated by roughly 30%, which is why we reconcile against real orders.
A badge proves the agency clears a minimum bar of spend, certification and platform activity. It does not prove the agency is right for your market or that its clients make money.
For Google Partner status, an agency's manager account needs a minimum optimisation score of 70%, 90-day spend of $10,000 across managed accounts, and at least 50% of account strategists certified. Premier Partners must also be in the top 3% of participating companies in their country, judged annually on client growth, new clients, retention, product diversification and spend. Google's guide says to click a badge on an agency's site to confirm it links to a genuine profile (Google).
Meta Business Partners works differently: eligibility "varies by solution type, and is typically a combination of the quantity and quality of your company's work" across Meta technologies. Meta does not publish one universal threshold, so ask the agency which solution type its badge covers.
| Check | What good looks like | Official basis |
|---|---|---|
| Account ownership | Accounts in your name; agency has manager or partner access | Google third-party guide; Meta ad account rules |
| Admin access | At least one Admin login inside your company | Google access levels |
| Cost reporting | Costs, clicks and impressions at account level, exact Google cost excluding fees | Google transparency requirements |
| Fee disclosure | Fee stated in writing before purchase and on every invoice | Google transparency requirements |
| Customer ID | Provided on request so you can contact Google directly | Google transparency requirements |
| Partner badge | Badge clicks through to a live Google profile | Google Partners requirements |
| Conversion set-up | Primary actions are real enquiries or sales | Google primary vs secondary |
| No guarantees | No promised ad position or #1 ranking | Google third-party guide; Google Search Central |
At minimum: costs, clicks and impressions for each ad account, with the exact amount the platform charged, separate from the agency's fee. Useful reporting then goes further, to qualified leads, sales and revenue.
Google's transparency requirements set the floor. Where a monthly report is required, it "must include data on costs, clicks, and impressions at the Google advertising account level", and cost must be "the exact amount charged by Google, exclusive of any fees". Agencies can meet this by letting you sign in to your own account, and must give you your Google Ads customer ID when asked so you can contact Google directly. Google's guide to advertisers puts it simply: you are entitled to "the number of clicks, impressions, and the total cost of your Google ads."
You can also audit activity yourself. Google's change history lists changes from the past 2 years, and where people use their own logins, the "User" column shows the email address of whoever made each change. If you are paying for weekly optimisation, the change history should show it.
Beyond the minimum, a good report answers business questions: cost per qualified lead, cost per sale, revenue and average order value, and what changed and why. Our analytics and marketing dashboards work is built around that principle.
The terms that matter are notice period, ownership and handover of accounts and data, how the fee is calculated, and who pays the platforms. Get them in writing; Google's guide warns against agencies spending budgets that differ from what you agreed, and advises getting "an official copy of your agreement in writing".
For how fee models compare in cost, see our breakdown of how much performance marketing costs.
Guarantees, secrecy and control. Any agency that promises a position, hides costs or keeps your accounts is telling you how the relationship will end.
Google's advertiser guide names the behaviour to watch for: not sharing cost and performance data, promising a guaranteed ad position (Google notes that "Ad position is determined by an auction and changes dynamically"), claiming that paid advertising will lift organic rankings, which Google calls "completely separate", and charging budgets that differ from what you agreed. Its broader third-party policies prohibit "false, misleading, or unrealistic claims".
For SEO, Google is equally blunt: "No one can guarantee a #1 ranking on Google" (Google Search Central). For maps and local results, "there's no way to request or pay for a better local ranking on Google" (Google Business Profile Help). Add these warning signs of our own:
Ask questions whose answers you can verify. Google suggests similar questions before hiring an SEO, including asking for past results and how the provider will communicate every change it makes to your site (Google Search Central).
When we take over accounts, the problems are rarely about creative talent. They are about measurement and judgement.
The most common is broken tracking. Across several client accounts we found the same pattern: a website redesign or relaunch removed the Google Ads conversion tag, and the account kept spending while reporting zero or wrong conversions. Nobody noticed because nobody was checking conversions against real enquiries. We now re-verify conversion tags after every rebuild before judging campaign performance, and you should expect any agency to do the same.
The second is applying textbook rules without measuring. On a Singapore instrumentation-measurement account, the standard advice to set location targeting to "presence only" would have hurt. "Area of interest" traffic produced 22 conversions from 147 clicks, about a 15% conversion rate, against 4 conversions from 69 clicks for "presence" traffic. Switching would have removed roughly 85% of that account's conversions. Many of those visitors were Singapore searchers typing "singapore" in the query or browsing from corporate or VPN networks Google could not geolocate.
The test for an agency is not whether it knows the rules. It is whether it measures the split before changing anything, and can show you the data behind each decision.
Choose on ownership and measurement first, and on pitch quality last. An agency that sets up accounts in your name, gives you Admin access, proves its conversion tracking against your own sales records and shows media cost separately from its fee has nothing to hide, and the official guidance from Google and Meta supports every one of those demands. Badges are a useful filter, not a decision. If an agency resists any item on the checklist above, walk away, however good the case studies look. If you want an independent view of your current set-up, our paid advertising team can review it, or you can contact us with your questions.
It should not, if the account was set up correctly. Google's guide says agencies must set up a separate Ads account for each advertiser. Problems arise when the agency's manager account has been made owner, or when you never had Admin access. Check Admin, then Access and security, today, and make sure someone inside your company holds Admin rights.
Premier Partners have met the Partner requirements and also rank in the top 3% of participating companies in their country, assessed annually on client growth, retention, new clients, product diversification and spend. That signals scale and growth, but not necessarily expertise in your industry or market size. Judge both on ownership, tracking and reporting first.
Pure pay-for-results deals are uncommon and can create disputes, because they depend entirely on tracking that both sides trust. The ANA found use of performance incentives fell to 41% by 2022. A modest retainer plus a clearly defined, verifiable bonus, measured in your own CRM or store data, is usually fairer for both sides.
Google's transparency rules set the minimum for Google Ads: where monthly reports are required, they must show costs, clicks and impressions at account level. Most businesses benefit from a monthly business review on leads, sales and revenue, plus direct read access to the ad accounts so you can check performance at any time.
The outgoing agency removes its own access, confirms you hold Admin rights on every account, and hands over creative files, landing page assets and documentation of conversion actions. Before the new agency changes anything, compare its first audit with the change history so you understand what was running and why.