Before you sign with a Google Ads specialist, ask for four things in writing: who runs the account day to day, what’s included in the fee, whose name the access is under, and what the exit terms are. A proposal that doesn’t answer these four isn’t a proposal, it’s an intention.
Who runs the account, not who sells it
In the sales meeting, you meet the person who sells. The question is whether you’ll meet the person who executes.
Ask for the name of whoever will open your account every week, and how many accounts that person handles today. There’s no exact right number, but there’s an order of magnitude: someone managing forty accounts won’t look at yours in depth, no matter how competent they are.
Also ask who responds when something breaks on a Friday night. A disapproved ad or a suspended account doesn’t pick a convenient time.
What’s included in the fee, item by item
Proposals with similar prices can hide very different scopes. The difference shows up when you list it out.
Ask them to check off, one by one, what’s included and what’s billed separately.
- Campaign structure and restructuring
- Periodic review of negative keywords
- Creation and testing of new ads
- Setup and maintenance of conversions in GA4 and GTM
- Analysis of the landing page
- Monthly report with conversions and cost per acquisition
- Support when the account or ad gets disapproved
Whose name is the access under
This is the item that costs you later, and almost no one asks about it beforehand.
Your Google Ads account needs to be under your CNPJ (Brazil’s company registration number), with the specialist given manager level access. The same goes for GA4 and Google Tag Manager. If the structure is created under the service provider’s name, you won’t take the history with you when you leave, and account history is an asset you paid for.
It’s worth asking directly: if I cancel in three months, what stays with me. The answer should be everything.
Contract term, lock-in, and exit
A long contract is usually a sign that the results alone can’t keep the client.
Ask about the notice period, whether there’s a penalty, and what happens to the account on the last day. Also ask how long, in the salesperson’s experience, it takes to see the first sign of results for your type of business. Whoever answers with a timeframe has a method. Whoever answers with an adjective doesn’t.
Ask for the first-30-day plan
A good proposal describes what will happen, in order, during the first few weeks.
It usually starts with a review of the account and the website, then moves to fixing tracking, then restructuring the campaign, and only then optimization. Anyone who proposes starting by adjusting bids is treating a symptom.
If the plan doesn’t exist in writing, you’ll find out the order of things on the invoice.
Agree on the reporting schedule up front
A nice-looking monthly report is where a stalled account hides for thirty days.
Agree on what’s included, how often, and what triggers an off-schedule alert. A sharp drop in conversions, a disapproved ad, and a blown budget can’t wait for the end of the month.
- What the report includes, field by field
- How often the account is actually touched, not just reported on
- What triggers an immediate alert
- Who responds, and on which channel
The three answers that end the conversation
Some answers, on their own, are reason enough to look for another provider.
The first is a guarantee of ranking position or number of leads before even looking at the account. No one controls the Google Ads auction.
The second is charging a percentage of the budget with no fixed fee. Anyone who earns in proportion to spend has an incentive for you to spend more.
The third is creating the ad account under the agency’s CNPJ (Brazilian company registration number). You pay to build an asset that someone else ends up owning.
The one request that separates everything
Ask for a diagnosis of the account you already have, before you sign anything.
If it comes with numbers from your account, real search terms, and wasted spend added up in reais, you’re talking to someone who actually opened your dashboard. If it comes as a document that could apply to any business, you’re talking to someone who opened a template.
That’s exactly the role of the free Google Ads audit, and it’s also the cheapest test there is for comparing providers.