Last updated: February 10, 2026
You are paying someone between $1,500 and $10,000 per month to manage your Google Ads. Maybe more. You receive a report once a month, maybe twice. It has numbers on it. Some of those numbers are green, which feels good. Your agency assures you things are "moving in the right direction." You nod, because what else are you supposed to do?
Here is the thing nobody in the agency world wants to admit: most business owners have absolutely no idea whether their Google Ads agency is doing good work, average work, or borderline negligent work. And the agencies know this. The entire relationship depends on an information asymmetry that overwhelmingly favors the agency. They understand Google Ads. You understand your business. And in that gap lives a tremendous amount of wasted spend, phoned-in management, and strategic laziness that you are paying premium prices for.
This is not an anti-agency article. Good agencies exist, and the best ones deliver real value that goes beyond what any tool can replicate. But those agencies are rarer than the industry would like you to believe. And without knowing what "good" actually looks like, you cannot tell the difference between an agency earning every penny and one coasting on your ignorance.
We talked to dozens of business owners who switched away from agency management in 2025 and early 2026. We analyzed hundreds of accounts that had been under agency management for 6 months or more. And we compiled the patterns into something actionable: the specific red flags that signal lazy or incompetent management, the benchmarks of genuinely good work, and a five-point audit you can run on your own account right now to see where your agency actually stands.
Bad agencies do not announce themselves. They do not send you an email saying "we have been neglecting your account this month." The signs are subtle, buried in reports you do not fully understand and practices you have no reason to question unless you know what to look for.
Open your most recent agency report. What does it lead with? If the first page is dominated by impressions, clicks, and click-through rate without any connection to actual business outcomes, you are looking at a report designed to look impressive rather than be useful.
Impressions tell you how many times your ad was shown. That number, on its own, means almost nothing. A million impressions that generate zero revenue is worse than a thousand impressions that generate ten sales. Clicks tell you how many people visited your site. Again, meaningless without context. If those clicks cost $5 each and none of them converted, you just paid $5,000 for nothing.
The report you should be receiving leads with the metrics that matter to your business: cost per acquisition, cost per lead, return on ad spend, revenue generated, and how those numbers compare to last month, last quarter, and your targets. If your agency's reporting does not tie directly to your business goals, they are either hiding poor performance behind big numbers or they do not understand what matters.
Here is a specific tell: look for the word "growth" in your report. Agencies love to report that impressions grew 23% or clicks increased 18%. Growth in vanity metrics without corresponding growth in conversions or revenue is not progress. It is inflation, and you are funding it.
The search terms report is the single most important diagnostic tool in Google Ads. It shows you the actual queries that triggered your ads and led to clicks. Not the keywords you are bidding on, but the real words real people typed before clicking your ad and spending your money.
If your agency has never shared a search terms report with you, or if you have never seen a search terms analysis in any meeting or report, that is a serious problem. It means one of two things. Either they are not reviewing search terms (which means irrelevant traffic is bleeding your budget unchecked), or they are reviewing them but not sharing the findings with you (which raises the question of why).
A well-managed account has negative keywords added regularly based on search term analysis. In a typical account spending $10,000 or more per month, a diligent manager should be adding negative keywords weekly. If you log into your account (more on that shortly) and see the same negative keyword list that existed six months ago, your agency is not doing this work.
According to industry analysis, poor negative keyword management alone can waste 20-40% of ad spend. On a $15,000 monthly budget, that is $3,000 to $6,000 per month going to clicks from people who were never going to buy from you.
Google Ads is not a set-and-forget platform. The competitive landscape shifts constantly. New competitors enter auctions, existing competitors change their bids and creative, Google updates its algorithms and features, seasonal patterns create demand fluctuations, and consumer behavior evolves. An account that is managed the same way in February as it was in August is an account that is being neglected.
Check your Google Ads change history (you can find this under the "Change History" tab). If the majority of changes over the past three months are minor bid adjustments, with no new campaigns created, no new ad copy tested, no structural changes made, and no new features adopted, your agency is on autopilot.
This is especially relevant in 2026 given the pace of Google's own changes. AI Max for Search, the Power Pack framework (PMax + AI Max + Demand Gen), expanded Performance Max controls, Ads Advisor, brand guidelines, creative asset tools, and ads in AI Overviews all launched or significantly updated in 2025. If your agency has not proactively discussed how these changes affect your account and whether you should be testing any of them, they are not keeping up with the platform.
A PPC strategist recently noted that if you look at an agency's change history and most entries are tiny bid adjustments, "you are likely getting fluff." Activity is not strategy. Busywork is not management. And a stagnant account in a dynamic market is a declining account, even if the numbers have not turned red yet.
This is not a yellow flag. This is not an amber flag. This is a screaming, neon red flag.
If your agency will not give you owner-level access to your Google Ads account, something is wrong. Google has robust user permissions that allow agencies to manage your account with full functionality while you retain ownership and administrative access. There is no legitimate technical or operational reason to deny you access to your own account.
Agencies that restrict access typically do so for one or more of these reasons: they do not want you to see how little work they are doing, they do not want you to see how the account is actually performing beyond their curated reports, they want to create dependency so you cannot easily leave, or they have built the account under their own MCC (Manager Client Center) in a way that makes it their property rather than yours.
Multiple industry experts flag this as the number one red flag. One PPC consultant described it bluntly: "Not having access inhibits your ability to monitor your campaigns yourself. It also puts you in a position of being held hostage to your current resource."
You should have admin-level access to your Google Ads account, your Google Analytics account, your Google Tag Manager, and any other tracking tools tied to your campaigns. If you do not, request it today. If they refuse or make excuses, start planning your exit.
Pay attention to the pattern of your agency's recommendations over the past 6 to 12 months. What percentage of their suggestions involved increasing your budget? What percentage involved making your existing budget work harder?
A good agency balances growth recommendations with efficiency recommendations. They should be telling you to spend more on what is working AND to cut spend on what is not. They should be recommending structural changes that improve performance at the same budget, not just budget increases that paper over inefficiency.
The structural incentive here is important to understand. Most agencies charge either a percentage of ad spend (typically 10-20%) or a flat fee. Percentage-based agencies earn more money when your ad spend increases, regardless of whether that increase improves your results. A 15% management fee on $20,000 is $3,000. On $30,000, it is $4,500. That is a 50% raise for the agency, and all they had to do was convince you to spend more.
Even flat-fee agencies can fall into this trap. More budget means more potential results, which makes the agency look good, which makes retention easier. The path of least resistance for any agency is always "spend more" rather than "spend smarter," because spending smarter requires actual work and spending more just requires a conversation.
If your agency has never recommended reducing spend on an underperforming campaign, never suggested pausing a campaign type that is not delivering, and never proactively identified budget waste, they are optimizing for their revenue, not yours.
Before we hand you the audit checklist, it is worth establishing what genuinely excellent Google Ads management looks like. If you do not know what "good" is, you cannot identify "bad."
A well-managed account has someone reviewing the search terms report at least weekly, ideally more frequently for higher-spend accounts. This review should result in concrete actions: negative keywords added, keyword match types adjusted, new keyword opportunities identified, and irrelevant traffic patterns flagged before they consume significant budget.
You should be able to see evidence of this in your change history. Look for regular negative keyword additions across campaigns and ad groups. If weeks go by without a single negative keyword added to any campaign, search term reviews are either not happening or not resulting in action, both of which are problems.
Google Ads is fundamentally a testing platform. The advertisers who win are the ones who continuously test new ad copy, identify what resonates with their audience, and iterate. A healthy account should always have at least one ad copy test running.
Your agency should be able to tell you, at any point, what they are currently testing, what the hypothesis is, and what the results of the last test were. If they cannot answer those questions, ad copy has been on autopilot. Given that the average click-through rate across Google Ads in 2025 was 6.66% and the average cost per click hit $4.66 to $5.26 (depending on the data source), the difference between a 5% CTR and a 8% CTR on your ads directly translates to Quality Score improvements, lower CPCs, and more clicks for the same budget.
Good management is not reactive. It does not wait for performance to decline before making changes. It anticipates seasonal patterns, monitors competitive shifts, tests new Google features when they are relevant, and adjusts campaign structure as the business evolves.
Your agency should be bringing you ideas, not just reports. They should be saying things like "We noticed your competitor started running aggressive promotions. Here is how we are adjusting your messaging." Or "Google just launched text guidelines for AI Max. We think testing this could improve your Search campaign performance by 10-15%. Here is our plan." Or "Q2 is typically your strongest quarter. We recommend shifting budget from Display to Search starting in March to capture higher-intent traffic."
If every meeting with your agency consists of them presenting last month's numbers and you asking questions, the dynamic is backwards. They should be driving the conversation with insights and recommendations.
Here is a test that exposes a lot of agencies: ask your agency what they think about your landing pages. Specifically, ask them when they last reviewed your landing page performance, whether they have recommendations for improvements, and whether they have tested different landing pages against each other.
An enormous number of agencies treat their responsibility as ending at the click. They drive traffic to your site and consider their job done. But landing page experience directly impacts Quality Score, conversion rate, and ultimately your cost per acquisition. An agency that ignores landing pages is leaving one of the biggest performance levers completely untouched.
The best agencies either have landing page optimization capabilities in-house or explicitly partner with you on landing page testing. They review bounce rates, time on page, and conversion rates by landing page, and they make recommendations based on what they find.
You should always know exactly how much of your money goes to Google and how much goes to your agency. These should be on separate invoices or clearly separated line items. If your agency runs ad spend through their own billing and sends you a single combined invoice, you have limited visibility into what you are actually paying for.
Transparent billing is table stakes for a trustworthy agency relationship. If you cannot easily answer the question "how much did I pay Google last month versus how much did I pay my agency," you have a transparency problem.
There is a fundamental asymmetry in the agency-client relationship that makes accountability difficult. Your agency has (hopefully) years of Google Ads experience. You have years of experience running your business. Those are different skill sets, and the gap between them is where accountability falls apart.
Most business owners evaluate their agency on one of two criteria: "are my leads/sales going up?" or "does my agency seem responsive and professional?" Both are reasonable but insufficient.
Leads can go up because of market conditions, seasonal demand, or increased budget, none of which reflect agency skill. An agency can be responsive and professional while doing mediocre work. They send prompt emails, attend every meeting, and present polished reports, all while running the same set-it-and-forget-it strategy they use for every client.
The real evaluation criteria are operational: is the account being actively managed? Are the right optimization levers being pulled? Is the strategy adapting to changing conditions? Is waste being identified and eliminated? Are new opportunities being tested?
You cannot evaluate these things from a monthly report. You need to look inside the account. And that brings us to the audit.
You need admin access to your Google Ads account to perform this audit. If you do not have it, that is finding number one, and it is the most important finding of all. Assuming you do have access, here is what to check.
Navigate to "Change history" in your Google Ads account. Filter for the last 90 days. You are looking for two things: volume and variety.
Volume: Are there changes being made regularly? For an account spending $5,000 or more per month, you should see changes at least weekly. For accounts over $15,000, multiple times per week. Long gaps between changes (two weeks or more with nothing) indicate periods of neglect.
Variety: What types of changes are being made? If 90% of the changes are bid adjustments and status changes (pausing and enabling things), that is low-effort maintenance, not strategic management. You want to see a mix of keyword additions, negative keyword additions, ad copy changes, budget adjustments, targeting changes, and structural changes (new campaigns or ad groups created).
What to worry about: Weeks with zero changes. Change logs dominated entirely by automated rules or Smart Bidding adjustments (meaning no human is actually touching the account). No new ad copy created in 60 or more days.
Go to "Insights and reports" then "Search terms." Filter for the last 30 days and sort by cost, highest first.
You are looking for search terms that obviously have nothing to do with your business. If you sell commercial insurance and you see search terms like "car insurance quotes" or "what is insurance" eating significant budget, those should have been added as negatives weeks ago.
What to worry about: Irrelevant search terms in the top 20 by cost. Search terms that are clearly informational rather than commercial (people researching, not buying) consuming meaningful budget. Any single irrelevant search term that has spent more than $100 without being negated.
The math: If you find even 5% of your search term spend going to obviously irrelevant queries, and your monthly budget is $10,000, that is $500 per month or $6,000 per year in pure waste. On a $30,000 monthly budget, that is $1,500 per month or $18,000 per year. And 5% is conservative. Poorly managed accounts regularly show 15-30% irrelevant search term spend.
Go to "Ads" in the left navigation and look at the creation dates of your responsive search ads. When were they last updated or when were new variations created?
What to worry about: All ads having the same creation date from months ago with no newer variations tested. Only one responsive search ad per ad group (you should have at least two for testing). Ad strength scores of "Poor" or "Average" that have not been addressed.
Context: Google's 2025 updates made individual headline and description performance reporting available for Responsive Search Ads. If your agency has not used this new data to refine your ad copy, they are ignoring one of the most useful optimization tools Google has released.
Look at your campaign list. Note how many campaigns you have, what types they are, and how they are structured.
What to worry about: A single campaign trying to do everything (all products, all services, all audiences in one campaign). Campaigns with no clear naming convention, making it impossible to understand what each one does. Performance Max running without proper audience signals configured. No branded search campaign separated from generic search (meaning your branded traffic is mixed in with everything else and probably inflating your agency's reported performance numbers). Campaign settings like "Search Partners" or "Display Network" enabled on Search campaigns without an explicit, documented reason.
The branded traffic tell: This one deserves special attention. Look at your search terms report and note how many of your conversions come from people searching your brand name. If branded search is mixed into the same campaign as your generic keywords, your blended CPA looks better than it actually is for new customer acquisition. Some agencies exploit this to hide poor generic campaign performance behind easy branded conversions.
Go to "Goals" then "Conversions" and review your conversion actions.
What to worry about: Conversion actions that track page views rather than actual business outcomes (form submissions, purchases, calls). Multiple conversion actions counting the same event (double-counting inflates reported conversions). No conversion value assigned to different conversion types, meaning your Smart Bidding has no way to prioritize high-value actions over low-value ones. Conversion actions with the status "No recent conversions" or "Inactive" that have not been addressed.
Why this matters so much: Everything in your Google Ads account optimizes toward your conversion data. If your conversion tracking is wrong, every optimization decision your agency makes is based on flawed data. Google's Smart Bidding, your agency's performance reports, and your understanding of what is working all depend on accurate conversion tracking. Getting this wrong does not just misrepresent performance. It actively makes performance worse because the algorithms optimize toward the wrong signals.
If you ran through those five checks and found problems, you have a decision to make. The honest truth is that some of these issues are fixable within the existing agency relationship. Others are not.
If you found a few stale ads and some irrelevant search terms but the overall structure looks sound and changes are being made regularly, raise the issues in your next meeting. A good agency will acknowledge the gaps, explain their prioritization, and address the specific findings within a week. Give them the chance to respond.
If you found major issues (restricted access, no change history for weeks, no search term management, a strategy that has not evolved in months), you are dealing with something bigger than a few missed optimizations. You are dealing with an agency that is either overloaded, underqualified, or simply not prioritizing your account.
Have a direct conversation. Show them the specific findings. Ask for a concrete remediation plan with timelines. If they get defensive, make excuses, or promise to "look into it" without specifics, start evaluating alternatives.
The patterns we have described in this article are not unique to any one agency. They are structural features of the agency model itself. Agencies manage multiple accounts simultaneously. Even excellent agencies have account managers juggling 10, 15, or 20 clients. Human attention is finite, and when attention is spread across that many accounts, some will inevitably receive less care than others.
The question worth asking is whether there is a model that does not have these structural limitations. Autonomous AI management eliminates the attention problem entirely because an AI agent does not manage a "portfolio" of accounts the way a human does. Every account receives continuous, 24/7 optimization with the same level of depth and attention.
groas operates at this level. It performs the search term reviews your agency should be doing, but continuously rather than weekly. It tests ad copy, but runs variations around the clock rather than when an account manager finds time. It restructures campaigns when the data calls for it, adjusts budgets across campaigns in real time based on marginal returns, and adapts to Google's platform changes as they roll out.
Because groas integrates directly with Google Ads via API and maintains deep compatibility with Google's evolving features (AI Max, Performance Max, Demand Gen, Smart Bidding, and the broader Power Pack framework), it does not just replicate what a good agency does. It does what even a good agency cannot: optimize continuously, across all levers, without the constraints of human attention, working hours, or portfolio management.
The cost comparison alone is striking. Agency management typically runs $2,000 to $10,000 per month or 10-20% of ad spend. groas starts at $99 per month with unlimited Google Ads accounts. But cost is almost secondary to the core issue: an AI agent that never sleeps, never gets stretched thin across too many clients, and never relies on vanity metrics to justify its existence simply cannot develop the patterns of neglect that this entire article describes.
Agency fees typically follow one of three models. Percentage-based pricing runs 10-20% of your monthly ad spend (so $1,500 to $3,000 on a $15,000 budget). Flat-fee pricing ranges from $500 to $10,000 per month depending on account complexity and agency tier. Performance-based pricing ties fees to results, though this model is less common because it is harder to structure fairly. Be wary of agencies charging below $500 per month for active management, as the economics make it nearly impossible to dedicate meaningful attention to your account at that price point.
Absolutely, without exception. You should have owner-level access to your Google Ads account, and the account should be set up under your own email or business domain. Your agency should connect to it through their MCC (Manager Client Center), which gives them full management capabilities while you retain ownership. If you ever part ways with your agency, you should be able to revoke their access and keep your account, campaigns, and historical data intact. Any agency that resists this arrangement is a risk.
For accounts spending $5,000 or more per month, you should see active changes at least weekly. For accounts above $15,000 per month, multiple times per week. These changes should include a variety of actions: keyword additions and removals, negative keyword updates, ad copy testing, bid strategy adjustments, budget reallocations, and periodic structural changes. Long stretches with zero activity (two weeks or more) almost always indicate neglect, regardless of what the agency tells you in meetings.
Your report should lead with business outcome metrics: cost per acquisition (CPA), cost per lead (CPL), return on ad spend (ROAS), total conversions, and revenue attributed to Google Ads. Supporting metrics like click-through rate, quality score, and impression share provide context but should not be the headline. Every metric in your report should answer one question: is my Google Ads spend generating profitable business results? If a metric does not connect to that question, it does not deserve prominent placement in your report.
Budget increase recommendations are legitimate when supported by data. If a campaign is limited by budget and performing well (strong CPA or ROAS with room to capture more conversions), increasing budget is the right call. The red flag is when budget increases are the primary or only recommendation your agency makes. A good agency should balance growth recommendations (spend more where it works) with efficiency recommendations (cut waste, restructure underperformers, improve ad copy and landing pages). If every meeting ends with "you should increase your budget," ask specifically what efficiency improvements they have made to justify earning additional spend.
Check whether you have a separate branded search campaign (targeting your company name and close variations) running alongside your generic campaigns. If branded and generic keywords are mixed in the same campaign, your agency's reported CPA is artificially low because branded searches convert at much higher rates and lower costs. Ask your agency to break out branded versus non-branded performance. If your overall reported CPA is $35 but your non-branded CPA is $80, you know that branded traffic is masking poor generic performance. Some agencies also let Performance Max cannibalize branded traffic, reporting those easy conversions as PMax wins.
An agency assigns a human account manager (or team) to your account. That person reviews your account periodically (daily at best, weekly at average, monthly at worst), makes recommendations, implements changes, and reports on results. They bring strategic thinking and industry experience but are limited by working hours, attention span, and portfolio size. Autonomous AI, like groas, manages your account continuously with no gaps in attention. It performs every optimization task a good agency should (search term reviews, negative keywords, ad copy testing, budget allocation, campaign restructuring) but does so 24/7 without the constraints that make human management inconsistent. The AI does not have off days, vacation weeks, or 15 other clients competing for its attention.
Yes, though the value of doing so depends on what you need from the agency. Some businesses use groas for the operational management of their Google Ads (the day-to-day optimization, testing, and execution) while retaining an agency or consultant for high-level strategic guidance, creative direction, and cross-channel planning. This hybrid model gives you the consistency and depth of autonomous optimization with the strategic insight of experienced human advisors, often at a lower total cost than full agency management alone.
First, make sure you have full admin access to your Google Ads account, Google Analytics, and Google Tag Manager. Download any reports, strategies, or documentation the agency has provided. Review your contract for notice periods, termination clauses, and any intellectual property provisions. Document the specific performance issues you have identified (using the five-check audit described above). Give the agency a chance to address the issues if you believe they are fixable. If you decide to move forward with a new management approach, whether that is in-house, a different agency, or autonomous AI, plan for a transition period where both the old and new management can overlap briefly to ensure continuity.
Most accounts see measurable improvements within two to four weeks. The fastest gains come from eliminating obvious waste that was being overlooked: irrelevant search terms, budget misallocation across campaigns, stale ad copy, and structural inefficiencies. These are the exact issues that a neglectful agency leaves unaddressed and that an autonomous system like groas identifies and fixes immediately upon connecting to your account. Deeper optimizations like cross-campaign budget modeling, creative testing cycles, and account restructuring compound over the following two to three months, with most accounts reaching their new performance baseline within 90 days.
