There’s no shortage of Google Ads agencies in Australia. There are large agencies with polished pitch decks, boutique specialists, one-person consultants, and every variation in between. Some of them are excellent. A lot of them are not.
The challenge for a business owner trying to choose is that the quality difference isn’t obvious from the outside. Everyone claims to be results-driven. Everyone has case studies. Everyone has a proposal that sounds comprehensive. The real question is what’s actually happening inside the account.
This guide covers how to evaluate a Google Ads agency properly, what to ask, what good looks like, and the patterns that signal you’re about to be disappointed.
WHAT GOOD GOOGLE ADS MANAGEMENT ACTUALLY INVOLVES
Before you can evaluate an agency, you need a baseline understanding of what the work actually entails. Google Ads management is not “set up a campaign and collect a monthly fee.” Done properly, it requires continuous active work: reviewing search term reports and expanding negative keywords, testing ad copy, adjusting bids, monitoring Quality Scores, analysing landing page performance, and connecting ad activity to actual business outcomes.
A properly managed Google Ads account changes every week. Not major structural overhauls — regular incremental improvements based on what the data is showing. A campaign that was set up in January and last modified in March isn’t being managed; it’s being billed.
The questions to ask any prospective agency:
- What does your week-to-week account management process look like? What are you checking, and how often?
- What does your typical monthly reporting include, and how does it connect ad spend to actual leads or sales?
- Who specifically will be working on my account? What’s their experience level
- How many accounts is that person managing? (If the answer is 30+, you should be concerned about how much attention you’ll actually receive.)
- Can I see an example of the reporting you provide to a client in a similar industry?
The answers to those questions tell you more than the proposal.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR IN A GOOGLE ADS AGENCY
There are a few markers of a quality Google Ads agency that hold up regardless of size.
Specific expertise in your vertical or a closely adjacent one. Google Ads for a personal injury law firm is genuinely different from Google Ads for a software company. Keyword costs, audience behaviour, conversion patterns, and the right campaign structure all differ. An agency that has done real work in your industry will make better decisions faster than one learning the vertical from scratch on your budget.
Transparency about account access. You should maintain ownership and admin access to your own Google Ads account. Not view-only. Admin. If an agency creates the account under their own structure and doesn’t give you admin access, you’re in a difficult position if the relationship ends — you lose your campaign history, your conversion data, and potentially your quality scores. Any reputable agency will set up the account in your Google Ads account (under your login) and grant themselves access. Non-negotiable.
Honest conversion tracking. The most common form of misleading Google Ads reporting is claiming credit for activity that isn’t actually conversions. “Conversions” set up as page visits, time-on-site events, or any low-intent action inflates the numbers and makes poor campaigns look like they’re performing. Ask specifically: what are you counting as a conversion, and can you show me the setup in my account?
Clear attribution between spend and outcomes. At the end of each month, you should know how many leads came from Google Ads, at what cost per lead, and ideally, how many of those became clients. If the reporting shows impressions, clicks, and CTR but doesn’t connect to leads and revenue, it’s not actionable information.
We tend to see this a lot. We recently had a client come to us who said the leads their agency was reporting was significantly higher than what they were actually receiving. It turned out that leads were being counted as visits to the contact page, not actual form completions. Not only is this poor from a measurement perspective, but it also means that Google Ads conversion machine learning is optimising using poor data.
WHAT TO AVOID
Management fees without performance context. A flat monthly management fee with no reporting on actual results is a bad arrangement. The fee should be tied to a clear scope and measurable outcomes.
Lock-in contracts without performance benchmarks. Some agencies ask for 12-month lock-ins. A contract isn’t inherently bad — proper Google Ads management takes time to optimise, and short-term arrangements incentivise quick-result tactics over sustainable performance. But a 12-month contract should include clear expectations about what will be delivered and measured. If the agency won’t commit to any performance benchmarks, the contract protects only them.
Agencies that won’t explain what they’re doing or why. Google Ads isn’t magic. The strategic decisions — which keywords to target, how to structure campaigns, what bids to set and why — should be explainable in plain terms. If your agency can’t explain why they made a structural decision without retreating into jargon, either they don’t know or they’re hiding something.
Percentage-of-spend pricing without clear deliverables. Some agencies price on a percentage of your media spend — say 15-20% of what you spend on ads. In principle, this aligns incentives (they earn more when you spend more effectively). In practice, it can create an incentive to recommend higher spend regardless of whether it’s producing returns. Understand clearly what you’re getting for the fee.
Automatic enrolment in Google’s recommended features. Google actively pushes account managers toward enabling automated features — broad match keywords, auto-applied recommendations, Responsive Search Ad suggestions, Performance Max campaigns. Some of these are genuinely useful in some contexts. Some of them benefit Google’s revenue more than your account’s performance. An agency that blindly enables Google’s recommendations without evaluating them against your specific goals isn’t doing strategic work; they’re just clicking “accept.”
WHAT GOOD REPORTING LOOKS LIKE
The reporting you receive from a Google Ads agency should answer a few core questions every month:
- How much did we spend, and what did that generate in leads or revenue? Not just clicks. Actual leads or conversions with business value.
- What changed in the account this month, and why? What work was done, what tests are running, what did we learn?
- What are we doing next month? What’s the focus, and why?
- Are there issues we need to address — landing page performance, budget constraints, Quality Score problems, new competitor activity?
A good report is a document that enables informed decisions about your advertising. A poor report is a colour-coded PDF with a traffic light system on vanity metrics. The difference should be obvious once you see both.
BOUTIQUE VS LARGE AGENCY FOR GOOGLE ADS
The dynamic I described in our boutique vs. big agency article applies here too. Large agencies have process and resources. Boutique agencies offer direct access to the people doing the work.
For most Melbourne businesses spending $2,000–$15,000 per month on Google Ads, a boutique agency with genuine expertise in your vertical will outperform a large agency where your account is managed by a junior. The maths of large agency economics doesn’t allow for genuine senior attention at that spend level.
At $15,000+ per month, the calculus shifts somewhat. You have enough leverage to command senior attention at a larger agency, and the infrastructure they offer — dedicated landing page team, creative resources, full-funnel attribution — may genuinely add value.
GETTING STARTED WITH THE RIGHT AGENCY
The most useful thing you can do before engaging any Google Ads agency is understand your current numbers. What’s your current cost per lead from paid search? What’s your conversion rate? What are your primary competitors doing?
If you already have an account running, get it reviewed first. A good agency should be able to audit your existing account and give you an honest assessment of what’s working, what’s wasted, and what structural changes would improve performance.
At Aperitif, we’re a boutique Google Ads agency based in Melbourne. We work with professional services businesses — law firms, accountants, mortgage brokers, financial advisers — and we can tell you quickly whether your current setup is as good as it should be. If you want that conversation, give us a call.
