Is Your Agency Actually Good? 7 Signs Your Ad Account Is Being Mismanaged

1. They Never Show You Search Term Reports

What It Looks Like

You see reports showing that "running shoes" or "organic skincare" is performing well. But you never see the actual terms customers typed. That matters because your broad match keyword "running shoes" might be triggering on searches like "cheap running shoes knock off" or "running shoes repair near me." The keyword looks fine. The search terms behind it could be bleeding money.

Why It Matters

Search term reports are the single most important diagnostic tool in Google Ads. Without reviewing them regularly, your agency cannot know whether your budget is reaching real buyers or being wasted on irrelevant clicks. We regularly find that 15-30% of search ad spend goes to completely irrelevant queries in unmanaged accounts.

The Revenue Impact

In one audit for a D2C brand spending INR 8 lakh per month on Google Ads, we found that INR 1.9 lakh was going to search terms that had zero purchase intent. That's 24% of the budget — gone every single month, compounding over a year into over INR 22 lakh wasted.

What a Good Agency Does Instead

A good agency reviews search term reports weekly, shares them with you proactively (or at minimum makes them available on request), and uses the findings to continuously refine targeting and build out negative keyword lists. They treat search term analysis as a core workflow, not an afterthought. For a deeper look at this, read our breakdown of the 7 most common Google Ads mistakes.

2. Branded Search Is Inflating Your ROAS

What It Looks Like

The agency reports a 5x or 6x ROAS and everything seems rosy. But they never break it down by branded vs. non-branded. When you look closer (or when someone audits it for you), you discover that branded search is running at 15-20x ROAS — because those customers already knew your brand — while non-branded campaigns are sitting at 1.5x or worse. The blended number hides the truth: your agency is not generating new customers efficiently.

Why It Matters

Branded search captures existing demand. Non-branded search creates new demand. If your agency is leaning heavily on branded terms to pad the numbers, they're essentially taking credit for customers your brand-building efforts (SEO, social media, word of mouth) already created. You're paying agency fees for them to convert warm leads that were coming regardless.

The Revenue Impact

We audited a skincare brand that was reporting a blended 4.8x ROAS across Google Ads. Once we separated branded and non-branded, the picture changed dramatically: branded was at 18x, non-branded was at 1.2x. That meant the agency was spending roughly 60% of the budget on campaigns that were barely breaking even for new customer acquisition. The brand was effectively paying twice for the same customer.

What a Good Agency Does Instead

A good agency always segments branded and non-branded performance in their reporting. They run brand campaigns separately with appropriate budgets, and they are transparent about the fact that branded ROAS will always look better. The real metric they optimize for is non-branded efficiency and incremental revenue. Our complete Google Ads audit guide covers how to evaluate this split in detail.

3. No Negative Keyword Strategy

What It Looks Like

The account has broad match and phrase match keywords running, but the negative keyword lists are either non-existent or woefully thin. There is no shared negative list across campaigns. Nobody is proactively blocking irrelevant terms. Your ads for premium protein powder are showing up for "free protein samples," "protein powder side effects," and "cheapest protein powder wholesale."

Why It Matters

Negative keywords are the defense system of your Google Ads account. Without them, Google's matching algorithms will happily show your ads to people with zero buying intent and charge you for every click. This is not a one-time setup task — it requires ongoing maintenance as new irrelevant terms emerge. An account without a robust negative keyword strategy is an account that is leaking money every single day.

The Revenue Impact

In an audit for a home decor brand, we found 412 search terms that should have been negated weeks or months ago. The estimated wasted spend on irrelevant clicks was INR 2.3 lakh per month. After implementing a proper negative keyword strategy, their cost per acquisition dropped by 34% within 30 days — without changing a single ad or landing page.

What a Good Agency Does Instead

A good agency builds comprehensive negative keyword lists before launching campaigns, maintains shared lists across campaign groups, reviews and updates them weekly based on search term reports, and proactively adds industry-specific negatives. A well-managed account will have hundreds — sometimes thousands — of negative keywords across multiple lists.

4. Single Campaign Structure for Everything

What It Looks Like

You have one Google Shopping campaign for 500 products. Or one Meta campaign that lumps prospecting and retargeting together. Or a single Performance Max campaign that is supposed to handle everything from awareness to conversion. The agency calls this "simplified" or "letting the algorithm work." In reality, it means they cannot control budgets, bids, or creative at a granular level. Your best-selling products and your worst performers are competing for the same budget.

Why It Matters

Different products have different margins, different conversion rates, and different competitive landscapes. A INR 500 accessory and a INR 5,000 hero product need different bidding strategies. Prospecting (cold) audiences and retargeting (warm) audiences need different messaging and different budget allocations. A flat campaign structure means the algorithm optimizes for the easiest conversions, which are usually your cheapest products or your warmest audiences — not necessarily what drives the most profit.

The Revenue Impact

We restructured the campaign architecture for a fashion brand running everything through two broad campaigns. After segmenting by product category and margin tier, the brand saw a 28% increase in overall ROAS within 45 days. More importantly, their high-margin products (which had been starved of budget) started getting the attention they deserved, lifting blended profit margins by 19%.

What a Good Agency Does Instead

A good agency builds a campaign structure that reflects your business reality: separate campaigns by product category or margin tier, dedicated brand vs. non-brand campaigns, separate prospecting and retargeting efforts, and clear budget allocation logic. They can explain why every campaign exists and how it connects to your business goals. This is something we cover extensively in our Meta Ads audit guide.

5. No Conversion Tracking Audit in 6+ Months

What It Looks Like

Your tracking was set up 8 or 12 months ago, and since then your site has been updated, your checkout flow has changed, maybe you've migrated platforms or added a new payment gateway. But nobody has verified that the Google Ads conversion tag, the Meta pixel, or the Conversions API (CAPI) is still firing correctly. You might be double-counting conversions. You might be missing them entirely. Either way, the data your agency is optimizing toward is wrong.

Why It Matters

Every algorithmic bidding strategy — from Target ROAS to Advantage+ Shopping — relies on accurate conversion data. If your tracking is over-reporting, the algorithm thinks everything is converting and overspends on low-quality traffic. If it's under-reporting, the algorithm becomes too cautious and you miss scale opportunities. Broken tracking is not a minor technical issue. It fundamentally undermines the entire optimization loop.

The Revenue Impact

We audited an electronics D2C brand where the Google Ads conversion tag was firing on the "add to cart" page instead of the "thank you" page due to a site update three months prior. The agency had been reporting and optimizing toward a metric that was overstated by roughly 4x. The real ROAS was not 5.2x as reported — it was 1.3x. Three months of budget allocation decisions were based on fundamentally flawed data, resulting in an estimated INR 12 lakh in misallocated spend.

What a Good Agency Does Instead

A good agency audits conversion tracking at least quarterly, and any time there is a website change. They use tools like Google Tag Assistant, Meta's Events Manager diagnostics, and server-side validation to confirm that events are firing correctly. They cross-reference ad platform data with your actual Shopify or WooCommerce orders, and they flag discrepancies immediately rather than waiting for you to notice.

6. They Won't Share Account Access

What It Looks Like

You want to log in and see your campaigns. But you either don't have credentials, have view-only access that hides key data, or — worst case — the campaigns are running inside the agency's own ad account, meaning if you leave them, you lose all your campaign history, pixel data, and audience learnings. The agency might say this is "standard practice" or "for security." It's not. It's a lock-in tactic.

Why It Matters

Your ad accounts are business assets. They contain valuable audience data, conversion history, and algorithmic learnings that take months or years to build. When an agency controls the account, they control your exit. You cannot bring in a third-party auditor. You cannot verify their claims. And if the relationship ends, you start from zero. This is the biggest structural red flag on this list because it enables all the others.

The Revenue Impact

A food and beverage brand we worked with had to start fresh after leaving an agency that owned their ad accounts. They lost 18 months of pixel data, custom audiences, and campaign learnings. It took approximately 3 months and INR 6 lakh in additional spend to rebuild the algorithmic intelligence that was lost — money that was essentially paying twice for the same thing.

What a Good Agency Does Instead

A good agency insists that you own the accounts from day one. They set up campaigns inside your Business Manager and your Google Ads account. They give you admin access. They welcome third-party audits. Transparency is not optional — it is a baseline expectation. If your agency disagrees, that tells you everything you need to know. For more on evaluating audit practices, see our guide on free vs. paid ad audits.

7. Performance Reports Lack Context

What It Looks Like

You receive a monthly PDF or Google Slides deck with charts and metrics: impressions, clicks, CPC, ROAS. Maybe there are some green arrows showing things went up. But there is no narrative. No explanation for why CPA increased 22% last week. No mention of what creative was tested and what was learned. No plan for next month. Essentially, you are getting a data dump disguised as a performance report.

Why It Matters

Numbers without context are meaningless. A 3x ROAS is great if your target is 2.5x. It is terrible if your target is 4x. CPA going up might be fine if you are scaling spend into new audiences. It is a problem if spend is flat. The report's job is not to show you data — you can get data from the platform yourself. The report's job is to tell you what the data means, what decisions were made because of it, and what happens next.

The Revenue Impact

The cost here is less about direct waste and more about lost opportunity. A wellness brand we audited had been receiving "green light" reports for 6 months while their customer acquisition cost steadily climbed 40%. Because the reports never flagged this trend, no corrective action was taken. By the time they came to us, they had overspent by an estimated INR 9 lakh on diminishing returns — spend that could have been reallocated to better-performing channels or creative.

What a Good Agency Does Instead

A good agency sends reports that tell a story. They include platform metrics with context relative to goals. They break down ROAS by branded and non-branded. They show creative performance with takeaways. They explain what was tested, what was learned, and what is planned next. They compare current performance to the previous period and to targets. They flag risks proactively. In short, their report answers every question before you have to ask it.

So What Do You Do Now?

If you recognized several of these signs, you are not alone. The uncomfortable truth is that many agencies — including ones that present well and have impressive client logos — operate this way. It is not always malicious. Sometimes it is inexperience. Sometimes it is too many accounts and too few people. Sometimes it is a business model that rewards client retention over client results.

Regardless of the reason, the impact on your business is the same: wasted ad spend, missed growth opportunities, and decisions made on flawed data.

Here is what we recommend:

Your ad budget is one of the biggest line items in your P&L. You deserve to know it is being managed properly. Trusting your gut is a good start. Verifying with data is the next step.

Frequently Asked Questions