How to Tell If Your Ad Agency Is Actually Doing Their Job

There’s a trust gap built into the agency relationship. You hand over your ad account, your budget, and often your brand, and in return you get a monthly report summarizing what happened. The report is produced by the same people who are accountable for the results it describes. This isn’t an indictment of agencies — most are trying hard and operating in good faith. But it does mean that healthy oversight isn’t distrust; it’s just good business. The business owners who get the most from their agencies are the ones who ask clear questions, understand the metrics that matter, and maintain enough visibility into their own accounts to know when something doesn’t add up. This piece gives you the framework to do that without needing to become a media buyer yourself.

Green flags vs. red flags

A good agency relationship has a consistent set of characteristics. So does a problematic one. Here’s how to read the signals:

• Green flag: They give you admin access to your own ad account and actively encourage you to look at the data. Your account belongs to you, not the agency.
• Green flag: Their reports explain what changed, why it changed, and what they’re doing about it — not just what the metrics were.
• Green flag: They bring problems to you proactively, before you notice them. If something underperformed, you hear about it in the same communication as the plan to address it.
• Green flag: They speak in terms of business outcomes — cost per lead, cost per acquisition, revenue attributed — not just platform metrics like impressions and engagement rate.
• Red flag: They’re reluctant to share account access or say you don’t need it. Any agency running your ads should be able to hand you view access without hesitation.
• Red flag: Reports are heavy on impressions, reach, and engagement but light on conversion and revenue data. Vanity metrics are easy to optimize and look good on paper.
• Red flag: Every explanation for underperformance points to external factors — the algorithm changed, the economy is slow, it’s a slow month. Occasionally true; as a pattern, it’s a deflection.
• Red flag: They can’t quickly explain what tests are currently running in your account or what hypothesis each test is based on.

The five questions a good agency answers instantly

You shouldn’t need to schedule a call or wait for the next report to get answers to these. If these questions are met with hesitation, vague answers, or requests for more time, that’s a meaningful signal.

• "What is our current cost per acquisition (or cost per lead), and how has it trended over the last 90 days?" A healthy agency has this number at their fingertips and can explain whether the trend is improving, stable, or declining and why.
• "What creative variants are currently live, and which is performing best?" If they can’t name the top-performing ad without looking it up, they’re not actively managing the account.
• "What’s our current ad frequency, and are any audiences showing fatigue?" Frequency management is a basic ongoing responsibility. If they haven’t looked at it recently, you’re at risk of wasted spend.
• "What did you test last month, what was the hypothesis, and what did you learn?" Agencies who are adding value run experiments. If there’s nothing to report here, the account is on autopilot.
• "What would you change right now if you had an extra 20% budget, and what would you cut if you had to reduce by 20%?" A good answer reveals strategic judgment. A vague answer reveals that the account management is more reactive than proactive.

Numbers you should be able to see yourself

You don’t need to live in Ads Manager. But you should be able to pull these numbers at any time, without asking the agency to pull them for you. If you don’t have the access to do this, that’s the first thing to fix.

• ROAS or cost per acquisition trend over the last 30, 60, and 90 days — broken down by campaign type (prospecting vs. retargeting) if possible.
• Ad frequency per audience, especially for cold prospecting campaigns. Frequency above 3–4 in a short window is a warning sign that the agency should already be acting on.
• A change log or campaign history showing what was modified in the account and when — Ads Manager’s Activity History tab shows this; you can verify it against what the agency reported.
• Spend breakdown by campaign: which campaigns are consuming the most budget and what results they’re generating relative to that spend.
• Landing page conversion rate from paid traffic — available in your website analytics. If the agency is running traffic to a page converting at 0.5% while your organic traffic converts at 2%, something needs attention either in the targeting, the creative, or the page experience.

The ‘what changed and why’ test

The single most revealing test of an agency’s active management is what you might call the change log check. Go to your Facebook Ads Manager account, open the Activity History for your account or a specific campaign, and look at what changed over the last 30 days: audience edits, budget adjustments, new creatives added, ad sets paused, bid strategy changes. Then compare that list against the last monthly report you received. If the activity log shows significant changes that the report doesn’t mention or explain, ask about each one directly. If the activity log shows almost nothing — no changes, no tests, no adjustments — that’s equally concerning. Active management means active decisions. An account that hasn’t been touched in three weeks is being left on autopilot regardless of what the report says.

How to get an honest second opinion

The challenge with asking your agency to evaluate their own performance is obvious: they have an interest in the answer. A second opinion is most useful when it comes from something that has no stake in the relationship and no incentive to soften what it finds. That means pulling the data yourself, or using an independent analytics tool that can read your account data directly and surface what’s actually happening — not what looks good in a slide deck. What you’re looking for is a view that answers the questions your agency should already be answering: Is the cost per acquisition trending in the right direction? Are there campaigns or ad sets consuming budget without producing results? Is there evidence of active testing and optimization, or is the account on autopilot?

That’s exactly the kind of independent, plain-English view a free AskAd audit provides — connecting directly to your ad account to surface what’s working, what isn’t, and what questions are worth bringing to your next agency call.