How to Vet a Google Ads Agency Before Signing

Most Malaysian business owners choose an agency the same way: three referrals, three proposals, whichever felt most confident in the meeting. That process selects for presentation skill. It does not test the things that decide whether you are still happy eight months later.

The awkward part is that the strongest signals are all available before you sign. They sit in the contract, in the account setup, and in how an agency answers a question it was not expecting. None of them require you to understand Google Ads. They require you to know which questions to ask and what a weak answer sounds like.

This guide from IZI Digital Marketing sets out a vetting process you can run in about two weeks. It covers how to decide what “good” means for your business, the five questions worth asking, the contract clauses that matter, and the red flags that reliably predict trouble. The aim is that you sign with fewer assumptions and a shorter list of surprises.

Before the detail, here is a practical view of the questions worth putting to any agency you are considering.

PART 1 · DIAGNOSE

Decide What Good Looks Like Before the First Meeting

IN BRIEFWrite down your target cost per enquiry and your monthly budget ceiling before you speak to anyone. Without those two numbers, every proposal sounds reasonable, because you have nothing to measure it against. Knowing what a search agency actually does helps you read the scope that follows.

Agencies pitch against each other. If you have not defined the target, you end up comparing them on tone and price rather than fit. Three numbers do most of the work.

• What an enquiry is worth to you. Take your average sale value and your rough close rate on enquiries. If one in four enquiries becomes a customer worth RM2,000, an enquiry is worth around RM500 to you. That is your ceiling, not your target.
• What you can commit monthly, for at least six months. Paid search punishes stop-start budgets, accounts lose their data momentum every time you pause. A smaller sustained figure beats a larger one you cancel in month three.
• Who internally owns the website. This decides half the scope conversation. If nobody can change a landing page within a week, say so upfront and make it the agency’s problem to solve.

With those written down, a proposal either fits or it does not, and the meeting becomes a conversation about approach rather than a sales pitch you have to referee.

BENCHMARK BRIEFING 1 OF 4

A Weighted Scorecard for Comparing Agencies

IN BRIEFScore every shortlisted search agency on the same weighted criteria instead of arguing about impressions. Contract terms and measurement setup deserve more weight than portfolio polish, because they are the parts you cannot renegotiate cheaply after signing.

The weights below reflect how much each factor tends to determine the outcome of a first engagement, rather than how much attention it usually gets in a pitch.

PART 2 · DIAGNOSE

Five Questions That Reveal How an Agency Works

IN BRIEFAsk questions with no rehearsed answer. Anything about process, conflict or failure works better than anything about results, because results can be selected. The answers tell you more about future Google Ads management than any case study will.

1. “Whose name will the ad account be registered under?” The correct answer is yours, with the agency added as a user. Google documents several access levels including admin, standard and read-only, so there is no technical reason an agency needs the account in its own name.
2. “Who will actually be in my account each week, and how many other accounts do they handle?” You are trying to find out whether the person in the meeting is the person doing the work. Both answers are acceptable. An evasive answer is not.
3. “Tell me about a client where this did not work. What happened?” Every agency has one. An agency that claims otherwise is either new or not being straight with you. Listen for whether they take any share of the responsibility.
4. “What would make you tell me to reduce my budget?” This tests whether they have a threshold at all. “We’d never recommend that” is a poor answer, it means the recommendation is not on the menu.
5. “Walk me through what happens in week one.” Specific answers name tracking setup, conversion definitions and account structure. Vague answers describe “onboarding” and “strategy alignment”.

Question four is the one worth pushing on. Every agency has a commercial reason to keep your spend high, and a good one will acknowledge it rather than pretend the tension does not exist.

BENCHMARK BRIEFING 2 OF 4

Red Flags Ranked by How Much They Cost You

IN BRIEFNot every warning sign carries the same cost. Guaranteed rankings are obvious and easy to reject; agency-owned accounts are quiet and expensive, because the damage only appears when you try to leave. Treat the quiet ones as seriously as an SEO audit checklist treats a slow server.

PART 3 · DESIGN

Which Credentials Are Worth Checking

IN BRIEFGoogle Partner status proves an agency clears defined thresholds, not that it suits your business. Read it as a floor, not a ranking. Comparing search agencies in Malaysia on badges alone will not separate the shortlist.

Google sets out three requirement categories for the Partner badge: performance, spend and certifications. Its documentation states that a company needs a minimum optimisation score of 70% along with annual ad spend and certification thresholds across managed accounts. That tells you the agency manages real budgets and keeps its team certified. It says nothing about whether they will answer your emails.

So use credentials as a filter, then decide on the things they do not cover.

A paid audit is the underused option. It costs a fraction of a retainer, it is the closest thing to a work sample, and an agency unwilling to sell one is telling you something about how it prices thinking versus execution. Any agency claiming a formal credential should be happy to have the reasoning behind it examined.

BENCHMARK BRIEFING 3 OF 4

Contract Clauses: Insist, Negotiate or Walk

IN BRIEFSome clauses are non-negotiable, some are fair trades, and a few should end the conversation. Sorting them in advance keeps a contract review to one round rather than three, whichever Google Ads package you end up choosing.

PART 4 · DEPLOY

A Two-Week Vetting Sequence You Can Actually Run

IN BRIEFTwo weeks is enough to vet three agencies properly if you run the steps in order. The sequence matters: define targets, then shortlist, then meet, then read contracts. Reversing the last two is how businesses end up negotiating with the agency they already emotionally chose.

1. Days 1–2: write your three numbers. Target cost per enquiry, monthly budget ceiling, and who can edit the website. One page, no research needed.
2. Days 3–5: shortlist three. Send all three the same one-page brief containing those numbers. Identical briefs make proposals comparable; bespoke conversations do not.
3. Days 6–8: meet, and ask the five questions. Same questions, same order, notes taken. Send question five by email afterwards and give two days.
4. Days 9–11: score against the weighted criteria. Do this before re-reading anyone’s deck, while the meetings are fresh and the design has not had time to do its work.
5. Days 12–14: read the contract of your top choice only. Check ownership, notice period and billing separation first. If those three fail, move to your second choice rather than negotiating from a weak position.

The discipline that matters most is step five. Reading only the winner’s contract sounds efficient, but it also means you still have a live alternative if the terms are bad, which is precisely when you have leverage to ask for changes.

BENCHMARK BRIEFING 4 OF 4

How a Shortlist Narrows, Stage by Stage

IN BRIEFMost candidates fall away at two points: the written brief and the contract read. Meetings rarely eliminate anyone, which is why they should not be the centre of the process. A consultant running this for you would compress the same stages, not skip them.

PART 5 · DRIVE

When the Right Answer Is to Stay Put

IN BRIEFSwitching costs more than the new fee. You lose account history, learning periods reset, and the first two months go to onboarding rather than optimisation. Vet a new agency properly, then check whether your existing one simply needs a different conversation.

Three situations where changing agency does not fix the problem you actually have.

• The brief was never clear. If nobody ever told the agency what an enquiry is worth, poor targeting is a shared failure. Send the three numbers and give it a quarter before deciding.
• The website is the constraint. When ads deliver traffic and the page converts badly, a new agency inherits the same page and the same result. Fix the destination first.
• The budget is below the account’s minimum viable level. Very small budgets collect data slowly, which makes every account look underperforming. That is arithmetic, not incompetence.

None of this means staying with an agency that keeps your account in its own name or cannot say what changed last month. It means separating a fixable relationship from an unfixable one before you pay switching costs.

THE VERDICT

What Vetting Really Tests

IN BRIEFYou are not testing whether an agency can run ads, most can. You are testing whether they will tell you something you do not want to hear, and whether you can leave if they do not. Everything else in vetting a Google Ads agency is detail around those two questions.

Competence is common. Candour is not, and it is the thing that decides whether the second year is better than the first.

The cheapest test of both is the question about reducing your budget. An agency that has thought about it will give you conditions, a spend floor, a category that stopped converting, a season worth sitting out. An agency that has not will reassure you instead. Reassurance is pleasant and tells you nothing.

Ask it in the first meeting, while the answer is still free.

FAQ

Common Questions About Vetting a Google Ads Agency

1. Should I always insist on owning the Google Ads account?

Yes, in almost every case. It depends only on whether you are running a short campaign you will never repeat, otherwise the account holds your conversion history, and that history is what makes the next year cheaper. Google supports adding an agency as a user without transferring ownership, so there is no practical trade-off.

2. Is a Google Partner badge enough to shortlist an agency?

It is a reasonable filter, not a decision. It depends on what you need: the badge confirms spend, certification and optimisation-score thresholds, which rules out the least experienced firms. It says nothing about responsiveness, category fit, or whether the person who pitched will do the work.

3. How long should the minimum contract term be?

Three to six months is fair for a new account. It depends on how much data your category generates, low-volume niches genuinely need longer before anything is provable. Beyond six months, ask what you get in exchange, and make sure a notice period follows the minimum term.

4. Should I pay for an audit before committing to a retainer?

Usually yes, if you already run ads. It depends on your budget size, below a certain spend the audit fee is a large share of a month’s cost. Where it applies, it is the closest thing to a work sample you can buy, and it tests thinking rather than presentation.

5. What is the single biggest red flag in a proposal?

A guaranteed number of leads or a guaranteed position. It depends on nothing, auction outcomes are not within any agency’s control, so the guarantee is either meaningless or funded by counting weak enquiries. Treat it as a signal about how the rest of the relationship will be reported.