A fast agency audit. Eighteen questions, half an hour.

A founder from Cluj called me last week. Seven months with the same agency on Meta and Google. He said: „I don't know if they're good or bad. Something is happening, but I don't see any extra money in the account." I sent him this list on WhatsApp. By 11pm the next day he texted me back. He had stopped at question 12. He already knew what to do.

If you have the same doubts, make a coffee, open three tabs, put the last three reports next to you. Walk through the list. Mark „yes" or „no" at each one. The end gives you a score and a next step.

Part 1. Tracking and access. Ten minutes.

The first five questions are answered just by logging in. If you don't have direct access, you already have your first problem.

1. 1Are you, on your own email, admin (not employee) on Meta Business Manager and Google Ads? If not, request it now. It's your account, not theirs. A no here is a red flag from the start.
2. 2Open Events Manager in Meta. Find Purchase. Do you see „Receiving events" with a green tick, or „Issues detected" instead? If there are issues sitting unfixed for weeks, half your sales aren't being tracked.
3. 3Same Purchase event, click on Deduplication. Is there a dedup percentage between pixel and CAPI? It should be over 80%. Below that, the data is mixed and the algorithm is learning from noise.
4. 4Jump to GA4. Reports, Monetization, Ecommerce purchases. Pull the last 30 days. Does total revenue in GA4 match total revenue in Shopify or your ERP? Accept a 5-10% gap. Beyond that, tracking is leaking sales.
5. 5Google Ads, Tools, Conversions. Is the Purchase source listed as „Imported from GA4" or „Google Tag"? If you still see old Universal Analytics tags or anything you don't recognize, you're probably double-counting conversions.

Part 2. What the reports actually say. Ten minutes.

Open the last three reports the agency sent. Not the chat, not the meeting. The actual document.

1. 1Is POAS (Profit On Ad Spend) shown anywhere, not just ROAS? If all you get is revenue and ROAS, they're optimizing on the wrong target. You can hit ROAS 4 and still lose money.
2. 2Are numbers broken down per campaign, ideally grouped by objective? A single account-level number hides the fact that three campaigns carry the weight and seven bleed money quietly.
3. 3Does it say explicitly what they changed this week (paused, launched, new creatives) and why? If it reads „optimizing audiences" three weeks in a row, they probably didn't touch a thing.
4. 4Is there a „what didn't work" section, with explanation? An honest report includes misses. If everything has been rosy for three months, something is being hidden.
5. 5Do you see AOV, CAC, LTV or at least average margin anywhere, not just revenue and ROAS? Missing business numbers mean the agency is working disconnected from your actual business.

Part 3. How they communicate. Five minutes.

Answer these from memory, no dashboards. Last 90 days.

1. 1Last time something broke (pixel down, campaign paused, budget spent wrong), who spotted it first, you or them? If you've caught it every time, they aren't watching the account.
2. 2Have they ever, on their own initiative, suggested pausing a campaign that was bringing revenue but losing money? If never, they aren't watching POAS either.
3. 3Over the last three months, how many calls were „we propose testing X" versus plain status updates? If they're all status, you're paying for stenography, not strategy.
4. 4At the last meeting, did anyone ask about your current net margin, your stock levels, the season ahead? If nobody asked for business context, how can they optimize for profit?

Part 4. The small signs that get expensive. Five minutes.

1. 1Have you seen charges larger than agreed on the last three Google or Meta invoices? Unexpected overage means the budget isn't being watched.
2. 2Have campaign changes happened without a heads-up, or at least a note after? I'm not talking tiny tweaks. I mean calls with impact (pausing, switching objective, doubling budget).
3. 3If you ask right now for a list of all active custom audiences in Meta, with source for each, do you get it within 24 hours, or does the reply drift across a full week? Turnaround time is the best proxy for how much control they actually have over your account.
4. 4Last time you asked for a report at ad level (not campaign, not ad set, the individual ad), how long did it take? More than two days means they look at dashboards, not at creatives.

What you do the moment you write the score

Whatever the score, don't jump to conclusions on emotion. Do two concrete things, in this order.

1. 1Send them the list, all 18 questions, with a seven-day deadline. Simple wording: „I want to understand what's happening on the accounts. Can you reply point by point?" Their reaction tells you more than the answers. Defensive replies or „let's jump on a call" confirm the diagnosis. Serious, direct, numbered answers mean they earned the benefit of the doubt.
2. 2Start quietly looking at alternatives. You sign nothing, you do nothing radical. You just build a shortlist of two or three options. When you have options, decisions are made calmly. When you don't, you cling to whatever you already have.

One small thing that saves weeks later. Whatever you decide, screenshot everything today. Reports, dashboards, custom audiences, the conversions list in Google Ads, Events Manager in Meta. If you end up switching in three months, migration takes a day instead of three weeks if you already have captures saved on a drive.