Signs Your Google Ads Agency Is Coasting (And When to Switch)

Jesse Heslinga
Jul 23
10 min read

Most agencies do good work when a client is new. The first few months tend to be active: account build, tracking setup, keyword research, initial testing. That's the honeymoon period.

What happens after that is the real test.

I've audited a lot of accounts over the years, and the most common thing I find is not aggressive mismanagement or hidden fees. It's quiet drift. An agency that was engaged in month two is running the account on autopilot by month eight. The reports still arrive. The fees still go out. But actual work has mostly stopped.

This post is about how to tell the difference. Some of these signs are checkable in 10 minutes; others take a proper audit. All of them are worth knowing before you decide whether to stay or go.

The Short Answer

The change history in your Google Ads account is the most objective measure of whether your agency is working. An active account run by an engaged team typically shows 30 to 100 changes per month.
Reports that lead with impressions, clicks, and CTR instead of leads and cost per lead are designed to look busy without showing you the number that matters.
If you don't have owner-level access to your own Google Ads account, that is a red flag before anything else. You should be able to see everything at any time.
CPL creep with the same response every month is maintenance with the label of strategy.
Before switching, give the agency one direct conversation: show them the specific thing you're concerned about and ask what they are doing about it. The response tells you more than the data.

The change history: the most honest signal in the account

Everything that happens in a Google Ads account gets logged in the Change History. Every bid adjustment, every keyword added, every ad paused, every budget change, every negative keyword.

If your agency is actively managing the account, the Change History is busy. An active lead-gen account typically sees 30 to 100 changes per month: keyword refinements, ad copy tests, bid adjustments based on device or location performance, negative keyword additions as new search terms surface, audience adjustments.

If the agency is coasting, the Change History is thin. Fewer than 10 changes per month is a warning sign. Zero changes in 30 days means the account ran on autopilot. I've seen accounts where the only changes over a 90-day period were automatic bid adjustments, with no human decisions in the log at all.

How to check: in your Google Ads account, go to the Tools icon, then Change History. Filter by date range. Look at the volume and the type of changes. Automated changes (Smart Bidding adjustments) are system-generated and don't count as agency work. You're looking for human decisions: new keywords, paused ad groups, negative keyword additions, ad copy edits, audience changes.

Pro Tip: Pull 90 days of change history, not just the last 30. Some agencies make a flurry of changes when a client asks questions and go quiet the rest of the time. The 90-day view reveals the pattern.

Reports that show everything except what matters

A good report answers one question: is this spend generating profitable leads, and what changed this month to move that number?

A coasting agency's report answers a different set of questions: how many times did people see the ad, how many people clicked, and what percentage of them clicked. These are useful data points. They are not what you need to know.

Watch for reports that:

Lead with impressions and CTR as headline metrics
Show "conversion rate" without showing what a conversion is or how many became actual qualified leads
Include a lot of graphs showing stable or upward trends across multiple metrics, with no clear narrative about what drove them
Contain the phrase "we recommend increasing your budget" without explaining what changed that makes more spend a good idea
Never mention what was tested, what failed, or what was paused because it was not working

A good report is shorter than most clients expect. It names the CPL, says whether it went up or down and why, states what was changed and what the result was, and says what is being done this month. That's it.

Keep in Mind: Reporting format is partly a style preference, but a client who cannot tell from a monthly report whether their spend made money last month is not in a position to hold their agency accountable. If you find yourself unable to answer "what did I get for my spend this month", ask for a different format.

You do not have access to your own account

This one comes before everything else.

You should have owner-level admin access to your Google Ads account. Your account should be owned by your business, managed by your agency. If the agency owns the account and you have read-only access, or no access at all, you are in a dependent position: you cannot audit the work, you cannot get an outside opinion without giving a stranger access to the agency's account, and if you leave, you lose the account history and conversion data.

This is the setup that benefits the agency, not you.

The fix is simple: ask your agency to give you owner-level access to the account in Google Ads. Any legitimate agency will do this without hesitation. An agency that pushes back or says they need to check with their team is telling you something important about the relationship.

If you're comparing agencies or thinking about switching, account ownership is the first thing to sort out. Your data, your account.

CPL creep with the same response

Cost per lead goes up over time in most competitive markets. Competition increases, search volumes shift, landing page fatigue sets in, seasonal effects hit. Some CPL inflation is expected and normal.

The sign of a coasting agency is not rising CPL by itself. It's rising CPL with no corresponding change in strategy. Same campaigns, same structure, same creative, same response month after month. When you ask about it, the response is either "the market is more competitive" or "we recommend increasing your budget."

A genuine response to rising CPL involves naming what specifically changed, identifying where the leak is (new competitor bidding on your terms, impression share lost to others, a landing page converting worse than before), and showing what is being done about it. Not necessarily a fix in week one, but a hypothesis and a test.

If your CPL has climbed 20% or more over two quarters and the only recommendation has been more budget, that is maintenance in the costume of strategy.

The cost per lead post covers the full diagnostic if you want to run through the causes yourself.

Same recommendations every month

Pull up your last six agency reports or call notes. If the recommendations are the same every time (increase budget, try Performance Max, add more keywords), that is not strategy. That is a template.

Strategy is specific. It names what is happening in your account, why it is happening, and what the tested response is. It changes month to month because the data changes month to month.

Generic recurring recommendations are the most common tell of an account on autopilot. The underlying reason is usually time: an agency managing 40 to 60 accounts with three people doesn't have the bandwidth to think deeply about any single account. Your account gets a slot, not a strategist.

This is also why the agency vs freelancer question matters: a smaller operation with fewer clients often gives individual accounts more actual attention, even if they charge less.

No negative keyword management

Search terms are not static. New queries appear every week. Some of them are relevant. Many are not. Actively managing what the account blocks is one of the most consistent, ongoing maintenance tasks in a lead-gen Search account.

If your agency has not updated your negative keyword list in three months, one of two things is true: they are not looking at search terms, or they are looking at them and not acting on what they find. Either way, that means budget is going to searches that shouldn't qualify.

How to check: in your account, go to Keywords > Negative Keywords. Look at the dates when negatives were added. A healthy account shows regular additions (at least a few per month in most accounts). A static negative keyword list that hasn't been touched in six months is a clear sign of inactivity.

Common mistake: Assuming that "the algorithm handles it" means you don't need to actively manage negatives. Smart Bidding reduces the impact of irrelevant traffic but doesn't eliminate it. Negative keywords are still manual decisions that require a human reviewing search terms.

How to actually check if your agency is doing the work

A 15-minute self-audit, doable from your Google Ads account right now:

Change History (last 90 days): what changed, how many times, who made the changes?
Negative Keywords: when were negatives last added? How many have been added in the last 90 days?
Ad copy: when were your current ads last created or updated? Are there any ad copy tests running?
Conversion actions: are your primary conversions set up correctly, or is the account counting things that aren't real enquiries? (See the full guide to conversion actions for the detail on this.)
Account ownership: do you have owner-level access? Does the account belong to your business?

If three or more of these surface problems, the account is being maintained at minimum viable level, not actively managed.

When to switch and when to talk first

Not every agency that's coasting is beyond recovery. Some have drifted and will respond well to a direct conversation. Before switching, try this: send a specific message to your contact, name the one thing you've found (the change history, the CPL trend, the lack of strategy on a specific problem) and ask what they are actively doing about it. Then listen to the answer.

A good agency responds with specifics. A coasting agency responds with reassurance.

If the response is vague, the problem is systemic. If it's specific, give them a month to show you.

Switch when: you've had the direct conversation, the response was not specific, and nothing changed in the following month. Or when you don't have owner-level access and they won't give it to you. Or when CPL has climbed significantly over two or more quarters with no tested response.

Stay and escalate when: you have access, the issue is recent (last 60 days), and the agency responds with a specific plan when pushed.

How I handle this for lead-gen businesses

Some of my new clients have come from agencies that coasted. What I almost always find: a thin change history, CPL that crept up without being addressed, and a generic reporting format that made the problem invisible.

The fix is not complicated. An active account needs someone looking at it every week, running the actual numbers (leads per day, CPL, search terms, Quality Score), and making decisions based on what they see. That does not require a big agency or a high fee. It requires genuine attention.

A free account review is the fastest way to tell whether what you're seeing is a coasting problem or a structural issue. I'll go through the change history, the conversion setup, and the CPL trend and tell you plainly what I find.

Ready to find out if your account is being managed or just maintained?

Book a free account review

Frequently Asked Questions

How many changes per month should a Google Ads agency be making?

A healthy, actively managed lead-gen account typically shows 30 to 100 changes per month in the Change History: keyword additions and pauses, negative keyword updates, bid adjustments based on device or location data, ad copy tests, audience changes. Under 10 changes per month suggests the account is largely on autopilot. Zero human changes for 30 or more days means no one is actively managing it.

What should a good Google Ads agency report include?

At minimum: cost per lead (current period vs prior period), what changed this month and what the result was, what is being tested or planned for next month, and a clear statement of whether performance improved or declined and why. A report that leads with impressions, reach, or CTR without addressing leads and CPL is not giving you the information you need.

Should I have access to my own Google Ads account?

Yes, always. You should have owner-level admin access to your account, which should be owned by your business. Your agency should be a manager on the account, not the owner. If the agency owns the account and will not give you access, you have no visibility into the work, no ability to get an outside opinion, and no data to take with you if you switch.

How long should I give an agency before switching?

That depends on why performance is declining. For new campaigns, 90 days is a reasonable minimum before drawing strong conclusions. For established accounts, a meaningful decline over two consecutive quarters with no tested response is a reasonable point to evaluate the relationship. Before switching, always have a direct conversation naming the specific issue and asking what is being done about it.

What is the difference between a coasting agency and one that's struggling with a hard problem?

A struggling-but-engaged agency tells you what they're testing, what failed, and what they're trying next. A coasting agency sends the same report with the same recommendations regardless of what is actually happening. The distinction is specificity: can your agency name what changed this month, what they tested, and what the data showed? If yes, they're engaged. If the answer is always general, they're not.

Can I switch agencies without losing my campaign data?

Yes, as long as you own the account. Your campaign history, conversion data, quality scores, and audience lists are all attached to the account, not the agency. If you transfer management to a new agency (or manage in-house), the data comes with you. If the agency owns the account, you lose it when you leave, which is one more reason account ownership matters before anything else.

Is it normal for CPL to increase over time?

Some increase is expected in competitive markets as more advertisers bid on the same terms. What's not normal: consistent CPL growth over two or more quarters with no strategic response from your agency. A CPL increase should trigger a specific diagnostic (where is the impression share going? What changed in search terms? Is landing page performance declining?) and a tested response, not just a budget increase recommendation.

About the author

Jesse Heslinga | Google Partner | 7+ Years Google Ads | Lead-Gen Expert

I run Google Ads for lead-gen service businesses at Groove Media across clinics, home services, and professional services, working with clients directly, no account-manager layer. I build every account around one question: is this spend turning into real customers, not just cheap form fills?