What Does a Google Ads Agency Actually Do Each Month?
- Jesse Heslinga
- Aug 5
- 10 min read
You hired a Google Ads agency. Monthly invoices go out. Reports come back. Leads arrive sometimes. But if someone asked you to describe what your agency actually did last week, you would struggle to answer.
That is not a personal failing. Most agencies describe their work in vague terms that do not map to anything concrete, and the reports they send show what they want you to see, not what is happening inside the account.
I have taken over accounts from other agencies where nothing had been meaningfully touched in months. The spend was running. The reports were landing. Nobody was doing the work.
This post is about what active management actually involves, week by week, and how to tell whether you are getting it.
The Short Answer
Month one is almost never about results. It is setup, audit, and tracking verification first.
Ongoing management is a weekly rhythm: search terms, bids, ad copy, budget pacing. Without that rhythm, the account runs on autopilot.
A lot of the most valuable work is invisible in reports: Quality Score maintenance, auction monitoring, tracking integrity.
Good reporting leads with cost per lead, not clicks and impressions.
The fastest way to check whether your agency is working: look at the account's change history in Google Ads.
Month One: What Setup Actually Involves
Month one at a new agency is almost never about results. That frustrates some clients, but it is the honest reality of what good work requires.
Before any agency can improve an account, they need to understand it. That means going through what is already there: campaign structure, keyword match types, bid strategies, conversion tracking, search terms history, negative keyword lists, and landing page alignment. Skipping this step means building on a foundation nobody understands.
Month one should include all of this:
Audit. A structured review of every area that affects performance: what is working, what is not, and why. If the previous agency built the account well, some of it stays. If they did not, it gets rebuilt.
Tracking verification. This matters more than most clients realise. If conversion tracking is broken, every bid decision Google makes is based on wrong data. I fix tracking before touching anything else.
In one account I inherited, the conversion tracking was pointed at the homepage, not the thank-you page. Every click was recorded as a conversion. The reported CPL of €18 was fiction. Once we corrected the tracking, the real CPL was closer to €140. The entire first month went on getting that right.
Campaign structure. Campaigns that match how the business actually works: segmented by service, geography, or intent where that makes sense.
Baseline data. Four to six weeks of clean data before drawing conclusions. Smart Bidding needs time to learn. Judging an account at week two is guesswork.
Keep in Mind: If an agency promises strong results in the first two to three weeks, they are either overpromising or planning to cut corners to show fast movement. Real improvement takes a learning period.
Verdict: month one is foundation work. If you are not seeing a proper audit and a tracking fix at minimum, you are not getting what you paid for.
Weeks 1 to 4 and Beyond: What Ongoing Management Looks Like
Once the account is built and the learning phase is done, management becomes a weekly rhythm. It breaks down like this:
Search terms review (weekly). The search terms report shows the actual queries that triggered your ads. Every week, new irrelevant searches appear: job seekers, DIY researchers, wrong geographies, adjacent services you do not offer. These go onto the negative keyword list. In accounts I manage, this is a non-negotiable weekly task.
Bid and budget review (weekly). Is spend tracking on target, or is the account underspending? Are Target CPA bids where they should be, or has Google drifted them somewhere that does not match the cost-per-lead goal? Device, time-of-day, and geography adjustments if the data supports it.
Ad copy and landing page check (weekly). Which ads are winning in rotation? Is the winning ad actually better, or just benefiting from impression variance? Are landing pages loading correctly on mobile? Any disapprovals or policy flags from the week?
Monthly review prep. Pulling the numbers, flagging anything that changed significantly, identifying the next round of tests or structural changes.
In a home services account I manage, the first 90-day search terms review identified 51 negative keywords responsible for roughly 22% of total spend. Most were job-seeker and DIY research queries that had been running unblocked since the account launched.
Pro Tip: Ask your agency what they changed in the account last week. A well-run agency can name exactly what they touched and why. An agency on autopilot will give a general answer about "ongoing optimisation."
Verdict: active management is four to six hours of real work per week in a typical lead-gen account. Less than that, and things are being missed.
The Work That Does Not Show Up in Reports
Some of the most valuable work in a Google Ads account is invisible. No deliverable is attached to it. But it directly affects what you pay for each lead.
Quality Score maintenance. Google scores each keyword on relevance, expected click-through rate, and landing page experience. Low scores mean higher costs per click for the same position. A keyword with a Quality Score of 4 versus 8 can cost 40% more per click at the same ad position. A good agency monitors this and adjusts: rewriting ad copy for relevance, aligning landing pages more tightly to keyword intent, flagging slow-loading pages.
Auction insights monitoring. New competitors entering your auctions show up here. So does existing competition scaling up spend. This tells you whether rising CPCs are caused by something inside your account or by external pressure, which require completely different responses.
Impression share tracking. Missing impressions because of budget limits means you need more spend. Missing because of ad rank means there is a Quality Score or bid problem. Different diagnosis, different fix.
Conversion tracking integrity. Tags break. Websites get updated and a script stops firing. A pixel fires twice on some browsers. Someone needs to check that conversion data is clean and consistent, not just assume the numbers are right.
Data Tip: If your conversion numbers jump suddenly without any obvious cause, check tracking before drawing any conclusions. Broken or re-enabled tags cause more mystery swings in conversion data than any real change in performance.
Verdict: this monitoring work has no slide deck attached to it. If it stops happening, you will notice it in your cost per lead within a few months.
What Your Monthly Report Should Actually Show
A monthly report is the floor, not the full service.
A good report for a lead-gen account covers: spend vs. budget, leads (actual conversions, not clicks), cost per lead, comparison to the previous month, and the main things that changed and why.
What a good report does not do: bury everything in impressions and click-through rate statistics that do not connect to revenue. Clicks do not pay anyone's salary. Leads do.
Beyond the monthly report, expect proactive contact when something meaningful changes. A campaign gets a policy suspension. CPC spikes for a keyword group. A test ad is outperforming the control by a clear margin. These should not wait for the monthly call.
You should also always have your own Google Ads login with direct account access. If an agency manages the account under their own login and you can only see what they share with you, that is a structural problem. You own the account and the data in it.
Well-Run vs. Coasting: What the Work Actually Looks Like
This is not what agencies say they do. This is what the actual work involves.
Task | Well-run account | Coasting agency |
Search terms review | Weekly, negatives added regularly | Rarely reviewed, few negatives added |
Negative keyword list | Growing list, organised by theme | Short list, little change over time |
Bid strategy | Reviewed and adjusted monthly based on conversion volume | Set at the start and left alone |
Ad copy testing | Active variants running, winners promoted, losers paused | Same ads running for 6+ months |
Quality Score | Tracked per keyword, ad copy adjusted | Not monitored |
Budget pacing | Checked weekly, adjusted toward month-end | Unchecked: overspend or underspend common |
Conversion tracking | Verified monthly, anomalies flagged | Assumed correct, never checked |
Landing pages | Checked against ad copy, mobile tested | Left as-is unless client reports a problem |
Monthly report | Leads, CPL, what changed, what is next | Clicks, impressions, CTR with no lead data |
Proactive contact | Reaches out when something changes | Silent between scheduled calls |
One account I took over had last had a search terms review nine months before I came on. The negative keyword list had 11 entries. The same ads had been running since the account launched with no copy changes. Conversion tracking was intact, but nothing else had been touched. The client had no idea because the monthly reports showed clicks and impressions, not what was actually happening inside the account.
For more signs your Google Ads agency is coasting, that post goes deeper on the specific patterns to look for.
Verdict: the difference between the two columns is what separates an agency spending your money carefully from one treating your account as passive income.
Red Flags You Can Check Yourself
These show up in the account, not the reports. You will need direct access to your Google Ads account to find them.
No recent changes in the change history. Go to Tools > Change History in Google Ads. If the last meaningful change was three weeks ago, nobody has been in the account. A properly managed account has regular documented changes: keyword additions, bid adjustments, ad copy updates, negatives added.
A short negative keyword list. Accounts that have been running six months with fewer than 50 negatives have almost certainly never had a proper search terms review. Relevant negatives accumulate fast when someone is actually looking.
All ads in rotation with the same edit date. Google Ads shows when each ad was last edited. If every ad in the account has the same date from six months ago, nobody is running copy tests.
Conversion tracking that nobody has verified. Ask your agency when they last confirmed that tracking is firing correctly. If they do not have a clear answer, it has probably been a while. For a practical guide to what to count as a lead in Google Ads, that post covers exactly what your primary conversion actions should look like.
Common Mistake: Trusting the report numbers without checking the account. Reports can look healthy while the underlying account is poorly managed. If conversion tracking is broken, the report is showing you fiction.
Verdict: you do not need to be a Google Ads expert to spot these flags. You just need access to the account.
How I Handle This for Lead-Gen Clients
Every account I manage gets a weekly pass through search terms, bid pacing, and any flags from Google. Monthly, I do a deeper review: Quality Scores, auction insights, ad copy performance, and landing page alignment. The monthly note I send leads with cost per lead and what changed, not impressions.
I contact clients outside that schedule when something meaningful happens. Not because I have to, but because they should know.
The accounts I take over from other agencies usually take three to six months to compound properly: tracking cleaned up, negative list rebuilt, bid strategy tuned to real conversion data. After that, results tend to move in the right direction and stay there.
Ready to See What Is Actually in Your Account? If you are paying for Google Ads management and you are not sure what is getting done, the fastest way to find out is to look at the account directly. Or have someone who knows what to look for do it for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much time should a Google Ads agency spend on my account each month?
For a typical lead-gen account spending €1,500 to €5,000 per month in ad spend, four to eight hours of active management per month is a reasonable minimum. Below that, meaningful tasks are being skipped. Accounts with multiple campaigns, locations, or higher spend levels can easily take more.
What should a Google Ads agency report include?
At minimum: total spend, total leads, cost per lead, and comparison to the previous month. The report should also explain what changed in the account and what is planned next. Impressions and click-through rate without lead data tells you almost nothing about whether the account is performing.
How do I know if my Google Ads agency is actually doing work?
Log into your Google Ads account and go to Tools > Change History. This shows every change made to the account and when. Frequent, recent changes mean someone is actively working. If the last change was several weeks ago, they are not.
What happens in the first month with a new Google Ads agency?
Month one should be audit, setup, and tracking verification. A new agency needs to understand what exists, fix structural problems, and build a clean foundation. Significant performance improvements in the first four weeks are unusual, and any agency promising them should be questioned.
Can I manage Google Ads myself instead of hiring an agency?
Yes, but it takes real time. The weekly tasks alone (search terms review, bid checks, ad copy monitoring) take two to four hours for a single campaign. Most business owners who try it end up either spending too much or under-managing. Whether hiring an agency makes sense depends on your spend level, time availability, and how much the account affects your revenue.
What is the difference between a Google Ads agency and a freelancer?
Mostly structure and cost. An agency has more overhead and may have an account manager layer between you and the person doing the work. A freelancer or small specialist usually works on your account directly. For most lead-gen service businesses, a direct-access specialist often delivers more attentive management than a mid-size agency where your budget is relatively small. The full comparison is in this post on agency vs freelancer for Google Ads.
How often should my agency contact me?
Monthly reporting is standard. You should also hear from them when something meaningful changes: a campaign gets suspended, cost per lead shifts significantly, or a test produces a clear winner. No proactive contact at all for months at a time means nobody is watching the account closely.
What should I do if I think my agency is not doing much?
First, check the change history in the account. Second, ask them to walk you through what they did last month, specific tasks and specific changes. If they cannot answer clearly, that tells you something. Third, consider an independent account review from someone with no stake in the relationship.
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?
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