Most buyers spend an AI Google Ads trial watching the dashboard. I spent years managing what sits behind that dashboard, and it is the easiest place for a weak vendor to look busy for 14 days. The trial is your leverage: use it to find out who owns the account, what changes without your approval, what the bill becomes at twice your spend, and whether the vendor cares about CPA or clicks. This is a vendor audit, not an account-prep list. Run the checks in order: before you sign, during week one, and at the end of the trial. Ask for answers in writing. A sales demo is not an answer.

Before you sign: establish what you own and what you owe

  1. Keep the ad account in your Google ID; grant the vendor MCC manager access only. You create the account, add the vendor as manager, and retain the ability to remove that access. If the vendor insists on creating the account under its own MCC, ask what you take with you when you leave. One audit of SME accounts cited in the draft found that 60% were held by someone other than the business paying for them. Account history, audiences, and bidding learnings are a poor parting gift to surrender.

  2. Confirm that conversion actions, audiences, and change history remain available when you cancel. Get the answer for each, not a blanket assurance that you own your data. Ask where conversions live and who controls the tag manager. If the setup depends on a property you cannot access after cancellation, the account may be yours on paper while the measurement is not.

  3. Put ownership of built assets in the order form. Landing pages, feeds, scripts, and creative should transfer with their files and admin rights. A page hosted on the vendor’s domain and rented back to you is not an asset you own. Do this check before work begins; it is harder to negotiate a handover once a live campaign depends on the page.

  4. Get the cancellation terms in plain English. You want month-to-month terms, a notice period, the date work stops, and a handover checklist. Watch for a 90-day lock, an auto-renewing quarter, or a fee to pause. If someone has to explain the exit clause twice, ask them to write out what happens when you give notice.

  5. Demand a fee formula, not a range. A flat fee of $X per service or X% of spend with a $Y minimum tells you what you will pay as the account grows. A range does not. For context, agency pricing cited here runs from $1,500 to $5,000 a month on retainer or 10–20% of spend with minimums. Whatever the model, make the vendor calculate your actual bill.

  6. Get every extra-cost line in writing, including the lines priced at $0. Ask separately about setup, tracking setup, landing pages, creative refreshes, seats, and call-tracking tools. These are common additions to media and management costs. “Included” is useful when it appears beside a named line item. “We can discuss that later” is not a price.

  7. Make the vendor quote the bill at twice your current spend. Keep the services the same and ask for current-spend and 2x-spend totals in one email. A percentage fee rises with spend; a flat fee does not. groas lists $1,499 a month per service, regardless of spend, with no setup fees and accounts that stay yours. Do not settle for “our pricing scales with you.” Have them do the arithmetic before growth gives them the negotiating position.

Week one: find out what “autonomous” actually means

  1. Separate changes that ship automatically from changes awaiting your approval. Ask specifically about bids, budgets within caps, negatives, ad tests, and landing-page fixes after guardrails are set. If each change lands in a queue for your click, you are still managing the workflow. The vendor has given you a reporting tool with a trial label.

  2. Read a timestamped action log, then cross-check it. The log should say what changed, when, why, and what happened afterward. You should not need a second login just to understand the vendor’s account of its work. For a separate record, check Google Ads Change History under Tools > History. A polished activity report means little if you cannot match its claims to dated changes.

  3. Ask when Search Terms are reviewed and whether the review starts with cost. Weekly or biweekly review is the practitioner rule cited here: find spend going to irrelevant queries, add appropriate negatives, and keep close variants that convert. “We handled negatives at launch” is not an ongoing process. Ask to see what the vendor excluded during the trial, not a screenshot of the Search Terms tab.

  4. Have the vendor state its negative-keyword logic. You want to know the match types, whether exclusions sit at account, campaign, or ad-group level, and how brand and competitor terms are handled. “Our AI excludes irrelevant traffic” describes an intention. An example of a query excluded last week, with the level and reason, describes work.

  5. Identify the human responsible for the account and their reply time. Get a name, a contact route, and the expected response window; ask whether a monthly strategy call is included. I am not anti-human. I want to know which human owns the decision when the automated system meets a constraint the sales deck never mentioned. A general support inbox and a three-day SLA are not the same arrangement.

  6. Write the guardrails before day-one spend. Record daily and monthly caps, CPA or ROAS targets, brand-term policy, geography, and hours. Then ask which of those limits the system can change on its own. “We will learn your goals as we go” leaves the vendor free to call almost any early result a learning. Set the boundary first; judge execution inside it.

  7. Look for a live change within 24 to 72 hours. That could be wasted spend cut, missing negatives added, or a landing-page or tracking fix. The point is not to force a cosmetic edit for the sake of the checklist. It is to distinguish an operating trial from a week of onboarding and an audit deck. Ask what shipped and where you can verify it.

End of trial: judge the work and the bill

  1. Judge optimization against CPA, ROAS, or qualified pipeline, not clicks and CTR. The chosen target might be cost per SQL, cost per booked job, or conversion value. Clicks and impressions can help diagnose performance; they are not the commercial result. That is also the distinction in this guidance on qualified conversions. If the weekly wins are CTR, impressions, and Quality Score with no CPA or revenue line, ask what the bidding is trying to buy.

  2. Check that landing-page, ad-test, or feed work actually shipped. Ask for the live change and its before-and-after numbers, not a recommendations deck. The same distinction runs through 7 Google Ads Agency Red Flags That Signal It Is Time To Switch: work proposed is not work done. A trial should give you something in the account or on the page to inspect.

  3. Make the weekly report readable without a translation call. It should state what changed, why it changed, and what happened to spend and CPA afterward. Screenshots and jargon do not replace an action list. If you need the separate account-prep check before granting access, use Before AI Touches Your Google Ads: An 18-Point Pre-Connection Checklist. This check is about what the vendor did once it had access.

Ink cartoon of a buyer checking the engine while the salesperson polishes the dashboard dials

  1. Compare the result with a success rule agreed before the trial. Write the rule in CPA or ROAS terms and keep the attribution basis the same. For example: if CPA moves from $85 to $65 on that basis, you sign; if it does not, you walk. An example is not a guarantee. The useful part is deciding what counts before the vendor presents its preferred chart.

  2. Reprice the first year at twice your spend, including one-off work and tools. The management fee is only one line. A worked cost example puts $36,000 in media beside $12,000 in management, $2,900 in one-off work, and $1,200 in tools; first-month cash is near 1.7 times a normal month. Ask for your vendor’s numbers, not that example’s. A quote that omits extras is not the doubled bill you requested in check seven.

  3. Test the exit on paper. Ask for the handover file and confirm that the account, history, negatives, audiences, pages, and tracking remain usable without the vendor. Do not accept “we would sort that out” as an exit procedure. For the account-side inspection, keep The Complete Google Ads Account Audit Checklist For 2026 alongside this vendor audit. The test is simple: could you leave with the work intact?

Five answers that end the evaluation early

  • “We cannot put account ownership and exit terms in writing.” Stop. A verbal assurance will not transfer an account or a landing page later.
  • “There is no action log you can verify.” If dated changes in the vendor’s report cannot be checked against Change History, you are buying slides.
  • “Clicks, CTR, and impression share are the wins.” Without CPA, ROAS, or qualified pipeline, the report has avoided the outcome you are paying for.
  • “We will quote the 2x-spend bill later.” The trial is when you have leverage to get that number.
  • “Tracking looks fine; we did not audit it.” Do not judge performance on an unexamined measurement setup.

Paper checklist with stamped red flags marking failed vendor checks

The last check: demand the tracking audit

  1. Ask what conversion tracking was broken, what was tested, and what was fixed. The vendor should show primary versus secondary conversions, any duplicate counting removed, a tested purchase tag, and how phone and offline orders reach the account where relevant. Do not treat “we kept your existing setup” as an audit. In 66 of 122 ecommerce audits cited here, a tracking problem was found; 16 accounts were flying blind. Send one email before connecting anything: request the ownership and exit terms, the fee at current and 2x spend with extra-cost lines, the named human and reply time, the week-one ship list, and this tracking audit. Say you spend $20,000 a month: at $40,000, a flat fee stays flat while a 15% fee moves from $3,000 to $6,000. Get that answer in writing. But tracking is the item most buyers skip, and its cost can outlast the trial: if micro-conversions count as primary, purchases count twice, or calls never reach the account, Smart Bidding learns the wrong goal and spends against it. You can spend 14 days judging ad copy while it optimizes for newsletter signups. If the vendor cannot show the audit, do not use its dashboard to declare the trial a success. Walk.

Overhead photo of a single printed vendor audit sheet with pen checkmarks