---
title: "Stop Hiring an ‘AI Google Ads Agency.’ Buy the Execution Model."
description: "Dedicated strategists run your account and a proprietary engine trained on $500B in profitable ad spend optimises the execution underneath them"
image: "https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6823bbd57170ea42b357cf81/6abf3ef398808f36ef97cb50_fedfa0b7-800a-464a-bba2-3d7cba9bbe36.png"
---

October 2, 2026

•

11

min read

# Stop Hiring an ‘AI Google Ads Agency.’ Buy the Execution Model.

![Young man with curly hair wearing a black shirt outdoors against green foliage background.](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6821efca072e48f6f495a47e/68562d390107b3921a6e3d68_1743932904108.jpg)

**Alexander Perleman**, Head Of Product @ groas
Ex-Goldman Sachs and Stanford Computer Science

**Email: alex@groas.com**

[**LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-433793253/**](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexander-433793253/)

![Cover image for: Stop Hiring an ‘AI Google Ads Agency.’ Buy the Execution Model.](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6823bbd57170ea42b357cf81/6abf3ef398808f36ef97cb50_fedfa0b7-800a-464a-bba2-3d7cba9bbe36.png)

Stop hiring an “AI Google Ads agency.” Most of the firms on your shortlist are selling the same monthly review cycle with a new homepage.

Same fee that climbs when your spend climbs. Same polished PDF at the end of the month. I used to tell clients to ask whether an agency “uses AI.” I was wrong. That question filters for vocabulary, and **vocabulary is what they are selling you, not an operating model**.

#### “AI-powered” tells you nothing about how the account runs

An agency can promise [proprietary AI that analyzes campaigns in real time and automatically optimizes bids, targeting, and creatives](https://konvtrack.app/) while saying its fee **depends on the ad spend we manage**. Read those two claims together. The machine supposedly does the work in real time. The invoice still rises when you give it more money to work with.

![Cartoon of a marketer pasting an AI sticker over an old monthly report binder](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6823bbd57170ea42b357cf81/6abf3ef498808f36ef97cb5c_4053fa9c-ef9d-47ef-81ff-49b7f1ae3634.png)

That is the problem with hiring by headline. If the label described how the account gets worked, you would see it in two places: how often changes go live, and how the invoice moves when spend moves. Instead, you get badges, partner logos, and what the deck calls *synergy*. I call it two people doing the same job: Google’s automation plus a manager watching it.

##### “Uses AI” is a vocabulary test, not a vendor test

Every shortlist post tells you to pick an agency that uses AI. That advice made sense when the technology was unusual. Now Google hands every advertiser a base machine: [Smart Bidding uses Google’s machine learning to optimize for conversions across ad auctions](https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/setting_smarter_search_bids.pdf). Turning it on is not, by itself, a distinctive service. It is onboarding.

When a deck says *proprietary AI*, ask what part is proprietary. A reporting layer, automated rules, and AI-assisted ad copy do not tell you who runs the account or how quickly anything changes. Google also has [Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor, which use Gemini models to suggest, implement, and troubleshoot campaign elements](https://business.google.com/us/updates/ads-and-analytics-advisor/). Independent coverage describes those agents as able to [suggest, implement, and troubleshoot campaign elements in real time](https://searchengineland.com/google-agentic-tools-ads-analytics-467121).

The assistant is no longer the interesting part. **Ask what work the vendor executes beyond the tools already in the platform.** If the answer ends at “our team reviews the recommendations,” you still have to ask when the review happens and what gets done afterward. A suggestion in a queue is not a change in your account.

#### Three mechanics reveal what you are buying

Forget the badge on the homepage. I want three answers: who makes changes and how often they ship; how the fee moves when your spend moves; and whether you can read what was done without waiting for a report. Once you have those answers, the AI label becomes irrelevant. You know the operating model.

##### 1\. Execution: monthly reviews or continuous changes?

Search auctions do not wait for your monthly call. Competitors change bids, budgets hit limits on a Tuesday afternoon, and a search-term cluster goes sour overnight. A team that checks in weekly or monthly sees only what its review cycle catches. The account keeps running between reviews. **The cadence is the product, not the deck.**

Google keeps a receipt. [Change History lists changes to your account, campaigns, and ad groups over the past two years](https://siang.uk/what-is-google-ads-change-history/), including who made each one. Set the date range to 90 days and look. New keywords, paused ads, budget changes, and negatives leave a trail. I have seen accounts paying a retainer where that trail shows almost nothing for weeks. One practitioner teardown says it plainly in the headline: [$800 a Month, 0 Changes in 90 Days](https://clairejarrett.com/blog/800-a-month-0-changes-in-90-days-the-screen-that-proves-it/).

Do not just count rows. Look at when changes happened and whether anyone can explain the sequence. If a search-term problem appeared, did the operator respond while it mattered, or mention it weeks later in a review? If the vendor says its machine handles execution, ask which actions it took and which ones waited for a person. That separates a working system from a quicker way to prepare a meeting.

A busy log does not prove the changes were good. An empty one while spend keeps running tells you something useful, though. Do not accept “real-time optimization” as an answer to a question about what actually shipped last week.

##### 2\. Pricing: does the fee rise when spend rises?

Say you spend $20k a month. Under a percentage-of-spend model, you pay the agency more when Google charges you more, whether CPA improves or not. UK pricing roundups list [percentage-of-spend fees of 10–20%](https://digitalrobin.co.uk/google-ads-agency-pricing/), alongside flat retainers. At $10k in spend, that percentage works out to $1,000–$2,000 a month. Cut wasteful spend by 30%, and the agency’s percentage-based invoice falls too. That does not mean every agency will argue against a cut. It means **the fee rewards spend, not efficiency**.

![Overhead photo of an invoice where the fee rises as ad spend rises, with a red pen circling the total](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6823bbd57170ea42b357cf81/6abf3ef498808f36ef97cb60_dff4e00d-8355-4f97-bca5-dead7d5b995c.png)

A published flat-fee schedule shows the alternative shape: [one firm lists bands from $500 a month for up to $2k in spend to $3,200 a month for $20k–$35k in spend](https://serpslice.com/pricing/). The fee stays put inside a band rather than moving with every extra dollar spent. I prefer that structure because cutting junk spend need not immediately cut the operator’s pay. At a 10–20% fee, removing $6k in monthly waste would reduce the agency’s monthly invoice by $600–$1,200. Ask whether its recommendations survive that math.

The point is not that a flat invoice makes every decision smart. It removes one reason to protect bad spend. Get the pricing rule in writing, then put your own numbers through it: what happens if you cut waste, and what happens if you raise budget without adding work for the vendor? You should understand the answer before you let a sales pitch about efficiency sit beside a contract that pays more for volume.

##### 3\. Auditability: can you see the work, not just the report?

Reports are where waste hides. A PDF can make flat CPA look like progress with impression-share graphs and a line about “optimizations in progress.” A dated action log is harder to dress up. It shows what changed, when it changed, and who made the change. Then you can ask the question the report ought to answer: what happened to CPA afterward?

Tool roundups often concentrate on dashboards, features, and pricing. One [2026 comparison of AI tools for Google Ads](https://startuptalky.com/best-ai-tools-google-ads-2026/) discusses automation alongside tools that help you decide what to change. That distinction matters. **A dashboard that recommends is not execution.** A recommendation waiting for your Friday approval does not stop waste on Tuesday.

The log needs a reason, too. “Budget changed” tells you less than why it moved and what the operator expected that move to do. You can disagree with a decision and still value being able to inspect it. Without that trail, the conversation starts and ends with whatever the report chooses to highlight. With it, you can ask about an individual action instead of trying to reverse-engineer a month of account activity from a chart.

Stop asking only for sample reports. Ask for sample logs. If a vendor cannot show what changed in an account like yours last week, why it changed, and what happened to CPA after, you are buying a narrative about work rather than a view of the work. groas logs actions with their reasoning and puts a named human in charge of direction. That is why its [framework for evaluating PPC automation platforms](https://groas.com/post/how-to-choose-a-ppc-automation-platform) starts with auditability instead of slideware.

#### Three questions that expose a rebrand in one call

You do not need a 12-tab scorecard. Give the vendor 20 minutes and ask about mechanics instead of marketing. A long demo can make an assistant look impressive without ever showing who runs the account. These questions bring the conversation back to the invoice and the change log.

![Interrogation lamp over a laptop showing a Google Ads change history log](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6823bbd57170ea42b357cf81/6abf3ef498808f36ef97cb55_b0bc1971-3f39-470e-9f1c-5c3ad2881091.png)

1. **“Show me last week’s change log for an account like mine.”** Not a case study or a sample report. Ask for the dated list of bids moved, keywords added or negated, budgets shifted, and ads launched. Ask which changes came from a machine, which came from a person, and what happened to CPA afterward. An execution shop should be able to show its work. If the answer is last month’s PDF, you have learned what the vendor thinks counts as proof.
2. **“What happens to your fee if I cut spend 30%?”** Make it concrete: you spend $20k a month, and the operation finds $6k of junk you should never have bought. Under a percentage fee, that efficiency cuts the agency’s pay on your account. Ask for the actual pricing consequence, not a speech about “scale” or “momentum.” A flat-fee operator has less reason to defend waste just to defend the invoice. Buy the model where killing bad spend does not punish the person who killed it.
3. **“Who is the human, and what do they decide?”** A serious system still needs someone who owns direction. Ask for a name, a scope, and an example of a decision they could make against the machine. A strategist who sets guardrails, kills a losing test, or tells you not to raise budget is accountable for more than a dashboard. Someone who merely approves suggestions on Fridays is another step in the queue. If the vendor cannot describe what its human can overrule, you are buying a meeting, not strategic ownership.

Listen for answers that connect. A vendor might show plenty of changes but give no account of why they happened. It might offer a named strategist whose only job is to present a report. It might promise efficiency while its fee falls whenever it finds spend to cut. Each answer matters on its own; together, they tell you whether execution, pricing, and accountability point in the same direction.

Those are not trick questions. They are the purchase decision. **Get specific answers before the contract turns vague promises into a monthly bill.**

#### When a traditional agency is still the right purchase

If you spend $2k a month, have no conversion tracking, and need someone to rebuild your site, fix your offer, and sit in your Monday meeting, hire a good human agency. If you sell something regulated or political where every headline needs legal sign-off before it goes live, you want slow on purpose. If your real problem is creative and positioning rather than auction execution, no bidding machine saves you. I have worked on accounts where the valuable part was strategy and hand-holding. The right agency earns its retainer for that work.

That is not an argument for paying a percentage of spend for monthly reviews on an account that already has volume, tracking, and something that converts. [That operating model no longer fits the work](https://groas.com/post/google-ads-agency-unnecessary-2026-automation-vs-agency). The account does not need another report telling you what happened weeks ago. It needs execution while the auctions are running, plus a human responsible for the decisions a machine should not make.

**Know which problem you are paying to solve.** Do not buy an agency’s AI label when what you need is a faster, more accountable way to run search.

#### Buy the execution model, not the adjective

Stop shortlisting on AI. Shortlist on proof: last week’s log, the fee after a spend cut, and the name of the human who can overrule the machine. Then choose the shop where changes ship continuously, actions come with reasoning you can read, the fee does not rise with every increase in spend, and a strategist owns direction inside your guardrails.

That is the model groas sells: continuous execution, logged actions, a flat monthly fee, and a named human accountable for direction. The cost is giving up the familiar monthly-review arrangement and insisting on visibility into what actually happens between calls. That should not be a hard trade if your account is already spending enough for wasted days to matter.

Ignore the distinction and keep buying the adjective. You can pay for Google’s available automation wrapped in a monthly PDF while a competitor acts in the same auctions day after day.

![Watercolor of a small business owner choosing between two doors labeled execution model and adjective](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6823bbd57170ea42b357cf81/6abf3ef498808f36ef97cb58_11d8133e-f193-4032-8fba-fa7bfec50983.png)

The test fits on an index card: **read the log, cut the spend, name the human**. If a vendor cannot pass it, the new homepage changes nothing. You are still funding the monthly review cycle, just with better fonts.

#### FAQ

##### Is asking a Google Ads agency whether it uses AI a good screening question?

No. Nearly every advertiser now gets Google's own machine, such as Smart Bidding, so turning on AI is onboarding rather than a distinctive service. Asking about AI filters for vocabulary, not for who actually runs your account.

##### How can I tell if my Google Ads agency actually makes ongoing changes?

Check Google Ads Change History, which records all account, campaign and ad group changes over the past two years, including who made each one. Set the date range to 90 days and look at what shipped, when, and whether anyone can explain the sequence. An empty log while spend keeps running tells you something useful.

##### Should I hire a Google Ads agency that charges a percentage of ad spend?

Be cautious. Percentage-of-spend fees typically run 10–20%, so the invoice grows whenever spend grows regardless of results, and cutting wasteful spend directly reduces the agency's income. Ask what happens to the fee if you remove waste before signing.

##### Why does a flat monthly fee work better for Google Ads management?

With a flat fee, reducing wasteful spend doesn't lower the agency's payment, so there's less reason for it to defend bad spend. Some agencies publish banded rates, e.g., $500/month for under $2K in spend or $3,200/month for $20K–$35K in spend. Flat invoices don't guarantee smarter choices, but remove one perverse incentive.

##### Are polished PDF reports enough to evaluate a Google Ads agency?

Not really. Reports can emphasize flattering metrics, whereas a dated action log shows precisely what changed, when, why, and what happened to CPA afterwards. Request sample logs rather than solely reviewing sample reports during the vetting process.

##### If an agency advertises 'proprietary AI', is that genuinely differentiated?

Sometimes yes, sometimes definitely not—ask specifically what portion is truly proprietary. Reporting layers, automation scripts, and AI-written ad copy don't necessarily indicate who manages your account daily. Additionally, note Google offers free advisors like Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisors, built on Gemini.

## Related Posts

[![Cover image for: The Google Ads AI Glossary: What the Settings Say and What They Actually Control](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6823bbd57170ea42b357cf81/6abf464e174c52d36f07b7bd_3b576ada-e41c-40d3-8727-4c7e2f81a22c.png) ##### The Google Ads AI Glossary: What the Settings Say and What They Actually Control October 2, 2026 • 11 min read Written by David](https://groas.com/post/the-google-ads-ai-glossary-what-the-cert)

[![Cover image for: Google Ads Says “Eligible.” Is Your Campaign Stable? Run This Test](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6823bbd57170ea42b357cf81/6abf463fd77d83d932d341c6_682e09ce-20b4-4a7b-a750-29a42097bf80.png) ##### Google Ads Says “Eligible.” Is Your Campaign Stable? Run This Test October 2, 2026 • 11 min read Written by David](https://groas.com/post/the-learning-label-lies-a-test-to-find-w)

[![Cover image for: The SaaS Startup That Kept Google Ads in Learning](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6823bbd57170ea42b357cf81/6abf451fd77d83d932d2befc_13c12005-df86-4464-b9ac-c29f1e41c284.png) ##### The SaaS Startup That Kept Google Ads in Learning October 2, 2026 • 10 min read Written by Alexander Perelman](https://groas.com/post/the-startup-that-relaunched-every-quarte)

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