You can usually tell in one meeting. A good agency talks about your pipeline and payback. A struggling one talks about clicks, impressions, and how busy it has been.
Most clients cannot tell if their agency is good, because the agency controls the scoreboard. The reporting is built to look like progress whether or not the business grew. So judge them on a different axis: not how much they do, but whether what they do shows up in revenue and who is accountable when it does not.
How do you know if your paid media agency is doing a good job?
Judge them on outcomes and ownership, not activity. The single clearest signal is what they put at the top of a report. If it is revenue, CAC, and payback, they are managing your business. If it is clicks, impressions, and a list of tasks completed, they are managing their own optics.
The rest is pattern matching. Here are the green flags and the red ones.
Green flags: what a good agency does
- Reports on pipeline and payback. Revenue contribution, blended CAC, payback period. Numbers a CFO would accept, not just a marketing dashboard.
- Names what it would stop. A good partner tells you where you are wasting money, even when it shrinks their managed spend.
- Has a thesis. Every test answers a question. They can tell you what they believed, what they tried, and what they learned.
- Tells you who is in your account. By name and seniority, and that person is on your calls.
- Shows you the failures. They volunteer what did not work. Confidence looks like disclosure, not spin.
Red flags: what a struggling agency does
- Reports platform ROAS as the headline. Self-graded homework. Since iOS, it overstates, and they know it.
- The senior lead disappeared after onboarding. You bought the pitch team and got the service team.
- No named owner. Questions route to an account manager who relays them to someone you never meet.
- New tactics every month, no thesis. Motion without direction. Busy is not the same as working.
- Defensive when a number moves. If asking why CAC rose gets you a deflection instead of an answer, they do not know either.
The one question that settles it
Ask: what would make you tell me to stop spending? A good operator has an answer ready, because they think in terms of your profit, not their retainer. A struggling agency will stall, because telling you to spend less has never been in their interest. The quality of that single answer tells you most of what you need to know.
What to do if the answer is "not good"
Do not fire anyone on one bad month, and do not switch before you know whether the problem is the agency or the strategy. Get an independent read on the account first. Confirm the tracking is clean, so you are judging real numbers and not a broken pixel. Then look at whether outcomes are flat, whether the reporting explains or obscures, and whether anyone senior owns the number.
If you want that independent read, that is exactly what our teardown is: 30 minutes, your numbers, the three things costing you the most right now. You keep the findings whether or not we ever work together. If you would rather self-assess first, the Leak Report scores your account in about four minutes.
Common questions
How do I know if my paid media agency is doing a good job?
Judge them on pipeline and payback, not activity. A good agency reports on revenue, CAC, and payback, names what it would stop doing, and can tell you who is in your account by name. If the reporting is clicks, impressions, and how busy they have been, they are selling effort, not outcomes.
What are the red flags of a bad paid media agency?
Reporting built on platform-reported ROAS only, a senior lead who vanished after onboarding, no named owner for your account, no willingness to name a disqualifier or a test that failed, constant new tactics with no thesis, and defensiveness when you ask why a number moved.
Should I fire my paid media agency?
Not on one bad month. Fire them when the pattern is clear: outcomes flat or declining, reporting that obscures rather than explains, and no senior owner accountable for the number. Before you switch, get an independent read on the account so you know whether the problem is the agency or the strategy.
What should a paid media agency report on?
Revenue or pipeline contribution, blended CAC, payback period, and what changed and why. Platform metrics like CTR and CPC are diagnostics, not results. The report should survive scrutiny from a CFO, not just a marketing dashboard.