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    Buyer Guide8 min read

    What to Look For in a Paid Ads Partner: A Performance-First Buyer's Guide

    By New Public Media

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    This guide pairs with our Our services , the same playbook we run on paying client accounts.
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    Most paid ads agencies are good at selling agencies. Far fewer are good at running ads. This is how to tell the difference before you commit your budget.

    The Three Things That Actually Predict Performance

    Forget award shelves and Forbes Council badges. The three signals that correlate with results are:

    1. How they think about tracking. If they do not bring up Conversions API, server-side events, or first-party data in the first call, they are working with blind dashboards.
    2. How fast they ship creative. Top performers launch 8 to 20 new creative variants per month per client. Mediocre ones launch 2 to 4.
    3. How honest their reporting is. Real reports include losers, missed targets, and what they are testing next. Marketing reports celebrate ROAS and skip CAC.

    The Tracking Conversation

    Ask three specific questions:

  1. Do you set up Conversions API or just rely on the pixel?
  2. How do you reconcile platform-reported conversions with our internal numbers?
  3. What is your view on attribution windows, and what defaults do you set?

    4. A partner who can answer these clearly will outperform one who cannot, every time, regardless of how big their portfolio looks.

    The Creative Process

    Paid social is a creative business now. Targeting is mostly automated. The campaign that wins is the one with the strongest hook, the cleanest offer, and the highest volume of fresh angles. Ask:

  4. How many creative concepts do you ship per month?
  5. Who writes them? Who shoots them? Who edits them?
  6. What is your testing framework? (You want to hear about hypotheses, not "let us try this and see.")

    7. The Reporting Cadence

    Performance moves week to week. A monthly report cycle is too slow. Look for partners who send:

  7. A weekly Loom or note covering wins, losses, and next steps
  8. A monthly summary with cost per result, CAC trends, and creative learnings
  9. An always-on dashboard you can check whenever

    10. If the only reporting is a monthly PDF, you will find out a campaign died three weeks too late.

    Contract Clauses That Protect You

    Before you sign, make sure the contract includes:

  10. 30-day notice both ways. Annual contracts with no exit are a trap.
  11. Ad account ownership. Your business owns the account, always. The agency manages it.
  12. Creative ownership. You own the assets, even after the engagement ends.
  13. Reporting access. You retain login access to platforms and analytics.

    14. Agencies that resist these terms are protecting their own optionality, not the relationship.

    Pricing Models, Honestly

    There are three common models:

  14. Flat retainer. Predictable, agency-friendly. Aligns badly with growth.
  15. Percentage of spend. Scales with volume. Can incentivise the agency to push for higher spend even when it hurts efficiency.
  16. Hybrid (retainer plus performance kicker). Best alignment if the kicker is tied to CAC or contribution margin, not raw ROAS.

    17. We use the hybrid model. We think it is the cleanest alignment, but plenty of great agencies use flat retainers. The model matters less than whether incentives line up.

    The Final Test

    Send the agency one of your worst-performing campaigns from the last 90 days. Ask: "What would you do differently in week one?" The quality of their answer tells you more than any pitch deck.

    Want us to run that test on your account for free? Book a 24-hour audit and we will send a Loom with concrete fixes within one business day.

    Next step

    Want this run on your account?

    Book a free 30 minute audit. We will walk through your ad accounts, tracking, and growth gaps with no pitch back.

    Book a free audit

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