Adela Mincea
The point
Ask your agency what your current cost per conversion is. How fast they answer tells you everything about whether your account is being managed or just maintained.
A client came to me after 14 months with an agency.
The reports looked professional - branded PDFs, charts trending in the right direction (usually), a summary of everything that had been done that month. The account manager was responsive. The relationship felt stable.
When we spoke, I asked what their current cost per lead was.
They didn't know. The reports had never shown it. They knew their total monthly spend, their CTR, and their impression share. Not their cost per conversion.
Neither did the agency, it turned out. The metric wasn't in their standard reporting template.
For 14 months, nobody had been tracking the number that determines whether the entire account is working.
The question to ask
Email your agency today.
"What's my current cost per conversion, and how has it changed over the last 90 days?"
Their response - specifically how quickly they respond and what they say - tells you more about how your account is being managed than any report they've ever sent you.
If they answer in under 10 minutes, that number is front of mind. They're watching it.
If they need to check and get back to you, that number isn't in their regular workflow. And if it isn't in their workflow, it isn't being actively managed.
If they send you a link to a dashboard and tell you to look it up yourself, you have your answer about how much analytical attention your account is getting.
Why cost per conversion is the only number that matters
Paid media exists to produce business outcomes. Everything else - impressions, CTR, Quality Score, click volume, impression share - is an input to that outcome.
Cost per conversion is the output.
It measures what you're actually paying to acquire a lead, a sale, or a booked appointment. It's the number that connects your ad spend to your business results in a direct, unambiguous way.
An agency that understands this tracks it obsessively. They can tell you:
- Current cost per conversion: $47
- Same metric 90 days ago: $61
- Change: -23%
- What drove the improvement and what they're watching next
An agency that doesn't understand this - or that operates accounts at a volume where individual account economics aren't closely monitored - tracks activity instead. New keywords added. Bids adjusted. Ad copy variants tested. Audiences excluded.
Busy and effective are different things.
The difference between activity and management
This is what an agency report focused on activity looks like versus one focused on outcomes:
| Activity-focused report | Outcome-focused management |
|---|---|
| "We added 47 new keywords this month" | "We paused 12 keywords with spend but zero conversions over 90 days" |
| "We adjusted bids on high-traffic terms" | "CPA dropped 18% after shifting budget from broad to exact match on converting terms" |
| "We tested 3 new ad variations" | "Ad variant B had 40% higher conversion rate. Paused A and C, scaling B" |
| "Impressions increased 22% month-over-month" | "Leads up 31% at the same spend" |
| "We expanded into new audience segments" | "Audience expansion added volume but CPA rose 35%. Rolled back." |
The left column describes a team that is doing things. The right column describes a team that is tracking whether those things are working and adjusting based on the answer.
The difference isn't how much time they're spending on your account. It's what question they're asking when they do.
What shows up when I audit agency-managed accounts
When an account comes to me for an independent review after a period of agency management, certain patterns appear consistently.
Conversion tracking is wrong. Not non-existent - wrong. The most common version: tracking form page views as conversions instead of form submissions. The account shows healthy conversion numbers. The actual form submissions are much lower. The agency has been optimising toward a metric that doesn't represent real leads, and the bidding algorithm has learned from corrupted data for months.
Negative keyword lists are thin. After 12 months of running, an account should have 150-300 negative keywords reflecting everything that's been learned about what doesn't convert. Accounts with fewer than 50 negatives have been accumulating search term waste with no systematic effort to stop it.
Budget allocation hasn't changed in months. Campaign budgets are set and left. Performance data clearly shows which campaigns are producing results at the best cost, but the budget distribution doesn't reflect that - it reflects what was set up at launch, or whatever was agreed with the client 6 months ago.
Bidding strategies haven't evolved. An account that launched on Manual CPC or Maximize Clicks and is still running the same strategy after generating significant conversion data is leaving algorithmic efficiency on the table. The transition from manual to smart bidding requires data and oversight to execute correctly - which means it often doesn't happen.
None of these problems show up in a standard monthly activity report. They only surface when someone looks at the account independently, without an interest in presenting activity as progress.
A Google Ads Audit gives you an independent view of your account: conversion tracking, negative keywords, budget allocation, without going through your agency.
Get the independent review →What good accountability looks like
Every significant change in a well-managed account has a reason. Every reason connects to a hypothesis. Every hypothesis is tracked against an outcome.
"We reduced bids on [term] because it generated clicks at 5x target CPA with zero conversions over 90 days. Reallocating that budget to [term], which is converting at 60% below target CPA. Will review in 4 weeks."
That's how decisions should be communicated - not as changes listed in a report, but as reasoning backed by data, with a defined review point.
This kind of accountability is not the industry standard. But it exists, and if you haven't experienced it, you don't yet have a baseline for what active management actually looks like.
Getting an independent view
A Google Ads audit gives you a picture of your account that isn't filtered through your agency's reporting.
Not shaped to show activity. Not selecting the metrics that trend well. What's actually in the account - what's working, what isn't, what's been set up incorrectly, and what it's costing you.
It's useful either way. You find out the account is in good shape and you have evidence-backed confidence in your agency. Or you find what's been missed and you have the data to have a direct conversation about it - or to make a change.
Get in touch
A Google Ads audit costs $499 and takes 3-5 business days. The report is written for you to use and act on.
Book at adelamincea.com/google-ads-audit or email hello@adelamincea.com if you want to know what questions to ask your agency before deciding.
In short
- Cost per conversion is the only metric that connects ad spend to business outcomes.
- An agency tracking it should answer the question in under 10 minutes. If they can't, they're not watching it.
- Activity in a report is not the same as active management.
- The most common audit findings: wrong conversion tracking, thin negative keyword lists, budgets that haven't moved in months.
- An independent audit is useful whether you stay with your agency or not - it tells you what's actually there.
Adela Mincea is a marketing economist, paid media strategist, and certified trainer. She helps growing businesses make marketing profitable before scaling it by validating margins, acquisition economics, and pricing power before deploying paid media and AI-enabled systems.
Adela Mincea
Marketing Economist
The Marketing Economist
One concept from economics. One marketing decision it changes.
One issue per month. Each one takes an economic concept and applies it to a real marketing decision, the kind that affects budget, margin, or growth.
