Every month your Google Ads agency emails you a report. It’s a PDF with logos, graphs, and a paragraph at the end about “continuing to optimise”. You scan it, find a number that’s gone up, feel vaguely reassured, and file it. Three months later you’re still spending the same amount and you’re not sure if anything’s getting better.
This is by design. Most agency reports are written to be unfalsifiable, not informative. The metrics that look good (impressions, clicks, click through rate) say nothing about whether the campaign is making you money. The metrics that matter (conversions, cost per conversion, share of branded vs non-branded traffic, attributed revenue) often aren’t on the report at all, or are buried in an appendix nobody reads.
Here’s how to read your next agency report properly, what to ignore, and what to demand if it’s missing.
The 4 metrics that should be on every report
If these aren’t there, in plain language, with month over month comparisons, ask why.
1. Number of conversions and what counts as one
You need a count of leads, calls, form submissions, or sales generated. And you need clarity on what’s being counted. A “conversion” can be a form submission, a phone call, a brochure download, an email click, or a scroll to 75% of the page. Agencies bundle these together to make the conversion number look big. Demand a breakdown by conversion type, with the form submissions and phone calls listed separately from softer signals.
2. Cost per conversion (and which conversion)
This is media spend divided by conversions. If the report says “average CPA $45” but doesn’t say which conversion type, that’s hiding something. Cost per form submission and cost per qualified call are the two that actually matter. Cost per “view page for 30 seconds” is a vanity metric.
3. Branded vs non-branded performance
If 60% of your Google Ads conversions come from people typing your business name into Google, your agency isn’t generating demand. They’re harvesting demand that already exists. That’s not necessarily wrong (branded clicks are cheap and convert well), but it does mean your $3,000 a month is buying customers who would have found you anyway. Reports should split branded and non-branded into separate rows.
4. What changed and why
The report should name the optimisations made that month and explain their impact. “Paused 3 underperforming keywords, added 2 new ad variations, adjusted bidding strategy on Campaign X to maximise conversions.” Specific. Verifiable. If the “what we did this month” section is bullet points like “ongoing optimisation” or “review and adjust bids”, they did nothing.
The 6 vanity metrics agencies hide behind
None of these tell you whether your campaign is working. They’re either too easy to inflate, too disconnected from sales, or both.
- Impressions. How many times your ad showed. Doesn’t matter unless people clicked. Easy to make go up by widening targeting, which usually makes the campaign worse.
- Click through rate (CTR). Percentage of impressions that clicked. Useful internally for ad optimisation, useless as a top line success metric. A 5% CTR on an ad nobody converts on is worse than a 2% CTR on an ad with a 12% conversion rate.
- Average position. Where your ad ranked. Google deprecated this metric in 2019 because it was misleading even then. If your agency is still reporting it as a success metric, they’re behind by years.
- Quality Score. An internal Google metric from 1 to 10. Sometimes useful for agencies to optimise against, but a 7 vs 8 changes almost nothing in your bottom line. Reporting Quality Score as a headline metric is filler.
- Search Impression Share. Percentage of available impressions you got. Sounds important. In practice, lifting it usually means spending more on broad keywords that don’t convert.
- Cost (the total spent). Yes, this should be on the report, but only as denominator for other metrics. “We spent your money” is not a success metric.
7 red flags hiding in agency reports
Red flag 1: The report is the same every month
Same template, same metrics, same commentary patterns. If a Google Ads campaign is being actively managed, things change month to month. Different campaigns will lead, different keywords will spike, different ads will need refresh. A report that looks identical every month suggests nothing was actually done.
Red flag 2: Comparison is only month over month
Month over month comparison is noisy. January is different to February for almost every Aussie business. The comparisons that matter are 3 month rolling averages and year over year. If your agency only shows last month vs this month, ask for the rolling view. If they say it’s not available, it is, they just don’t want to show it.
Red flag 3: No conversion attribution model disclosed
Google Ads attributes conversions to clicks within a window (default 30 days). If the conversion window is set wide, the campaign looks like it’s generating more. Your agency should tell you what attribution model and window they’re using, and whether anything changed in the report period.
Red flag 4: Performance Max is reported as one campaign
Performance Max is Google’s black box campaign type that runs across Search, Display, YouTube, Shopping, and Discover. It can be effective. It can also be a disaster. If your report just shows “Performance Max: 47 conversions, $23 CPA” without a breakdown by asset group or audience signal, you’re being told to trust Google’s auto-bidding without any visibility into what it’s actually buying.
Red flag 5: Negative keyword list isn’t growing
Every month a Google Ads campaign should be adding negative keywords (search terms you don’t want to show for). A “free”, a competitor name, a wrong city, an irrelevant industry term. If your negative keyword list hasn’t grown in 6 months, your agency isn’t reviewing search terms reports. They’re letting Google waste your money on irrelevant clicks.
Red flag 6: No mention of landing pages or conversion rate
Most agency reports treat the campaign as separate from the page it sends people to. But the conversion rate on your landing page is at least as important as the click cost. If 100 clicks converts at 3% you get 3 leads. Same 100 clicks at 8% conversion is 8 leads. The agency that ignores landing page conversion rate is leaving most of your upside on the table.
Red flag 7: “Account health” sections that say nothing
“Account is performing well overall.” “Continued positive trends.” “We’re optimising bid strategies for improved efficiency.” Empty calorie sentences that could apply to any account in any state. The commentary on a real report names the campaign, names the change, names the impact. If yours doesn’t, you’re reading template copy that fills space.
How to challenge your agency without breaking the relationship
Most owners don’t push back on agency reports because they don’t want to seem ignorant or accusatory. But asking sharp questions is your job, not theirs. Here’s how to do it without setting off a defensive war:
- “Can you split branded and non-branded conversions in next month’s report?” Reasonable, specific, hard to refuse.
- “What’s the cost per qualified phone call this quarter compared to last?” If they can’t answer, the call tracking is broken or not being reviewed.
- “How many new negative keywords were added this month? Can I see the list?” Tests whether they’re actually doing search terms reviews.
- “What’s our conversion rate on the landing page, and what would it take to lift it?” Forces the conversation about CRO.
- “If I gave you 20% more budget, where would you spend it and what’s the expected outcome?” Tests whether they have an actual growth thesis or just maintenance mindset.
A good agency welcomes these questions. They have the answers. A bad agency goes quiet, blames Google’s algorithm, or tells you the questions aren’t standard. The way they respond tells you everything.
The 5 minute test for your next report
Open your last 3 monthly reports side by side. Then ask:
- Is the cost per qualified lead trending down? If not in 3 months, why?
- Has the agency named specific tests they ran (not just “ongoing optimisation”)?
- Is the conversion rate on landing pages mentioned?
- Are branded and non-branded results split?
- Can you point to one decision in the last 90 days that was driven by something the agency told you?
If three of those are “no”, your reporting is theatre. The campaign might still be making you money, but you have no visibility into how to make it better, which means you can’t fire the agency without losing your only source of insight (a flaw in their favour, deliberate or not).
If you’re not sure whether you’re paying a sensible amount, our breakdown of what a Google Ads campaign actually costs in Australia is the place to start. And if the reports above sound familiar enough that it’s time to switch, we wrote a separate piece on when to fire your Google Ads agency and how to do it cleanly.
If you want a second opinion on your last report, our Google Ads page has a free 30 minute audit offer. We’ll read your report, tell you what’s missing, and either confirm your current agency is doing the work, or show you what they’re hiding. Either way, you’ll walk away knowing.
Sources and further reading
- Google Ads Help: About performance reports (what each column actually measures).
- Google Ads Help: Attribution models (how conversions get credited across touchpoints).
If your report raises more questions than it answers, get in touch and we will review it with you, no obligation.
Frequently asked questions
Spend, conversions, cost per lead, the search terms that triggered your ads, what the agency changed during the month, and what they plan to do next. Anything less is a summary, not a report.
Cost per lead, read alongside lead quality. Clicks, impressions and click through rate are inputs, not outcomes.
Vanity metrics with no cost per lead, no search terms report, no record of changes made, and reports that look identical month after month.
Monthly as a minimum, with live dashboard access so you can check performance yourself at any time.