The questions to ask a Meta ads agency before you sign

A smooth sales call tells you nothing about what you will actually get. These questions about creative process, reporting, incentives and staffing reveal within an hour who you are really dealing with.

Every agency sounds good in a sales call; that is literally their trade. What you actually want to know only surfaces when you ask the right questions, across four areas: the creative process, the honesty of the reporting, the incentives behind the pricing model, and who will actually work on your account. The answers predict your results better than any case study in the pitch deck.

Which questions should you ask about the creative process?

On Meta, your creatives drive most of your results. Targeting is largely automated, so the difference between agencies sits in what they feed the machine. So ask concretely: who makes the ads, how many new creatives do you test per month, and where do the angles come from? An agency that only does media buying and puts creatives back on your plate is leaving the most important part of the work to you.

• How many new creatives do you test per month, and what happens with the learnings?
• Where do your angles come from: customer reviews and research, or our competitors' ads?
• What is your process when a creative fails: a new iteration or waiting until next month?
• Can we see examples of a concept that improved across multiple iterations?

How do you test whether the reporting is honest?

Ask which numbers will appear in your monthly report and why. An agency that only shows platform ROAS is telling the story Meta tells, and Meta loves flattering itself. Honest reporting puts platform numbers next to your actual revenue, looks at blended results across channels, and separates revenue from new customers from revenue that would have arrived anyway.

A simple test: ask how the agency handles a bad month. Anyone who starts explaining attribution windows and view-through conversions the moment things go wrong, but happily reports platform numbers in good months, is measuring with two rulers. The answer you want is a fixed measurement framework that stays the same in good months and bad, agreed before the engagement starts. Also request an anonymized sample report from an existing client. One glance tells you whether the agency reports to inform or to sell.

An agency that picks its ruler after the results are in never has a bad month.

What incentives does the agency have?

Pricing models steer behavior, so dig into how the agency earns. A fee set as a percentage of your ad spend means the agency earns more when you spend more, whether that is wise or not. That does not automatically make anyone untrustworthy, but you want to know which way the incentive points and how the agency counters it. Also ask about the notice period: an agency confident in its work does not need a year-long contract to keep you.

Be wary of guarantees. Nobody can guarantee a ROAS without knowing your margins, your return rates and your market, and anyone who does has framed the number so it always holds. The same goes for agencies that arrive at the first call with a media plan ready before asking a single question about your business. Speed is fine, but a plan without a diagnosis is a template.

Who will actually work on your account?

The oldest pattern in the agency world: the senior strategist runs the sales call, the junior who started last month runs your account. So ask explicitly who your day-to-day contact will be, how many accounts that person manages besides yours, and who makes your creatives. Ask to speak with that person before signing. The response to that request usually says enough.

In the same breath, ask about turnover in the team. Agencies with high churn hand you a new face every few months who has to learn your business from scratch, and you pay for that learning curve. How long do people stay on average, and what happens to your account when your contact leaves? An honest answer to that question is worth more than the prettiest case study.

Also ask about the scenario where things go wrong: what happens if results disappoint after three months? A good agency has a real answer, with a diagnostic process and clear decision points, instead of reassurance. And pay attention to the questions the agency asks you. Anyone who does not probe your margins, your inventory and your goals will end up steering on numbers that do not matter for your business.

Conclusion

Good questions cost you an hour and save you months in the wrong partnership: what does the creative process look like, what do you report on, how do you earn, and who does the work. At AdSplicit we are happy to answer them ourselves too; our approach leans on in-house creative production combined with media buying, and on reporting built around new customers and margin instead of platform ROAS alone. Comparing partners for your paid social? Book a call and we will gladly take a look with you, even if the outcome is that we are not the right match.