You are paying someone to manage your Google Ads. They send a report every month. The numbers look acceptable, or at least no one has explained clearly why they should look better. But something feels passive. Questions get reassuring but vague answers. You are not sure if someone is actively working on your account or if it is running on autopilot while the management fee comes out automatically.
This feeling is common, and it is often correct. Google Ads management exists on a wide spectrum from genuine, ongoing strategic work to an account that was set up once and has not been meaningfully touched since.
This post gives you a practical framework for evaluating whether the person managing your ads is actually doing the work.
What Active Management Actually Requires
Start with what real management looks like, so you have something to compare against.
A Google Ads account for an ecommerce store needs regular, specific attention. Not daily attention, but regular attention with clear deliverables. On a monthly basis at minimum, a manager doing their job should be doing these things:
Reviewing the search terms report and adding negative keywords. The search terms report shows every real query that triggered an ad. Queries that have nothing to do with your products waste budget. Reviewing this and building up negative keyword lists is routine, not optional. An account that has been running for 18 months and has 30 negative keywords has not been managed. A well-managed account of the same age typically has several hundred.
Reviewing product-level performance in Shopping or Performance Max. Which products are getting impressions. Which are converting well. Which are getting clicks but not converting. Which are not appearing at all. This review should drive feed optimization, bidding adjustments, and budget allocation decisions.
Checking that conversion tracking is working correctly. Not just “it’s running,” but that the conversion numbers look consistent with what is actually happening in the store. Tracking can break silently. A theme update, a checkout app change, a GTM publish, a thank-you page URL change: any of these can break purchase tracking with no alert. A manager who is not cross-checking conversion data against backend orders may not notice for months.
Reviewing and adjusting bids or bid targets. Bidding strategies like Target ROAS are not set-and-forget. They need updating when seasonality shifts, when competition changes, when product pricing changes, when the account has enough conversion data to qualify for a more aggressive target. Passive accounts run the same bid target from setup through to whenever someone eventually asks a question.
Making and documenting changes. A real manager makes specific changes on a regular basis and can tell you exactly what was changed and why. If you ask “what happened in my account last month” and the answer is “we monitored performance and it looks good,” something is wrong.
What Autopilot Management Looks Like
An account on autopilot was often set up properly at the start. The initial work was done. Then it was handed off to someone who monitors the dashboard and generates reports but does not do ongoing optimization.
Signs you are looking at an autopilot account:
Reports that only show top-level numbers. ROAS, spend, conversions, clicks, sometimes impressions. No search term analysis. No product-level breakdown. No explanation of what changed and why. This style of reporting is produced automatically by Google Ads. It does not require any analytical work.
The exact same campaigns and ad groups, month after month. Active management involves testing, restructuring, adding, and retiring things on a regular basis. An account that looks structurally identical to how it looked nine months ago, with no new experiments and no campaign changes, has not been actively managed.
Recommendations that mirror Google’s automated suggestions. If the changes your manager proposes are the same things Google is suggesting in the optimization recommendations panel (expand to broad match, increase budgets, switch to Performance Max), be skeptical. Google’s recommendations are designed to increase spend and automation. They are not always aligned with what is good for your business.
No discussion of conversion tracking or data quality. An active manager checks the data. A passive one trusts the dashboard.
Vague answers to specific questions. “We made some optimizations to improve performance” is not an answer. “We tightened keyword match types on the brand campaign after finding 200-dollar in monthly spend going to queries with your competitor’s brand name” is.
Questions That Reveal Whether Work Is Being Done
These questions are designed to be specific enough that vague answers become obvious:
“Can you show me the search terms report from last month and walk me through what you added as negatives?”
A manager doing this work will pull it up immediately and walk through specifics. Someone who is not doing it will respond with general statements about match types or managing search intent.
“What specific changes were made to the account in the past 30 days, and what was the reasoning behind each one?”
The answer should be a list. If it is not a list, push for specifics. If the specifics do not come, the work was not done.
“Is our conversion tracking accurate right now? How do you verify it?”
The correct answer involves some process of comparing Google Ads conversion data against actual backend orders. “It’s working because Google shows conversions” is not an adequate answer. That only confirms something is firing. It does not confirm it is firing correctly.
“What was different about last month compared to the month before, and why?”
Pick a period where you know something changed (even if you do not know why). A manager watching the account closely has a specific explanation. One who is not watching closely will tell you “there’s some normal variation.”
“How are you tracking new customer acquisition separately from returning customer sales?”
This is an advanced question, but the answer reveals whether the person understands what growth actually looks like for an ecommerce store versus just maintaining existing revenue.
What You Should Expect to Receive
These are minimum expectations for professional management:
A monthly report with actual interpretation, not just numbers. Data presented without context tells you nothing. A good report explains what happened, what the manager believes caused it, and what is being done about it.
Specific documentation of what was changed. Some managers keep a change log and share excerpts. Others write it into the monthly report. The format does not matter. The information should be there.
Proactive communication when something unusual happens. A significant drop in conversions, a tracking break, a sudden spike in cost per conversion, a product being disapproved in Merchant Center: these things happen. Your manager should tell you when they do, without you having to ask.
Access to a real person, not just a ticket system. When you have a question about a line item on your invoice or a decision you do not understand, you should be able to get a direct response within a business day.
Real access to your own account. You should have admin access to your Google Ads account at all times. Any manager who holds the account in their own MCC without giving you owner access to your own campaigns is creating a dependency that works against your interests.
When the Problem Is the Setup, Not the Management
Sometimes an account that looks underperforming is actually being managed actively, but the original setup was wrong. Bad structure produces bad results regardless of how carefully someone monitors it. If your manager is doing all the right monthly tasks but performance is still disappointing, the audit question becomes: was the account built correctly to begin with?
These two problems look similar from the outside (poor results, unclear explanations) but have different roots and different fixes. A good manager should be able to tell the difference between “the account needs structural work” and “the management is insufficient.”
Getting This Fixed
If this checklist is raising doubts about your current management, those doubts are worth acting on. An account sitting on autopilot for six months or more accumulates problems that carry real cost: wasted spend on irrelevant queries, budget misallocated across campaigns, tracking errors that misdirect the bidding.
I do independent account audits that give you a clear picture of what is actually happening, separate from whoever currently manages the account. And I manage Google Ads for ecommerce stores that need it done properly.
You can reach me at adnanagic.com/#contact.
Part of the Google Ads for Store Owners series, written for ecommerce owners who want their ad spend to actually work.
Related Posts
- A Google Ads Account Audit: What I Check and What It Usually Finds
- What a Proper Ecommerce Google Ads Account Looks Like in 2026
- How to Audit a Google Ads Account That Isn’t Performing
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