Paid media is the agency service where the supplier spends your money as well as charging for its time, and that second fact creates every structural issue worth worrying about. Creative quality and platform expertise matter, but they are not where relationships go wrong. Fee structure, account ownership and transparency of media cost are, and all three are settled in the contract rather than in the work.
The fee structure is a statement about whose interest is served
A percentage of spend rewards growth in spend. A flat retainer rewards efficiency of the agency's time. Performance pricing rewards whatever metric was chosen and frequently distorts it. None is wrong, and you should know which one you have bought and what it implies. If it is a percentage, agree the step-down as spend grows; if it is flat, agree what happens when the account genuinely needs more hours.
Own the accounts, always
Advertising accounts should be created under your ownership with the agency granted access, and the same goes for pixels, tags, audiences and conversion configuration. These carry history that materially affects performance and they are assets you funded. Agencies running client campaigns inside their own accounts are holding something that is expensive for you to rebuild, and the cost is invisible until the day you leave.
Ask whether the agency ever profits from the media itself
Some agencies buy inventory principally and resell it, so the price you pay is not the price they paid, and the margin is invisible in any platform report. This is not necessarily improper, but you should know whether it is happening. Ask directly whether the agency takes any rebate, discount or arbitrage margin on media, and get the answer in writing.
Automation changed the job and the reporting has not caught up
With automated bidding and broad targeting, much of the old optimisation work is gone and the value has moved to conversion data quality, feed and creative quality, audience exclusions and measurement. Ask a prospective agency what it does that the platform's automation does not, and listen for a specific answer. If there is not one, you are paying a fee for the platform's own work.
Agree the measurement before the first campaign
Platform-reported conversions are generous and overlap across channels, so the same sale appears in several reports. Decide in advance what the source of truth is, what attribution window applies, and whether incrementality will ever be tested. Doing this at the start is an ordinary conversation; doing it after a disappointing quarter is an argument nobody wins.
Questions people ask about paid media agency
What is a normal paid media management fee?
Commonly a percentage of media spend that steps down as spend increases, a flat monthly fee, or a hybrid with a floor. The comparison worth making is fee plus media against outcomes, alongside how many hours of which people the fee actually represents. A low percentage on a large budget can be more expensive in absolute terms than a flat fee.
Should we use one agency across every platform?
One supplier makes budget shifting between channels easier and gives you a single accountable party. Specialists often execute better on a given platform. The deciding factor is usually how much of your spend sits on one channel: if it is heavily concentrated, buy the specialist for that and keep the rest simple.
How quickly should a new agency improve things?
Structural fixes such as targeting, conversion definitions, exclusions and feed quality can show within weeks. Anything that requires bidding systems to relearn takes longer, and changing everything at once makes attribution of the improvement impossible. Ask for a sequenced plan naming the first month's changes.
What should be in the contract?
Fee basis and any step-downs, ownership of accounts and data, notice period, whether the agency takes any media margin, what reporting is delivered and how often, and what happens at the end including transfer of accounts and documentation. Everything else is negotiable; these are the terms that decide how the relationship ends.