Vander Els Partners
If you have never looked at the invoice Google sends for your ads, you are taking someone's word for a number you could read yourself. This is how to read it. Fifteen minutes.
Find it
- Sign in to Google Ads with your own login. If you do not have one, or the agency's login is the only way in, stop here and fix that first. The account should be yours, with the agency added as a manager. Who should own the account →
- Open Billing, then Transactions. Set the range to last month. Every charge Google made is listed there, and the total is what actually went to Google.
- Put that total next to what you were billed for media. If the agency invoices you for ad spend, the two numbers should match to the dollar. If they do not, ask why before you do anything else.
Read where it went
- Open Campaigns, same date range. Each campaign shows what it spent. Read the names. If you cannot tell from a campaign's name what it is for, that is worth a question.
- Open the search terms report. This is under Keywords, then Search terms. It is the list of what people actually typed before they clicked. Read the first page sorted by cost. You are looking for searches you should not be paying for: how-to questions, jobs you do not do, towns you do not serve, brands you do not carry, anyone looking for something free.
- Count them. Roughly, what share of the spend on that first page went to searches you would not have paid for if you had been asked? Write it down.
What it means if
The totals match and the search terms are clean. The account is being worked. Check again next quarter.
The totals match and the search terms are full of waste. Nobody is reading the report. The fix is a negative keyword list, added and maintained every week, and it costs nothing but attention. Ask whoever runs the account what they added to the negative list last week. The answer will tell you whether anyone is home.
The totals do not match. There is a markup or a mistake between Google and you, and you are entitled to know which. Google's number is the true one.
You could not get in. Then the most important number in your marketing lives somewhere you cannot see. Getting your own access is the first job, before any of the rest.
The one thing to take from this
The invoice is yours to read and the search terms are the account's confession. Read both once and you will know whether the money is being spent or being managed.