The short answer: a good Meta Ads agency can tell you, in one sentence, how many booked jobs your ad account produced last month and what each one cost. If yours can't — or won't — you already have your answer. Everything below is how to prove it with the account open in front of you.
1. They report on the wrong metrics
Impressions, reach, CTR, page likes, video views — none of these pay your team on Friday. If the monthly report leads with vanity numbers and buries (or omits) leads and cost per lead, that's a choice. Agencies that are hitting the number they were hired to hit lead with that number.
The report you should be getting each month is short: spend, leads, cost per lead, booked jobs, cost per booked job, and revenue attributed. Everything else is supporting evidence. For the full picture of what Meta actually should be delivering at a given budget, see What to Expect from £500/month Adspend.
2. You don't have admin access to your own ad account
This is the single biggest red flag in the industry. Your Meta Business Manager, ad account, Facebook page and Pixel/CAPI setup should all be owned by you, with the agency added as a partner. If the agency owns the assets and "grants" you access, you don't own your marketing — you rent it. The day you leave, you lose the pixel data, audiences and learning that your money paid to build.
- 1. Ad account: owned by your Business Manager, agency added as partner.
- 2. Facebook page & Instagram: owned by you, agency has admin.
- 3. Pixel & Conversions API: installed on your domain, events owned by you.
- 4. Creative files: delivered to you in a shared drive, not held hostage.
3. Tracking is broken (and nobody's mentioned it)
In 2026, running Meta Ads without server-side tracking through the Conversions API is malpractice. Between iOS privacy, ad blockers and browser tracking prevention, 20–40% of conversions never make it back to Meta through the pixel alone. If your agency hasn't set up CAPI, or can't tell you the event match quality score on your key events, the algorithm is optimising against a fraction of the picture — and your cost per lead is higher than it needs to be as a direct result.
Ask them to open Events Manager and show you the event match quality. Anything under "Good" on your lead event is a job to fix this week, not a nice-to-have.
4. The same three ads have been running for six months
Meta's algorithm rewards fresh creative. Creative fatigue is the single most common reason a previously-working campaign quietly gets worse — frequency creeps up, CTR drifts down, cost per lead climbs, and the agency blames "the platform". A serious operator ships new creative every 2–4 weeks: new hooks, new formats, new proof. If your ad library looks identical to how it looked at Christmas, that's the problem.
You can check this yourself in 30 seconds — open facebook.com/ads/library, search your business name, and see how many active ads there are and when they were first published.
5. They're boosting posts and calling it Meta Ads
Boosted posts are the worst version of the platform: no proper objective, no lead form, no conversion optimisation, no retargeting structure. If your "campaign" is really a series of boosted Facebook posts run from the page, you're paying agency fees for something the platform lets any teenager do from a phone in two taps. For what a real Meta Ads setup looks like end-to-end, read Get to Know Meta Ads.
6. There's no strategy — just "we're testing"
"Testing" is a real thing, but it has a plan, a hypothesis and a timeline. If every question you ask is answered with "we're testing that at the moment", six months in, you're not being managed — you're funding an experiment with no endpoint. A good agency can tell you: what we're testing this month, what we expect to learn, and what we'll do with the answer.
7. You only hear from them when the invoice is due
The health of a Meta account changes weekly. Frequency, CPM, learning phase status, creative fatigue, lead quality — all of these move constantly. An agency that goes dark between invoices isn't watching the account; they're watching the direct debit. Expect at minimum a weekly written check-in and a monthly call with the numbers on screen.
8. Lead quality has quietly collapsed
One of the sneakier failure modes: the lead count looks fine, but half of them are the wrong postcode, wrong job type, or ghost the moment you call. That's almost always a targeting, form or creative problem — and it's solvable — but only if the agency is looking at what happens after the lead is submitted. If nobody is closing the loop with your booking data, they can't tell good leads from bad, and neither can Meta's algorithm.
9. They hide behind jargon when you ask hard questions
"The algorithm needs more time." "We're still in learning." "iOS 14 changed everything." All of these are real, and all of them get weaponised as excuses when the number isn't good. A confident operator can translate what's happening in the account into plain English in under a minute. If every straight question comes back wrapped in acronyms, that's a tell.
The 60-second scorecard
| Check | Healthy | Warning |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per booked job | Reported monthly, trending stable or down | Nobody's ever mentioned it |
| Account ownership | You own BM, ad account, page, pixel | Agency owns any of them |
| Conversions API | Installed, event match quality ≥ Good | Not set up, or nobody knows the score |
| Fresh creative | New ads shipped every 2–4 weeks | Same 3 ads live for months |
| Campaign type | Proper lead-gen or conversions campaign | Boosted page posts |
| Communication | Weekly written update, monthly call | Silence between invoices |
| Lead-quality feedback loop | Booked / unbooked data flows back to Meta | Nobody asks what happened after the lead |
What to do before you fire them
- 1. Ask for a 30-minute account walkthrough with your Business Manager open on screen.
- 2. Ask three questions: what was our cost per booked job last month, what is our event match quality, and what new creative is going live this month?
- 3. Give them 30 days and a written plan to fix whatever they can't answer today.
- 4. If nothing changes in 30 days, move — but only once your ownership of the account, pixel and creative is bulletproof.
Before switching, get clear on which channel actually suits the work you want more of — Meta Ads vs Google Ads — and what to choose walks through that decision honestly.
Frequently asked questions
How long should I give a new agency before judging results?
For Meta specifically, 6–8 weeks. The first 2–4 weeks are learning phase and creative testing; from week 4 you should see cost per lead stabilising and a clear picture of which creative is carrying the account.
Isn't a rising cost per lead just "the platform getting worse"?
Sometimes, but rarely. CPMs do drift up over the year, but a well-run account offsets it with fresh creative, tighter targeting and better tracking. Blaming the platform every month is a red flag, not a diagnosis.
Should the agency guarantee leads?
Be careful with guarantees — they usually mean lead volume, not lead quality, and they're often padded with cheap, low-intent form fills. A better commitment is transparency: full account access, clear reporting, and a defined 30-day plan whenever a metric drifts.
Can I run Meta Ads myself instead?
Some trades absolutely can, especially with a modest budget and time to learn. Get to Know Meta Ads and the £500/month playbook together cover the setup an in-house operator needs. Bring in help when your time is worth more than the learning curve.
The takeaway
You don't need to be an ads expert to hold your agency accountable. You need one number (cost per booked job), one screen share (your ad account) and one honest answer to the question "what changed this month and why?". If you can't get all three, the problem isn't Meta — it's the people running it for you.
At Onyx we're happy to do this walkthrough on your current account, for free, before you ever consider switching. Sometimes the fix is a conversation with your existing agency. Sometimes it isn't. Either way you'll leave the call knowing exactly where your money's going.