Three signs a marketing agency is overbilling you

The standard contractor retainer arrangement is a flat monthly fee plus a separate ad-spend budget. When the agency manages the spend and refuses read-only access to the underlying Google Ads or Meta Ads account, the contractor cannot independently verify what was bought. The FTC’s Endorsement Guides require any party making efficacy claims to be able to substantiate them; the same standard should apply to invoiced media buys. A contractor should always own the platform login.

Shared-lead arrangements (the same homeowner inquiry sent to three or four contractors at once) inflate the apparent lead count without inflating the contractor’s win rate. HomeAdvisor’s 2023 settlement with the FTC named exactly this practice. If the invoice line says thirty leads and the dashboard says thirty leads, but the close rate is under five percent, the leads are almost certainly being sold downstream. A contractor-exclusive lead outperforms a shared lead at the same nominal price.

Honest reporting names three numbers: cost per lead, cost per booked appointment, cost per signed job. Agencies that report only “cost per lead” or only “impressions” are choosing the metric that flatters their work. Ask for cost per signed job on every monthly call. If the agency cannot produce it, the agency does not know whether its work is profitable for the contractor.