Hiring a Meta ads agency in the UK: 9 questions

Paid social is the easiest marketing channel to waste money on, because spend leaves your account whether or not anyone is paying attention. These are the questions worth asking before you hand over a budget.

1. Who owns the ad account?

Ask this first. There are two models:

• You own the account and grant the agency access. If you part ways, you keep the spend history, the custom audiences, the pixel data and the learning the algorithm has accumulated.
• The agency owns the account and runs you inside it. If you part ways, you start from zero.

The second model is common and rarely volunteered. It is not automatically wrong — but you should know which one you are signing up to, and the answer should be in the contract rather than in an email.

The same question applies to the pixel, the product catalogue and the Conversions API setup.

2. How do you charge?

The three common models in the UK:

• Percentage of ad spend, typically in the 10–20% range. Simple, but it rewards spending more rather than spending well.
• Flat monthly retainer, often somewhere between £1,500 and £8,000+ depending on account complexity. Predictable, and incentives are neutral.
• Hybrid, a base fee plus a smaller percentage above a spend threshold.

None is inherently better. What matters is that the agency can explain why they use theirs, and that you understand what happens to the fee if you pause spend for a month.

3. What is your minimum monthly ad spend?

Most agencies have one, often around £1,000–£1,500 a month, because below a certain spend there is not enough data for the platform to optimise against. An agency that will happily take £300 a month is either inefficient or not really managing it.

If your budget is below their floor, a good agency will tell you to run it yourself for now. That answer is a positive signal.

4. Is my margin high enough for this to work?

This is the question that should come before any campaign is built, and it is arithmetic rather than opinion.

Work out your break-even return on ad spend:

Break-even ROAS = 1 ÷ gross margin

If your gross margin is 40%, your break-even ROAS is 2.5 — you need £2.50 back for every £1 spent just to stand still. Factor in VAT, returns and delivery and the real number is higher.

An agency that has not asked about your margin before proposing a budget is proposing a budget blind.

5. How will you track conversions?

Browser-based pixel tracking has become steadily less reliable: iOS privacy changes, ad blockers, consent mode. A current answer should mention the Conversions API (server-side event sending) alongside the pixel, and deduplication between the two.

If the answer is “we install the pixel”, the reported numbers will drift from reality, usually in the optimistic direction.

6. How do you handle UK consent requirements?

Under UK GDPR and PECR, you generally need consent before setting non-essential tracking cookies. That has direct consequences for ad tracking: a compliant consent banner reduces measurable conversions, and the agency needs to account for that rather than be surprised by it.

Ask how they reconcile consented data with actual sales. If the question lands as a novelty, treat that as information.

7. What is the landing page plan?

A click costs the same whether it lands on a page built for that ad or on your homepage. Campaigns and landing pages are one system, and an agency that only touches the ad side is optimising half the problem.

Ask who builds the landing pages, how quickly they can be changed, and whether page speed is part of their remit. On mobile, a slow landing page quietly destroys the campaign you are paying for.

8. What does reporting look like, and how often?

You want: spend, revenue or qualified leads attributed, cost per acquisition, return on ad spend, and what changed this month and why.

You do not want a 40-page automated PDF. Ask to see a real, anonymised example from an existing client. A good agency will have one ready; it is a reasonable request and a telling one.

Also ask what they report when a month goes badly. Every account has them. The useful answer describes the diagnosis and the response, not a reframe.

9. Are you a Meta Business Partner?

Partner status is a reasonable baseline signal — it requires meeting spend and performance thresholds — but it is not a guarantee of competence, and plenty of excellent small agencies do not bother with it.

Treat it as one input. Weight client references more heavily, and actually call them.

Two answers that should give you pause

“We guarantee a specific ROAS.” Nobody controls auction dynamics, seasonal demand or competitor spend. A guarantee is either hedged into meaninglessness in the contract, or it is a sales line.

“We can start Monday.” Proper setup — tracking, audiences, creative, landing pages — takes a couple of weeks before a sensible first campaign goes live. An agency that can start instantly is reusing a template.

What good looks like in the first 90 days

• Weeks 1–2: account audit, tracking and Conversions API set up, baseline numbers agreed, break-even ROAS calculated.
• Weeks 3–6: deliberate testing phase. Multiple creative angles, several audiences, enough spend to produce signal rather than noise. Expect this phase to look inefficient — that is what it is for.
• Weeks 7–12: spend concentrates on what is working, testing continues at the edges, and you should be able to see a cost per acquisition you can plan against.

If someone promises a profitable account in week two, they are describing luck rather than a process.

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We run Meta and Google Ads for UK businesses, and we will tell you before you spend anything if the numbers do not work. See performance marketing or book a call.