How to Choose a Meta Ads Agency: Questions, Red Flags and the First Month

To choose a Meta ads agency, settle ownership, billing, tracking and written terms before you compare creative samples, because Meta’s own rules make ownership and billing mistakes hard to undo: ad accounts and pixel datasets stay in the business portfolio that creates them, and Meta can’t move an ad account whose payment method a third party manages. This guide quotes those rules from Meta’s help and developer pages as published in October 2026, then covers the questions to ask, the red flags, how to read a proposal and what a good first month looks like. NextAds is a Meta ads agency.

How to choose a Meta ads agency, step by step

Work through it in this order.

1. Settle ownership first. Put your ad account, Page, Instagram account, pixel dataset and catalog in a business portfolio you control, with your own payment method on the ad account.
2. Shortlist and check their work. Look up the brands each agency names in the Meta Ad Library and call one current client.
3. Run the same first call with each agency. Ask the same questions and note how specific the answers are.
4. Read the proposals side by side. Compare scope, fees, billing, creative, tracking and exit terms line by line.
5. Judge the first month on setup. Tracking fixed, the first new ads live, and weekly reports that put Meta’s numbers next to your store’s.

Own the accounts before an agency touches them

Meta’s Business Help Center is direct about what happens once an asset lands in a business portfolio, and most of it cannot be undone.

• Ad accounts stay where they are created. Meta says that if you create a new ad account in a business portfolio, “it will permanently be a part of that portfolio,” and it “can’t be deleted or transferred from the portfolio.” Claiming an existing account “may permanently move it into the portfolio.” An account an agency creates in its own portfolio stays there after you part ways.
• Agencies get shared access. For an agency working on a client’s ad account, Meta’s same page says “the account will remain in their portfolio, but access will be shared with your portfolio.”
• Your pixel dataset cannot move either. Meta’s dataset setup page says “you can’t delete a dataset or transfer it to another business portfolio,” and lists “someone else manages your ads” among the reasons to set one up in Meta Business Suite. Meta uses the dataset “to help target and measure your ads,” so it belongs with you.
• Third-party billing locks an account in place. Meta’s troubleshooting page says ad accounts whose payment methods are managed by a third party “can’t be moved by Meta. You’ll need to create a new ad account.”
• Partners cannot pass your assets on. A partner you give full control of an asset “can manage everything but they cannot share the business asset with another business.” Only the organization that owns the asset can.
• Two of your people should hold full control. Meta recommends, but does not require, that “2 active people have full control of a business portfolio,” which adds a second approval to sensitive actions such as changing the access of someone with full control.

Once those are in place, give the agency only the access its work needs. Meta lists the access options for each asset, and the table below uses its names.

Asset	Owned by	What the agency gets
Business portfolio	You, with two of your people holding full control	Added as a partner, never given full control of your portfolio
Ad account	Your portfolio, with your payment method	Partial access, Manage campaigns: view ads, create and edit ads, access reports. Full access adds ad account settings, finances and permissions, so keep that in-house
Facebook Page and Instagram account	Your portfolio	Partial access for Ads and Insights; add Content, Community activity or messaging (Messages and calls on the Page, Messages on Instagram) only if they post, reply to comments or answer messages for you
Pixel dataset	Your portfolio	Use events dataset to view data and create conversion ads. Meta’s table lists creating audiences only under Manage events dataset (full access), which also controls settings and user access, so grant it only if the agency builds audiences from your pixel
Catalog	Your portfolio	Basic, to view products, build product sets and pick the catalog in ads; Manage everything only if they run your product feed, since it includes deleting the catalog
Payment and finance	You	No finance permission unless you agree to it in writing

Finance is its own setting. Meta’s page on business payment methods says permission to manage finance “must be assigned separately, even if you have full access to the portfolio,” and that anyone with full access or that permission is responsible for how the portfolio’s payment methods are used.

What to ask on the first call

Ask every agency the same questions in the same order, and write the answers down.

Ask	A useful answer	Be careful if you hear
Who runs my account day to day, and who makes the ads?	Names, roles and who you contact when something breaks	“Our team,” with no names, or a senior person on the call who will not work on the account
Which brands in my category have you run ads for, and which Meta ad policies limit what we can say?	Brands you can look up in the Ad Library, and the specific policy limits for your category	“We work with every industry”
Whose portfolio will the ad account, dataset and catalog sit in?	Yours. You add them as a partner with their business portfolio ID, or they request access to your ad account by its ID	“We’ll set it up in ours, it’s faster”
How is ad spend paid?	Meta charges your payment method; their fee is a separate invoice	Spend runs through their card or credit line and comes back as one total
How is your fee calculated, and what changes when spend goes up?	A written basis and the points where it changes	A number that depends on “how things go”
What will you check in tracking before launch?	Pixel and Conversions API sending the same events, deduplicated, with purchases compared against your store’s orders	“The pixel is installed”
Which attribution model and setting will you report on?	One named model and setting, used every week, shown next to your store’s numbers	A ROAS figure from Ads Manager with no attribution model or setting named
How much new creative do we get each month, and who makes it?	A number of new concepts and formats, sized to your budget	“As much as we need”
Is my budget enough for what you propose?	How many ad sets and new creatives the budget can support while each ad set can still get the roughly 50 results a week it usually needs to leave learning	A plan with more ad sets than the budget can feed
How do you decide an ad set has failed?	A rule based on results and spend, with time to leave learning	Budgets and ads changed every day
What is the term, the notice period, and what do I keep if I leave?	A short term or month to month; you keep the accounts, the data and the creative files	Automatic renewals, exit fees or files held back

Also ask for a sample report with the client’s details removed; it shows how they will explain your numbers each week. On creative, ask how they spot ads wearing out. Meta’s own signals are in our guide to Facebook ad creative fatigue. To size creative volume to a budget, see our guide to how many ad creatives to test.

Red flags that should end the conversation

Any one of these is a reason to walk away unless the agency fixes it in writing before you sign.

• A markup inside ad spend. A fee calculated as a percentage of spend is a pricing model, and the contract should state it as one. A markup is the agency paying Meta and billing you more than Meta charged, or reporting spend you cannot check. With your own payment method on your own ad account, Billing & payments shows exactly what Meta charged.
• A long lock-in before any results. Meta’s learning phase works on a one-week window: an ad set usually exits the learning phase “after about 50 results in the week after the ad set’s last significant edit.” A 12-month minimum, automatic renewal or an exit fee protects the agency’s revenue. Nothing in how Meta delivers ads requires one.
• The agency wants to own the ad account. Under the rules above, an ad account created or claimed in the agency’s portfolio stays in that portfolio, and Meta cannot move an account whose payment method is managed by a third party. If you leave, you either ask the agency for access to your own history or start again in a new, empty account.
• A request for full control of your portfolio. Meta says people with full access to a business portfolio “can claim or remove assets or people from the business portfolio” and “can also delete the business portfolio.” An agency needs partner access to named assets, and nothing more.
• No tracking plan. Meta’s Conversions API best practices say “you can use only matched events for ads attribution and ad delivery optimization.” A proposal that skips tracking optimizes to data no one has checked.
• Reports you cannot check. Reach, impressions and a ROAS figure with no attribution model or setting named. Meta notes that results cannot be compared in its Campaign Overview table across ad sets with different attribution models, and Shopify’s marketing reports credit the last non-direct click by default, so the two rarely agree. A useful report shows both and explains the gap.
• A guaranteed return. No agency controls Meta’s auction, your margins or your product. Ask what they will commit to instead: tracked numbers, a creative schedule and a report on a fixed day each week.

How to read a Meta ads proposal

Read the proposals side by side. If a line is missing, ask for it in writing.

Line	What it should say
Scope	Which work is included: account management, creative, landing pages, tracking, and who does each
Fee basis	Flat, percentage of spend, performance-based or a mix, and the points where it changes
Ad spend billing	Charged by Meta to your payment method, with the agency fee invoiced separately
Creative	How many new concepts and formats each month, and who makes them
Tracking	What gets checked and fixed before launch
Reporting	How often, which attribution model and setting, and whether your store’s numbers sit next to Meta’s
Term and exit	Length, notice period, renewal, exit fees, and what happens to access and files when you leave
Ownership	Accounts, data and creative files stay yours, stated in the contract

Each fee model pulls the agency in a different direction.

Fee model	How it works	What to ask
Flat monthly fee	The same fee whatever you spend	What is included, and when the fee changes
Percentage of ad spend	The fee rises and falls with spend	What evidence they need before raising budgets, since their fee rises with yours
Performance-based	The fee is tied to orders, revenue or leads	Which numbers count, Meta’s attributed purchases or your store’s orders, and how refunds and returns are handled
Hybrid	A base fee plus a spend or performance part	How each part is calculated, in writing

For comparison, NextAds charges $0 markup on ad spend and works month to month with no lock-in. How we run accounts is on our Meta ads agency page.

What a good first month looks like

The first month is mostly setup, and it should be judged on setup. Meta says ad sets in the learning phase “are less stable and usually have a higher CPA,” so cost per purchase in the first weeks says little about the agency.

1. Week 1: access and audit. Partner access to named assets is in place. The agency reviews your account history, Events Manager, catalog feed and landing pages, then agrees targets with you using your store’s numbers as the baseline. The weekly report starts this week, on a fixed day, even if the first one only covers setup.
2. Weeks 1 and 2: tracking fixed before new spend. The Pixel and Conversions API send the same purchase events, and Meta discards the duplicate when the event name and event ID match within 48 hours. Purchases in Events Manager are checked against your store’s orders for the same days. Our guide to the Meta Pixel and Conversions API on Shopify walks through the check.
3. Week 2: the first creative batch. New concepts built from your reviews and from competitors’ live ads, in versions that fit feeds, Stories and Reels.
4. Weeks 2 and 3: a launch that can learn. Fewer ad sets, budgets sized for the results Meta needs, and no daily edits. Meta warns that editing an ad, ad set or campaign during learning will “reset learning and delay our delivery system’s ability to optimize.”
5. Week 4: the first monthly review. The weekly reports so far, rolled up: spend, purchases and cost per purchase under one named attribution model and setting, next to your store’s orders and revenue for the same dates, with what was tested, what changed and what comes next.

If week four arrives without the tracking check or the side-by-side weekly numbers, ask why before month two starts.

Check the agency’s work before you sign

Three checks are worth doing before any contract.

• Look up the brands an agency names in the Meta Ad Library. You will see which ads are live, when each started and where they send people. For US product ads it shows no spend or results, and it does not show which agency runs an ad, so confirm the rest with the brand. Our guide shows how to read a brand’s ads in the Meta Ad Library.
• Call one current client. Ask what changed in the first 60 days, how quickly the agency replies and whether they would hire it again.
• Ask for a short written read of your own live ads. A useful one names specific ads and pages and says what it would test first. Advice that would fit any brand tells you how your account will be run.

Choosing a Meta ads agency: questions, answered

Should the agency use my existing ad account or create a new one?

If your existing account is in your own business portfolio and in good standing, keep it, because its history stays with you. If you need a new one, create it in your portfolio yourself and share it with the agency. Meta says a new ad account “will permanently be a part of” the portfolio it is created in.

Can I get my ad account back from an agency?

If the account sits in the agency’s portfolio, Meta says ad accounts already linked to a business portfolio “can’t be moved to another one.” You can ask the agency to share access with your portfolio or create a new ad account in your own. Pixel datasets cannot be transferred either, which is why ownership is settled before work starts.

Should I add the agency as a partner or add its people to my portfolio?

As a partner. With partial access, the agency can only give its own people the tasks you assigned to the agency, and when you part ways you remove the partner from Partners in your portfolio settings. Meta notes that removing a partner is different from removing someone in your organization.

How long before I know whether an agency is working?

There is no fixed time. Ad sets usually leave learning after about 50 results in the week after their last significant edit, so the first month shows whether the setup is sound, and the weeks after show the trend in cost per purchase against your store’s numbers.