None of them are onerous, and an engagement without them stalls in month two. We would rather set the expectation now than discover the gap later.
The first fortnight is deliberately unglamorous. Numbers will move around and it is not yet a period you should judge anything by.
Partner access to the ad accounts, analytics and CRM. Then a full written audit: structure, tracking, creative, feed, spend distribution, waste and the three things we would fix first. You get this document whether or not you continue, and it is written to be read by you rather than by another agency.
We do not take a green tick as evidence. Events are fired, followed and matched against what the business actually recorded. Deduplication between browser and server, event match quality, consent mode behaviour, currency handling, and whether the conversion values mean anything. This is where most of the first fortnight goes, and every hour of it is repaid.
Anything actively losing money or breaking measurement gets fixed immediately. Everything else waits. We will not restructure a live account in the first three days — that resets learning your previous spend paid for and makes the first month unreadable for both of us.
With measurement trustworthy, the structural work happens in one deliberate move rather than a hundred small ones.
Consolidation where the account is fragmented, separation where brand and acquisition are mixed, exclusions and negatives, budget moved to where the evidence points. Done in a single planned change with a written rationale, then left to settle. Continuous small edits are why so many accounts never exit the learning phase.
Concepts, hooks and copy for the first real test set — distinct angles rather than variations of one. You approve the concepts; we write and direct. If creative supply is your bottleneck, this is the fortnight where that becomes obvious and we say so plainly.
Before anything is judged, we agree what we are judging: which metric, measured how, against what starting point, over what window. Written down, so nobody can move the goalposts later — including us.
This is the part you are actually paying for, and the first honest read on it arrives around week four.
The first genuine assessment. Not "it is early days" — an actual statement of what is working, what is not, and what changes as a result. If the channel looks unlikely to reach a cost per acquisition your margins support, you hear it here, at week four, rather than at month six.
Creative angles, offers, landing pages and audiences, tested in an order and at a size where results can actually be called. We use a significance test rather than a feeling, and we publish the calculator we use so you can check ours.
Budget increases are staged so the learning phase is not reset on every move. Scaling fast and breaking an account is easy; scaling while holding efficiency is the actual skill and it is slower than clients expect.
Ninety days is a fair test because that is roughly how long it takes to find winning creative and build behind it. At that point you should be able to say plainly whether this is working, and so should we.
After the first quarter the work settles into a cadence. It is the same whether you are a direct client or an agency partner.
Spend, pacing, anomalies, disapprovals, feed errors and delivery problems, checked every working day. Not a weekly sweep — a lot of expensive things happen in a day.
What changed, why, what we expected, what actually happened, and what happens next. A dashboard is not a report. More on what that looks like on the reporting page.
One structured monthly call for direction. Between those, a shared channel with your buyer during your working hours. No account manager relaying messages.
Send us the accounts. Within two working days you get a written read on what is wrong and what we would do about it — yours to keep either way.
Because a live account carries learning that your previous spend paid for, and tearing it up on day three destroys that and makes the first month unmeasurable. Anything actively losing money is fixed immediately; structural work happens once, deliberately, with the reasoning written down.
A real read at week four and a fair judgement at 90 days. If we think it will not work, you hear that at week four rather than at the end of the quarter.
Roughly an hour a month on the call, plus creative approvals and answering questions in a shared channel. The onboarding fortnight is heavier — access, economics and a proper conversation about what a customer is worth.
The audit is free and independent, and plenty of people use it as a second opinion while staying where they are. If your current agency is doing good work, the audit will say so.
Either. Most often we take channel execution while your marketing lead keeps strategy and brand. If you want a named person inside your team rather than an agency relationship, the dedicated buyer page describes that.
Thirty days' notice, no penalty, no exit fee. You already own the accounts, so there is nothing to hand back — you just remove our access.
A written audit of your live accounts within two working days. Keep it either way.