For the CMO who’s tired of being talked over

You don’t have to be a mechanic to know when you’re being upsold.

You just need someone who is — sitting on your side of the table, reading the report your agency hopes you won’t question, telling you in plain English what they’re actually doing with your money.

Ask me one thing — free See the red flags

One question, one straight answer. No pitch attached.

Sound familiar?

Three things you’ve probably seen in your last quarterly review.

If any of this lands — the green-arrow slide, the agency vocabulary, the campaign nobody can audit — you’re not imagining it. These are tactics, not accidents. Each one has a name and a fix.

Mock agency slide showing four green vanity metrics with a buried conversion drop A slide titled Account Performance March with four large green up-arrow tiles and a small grey line at the bottom showing conversions are down 19 percent. ACCOUNT PERFORMANCE — MARCH IMPRESSIONS +47% ▲ vs. last month CLICKS +23% ▲ vs. last month CTR +18% ▲ vs. last month IMPR. SHARE +14% ▲ vs. last month Conversions: 38 (−19% MoM) · CPL: $284 (+31%) The only number that pays your salary.

Exhibit A — The greenwashed slide

Four green up-arrows on the lead-off slide. The one number that connects ad spend to your actual business is in 9-point grey type, no comparison column, no chart. See the red flag →

Verbatim quotes from a typical agency call, each annotated with a translation Four italic quotes that account managers commonly use, each annotated in orange monospace text with what they actually mean. FROM YOUR LAST QUARTERLY CALL “We’re still in the learning period.” → It’s been six weeks. Documented at two. “Performance Max needs runway.” → The campaign that consumes 30% of spend has no audit trail. “Quality of traffic is up, even if volume isn’t.” → A pivot. Last month it was the other way. “ROAS came in strong, in line with expectations.” → Whose expectations? Set when?

Exhibit B — The vocabulary

Four phrases your account manager reaches for when they don’t want to commit to why a number moved. Each one is a real Google Ads concept being used as fog. See the red flag →

Mock Performance Max campaign panel showing aggregate numbers but a locked search-terms drilldown A campaign panel showing $14,820 spent on Performance Max with three big numbers and a greyed-out Search Terms drilldown labeled not available. PMAX — ALL CONVERSIONS SPEND $14,820 31% of total budget CONVERSIONS 182 CPA $81 CONV. VALUE $58.4K 3.94 ROAS SEARCH TERMS — not available at the keyword level No human reviewed where this $14,820 actually went.

Exhibit C — The black box

A single campaign that consumes a third of your spend. The aggregate looks fine. The drilldown is “not shared by Google,” which used to be true and is now mostly a choice. See the red flag →

The asymmetry is the business model

Most clients of PPC agencies are in the same position you’d be in at an auto shop.

You can tell something is off. You can’t quite say what. The technician uses words you don’t fully follow. The bill arrives. You pay it.

Asymmetry is the entire business model.

The fix is not to become a mechanic. It’s to bring one with you.

Three people read this site.

You’re probably one of them.

  • The CMO with green reports and red leads
    You get a deck every month full of green arrows. Click-through rate up. Impressions up. ROAS (return on ad spend — revenue divided by ad cost) up. Sales tells you the pipeline is the worst it’s been in two years. Something doesn’t add up and you can’t put your finger on what.
  • The owner-operator paying $2K–$10K a month
    You’re your own marketing department. You signed with an agency because you didn’t have time to do it yourself. Now you’re reading reports you don’t fully understand and you have no internal benchmark for whether the numbers are good, bad, or invented.
  • The marketing director, fourteen months in
    You’ve been with this agency over a year. You still don’t feel like they understand your business. Every quarter is “results take time.” Every kickoff call is with someone new. You want to leave but you’re afraid of the gap.

What I do

Four ways to work together. None of them lock you in. The first one is free, and most people who use it never come back — that’s exactly the point.

  1. Tier 0
    Free one-off question
    One question, one answer, one time. Phone, email, or a fifteen-minute Google Meet. No pitch. No follow-up. The person who got a free straight answer today is the person who hires me six months from now when the situation escalates — and if it never escalates, we both walk away fine.
    Free
  2. Tier 1
    Quick Dive
    One hour, screen-share into your Google Ads account. Specific written findings within 24 hours. You’ll know in one hour whether your account is being managed properly or not. No ongoing commitment.
    $300–500
  3. Tier 2
    Monthly Advisor
    I sit on your monthly agency call. I pre-read the report, flag what’s fluff, and tell you which questions to push back on and what good answers sound like. Each month you also get a one-page plain-English translation of the agency report. A practitioner in the room, on your side, every month.
    Retainer, on inquiry
  4. Tier 3
    Full Account Audit
    Read-only access to your Google Ads account. Comprehensive written findings: where money is being wasted, structural problems, missed opportunities, and platform gaps. Specific prioritized recommendations you can hand directly to your agency.
    Project, on inquiry
  5. Tier 4
    Agency Transition Support
    For clients who’ve already decided to leave. I keep the lights on in your accounts during the transition so leads don’t fall off a cliff, then help evaluate and brief the incoming agency. You don’t have to choose between staying with a bad agency and going dark.
    Project, on inquiry

Why I’m the one telling you this

Alex Langton
Alex Langton
Independent paid-media advisor

I’ve been in paid media since 2014. Eight years inside agencies. Four years in-house. Right now I lead a paid media team that runs over a million dollars a month in spend across Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, Reddit, Quora, TikTok, programmatic display, and trade publications — in two of the most competitive arenas in B2B: e-commerce and lead generation.

I’ve sat in the agency seat. I know exactly how account managers are coached to talk in the report meeting, which numbers get highlighted to make a flat quarter look like growth, which ones quietly get left out of the deck. I’m on the other side of that table now — and I don’t plan on going back.

I’m not building an agency. I don’t take referral fees. I won’t recommend a replacement agency unless you ask, and even then I’ll lean toward telling you the questions to ask, not the names to call.

Free, no catch

Ask me one thing.

One question. Anything about your account, your agency’s reporting, a tactic you’re skeptical about, a number that doesn’t feel right. I’ll give you a straight answer, usually within two business days. No pitch. No newsletter. No follow-up sequence.

No follow-up sales sequence. No newsletter. One question, one straight answer, usually within two business days.