Quick answer
Score a prospective ecommerce PPC agency on twenty criteria across six pillars — measurement, Merchant Center, campaign controls, creative, merchandising and governance — for a total out of 60. Measurement and account ownership are gates, not points: a strong total with a weak conversion setup is a false positive.
- Six pillars, twenty criteria, scored out of 60
- Measurement and ownership are pass/fail gates
- Score what they show you, not what they claim
Ecommerce PPC pitches tend to converge on the same three slides: a ROAS figure, a list of platforms, and a promise of proactive management. None of that separates one agency from another. The scorecard below does, because every line is something the agency has to demonstrate.
The six pillars
| Pillar | Criteria | Max |
|---|---|---|
| Measurement | Conversion setup, server-side or API tracking, deduplication, margin data in the account | 12 |
| Merchant Center | Feed quality, titles and attributes, disapproval handling, availability accuracy | 12 |
| Campaign controls | Structure rationale, automation guardrails, negatives and exclusions, geography | 12 |
| Creative | Asset production, test design, decision rules | 9 |
| Merchandising | Product prioritisation, promotions, seasonality | 9 |
| Governance | Account ownership, change log, reporting clarity | 6 |
Score each criterion 0 (cannot show it), 1 (describes it), 2 (shows it) or 3 (shows it and explains the decisions it drove). Sixty points available.
Measurement and ownership are gates
Two lines override the total. If conversion measurement is unclear — what is counted, where it is deduplicated, how returns are handled — every other number in the pitch is unverifiable. And if the agency proposes running your Google Ads, Merchant Center or analytics from accounts it owns, the relationship has a switching cost built into it before day one. Both should be settled before scoring anything else.
Feeds decide what is possible
For most ecommerce accounts, the product feed sets the ceiling. Titles, attributes, availability accuracy and disapproval handling determine what can be shown at all, long before a bidding strategy matters. Google confirms AI performance insights in Merchant Center are available for English-language queries in Canada, an expansion Search Engine Roundtable reported on September 3, 2026. That is a useful input for feed and product decisions — it is not evidence of an agency's performance, and it should not be presented as such.
Profit beats ROAS
A ROAS target set without margin data will scale whatever converts, which is often the lowest-margin part of the catalogue. Ask how margin gets into the account, how frequently it is refreshed, and what happens to bidding when a product's margin changes. If the answer is that margin is not in the account at all, that is a legitimate position — but the reporting has to stop describing revenue as if it were profit.
Why we wrote this one
Between August 7 and September 3, 2026, Google Search Console recorded 242 impressions for "ppc agency vancouver" at an average position of 12.07, with zero clicks, for our own site. These are ThinkProfits visibility observations — how often our pages were shown — not search volume and not a market estimate. They tell us the category is being looked at, and that our own answer was not compelling enough to click.
What the scorecard cannot do
A score will not tell you whether an agency will be responsive in month seven, and it cannot compensate for a weak offer or a slow site. It is a way to make a pitch answerable, so the decision rests on demonstrated capability rather than on the confidence of the presenter.
Our PPC advertising and Vancouver PPC agency pages explain how we run paid campaigns, ecommerce website design covers the store itself, and reporting dashboards covers how results get reported.
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