Both sides remember the relationship differently. The change history does not.
When an advertiser and an agency fall out, the pleadings usually allege some combination of wasted spend, misreported performance, work not performed, and accounts left in worse condition than they were found. Recollection differs sharply on every point.
Paid search is unusual in that most of it is recorded. A ppc expert witness working from the platform record can establish what was actually done, by whom, and when, with far less reliance on testimony than a comparable services dispute would require.
The reconciliation between the last two is where management-fee and markup disputes are resolved. Platform spend, invoiced spend and reported spend should agree; where they do not, the gap needs an explanation.
An agency is not liable for a campaign that underperformed. The question is whether the work met the professional standard a competent practitioner would have applied. That is assessed against observable practice:
That last point is the one that most often decides these cases. Reporting that differs materially from what the platform shows - different attribution than disclosed, conversions counted that were not sales, spend figures that do not reconcile - moves a dispute from performance disagreement to misrepresentation.
Contracts in this field frequently contain claims that read as guarantees and are drafted as aspirations. Interpreting them requires reading the deliverable language against what the platform allows anyone to control. No advertiser controls competitors' bids, auction pressure or platform policy changes, and an opinion on whether a promise was achievable has to distinguish controllable from uncontrollable variables.
A frequent secondary claim concerns who owns the account. Where the agency held the account under its own manager and removed access at termination, the advertiser may have lost historical data as well as continuity. The evidentiary question is factual: what was contracted, what access existed, what was transferred, and what was lost.
Dan Stratford has managed multi-million-dollar monthly digital advertising budgets and founded and sold an agency serving clients across legal, insurance, technology, SaaS, home services, education and eCommerce - meaning he has occupied both sides of this dispute type. That background supports his expert witness in adwords and ppc witness expert work at Stratex Digital Marketing. Enquiries: 720-985-7945.
Google Ads change history, which records the account, level, date and user for each modification, read alongside account structure snapshots, search terms reports and reporting delivered to the client.
Generally no. The question is whether the work met the professional standard of care - coherent account structure, verified conversion tracking, maintained negatives, data-led budget allocation and accurate reporting - not whether results met hopes.
A material divergence from the platform record: undisclosed attribution changes, conversion actions counted as sales when they are not, or spend figures that do not reconcile to platform and billing data.
It depends on how the account was created and what the contract says. Where an agency held it under its own manager account, historical data and continuity can be lost at termination, which is a factual question about access and transfer.