Hiring a Google Ads agency outside Australia: what to check

Should you hire a Google Ads agency outside Australia?

You can, as long as the agency passes the same checks you’d use on a local one. Where the team sits matters less than who owns your account, how fast they answer, and whether they report in cost per call.

We’re a Singapore agency running Google Ads for Australian trades and law firms. So we have an obvious interest here. That’s why this guide also lists the real downsides of going offshore, including ours.

Most of the risk in hiring any agency comes from three places. You don’t control the account. You can’t reach anyone when leads dry up. And the report tells you clicks instead of calls. None of those depend on a postcode.

Who should own the Google Ads account?

You should. The account should sit under your business, with you holding Admin access, before a single dollar of ad spend goes through it.

Google Ads has five access levels: Admin, Standard, Read only, Billing and Email only. Only Admin users can add or remove other users and change their access levels. Admins also manage billing settings and linked products like Google Analytics.

So if the agency is the only Admin, the agency controls who sees your data. If you part ways badly, you can lose years of conversion history and campaign learning.

Google itself warns that a single administrator is a risk. If that person becomes unavailable, you can lose access. Its advice is to add at least one more Admin.

What we recommend to every business, whoever they hire:

• Create the account in your business name, with your email as an Admin.
• Give the agency Standard or Admin access through their manager account. Not the other way round.
• Keep the payment method in your name, so ad spend is billed to you by Google.
• Ask in writing who keeps the campaigns, conversion tags and call tracking if you leave.

One detail worth knowing. If your account is linked to an agency manager account with ownership, that manager account’s Admins can also edit user access in your account. Ask whether ownership is being requested, and why.

Will time zones slow things down?

Not if you’re in Perth. Perth runs on AWST, which is UTC+8 with no daylight saving. Singapore is also UTC+8 with no daylight saving. Same clock, all year.

The east coast is different. Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra run on AEST (UTC+10) and switch to AEDT (UTC+11) in summer, according to timeanddate’s Australian time zone guide. In NSW, daylight saving runs from 4 October 2026 to 4 April 2027.

So a Sydney law firm is two hours ahead of Singapore in winter and three hours ahead in summer. Queensland doesn’t use daylight saving, so Brisbane stays two hours ahead.

Two or three hours is workable. Your 9am in Sydney is 6am or 7am in Singapore. Your 5pm is our 2pm or 3pm, so most of your afternoon overlaps with ours. But it’s a real gap, and any agency that says it doesn’t matter isn’t being straight with you.

The better question is response time. Ask for a number, in writing. “Same business day” is a fair standard for a non-urgent change. A broken conversion tag or a budget burning on the wrong keyword needs faster.

Can an overseas agency know your local market?

It can learn it, and you should test whether it has. Local knowledge in Google Ads comes down to a few concrete things, and you can check each one in the first call.

Suburbs and service areas

A Joondalup plumber doesn’t want calls from Mandurah. Ask how they’d set location targeting, and whether they’d use radius, postcode or suburb lists. If they can’t name a few suburbs in your area, they haven’t looked.

Licence display rules

Trades advertising has rules that general marketers miss. In Western Australia, Building and Energy’s guideline on electrical contractor licence numbers says the EC licence number must appear in any advertisement, and its definition of an advertisement includes web pages. Not displaying it is an offence under the Electricity (Licensing) Regulations 1991.

Your landing page is a web page. If the agency builds one without your licence number, that’s a compliance problem for your business. Law firms have their own professional conduct rules on advertising, and the agency should ask you about them before writing a single ad.

Call tracking with local numbers

Ask how they track calls from ads and from the website, and whether the number shown is local to your area. A local number looks like a local business.

For tradies, most of the value is in the phone call. For law firms, it’s the call or the enquiry form. If the agency can’t track both, they can’t tell you what’s working.

How do payment, currency and GST work?

Ad spend and the agency fee are two separate payments. Ad spend should go straight from your card to Google. The agency fee goes to the agency.

That split matters more offshore. You keep control of the budget, and you never pay a foreign supplier for media you can’t see.

Currency is the next thing. Many offshore agencies bill in US dollars. Ours does. Our fee for Australian clients is a one-off US$300 setup, then US$300 a month plus 15% of ad spend, with a minimum ad spend of A$2,000 a month and a 3-month minimum. Because the fee is in US dollars, what you pay in Australian dollars moves with the exchange rate. That’s a real cost of hiring offshore, and you should budget for it.

Then GST. The ATO’s page on Australian businesses importing services says a GST-registered business generally shouldn’t be charged GST on imported services used in the business. To make that work, you give the supplier your ABN and state that you’re registered for GST.

The exception is the reverse charge. If the purchase is partly private or domestic, or relates to input taxed supplies, you may have to account for the GST yourself. The ATO says in that case GST is 10% of the amount paid, and you can claim back any credits you’re entitled to.

SimplyGJ does not charge GST. Whether the reverse charge applies to you depends on how you use the service. This is not tax advice. Check with your accountant.

What contract terms should you accept?

A short minimum term with a clear exit. Three months is reasonable for Google Ads. Twelve months, with the account held by the agency, is not.

The first month of any new account is setup and learning. Conversion tracking gets fixed, search terms get cleaned up, and bids settle. Judging an agency on week three is too early. Judging it on month nine is too late.

Read the contract for these:

• Minimum term, and what happens after it. Rolling monthly is the fairest.
• Notice period to leave.
• Who keeps the account, campaigns, ads and conversion setup when you leave.
• Whether the fee scales with ad spend, and whether there’s a cap.
• Whether landing pages they build stay with you.

If you want a sense of what fees look like elsewhere, our guide to Google Ads management costs in Australia breaks down the common pricing models. For Perth specifically, see what Google Ads costs in Perth.

How should an agency report results?

By cost per call, or cost per qualified enquiry. Clicks, impressions and click-through rate are useful to the agency. They don’t pay your bills.

A tradie cares how many jobs came in and what each lead cost. A family law firm cares how many consultations it booked. The report should start there.

In Singapore we run Google Ads for home-services businesses in plumbing, electrical and cleaning. The conversions we report on are calls and WhatsApp enquiries. Everything else in the report exists to explain why that number moved.

Ask any agency to show you a sample report before you sign. If the first page is clicks, ask where the calls are.

What are the real downsides of an offshore agency?

There are some, and you should weigh them. Here are the ones we’d flag if we were in your seat.

• No face-to-face meetings. We won’t drop by your office or meet you on a job site. Everything happens on video calls and email.
• No local phone number, in our case. SimplyGJ doesn’t have an Australian number yet. Australian prospects book a call online.
• Currency risk. A US dollar fee costs more when the Australian dollar falls.
• East coast time gap. Two or three hours behind Sydney and Melbourne, depending on the season.
• Different public holidays. Singapore and Australian holidays don’t line up. Ask how cover works.
• Harder disputes. If things go wrong, chasing a supplier in another country is slower than chasing one down the road.

Some of these matter more to some businesses. A sole trader who likes a chat over coffee may be better off local. A busy firm that wants clean numbers and fast changes may not care where the team sits.

What questions should you ask any Google Ads agency?

The same ones, offshore or local. Use this table on your shortlist and compare the answers side by side.

Question	A good answer	A red flag
Whose name is the Google Ads account in?	Yours, with you as Admin	“Ours, but you can see reports”
Who pays Google for ad spend?	You, directly, on your card	Spend bundled into one invoice
What do you report on?	Cost per call or per qualified lead	Clicks and impressions only
How do you track phone calls?	Ad calls and website calls, local numbers	“Calls are hard to track”
What’s the minimum term?	Three months or less, then monthly	Twelve months with exit fees
What do I keep if I leave?	Account, campaigns, tags, landing pages	Unclear or “it depends”
How fast do you respond?	A stated time, in writing	“We’re always available”
How do you handle licence numbers and ad rules?	Asks for your licence details upfront	Hasn’t heard of the rule
Do you charge GST?	A clear yes or no, with reasons	Not sure
Can I see a sample report?	Yes, before you sign	Only after you sign

If an agency passes all ten, location is a minor detail. If it fails on account ownership, nothing else on the list matters.

You can see how we run Google Ads for Perth businesses, or read more about how we work with clients outside Singapore. The agency you hire should be easy to leave. That’s usually the best sign it’s worth staying with.