How to Choose a Google Ads Freelancer: What to Look For

The goal of this article is to give you a checklist: what to look for when choosing a Google Ads specialist. Why does it matter? Because you're trusting a specialist with your advertising. You're trusting them with your money. And right from the start you need to know how to evaluate a candidate.

I'm speaking from my own experience, because I'm qualified to evaluate people. I've worked as a COO and as a CMO (more about my path here). I can evaluate not only Google Ads people — that's my main specialty — but other specialists too. So from where I stand, here's what to look at.

Contents

1. 1. How the person thinks
2. 2. How they'll measure results
3. 3. Do they understand analytics and numbers
4. 4. Experience in your niche: a plus, but not decisive
5. 5. Reputation
6. How to talk about case studies
7. Red flags
8. Conclusion
9. FAQ

1. How the person thinks

The first thing I'd pay attention to is how the specialist thinks. It sounds vague, but at the pre-screening stage that's exactly what I need to understand.

If a person thinks in ad account metrics, that guy isn't right for me. If they think in business terms, they are.

One more important thing: the person I'd hire for Google Ads must understand marketing first and foremost. As obvious as it sounds, being a Google Ads specialist doesn't mean being a marketer.

Without understanding marketing, you can know your way around an ad account just fine, but in the long run you'll be outpaced by marketers — people who understand not just the account, but how a business works as a whole. I understand perfectly well how a business works, because I've held C-level positions. It's not about “let's offer free shipping over a certain amount and sales will take off.” It's about thinking like your audience: how they interact with you and what matters to them.

If you're looking for a specialist for $100–150, don't expect them to understand marketing. God willing, they'll know which buttons to press in the ad account and launch a campaign by checklist. More on what's behind different price points in the article “How Much Does It Cost to Hire a Google Ads Specialist?”.

But we're talking about choosing a serious specialist.

2. How they'll measure results

The first point leads to the next one: the approach to measuring results.

The simplest question you can ask: what will you consider successful advertising? What will you pay attention to? How will you measure results?

If the answer is “we'll look at the ad account and make decisions based on it,” keep looking. My recommendation: look for people who think in business terms and measure results in business numbers. That means not just leads, but how many of them are qualified and how many turn into sales.

And not just cost per lead, number of clicks and impressions. That's not about business, that's about pressing buttons in an ad account. I showed how to measure advertising in business metrics in the Google Ads ROI calculator.

3. Do they understand analytics and numbers

This leads to the third point: understanding web analytics and analytics in general. The person has to be comfortable with numbers.

Why? Because all Google Ads advertising is built on numbers, statistics and analytics. It's not built on how to write a pretty ad. And not on which location targeting option is set: people in the location, or people interested in it.

Ads are micromanagement. Location targeting settings are micromanagement.

Who do you need? A micromanager who watches ad strength as rated by Google? Or someone who understands numbers and can analyze not only the ad account but also analytics and sales, and understands what sales are in the first place?

4. Experience in your niche: a plus, but not decisive

I wouldn't call this point critical. But all else being equal, if a specialist has experience in your niche or an adjacent one, it's better to go with them. You'll simply spend less time.

Important: for top-level specialists this isn't critical. Figuring out any niche isn't hard. I, for example, have diverse case studies across different niches: online stores and lead generation, B2B and B2C. The principles of marketing were laid down back in the Neolithic and are still with us in 2026. Yes, they've evolved, but the essence and the foundation are the same. For a good Google Ads specialist and a good marketer, getting to grips with a project isn't hard.

Every now and then I see people on Freelancehunt (a Ukrainian freelance marketplace) looking for someone who has worked only in their niche. All else being equal, that makes sense. But in narrow niches especially, you could search forever. For example, one of the niches I've worked with is equipment for gas stations. Serious B2B equipment for fuel stations. How many people in Ukraine do you think have promoted products like that? Exactly. Me and maybe one other guy. Or maybe nobody at all.

B2B and B2C — there's an interesting point here. B2B is its own story. I see it in the B2B projects that come to me: whoever set up the ads before me stuck to B2C logic. They think B2B is just B2C with a bigger order value.

It isn't. B2B has a completely different funnel, a different decision-making pattern and a completely different deal cycle.

I love B2B and love working with B2B niches. My longest collaborations are with B2B clients, like 3.5 years with a metal processing manufacturer. Because a client who understands how B2B works understands that you shouldn't expect results in the first or second month. There are niches where months, not days, can pass between the first site visit and the first contact.

5. Reputation

The next thing I'd pay attention to is the person's reputation. Look for information about them and see how much is out there. With AI, this isn't hard: you can find information about a specialist across the internet.

Check their LinkedIn profile. If they work on Upwork, Fiverr, Freelancehunt or other marketplaces, look at their profile and reviews there. Maybe they have their own resources where they publish something.

I'm not saying you need to ask for references from a previous employer or anything like that — that's dead in 2026. But there should be some kind of reputation. If you're choosing a good specialist for good money, check their background.

Buying a pig in a poke and risking your money is, of course, your call. But I'd check. I wouldn't drag them to a polygraph, but I'd check the basics: is there any information about the person at all, positive or negative.

How to talk about case studies

Having case studies is a plus. But soon I'll release a video showing how case studies get manipulated and how easy it is now to fake any results.

This brings us back to the first point: it's important to talk to the person and listen to what they say and how they say it.

If they have case studies, ask questions about them. Not just “how did you achieve this result?” Ask questions that lead somewhere. Okay, you're showing a case. Tell me about it. What were the challenges? What problems came up? What didn't work?

It's especially important to ask what didn't work. That's how you'll understand how capable the person is of analyzing their own mistakes. If the answer is “everything was great, no problems at all,” you're dealing with a liar, and the case is most likely fake. Because there are no projects without problems. There are always some challenges and some failures.

Ask about failed cases too: “Tell me about three cases that didn't work out.” If the answer is “all my cases are successful” — again, you're dealing with a liar.

I, for example, describe failed cases in some of my articles, because that's part of our job. Based on them, I analyze what I did wrong or what went wrong, and draw conclusions. And if every single case someone has is a success... Okay, man. I don't buy it.

Key point: don't ask “how did you achieve the result,” ask “what didn't work.” The answer to that question will tell you more about a specialist than any case study.

Red flags

A guaranteed result. I wouldn't work with someone like that. Here's why: advertising effectiveness is influenced by a huge number of factors that don't depend on the specialist.

If you're guaranteed 100% results, massive ROI from the first week or “sales will grow 375 times,” that's just a marketing hook and empty talk.

We're living through a period of extreme uncertainty, both globally and locally in Ukraine. Today you don't know whether you'll wake up tomorrow. And guaranteeing anything in a market that, first, is stagnating in most niches right now and, second, is extremely unstable... Everyone reading this article is looking at their screen and knows I'm right.

Lying in the interview. I would 100% not work with someone who lies to me. If you have any hiring skills, it becomes obvious pretty quickly in an interview. The person is lying — instant red flag.

One-time setup with no ongoing support. For example, a freelancer says Google Ads can be set up perfectly once and it'll work on its own, without ongoing optimization.

That would be true if you were alone in the market and the market were perfectly stable — in other words, if you worked in a closed environment where nothing happens. That doesn't exist. You work in a competitive environment, in a dynamically changing market, with audience behavior patterns that keep changing too.

This whole one-time-setup-without-support story is just a scam for suckers. Because that's not how it works. Ads don't run themselves.

Get the idea out of your head that you can launch ads once and they'll run on their own. It's the same as going to a car repair shop and saying: fix my car so it never breaks down again.

Zero actions in the change history. This is no longer about the first interview but about the second stage of working together. I'd check the change history in the ad account: what the person is actually doing there.

Quite often during audits I show clients: you have a contractor, you're unhappy with the results, and the number of actions in the account over a month is zero. Literally zero. And clients wonder why there are no results. Advertising is constant work; you have to keep working on it.

“Secret settings.” If someone tells you about some secrets of search advertising, that's a red flag too.

I've been doing search advertising in Google Ads for 7 years and I'm constantly learning. And I can tell you 100%: there are no secrets in Google Ads. As I said at the start, Google Ads is work with analytics and statistics.

Key point: Google Ads has two secrets — analytics and statistics. Not secret buttons, not magic settings in Merchant Center, but analytics and statistics.

Conclusion

I used Google Ads as the example, but you can apply this methodology to choosing other contractors too: SEO, paid social, SMM and so on. The selection principle is more or less the same. The essence doesn't change; the approach shifts a little.

Carefully check the information about the person you're planning to work with. You're trusting them with your business. And anyone can say “everything will look great, everything will be on point, I know the secrets.”

If you're still torn between formats, there's a comparison in the article “Agency or Freelancer?”.

I show how these criteria look in practice using my own profile in “What My Clients Praise Me For”.

The questions clients ask most often at the start of a project, and my answers, are in the article “Google Ads FAQ: Answers to the Most Common Client Questions”.