You have an active advertising account and a decision to make. Perhaps the results are difficult to explain, your team wants a second opinion, or nobody has enough time to run the account. Those situations call for different kinds of help.
Start by asking what you need back and who should do the work. A review gives you findings. Advice helps you make a particular decision. Management puts an agreed operator in charge of ongoing account work. Each can be useful on its own.
Choose a review when the problem is still unclear
A review examines a defined area and gives you findings to act on. It is useful when you want an independent view of an account before deciding what should change or who should change it.
Agree the question first. Is it about how the account is structured, where spend goes, which searches trigger ads, or what the platform counts as a conversion? Ask for the account and period to be named, together with any limits in access or usable history.
The boundary matters. An account review can inspect what is recorded in the advertising platform. A check of the landing page, form, measurement setup or CRM handoff needs to be included in the agreed scope if you want those parts examined. A healthy-looking account alone cannot establish what happens after the click.
At the end, the findings should distinguish observations from recommendations and identify what needs further checking. Your existing team or agency can use them; a later management engagement need not follow. The paid media page explains how account and wider review scopes differ.
Choose advice when you have a decision in front of you
Advisory work is useful when your team is already operating the account but needs help with a specific choice. The question might concern a proposed campaign structure, a change to conversion goals or how to interpret conflicting reports.
Bring the decision, the business context and the information you have. Agree what the adviser will examine, who makes the decision and who will implement it. Advice can reveal that more evidence is needed; it should not be treated as permission to change the account unless that work is also agreed.
If the question turns out to involve the form, CRM or measurement rather than the account alone, expand the scope deliberately. This keeps the conclusion tied to what was actually inspected.
Choose management when the work needs an ongoing owner
Management is an agreement to carry out account work over time. Before it starts, establish the goal, access, reporting rhythm and authority to make changes. Your business retains its budget and commercial decisions unless a different responsibility is explicitly agreed.
Clarify how the operator will work with whoever owns the website, tracking and sales follow-up. Account management cannot by itself fix a form that another team controls or decide what sales should call a qualified enquiry. Those dependencies need named owners.
Keep the baseline and the decision visible
Whatever help you choose, record the question, the current state and the changes made after the work begins. Keep the date, owner and reason for each material change alongside the measures you intend to watch. Also record other relevant changes, such as an altered offer or landing page.
Then compare the same definitions over a suitable period, noting gaps and changes in circumstances. A later movement can have several causes, so the record supports a more useful discussion without proving that one intervention caused the result. If the conversion itself is unclear, resolve that measurement question before using it to judge the work. The analytics and conversion guide sets out that distinction.