Most paid media agency RFP templates were written for a market that no longer exists.
They ask how many years an agency has been in business, which platforms they run, and what their standard reporting cadence looks like. Then they hand out a score sheet and pick whoever answered the most questions the most thoroughly.
That process rewards the agency that interviews best. It doesn't reveal which agency thinks best.
We've read a lot of these RFPs from the other side of the table. The pattern is consistent: heavy on deliverables, heavy on past client logos, light on how the agency actually approaches a problem.
And that's what matters.
In a world where AI can produce deliverables faster than ever, what matters most is human judgment and the decisions we make with the information we have in front of us.
While we may be a little bit biased, just a bit ;) , we tried to put ourselves in the shoes of a VP of marketing to develop some questions that may help you put together a really strong RFP if you're looking to switch paid media agencies.
Btw, scroll down to the bottom if you don't want the preamble.
Why most paid media agency RFPs get you the wrong agency
RFP templates tend to get copied from the last one a marketing team used, then lightly edited. Or these days, a one-sentence prompt to Claude or ChatGPT, copy/paste, then send to agency.
That structure usually leads with company background, services offered, and case studies. Commercial terms show up early too, because budget is often the first filter a marketing team applies. Strategy questions, when they appear at all, get one or two generic entries near the bottom.
The result is a document that's easy for any competent agency shop to answer well. "Describe your reporting process" and "list your team's certifications" don't separate a strategic partner from a vendor executing a checklist. They separate agencies with a good proposal writer from agencies with a bad one.
Sidebar: Certifications should matter very little in your evaluation. Why? Certification is often biased to the way that ad platforms want you to run the channel, and not necessarily the way it should be run to protect your money.
The bottom line: an RFP built around deliverables and price will always favor the agency best at describing what it does, not the one best at deciding what should be done.
What a paid media agency RFP should actually be testing for in 2026
The agencies worth hiring in 2026 aren't differentiated by which platforms they manage. Google Ads, LinkedIn, Meta: most firms run all of them. The differentiator is how an agency thinks before it touches a single campaign.
That means testing for a point of view, not a service list. A strong RFP should surface how a firm reasons about a few specific things:
Demand capture versus brand building
Most B2B buyers aren't in-market at any given moment. An agency that only talks about high-intent keywords and retargeting is optimizing for the minority of your audience that's ready to buy today, and leaving the rest of the market for a competitor to build preference with first. (Capture is important, but only part of the story)
Root-cause diagnosis, not tactic recommendation
Ask how they'd approach a client whose MQLs are up but pipeline is flat. An agency with real methodology will walk you through a diagnostic process. An agency without one will jump straight to "we'd test new creative."
How media connects to revenue, not platform metrics
CTR and CPL are leading indicators. The agency should be able to explain, specifically, how they connect ad spend to CRM data and what happens when platform-reported don't match what your CRM shows.
What sits behind the account team
Proprietary technology, structured testing cadences, and defined escalation paths for anomalies say more about how an account will actually run day to day than a slide about "dedicated strategists."
I think this is the biggest miss in most RFP processes: teams spend far more time verifying that an agency can execute than understanding how that agency decides what to execute in the first place.
Execution is table stakes. Judgment is the actual product you're buying.
Tailor it, don't template it
A copy-pasted RFP produces copy-pasted answers (that includes the one below). If you send out a generic document, you'll get generic responses back, because agencies calibrate their proposals to the specificity of what's being asked.
Before you send anything, fill in your own context: current budget, current channels, the specific pain point that triggered this search, and what "success" needs to look like to your CEO or board twelve months from now. The template below has placeholders for exactly this.
Don't skip them, and don't leave them generic. An agency's answer to "how do you diagnose a performance issue" changes meaningfully depending on whether you're a Series A company with $20K a month or a Series C company with $150K a month, and the version of the RFP you send should make that context impossible to miss.
The same applies to length and scope. Cap the response length. A well-run agency can articulate its methodology in a page or two. If a proposal needs twenty pages to say something, that's information too.
The 2026 paid media agency RFP [TEMPLATE]
This is the structure we'd recommend using or adapting. It leads with strategic philosophy and diagnostic process before it gets to channel tactics, technology, and commercial terms, in that order. Sections are grouped so you can drop or expand based on what matters most for your business.
Overview
[Company Name] is evaluating agency partners to lead our B2B paid media and demand generation program. We are looking for a partner with deep, specific expertise in B2B SaaS, one that can articulate a clear point of view on how modern B2B buyers make decisions, connect media investment to pipeline and revenue outcomes, and bring the operational infrastructure to execute at the speed our business requires.
Please respond to each question directly and specifically. Generic descriptions of services will be weighted lower than concrete methodology, named examples, and evidence. Responses should not exceed [X] pages, excluding appendices.
Company Background
- Industry / product: [describe]
- Funding stage: [describe]
- Current monthly paid media budget: [describe]
- Current channels in use: [describe]
- Primary goal for this engagement: [describe]
- Primary problem/pain point: [describe]
- Expectations of an agency partner: [describe]
1. Agency Background & B2B SaaS Specialization
- What percentage of your current client roster is B2B SaaS specifically? How many B2B SaaS brands has your agency worked with in total, and over how many years?
- Are you an independent, founder-led agency, or part of a holding company/network? Please describe your ownership structure and how long the founding team has led the agency.
- What is the typical monthly retainer range and ad spend range of the clients you work with today? Where would an engagement of our size and budget fall within that range?
- Describe the specific roles (not just titles) that would be staffed on our account, including day-to-day point of contact, strategic lead, and executional support.
- What is your average client tenure, and what are the most common reasons clients leave?
2. Strategic Philosophy & Methodology
Before we evaluate channel tactics, we want to understand how your agency thinks about demand generation strategically, how you diagnose our situation, and how you prioritize investment.
- Describe your point of view on the balance between capturing in-market demand and building preference with buyers who are not yet in-market. What share of a typical B2B buying audience do you estimate is actively in-market at any given time, and how does that shape your recommended channel mix?
- How does your agency define and build "mental availability" or brand preference with buyers before they show purchase intent? What does that look like in an actual media plan?
- What is your point of view on category entry points or buying triggers, and how do you build targeting and messaging around them rather than relying solely on keyword or platform-defined intent signals?
- Walk us through your diagnostic process for a new client. How do you determine whether our real constraint is top-of-funnel awareness, mid-funnel lead quality, or bottom-of-funnel sales conversion, before recommending specific tactics or channels?
- How do you define success in the first 90 days versus the first 12 months of an engagement, and how does that differ between an early-stage company and a scale-stage company?
3. Measurement, Attribution & Reporting
We measure marketing performance in terms of pipeline and revenue impact, not platform-reported metrics in isolation. We want to understand how you connect paid media to business outcomes.
- Describe your approach to connecting paid media performance to CRM data (Salesforce or HubSpot). Is this process manual, or supported by proprietary technology your team has built?
- How do you implement offline conversion tracking, and how quickly after a lead becomes an MQL or SQL is that signal fed back into ad platforms to inform optimization?
- What attribution models do you support, and how do you reconcile discrepancies between platform-reported conversions and CRM-reported pipeline?
- Do you offer incrementality or lift testing? If so, describe a specific methodology you have run for a client, including how holdout groups were structured.
- What will we see in a standard monthly report, and how is it structured? Please describe the difference between how you report leading indicators versus lagging indicators.
- How do you establish initial KPI benchmarks for a new client: do you start from industry averages, or from the client's own historical data?
4. Paid Search Approach
- Describe your account architecture philosophy: how and why you segment brand, non-brand, and competitor campaigns.
- What is your point of view on Performance Max for B2B SaaS clients specifically? Under what conditions, if any, would you recommend it?
- What governs your bidding strategy decisions, and how do you determine when a strategy change is warranted versus when underperformance is actually a budget pacing or impression share issue?
- How often do you review search term reports, and what is your process for building and maintaining negative keyword lists without disrupting performance?
- How do you approach keyword and campaign structure for a company with multiple products or a multi-region footprint?
5. Paid Social Approach
- What audience targeting approach do you rely on most for B2B SaaS: platform-defined interest segments, target account lists, or contact-based/intent audiences? What evidence can you share for the relative performance of each?
- Describe your creative sequencing strategy for retargeting audiences at different levels of brand familiarity (cold, warm, and high-intent).
- How do you decide when to use lead generation forms versus a landing page for a given offer?
- How do you measure paid social performance beyond click-through rate and cost per lead? Specifically, how do you measure brand or pipeline influence from awareness-stage campaigns?
- Which platforms do you consider primary versus secondary for B2B SaaS, and how do you decide when to test a new channel?
6. Technology, Automation & AI
We want to understand what infrastructure sits behind your service delivery, beyond native ad platform dashboards and spreadsheets.
- Does your agency use proprietary technology to manage client accounts, or do you rely solely on native ad platform interfaces?
- If you have proprietary technology, describe specifically how it supports anomaly detection, budget pacing, and campaign planning, and how it differs from what is available natively in Google Ads, LinkedIn, or Meta.
- How is AI used in your day-to-day account management today? What human review exists around AI-assisted decisions or AI-generated creative before anything goes live?
- How quickly, on average, does your team identify and respond to a performance anomaly (for example, a budget overspend or a sudden CTR decline)?
7. Account Team, Process & Cadence
- Describe your process for structuring strategic tests versus routine optimizations. How are tests proposed, approved, and evaluated, and over what time period?
- What is your onboarding process for a new client, and how long from contract signature until the first campaign is live?
- What is your standard meeting and communication cadence, and what channels do you use (Slack, email, live syncs)?
- How do you handle a request from us to test a new channel or tactic that falls outside your current recommendation?
8. Case Studies, Proof Points & References
- Please share three case studies from B2B SaaS clients of a similar size, stage, or industry to us, including specific, verifiable metrics.
- Please provide two to three references we can contact directly, ideally including at least one client who has worked with you for two or more years.
- Do you have experience running campaigns across multiple regions or languages? If so, please describe how you handled translation and localization.
9. Commercial Terms
- What is your pricing model (flat retainer, percentage of spend, performance-based, or hybrid)? Please provide a representative range for an engagement of our size.
- What is included in the base retainer versus billed separately (for example: creative production, landing page development, additional platform management)?
- What are your standard contract terms, including length of commitment and cancellation notice period?
- Under what circumstances have you adjusted pricing or scope mid-contract, and how was that handled with the client?
10. Submission Instructions
- Proposal format: [PDF / deck / written document]
- Submission deadline: [date and time]
- Submission contact: [name and email]
- Anticipated timeline: proposal review by [date], finalist presentations by [date], decision by [date]
- Please confirm receipt of this RFP and your intent to respond by [date]
Final thoughts
An RFP is a filter. Whatever you ask for is what you'll get back, and whatever you weight most heavily is what will win.
If your document leads with deliverables and price, you'll end up choosing between agencies that all look similar on paper, because most of them can run the same platforms and produce the same kind of report. If it leads with diagnostic process, point of view on capture versus brand, and how an agency handles a client pushing them off-strategy, you'll end up with real differentiation to evaluate.
The agencies worth hiring are the ones who get more specific, not less, when you ask them how they think. That's a harder thing to fake than a case study slide.
Use the template above as a starting point, not a final draft. Fill in your own context, cut what doesn't apply, and send it to fewer agencies with more specificity rather than more agencies with less.
