Free template · updated 2026-08-25

B2B paid advertising RFP template: the questions that actually separate agencies

Most paid media RFPs ask for credentials, case studies, and a proposed strategy. None of those three predict performance. This template asks the four things that do: how the fee is calculated, who owns the account, where the reporting ends, and who actually touches the work each week.

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10sections45vendor questions6scored dimensions7disqualifiers

The short answer

A B2B paid advertising RFP should force every bidder to answer the same four questions in writing: exactly how the fee is calculated and what falls outside it, whose legal name is on the ad accounts and audience data, what the final number in the monthly report is, and which named person does the work and for how many hours a week. Credentials and case studies are not comparable across bidders and should carry almost no weight. Send the same document to three to five agencies, score the responses against a weighted rubric before any sales call, and disqualify any bidder that will not put the fee calculation and the account ownership in writing.

Ask for the fee calculation, not the fee: a percent-of-spend model and a flat retainer at the same monthly number behave very differently as spend changes
Ownership of ad accounts, pixels, audience lists, and creative files is the single most expensive thing buyers forget to put in writing
Reporting that ends at cost per lead is not comparable between bidders, so define the endpoint in the RFP instead of letting each agency define it
Score in writing before the first call, or the most confident presenter wins regardless of the answers

Why most paid media RFPs fail

Credentials are not comparable, terms are

The standard agency RFP asks for company history, relevant case studies, a proposed strategy, and pricing. Three of those four are effectively uncomparable. Case studies are selected by the seller, proposed strategy before account access is a guess, and company history predicts nothing about who will be assigned to your account in month three.

What is comparable is contractual. How the fee is calculated, what sits outside it, whose legal name is on the ad accounts, what the last number in the monthly report is, and who does the work for how many hours a week. Those five answers can be laid side by side, they are verifiable, and they are the ones that determine whether the engagement survives its first bad quarter. This template pushes the weight of the decision onto them.

For context on the numbers you will be comparing, the B2B advertising agency page lists spend floors by channel, and the breakdown of B2B PPC agency pricing and fees works the total cost math at three spend levels.

The template

Every section, and the exact questions to ask

This is the full contents of the PDF. Copy it, edit the weights and the context to fit your situation, and send the identical document to each bidder.

Section 1

How to use this template

Set the ground rules so responses are comparable. Send the identical document to every bidder, give them the same deadline, and require written answers before any call.

You fill in

Response deadline and format (we recommend a single PDF, no slide decks)
Number of agencies invited (three to five is the sweet spot, more than six wastes everyone's time)
Named point of contact and the questions window
Decision date and who is in the room for it

Section 2

Your company and context

Everything an agency needs to price the work honestly. Withholding this produces generic proposals you cannot compare, and it hides the bidders who would have told you paid is the wrong first move.

You fill in

What you sell, and who signs the contract on the buyer side
Average contract value, sales cycle length, and win rate from a marketing-sourced opportunity
Current monthly media spend by channel, and current cost per qualified opportunity if you know it
CRM and how paid conversions currently reach it
Who owns landing pages today, and how long a new page takes to ship
The one commercial number this program is accountable for over the next two quarters

Section 3

Scope of work by channel

Ask each bidder to recommend a channel mix against your deal size and to state the minimum monthly media each recommended channel needs before the data is decisive. A bidder who recommends five channels on a $10K budget is telling you something.

The vendor answers

3.1Which channels do you recommend for our deal size and sales cycle, in priority order, and which would you explicitly not run yet?
3.2What is the minimum monthly media spend each recommended channel needs before the results are statistically usable, and how did you arrive at that number?
3.3How many conversions per audience and offer do you require before you act on a result?
3.4What is the test window you would set before judging each channel, in weeks?
3.5If our budget only supports one channel done properly, which one and why?
3.6Who writes the ad creative and offers, and how many variants ship in month one?
3.7Do you build and own the landing pages inside the fee, or do we ship them?

Section 4

Fee model and exactly what is inside it

The most important section. Two proposals at the same monthly number can differ by an entire function, and the fee structure predicts what the agency will recommend when the right answer is to spend less.

The vendor answers

4.1State your fee model: percent of media spend, flat retainer, or hybrid. Show the exact calculation with our numbers.
4.2What happens to your fee if we cut media spend by half? Show the math.
4.3Is there a minimum fee floor, and at what spend level does it stop binding?
4.4List everything inside the fee. List everything billed separately, with a price or a rate.
4.5Do you mark up media spend, platform fees, or third-party data in any way, including through a reseller relationship? Yes or no.
4.6Is media billed to our card and accounts directly, or does it pass through you?
4.7What is the minimum contract term, what is the notice period, and what do we pay if we leave in month three?
4.8Are there setup, onboarding, or implementation fees, and are they one-time?

Section 5

Ownership and access

Rented accounts are the most expensive mistake in paid media. If the ad account, pixel history, audience lists, and creative files are not in your legal name, leaving means starting the learning period over from zero.

The vendor answers

5.1Whose legal entity owns the ad accounts on each platform? Confirm in writing that they are in our name.
5.2Do conversion tags, pixels, and their historical data stay with us if the engagement ends?
5.3Do first-party audience lists, custom audiences, and exclusion lists remain our property?
5.4Do we receive source files for all creative, and under what license?
5.5Who owns the landing pages, the code, and the hosting, and can we take them?
5.6Will you work inside our accounts with delegated access rather than moving spend into yours?
5.7What is the offboarding process, in days, and what exactly do we receive on the last day?

Section 6

Measurement and the reporting endpoint

Define the final number in the report yourself. If each bidder picks their own endpoint, the proposals are not comparable and the winner is whoever chose the friendliest metric.

The vendor answers

6.1What is the last number in your monthly report? We require cost per qualified opportunity and pipeline created, not cost per lead.
6.2How do you define a qualified conversation, and who at our company signs off on that definition?
6.3How do platform conversions get reconciled with our CRM, and who owns that plumbing?
6.4Do you implement offline conversion imports back to the ad platforms? Is that inside the fee?
6.5What attribution method do you use, and what do you do when it disagrees with the CRM?
6.6What do you do in the first thirty days if our tracking is wrong, and is remediation inside the fee?
6.7Will you report on channels and campaigns you recommended that failed? Show an example from a live account with numbers redacted.

Section 7

Team and staffing

Ask who does the work, not who sells it. The gap between the pitch team and the delivery team is the most common source of disappointment in agency relationships.

The vendor answers

7.1Name the person who will own our account day to day, and their title and tenure.
7.2How many hours per week does that person spend in our account, and how many other accounts do they carry?
7.3Which parts of the work are done by subcontractors or offshore teams? Name the functions.
7.4Who from the RFP presentation will still be on the account in month three?
7.5What is your escalation path and response time when something breaks on a Friday afternoon?
7.6What happens to our account if our named owner leaves your company?

Section 8

Timeline, onboarding, and exit

A dated plan is the cheapest test of whether a bidder has done this before. Vague sequencing in a proposal becomes vague sequencing in delivery.

The vendor answers

8.1Give us a dated ninety-day plan with named owners and weekly milestones, not a phase diagram.
8.2What has to be true before the first dollar is spent, and how long does that take?
8.3In which week do we see the first campaign live, and in which week do we see the first defensible read?
8.4What do you need from us each week, and how many hours of our time does that cost?
8.5What is the notice period, and what is the handover checklist on exit?
8.6What would make you tell us to pause or stop spending?

Section 9

References and verification

Do not ask for references. Ask for a specific kind of reference and then ask that reference a specific question.

The vendor answers

9.1Give us two clients in a similar deal size and sales cycle, and one client who left in the last twelve months.
9.2For the client who left, what happened, and what would you do differently?
9.3Which platform certifications and partner statuses do you hold, and can we verify them?
9.4Ask each reference: did the named owner in the pitch stay on the account, and what was the last number on the monthly report?

Section 10

Scoring and decision

Score every response against the rubric before the first sales call. Written scores prevent the most confident presenter from winning on delivery rather than substance.

You fill in

Scorer names and the weight each dimension carries for your situation
Any disqualifiers you will apply automatically
Decision date, and who has the final call

Send the whole thing as a PDF instead

The download is the same content, formatted as a document you can attach to an email and hand to procurement, with the scoring sheet on its own page.

The expensive omissions

Five questions buyers leave out, and what each one costs

What happens to your fee if we cut media spend in half?

Answers the incentive question directly. A partner whose revenue falls with your spend will find the efficiency conversation harder than one whose fee is flat.

Whose legal name is on the ad accounts and the audience lists?

If the answer is the agency, leaving costs you the pixel history and the learning period on every platform. That is months of performance, not a paperwork inconvenience.

What is the last number in the monthly report?

Cost per lead can be improved by loosening the form. Cost per qualified opportunity cannot. Define the endpoint in the RFP or each bidder will define it in their favor.

How many hours a week does the named owner spend in our account?

It converts a staffing promise into a number you can check against results, and it exposes the accounts that are actually run by a shared bench.

Show us a channel you recommended that failed.

Every paid program has losing tests. A bidder who cannot produce one is either new or is telling you what you want to hear.

Scoring

Score the responses before the first call

Written scores stop the most confident presenter from winning a decision they did not earn on substance. Set the weights before you read a single response.

Dimension	Weight	What a 5 looks like	What a 1 looks like
Fee transparency	25%	Exact calculation shown with your numbers, every exclusion listed with a price, no media markup	A monthly number with no calculation and no list of what sits outside it
Ownership terms	20%	Accounts, pixels, audiences, creative, and pages in your name, confirmed in writing	Accounts held by the agency, ownership described as standard practice
Measurement endpoint	20%	Reports end at cost per qualified opportunity and pipeline, with CRM reconciliation owned	Reports end at cost per lead, attribution described as proprietary
Named ownership and hours	15%	One named owner, stated weekly hours, account load disclosed, escalation path with a response time	A pod, a team, or a role title with no name and no hours
Dated ninety-day plan	10%	Week-numbered milestones with owners, and a stated date for the first defensible read	Phases named crawl, walk, run, with no dates
Channel discipline	10%	Fewer channels than your budget could technically cover, with a stated reason and a spend floor per channel	Every channel recommended at once, spend floors not mentioned

Score each dimension 1 to 5, multiply by the weight, and total before the first call. Adjust the weights to your situation, but decide them before you read the responses.

Automatic disqualifiers

Any one of these ends the evaluation regardless of the total score. They are not negotiating positions, they are structural.

Will not put the fee calculation in writing, or answers the spend-cut question with a conversation instead of math
Requires the ad accounts to be held in the agency's name
Marks up media spend, platform fees, or third-party data, including through a reseller
Guarantees a lead volume, a cost per lead, or a ranking
Cannot name the person who will own the account in month three
Refuses to give a reference from a client who left
Proposes four or more channels on a budget that cannot make one of them decisive

Our own answers

How Momentence answers sections 4 and 5

We publish this template partly because it is the document we would want a buyer to send us. Our fee is a flat retainer, not a percent of spend, so it does not move when your media budget does. Media spend, platform fees, and third-party data are billed to you directly and never marked up. Ad accounts, pixels, audience lists, creative source files, and landing pages stay in your name, and you keep them if the engagement ends.

Reporting ends at cost per qualified opportunity and pipeline created, with the definition of a qualified conversation signed off by your team in onboarding. Retainers are published on the pricing page with a flat six-month minimum, and the paid advertising service page lists what is inside the fee.

We are the wrong answer for some of the situations this template is used to shop for. If your average contract value is under roughly $5,000, or your budget only supports one channel and your real constraint is the website, we will tell you that on the first call rather than quote you.

FAQ

Questions about running the RFP

Not always. If you are hiring one specialist for one channel at a modest spend, a written version of sections 4, 5, and 6 of this template sent as an email is enough. A full RFP earns its overhead once you are comparing three or more bidders, or once annual media spend is large enough that the ownership and fee terms carry real money.

Three to five. Fewer than three and you have no comparison. More than six and the review turns into administrative work, response quality falls because bidders read the odds, and you start weighting presentation over substance simply to get through the pile.

Yes. Withholding it produces proposals priced at what the bidder guesses you can pay, which is not comparable, and it hides the honest answer that your budget only supports one channel done properly. Share the media budget and the fee budget separately.

Ten to fifteen business days. Shorter than a week and you are selecting for whoever had a template ready. Longer than three weeks and the process loses momentum on both sides.

That usually means the requirement is unusual for the market segment you are shopping in, or your own side of it is undefined. The most common example is the measurement endpoint: if nobody can report cost per qualified opportunity, the constraint is often that your CRM does not carry the field yet.

The fee, ownership, staffing, and scoring sections transfer directly. The channel and measurement sections are paid-specific and would need replacing with the equivalents for organic work, which are the content and link production commitments and the reporting endpoint on qualified pipeline.

The PDF is free and every question in it is published on this page, so you can use it without downloading anything. If you do download it, we store your email to send the next version of the template and to follow up once. No list rental, no sharing.

Send us the RFP

We answer every question in this template in writing before a call, including the fee calculation and the ownership terms. If a different agency is the better fit for your stage, we will tell you which one and why.

Book a 30-minute call sales@momentence.com