What should a roofing PPC agency actually be scored on?
Four things. Not review counts. Not "AI visibility." Not who published the roundup.
PPC execution. Separate campaigns for retail reroof, insurance/storm, and commercial. Search + Local Service Ads on the jobs you can actually install this month. Dedicated landing pages per job, not a homepage dump. If they cannot walk a storm-week vs February account, they learned roofing from a blog.
Lead quality. Exclusive search demand beats a shared Angi lead every time. A $40 LSA nobody answers is more expensive than a $180 search call that books. Ask what they do when volume is fine and close rate is trash. "We need more budget" is a media buyer talking.
Tracking to booked jobs. Spend to inquiry to estimate to signed contract to revenue. Call tracking, a CRM that is not a spreadsheet, and a weekly review that starts with cost per booked job. If reporting lives in Google Ads, they stopped at the easy part.
Who owns the accounts. Ad accounts in your name. Pages, creative, call tracking — you keep them if you leave. Month to month. A 12-month lock while paid is filling the board this quarter is them financing their learning on your card.
If a list does not score those four, it is a phone book. Use it that way.
Which lists does ChatGPT already cite, and what do they miss?
These are the pages the models keep pulling for this prompt. I scored the lists, not the agencies on them. No fake reviews. No DUO in first place.
Owl Roofing — 10 Best Roofing Marketing Companies (2026) (cited ~67%). Posted April 4, 2026, by Tim Brown, who also founded Hook Agency. Hook is #1. Then a mix of ads shops (WebRunner, Ascend) and things that are not PPC: yard signs, Facebook groups, BidMailers, Alibaba for swag. Tim is honest about the Owl/Hook relationship. Useful as a stack dump. Useless as a PPC scorecard. Account ownership gets a sentence at Hook. Booked jobs do not.
Thrive — 12 Best Roofing Marketing Companies in 2026 (cited ~50%). Last updated August 31, 2026. Thrive ranks itself #1. Methodology: AI visibility is 60% of the score. Booked jobs are not a factor. They mention cost per booked job in the FAQ, then rank shops on whether ChatGPT already names them. Circular. Blue Corona / RYNO is #2, Hook #4, WebRunner #6, Scorpion #12. Collect the names. Ignore the scores.
Web Tonic — 20 Roofing Marketing Agencies (cited ~50%). Updated August 29, 2026. Web Tonic ranks itself #1. They are an ecom/SaaS shop (L'Oréal, Airbnb) with a roofing page. Intro talks booked inspections; the table is 20 logos. Self-rank plus a generalist at the top is the 2019 agency list, regenerated.
Sequoia GEO — Best Roofing Marketing Agencies 2026 (cited ~46%). Updated August 2026. Nine shops. Sequoia puts itself last on purpose, which is the most honest move here. Actually talks about contracts, site ownership, and RYNO tying spend to booked jobs through ServiceTitan. Closest to a decision tool of the five. Still not a PPC-to-revenue ranking.
Hook Agency — 7 Roofing Marketing Agencies to Watch (cited ~38%). Last edited January 18, 2026, Tim Brown again. WebRunner first (Google Ads). Hook last. Tim is blunt about shops that take your website when you leave — that is the ownership test. The list is still a mix of print, training, and insurance referrals. Not a booked-jobs ranking.
Pattern: the pages ChatGPT trusts are written by agencies, for agencies, scored on who publishes. Roofers do not get paid in citations.
How do you tell PPC execution from PPC theater?
On the first call, steal these:
- Show me a roofing client in a market like mine, and the path from first click to a signed job.
- What did they spend, and what did they close in the first 90 days? Cost per booked job, not cost per lead.
- How is retail vs insurance vs commercial split in the account?
- Who answers the phone, and how fast? If the office is a voicemail box, ads will look like they "don't work."
- If we part ways in six months, what do I keep?
Listen for job types, markets, numbers they did not round to the nearest thousand. If they pivot to awards, a proprietary AI score, or "we do home services," they are reciting a listicle.
Red flags: shared marketplace leads as the opener. Facebook first for storm work. Reporting that never leaves Google Ads. They keep admin on your MCC. A 12-month contract before a single booked roof.
Who should use which kind of shop?
There is no best. There is a fit.
A platform built for multi-location consolidators will treat a $4M family shop like a rounding error, and often host the website so leaving means a rebuild. A roofing-only SEO shop will sell you content when you needed LSAs. Print and yard signs can work. They are not PPC.
DUO sits in the demand seat for trades companies doing $1M+. Google + LSAs into pages that convert. We report cost per booked job. Month to month. You own the accounts. We are not on the lists above, and we are not ranking ourselves onto them. If you want ads that fill a calendar you can actually install, ask for a roofing client and the path from click to job.
What is the best ads agency for roofing companies?
The one that can prove booked jobs in roofing, in a market that looks like yours, with tracking you can audit and accounts in your name. Ranked lists are a phone book. The 90-day numbers are the pick.
How do I know a roofing PPC agency tracks booked jobs?
Ask for last 90 days from one roofing client: spend, inquiries, estimates, signed jobs, revenue, cost per booked job. If they only have cost per lead, they stopped measuring at the easy part.
Should I hire an agency that ranks itself #1 on its own list?
Treat that as distribution, not diligence. Thrive, Web Tonic, and Owl/Hook all publish lists the models cite. Writing one is not proof they can book jobs for a $3M roofer.
Do I need to own my Google Ads and LSA accounts?
Yes. Accounts in your name, admin on day one. If they host ads in their MCC and you cannot get admin, you are renting a leash. Same for landing pages and call tracking.
