How to oversee a marketing agency in Vietnam
Vũ Kỳ AnhFounder, MWY Consulting
Short answer
Oversight is decided before the first campaign runs, not after results arrive. Three things carry most of the weight: the ad accounts should be registered to your company with the agency granted access, the contract should name one system as the source of reporting numbers, and the metric you hold the agency to should be the one your business actually decides on. Everything else is easier to fix later than these three.
Most foreign companies entering Vietnam choose a capable agency. Proposals are compared, references are checked, a decision gets made, and the decision is usually reasonable.
What goes wrong tends to be decided earlier and more quietly, in the first few weeks, in choices that look administrative at the time and structural a year later.
Three decisions that carry most of the weight
Who the ad accounts belong to
The accounts should be registered to your company, with the agency granted access. Not the reverse.
This is not about trust. Historical performance data, custom audiences and conversion tracking are company assets, and their value comes from continuity. An account that has been learning for eighteen months is worth considerably more than a fresh one, and that value evaporates if the account cannot move when the relationship does.
In Vietnam, accounts held in the agency's name are common enough that nobody flags it as unusual. Ask in the first week. Unwinding it later is possible but costs months of history.
Which system the reports draw from
A report built from the advertising interface and a report built from the revenue system will not agree. Both are accurate within their own boundaries, and the two sides can argue indefinitely without either being wrong.
Name one system as the decision source in the contract. For most companies that is whatever records actual revenue. The others stay useful for daily optimisation — operators need them — but budget decisions come from one place.
Which metric the contract measures
An agency improves at the metric it is held to. That is not a flaw; it is how any organisation with a target behaves. The problem appears only when that metric is not the one the business decides on.
| Contract metric | What the agency will optimise toward |
|---|---|
| Impressions or reach | Cheap inventory, broad audiences, weak purchase intent |
| Clicks | Curiosity-driven creative, variable traffic quality |
| Cost per lead | Lead volume, with closing rate left to someone else |
| Recorded revenue | The easiest-selling lines, usually the most discounted |
| Revenue after acquisition cost | Closest to an actual business decision |
No row is wrong. Each one pulls in a different direction, and it is worth knowing which direction you have chosen.
What is genuinely different here
The marketplace channel is a separate discipline. Shopee, Lazada and TikTok Shop run their own advertising systems with their own rules and their own reporting. Strength in Meta and Google search does not transfer automatically, yet the two are often quoted as a single line in a proposal.
Chat is a sales channel. A large share of selling happens in Zalo and Messenger. Ask how the agency measures it. If they cannot, an entire channel is absent from every report you will receive, and the channels that feed it will look weaker than they are.
Cash on delivery separates the order from the money. An order counted in the campaign report is not revenue until the parcel is accepted. That gap varies by category and by acquisition source, and it belongs in the reporting definition rather than in a footnote.
A quarterly review that takes an hour
Monthly reviews look at operating numbers. The relationship itself needs a different, rarer conversation:
- Is the metric in the contract still the right one? Businesses change faster than contracts.
- Is the named team still the team on the account?
- Has anything become measurable that was not measurable last quarter? If so, which past conclusions should be revisited?
- What would have to be true for the agency to recommend spending less?
That last question is worth asking plainly. Where an agency is paid a percentage of media spend, recommending a reduction works against its own income. That is a structural fact rather than a character judgement, and the appropriate response is not suspicion — it is making sure the decision to increase or reduce budget has a second perspective on it.
Where MWY sits
MWY does not run campaigns, does not recommend agencies, and takes no commission from any agency or platform.
What MWY does is the third job: setting the criteria before you choose, reading the proposals, reviewing the contract, and then reading the numbers back each month on the company's side of the table. Taking money from both sides would remove whatever value that reading has, so MWY takes it from one.
Common questions
Should we hire a local Vietnamese agency or a regional network?
It depends on which problem is larger for you. Local agencies generally move faster in Vietnamese and understand platform-native creative, particularly on TikTok and the marketplaces. Regional networks give you consistent reporting and governance across several markets. Decide which of those you actually need before comparing proposals, because the two are rarely strong in the same places.
How often should we review agency performance?
Monthly for operating numbers and quarterly for the relationship itself — whether the metric in the contract is still the right one, whether the named team is still the team working on the account, and whether anything material has become measurable that was not before. Reviewing the relationship only when results disappoint turns every review into a defence.
Our agency reports look fine but sales do not match. Where do we start?
Start by establishing which system each number came from and over which period. Advertising platforms report on the day an ad was seen, finance reports on the day an invoice was issued, and in Vietnam cash on delivery adds a further gap between a confirmed order and money received. Most mismatches resolve into definition differences rather than into anyone being wrong.
Can our agency also do the measurement setup?
They can build it, and often they are the practical choice. What is worth avoiding is having the same party build the measurement, run the campaigns, and report on the results, because that removes any independent check. Separating who builds from who verifies costs very little and changes what the reports are worth.
Is this your problem?
Thirty minutes, no fee. Bring real numbers and the call will be far more specific than the article.