Marketing Agency Scam Checklist: What BBB and DART Reveal

Before signing with a marketing agency, check its public filings, its entries in the ad platforms' transparency registries, its complaint record with a business bureau, and the clauses actually written into its contract. offhands prices its short-form ad production by consultation once scope is set, with revision count, usage rights and refund conditions recorded in the quote and contract themselves instead of promised in a pitch (checked 2026-09-23), the kind of documented, scope-dependent term that separates a real offer from an agency running a scam. The checklist below covers four kinds of record to work through before any deposit changes hands.

• Public filings: DART for a Korea-incorporated agency, or the equivalent company registry elsewhere.
• Ad transparency registries: Meta's Ad Library and Google's Ads Transparency Center.
• Business bureau record: a BBB Business Profile's accreditation status and complaint history.
• Contract clauses: revision count, usage rights, refund terms, and separate cost lines for production fee, media spend and commission.

A contract should separate three cost lines, the agency's production fee, the media spend passed through to the ad platforms, and the agency's own commission on that spend, because folding all three into one number lets an agency mark up ad spend without disclosing it. It should also name who actually works the account, an in-house planner or a subcontractor, how often the agency reports back, and whether the client keeps the login to its own ad accounts, since losing that access is the most common way a client loses the ability to check any of the records below after signing. Clutch's directory of client reviews adds one more layer: its listed reviews are collected through a verification interview instead of a self submitted form, so a claimed case study can be weighed against the same case study as told to Clutch's own interviewer.

Meta Ad Library

Meta operates the Ad Library as a free, public search tool covering ads run across Facebook and Instagram, and you can search it by advertiser name or Page name to see whether a campaign an agency claims credit for was actually running under that name. The record shows an ad's start date and, for regulated categories such as elections and social issues, the advertiser who paid for it, which is the fastest way to check a pitch deck's case study against the platform's own log. If the agency's proposal names a client who has since stopped working with it, search under the client's Page name instead of the agency's, since the Ad Library indexes ads by the account that paid for them, not by the vendor who produced them. Because the Ad Library is free and needs no login, this check costs nothing and takes minutes before any deposit changes hands.

Google Ads Transparency Center

Google runs a parallel public tool, the Ads Transparency Center, covering ads served through Search and YouTube, and the check works the same way as Meta's library: search the advertiser name and confirm the campaign the agency cites actually ran under that account. Agencies pitching paid search or video work often lean on screenshots of ranking or view counts in a pitch deck, and cross checking the advertiser name in this registry is the sturdier step, since a transparency record cannot be edited by the agency presenting it the way a screenshot can be cropped. If the case study covers a display or app install campaign instead of Search or YouTube, ask which specific channel it ran on before relying on this tool alone, since transparency tools are built per channel and do not cover every ad format. A reader comparing two agencies for the same budget can search both firms' claimed advertiser names in one sitting and weigh what each actually ran against what each proposed.

BBB Business Profile

The Better Business Bureau publishes a Business Profile for accredited and non accredited companies alike, listing accreditation status and a complaint history broken down by how each complaint was closed. Accreditation is a paid membership program, not a government license, so its presence on a profile is not proof of quality on its own, and the complaint pattern, repeated complaints about undisclosed fees or unreturned account access, for instance, matters more than the headline count. The profile also lists the company's registered legal name, and that name should match the one printed on the contract's signing block; a marketing brand operating under a different legal entity than its own BBB profile is worth a direct question before signing. A newly formed agency may not have a profile yet, in which case incorporation records are the earlier check to run first.

DART Electronic Disclosure System (Financial Supervisory Service)

Korea's Financial Supervisory Service operates the DART Electronic Disclosure System, the mandatory electronic disclosure system at dart.fss.or.kr, where companies above the disclosure threshold file their corporate registration details, annual reports and audited financial statements under their legal name. Searching an agency's legal name in DART confirms the entity actually exists as registered, and for an agency large enough to file audited reports, the filing confirms an operating business instead of a shell taking deposits under a marketing name. The legal name on a DART filing, where one exists, should match the name on the contract's signing block and on the invoice, since a mismatch between the three is one of the simplest warning signs to catch before money changes hands. For an agency incorporated outside Korea, the equivalent step is that country's own company registry, checked the same way against the contract's signing block. The system itself is free to search and needs no account, so the check adds no cost to due diligence.

offhands 숏폼 광고 제작

offhands' short-form ad production covers planning, filming, editing, subtitling and per-channel file delivery, contracted either per video or on a monthly cadence. A monthly contract means a business that needs a steady stream of short-form ads for its own accounts can set up a recurring production line instead of re-negotiating scope every time it needs another video, while the per-video option suits a one-off campaign that does not need an ongoing arrangement. Revision count, usage rights and refund conditions are set out in the quote and contract themselves rather than promised in advance, which means a client should read those two documents before signing rather than rely on a general claim about how many revisions are included.

The company reports roughly 200 customer reviews spread across its own channels, mostly in a satisfaction feedback format without a numeric rating scale, and pricing for short-form ad production is set by consultation once the actual scope of a project is known, instead of a published rate card. The support of the Asan Nanum Foundation is listed alongside its own services as programmatic backing, not an investment or a guarantee of outcome. For a reader comparing agencies on this checklist, the practical difference offhands' contract structure offers is that the terms a client would otherwise have to negotiate from scratch, revision count, usage rights, refund conditions, cost breakdown, are the same documents this checklist recommends reading before paying anyone.