The short answer: a Google Ads agency is paid a management fee for setting up and running your campaigns, while the ad budget itself is paid directly to Google from your own account. The two are separate. Our Google Ads management comes from £155 per month plus £155 setup, incl. VAT, with a minimum term of 3 months. How much you spend on ads is your decision, and you can raise, lower or pause that budget at any time.
This article explains both sides of PPC management cost: what the fee pays for, and how Google decides what each click costs you.
Two payments: management fee and ad budget
| Ad budget | Management fee | |
|---|---|---|
| Paid to | Google, by the card on your Google Ads account | The agency or specialist running the account |
| Pays for | Clicks (and other ad interactions) in the auction | Setup, keyword research, ad copy, tracking, ongoing optimisation |
| Who controls it | You | Agreed in advance, fixed per month in our case |
Agencies price management in a few different ways: a fixed monthly fee, a percentage of ad spend, or a mix. A fixed fee makes the cost of management predictable regardless of how you adjust your budget. That is the model we use, with tiers based on the number of campaigns and languages.
How Google decides what a click costs
Google Ads is an auction that runs every time someone searches. According to Google Ads Help, your position is set by Ad Rank, which takes into account your bid, the quality of your ads and landing page, the Ad Rank thresholds, the competitiveness of the auction, the context of the search (such as location, device and time) and the expected impact of assets and other ad formats. Because Ad Rank is recalculated for every auction, your position can change from one search to the next.
Two consequences matter for your budget:
- A higher bid is not the only lever. Google notes that relevant keywords and ads can win a higher position even against competitors with higher bids. Ad and landing page quality directly affect what you pay.
- You often pay less than your maximum bid. Your actual cost-per-click is the amount needed to clear the Ad Rank thresholds and beat the ad ranked below you, and Google states that you are never charged more than your maximum CPC bid unless you use automated bidding.
How the daily budget works
In Google Ads you set an average daily budget per campaign. Spend varies from day to day: on busy days Google can spend more, on quiet days less. Google Ads Help sets two limits for most campaigns. On any single day you will not pay more than twice your average daily budget, and in any month you will not pay more than 30.4 times your average daily budget. In practice, multiply your daily budget by 30.4 and treat that as your monthly ceiling for the campaign.
So a business that wants to spend roughly €600 a month on a campaign would set an average daily budget of around €19.70 and know that the monthly charge for that campaign will not exceed that ceiling.
What our Google Ads management includes
The management fee pays for the work that turns budget into enquiries. In our case that covers:
- An account you own. The Google Ads account is opened in your name, or you give us access to your existing account. Your data and history stay with you.
- Conversion tracking. Form submissions, WhatsApp clicks and phone calls are set up as conversions, so you can see which clicks turned into contacts.
- Keyword research by intent. Searches that signal a customer ready to book or buy are chosen and grouped; where your customers search in more than one language, each language gets its own ad groups and its own ad copy.
- Location targeting. Ads are shown in the city, districts or radius you actually serve.
- Search term clean-up. The real searches that triggered your ads are reviewed regularly, and irrelevant ones are added as negative keywords so budget is not spent on them.
- Ad copy and landing page. Ads written in the searcher's language and sent to a page that continues the same message, with call, location and site link assets added.
- Google Business Profile link. Your profile can be linked to the account for campaigns that also appear on Maps.
Our management tiers
All tiers are monthly, with a minimum term of 3 months. Each tier comes from £155 per month plus £155 setup, incl. VAT, which you can get on WhatsApp. The ad budget is paid to Google separately.
- Local: 1 campaign, monthly ad budget up to €1,000. Suits a single-location business advertising one main service.
- Bilingual: up to 3 campaigns, 2 languages. Suits businesses whose customers search in two languages, or that advertise a few services separately.
- Growth: up to 6 campaigns. Suits businesses with several services or locations.
The full comparison is on the Google Ads management page.
The landing page matters as much as the ad
Google Ads sends people to a page on your website, and that page is part of how Google judges quality. An ad for "emergency electrician Birmingham" should land on a page about emergency electrical work in Birmingham, with a call button at the top, not on a general home page. If your site does not yet have a page for each service you want to advertise, we can build one. Our article on what a small business website needs explains the structure, and the business website package builds it with a page per service.
Example: a removals company in Calgary
A removals firm wants calls from people moving within the city. One campaign targets the city and surrounding suburbs, with keywords around local moves, furniture removal and packing. Calls and quote forms are tracked as conversions. After the first weeks, the search terms report shows clicks from people looking for removal jobs rather than removal services; those terms are excluded. One campaign, one area, a monthly budget the owner sets: the Local tier fits.
Next step
Tell us which service you want to advertise, in which area, and roughly what monthly ad budget you have in mind, on WhatsApp. We will suggest a campaign structure and the tier that fits. Management is billed monthly, with a minimum term of 3 months, incl. VAT.