What you pay for Google Ads management follows the work your account needs, and that work looks different for a plumber in one town than for a store selling hundreds of products. Here's what management covers, what adds to it, and how to compare the quotes you get.
What management covers
Management is the ongoing work of making sure your budget goes to searches that can turn into customers. Here's what a normal month usually includes.
- Checking which searches triggered your ads and blocking the ones that waste money
- Adjusting bids by location, time of day, and season
- Writing and testing new ad copy
- Keeping the pages people land on matched to what the ad promised
- Checking that calls and form submissions are still being tracked
- Reporting on the results and explaining what they mean
Setup at the start is its own piece of work. Building the campaigns, writing the first ads, and setting up conversion tracking usually takes more time than a normal month of management.
The landing pages matter as much as the ads. If the page is slow or makes it hard to call or fill out a form, you pay for clicks that never turn into anything. That's a website question, and How much does a website cost in 2026? covers what goes into fixing it.
Management fees and ad spend are different things
Your ad spend goes to Google. Your management fee goes to whoever runs the account. Keep the two apart when you compare quotes, because a quote that bundles them makes it hard to see what the management itself costs.
Managers usually charge in one of two ways.
- A percentage of your ad spend. The fee grows with your budget, even when the work doesn't.
- A flat monthly fee. The fee follows the work, so it doesn't change when your budget does.
Neither is automatically better. What matters is knowing which one you're being quoted, whether there's a separate setup fee, and what happens to the fee if you pause ads during a slow season.
What changes the amount of work
- How many services, products, and locations you advertise. One service in one city takes less attention than twenty products across several regions.
- How many campaigns are running. Each one has its own searches, ads, and budget to check.
- Busy and slow seasons. A seasonal business needs heavier work at the start and end of its season, and less in between.
- Tracking. Accounts that track phone calls and form submissions need that tracking checked, because it can stop working without anyone noticing.
- Online sales. If you sell products through Shopping ads, the product feed is one more thing to maintain.
Questions to ask before you choose a manager
- Will the account be in my name, so I keep the history and the data if we stop working together?
- Is the fee a flat amount or a percentage of spend, and is there a setup fee?
- What will you report, how often, and will you walk me through it?
- What do you do in a month when nothing needs changing?
- How will we know it's working?
Clicks show what you paid for. For that last question, ask how they'll show you the calls, forms, and sales that came from them.
Our ad campaigns page explains how we run accounts, and the FAQ covers reporting. If you'd like us to look at your account, send us a few details.