If you’re looking to work with a Google Ads agency the most pressing question on your mind (outside of “what results will we get?”) will likely be “how much will it cost?”.
There are varying cost models and factors that go into agency pricing to be aware of before you go out to find your new partner.
Management fees can also vary based on the scope that’s included. Some Google Ads agencies offer other complementary services, others don’t. It’s good to find out the full detail of what’s included and what isn’t before reviewing the cost itself and how viable that is for your business.
If an agency isn’t right for you, a freelancer can also be a viable option. Costs here can be a lot lower, however, you also potentially lose some broader benefits like having skillsets in supporting areas outside of Google Ads itself.
Let’s explore the different types of Google Ads agency costs.
Types of PPC agency costs
There are three main cost models which agencies will present you with, These each have their own upsides and potential downsides. Selecting the one which aligns best with your requirements from the activity will lead to you being well integrated with your Google Ads resource.
Fixed retainer
Probably the most common and straightforward, the fixed price retainer model is where you will be offered a cost which is recurring monthly fee for management of Google Ads.
£2-5k per month is where the average agency fee sits in the UK in 2025.
The benefits to this cost model is that you know exactly what you’re paying out so forecasting and financing your marketing budgets is very simple.
Fixed monthly retainer fees can range from £1,500 to 5,000+ depending on the scale and complexity of the Google Ads account that you have in your business. Common reasons for a higher retainer are size and scale of the account. If you have high spend and revenue then there’s more compound value in the right changes. If you have a large inventory or advertise in multiple countries, there are more hours required to manage the account effectively.
Considerations here are will the agency be motivated and focused on your account as it scales as their remuneration will be static as you grow through the channel. In that instance it can be where a % of can have its uses.
This can be broadly based on an approximate % of spend or revenue, hours required as well as taking into account the value being provided. I.e if an agency is generating £100k of profitable monthly sales and charging you £5,000 in management fees, most businesses would be happy with that arrangement.
The key is seeing the return and/or opening up new markets and channels which have a long term value outside of the transactional month-to-month costs on management fee.
This model is common as good agencies have to retain the best people so need to have a baseline client fee that is commercially viable and reflects the talent that they have in their teams.
Performance based (i.e % of spend)
The second most common model you will find with paid search agencies is a % of spend. This is where you would pay typically 10% of the total advertising spend per month as a management fee.
As an example under this model, if you were spending £50,000 per month in advertising cost, your management fee at 10% would be £5,000.
This has the linear presumption that a higher spending account is delivering more value so as such warrants a higher fee.
The positive element of this model is that as your account grows, the supplier is also growing with you which aligns focus and priority.
The challenge with a % of spend model is that ad spend (whilst it can be an indicator) isn’t a measurement of return or growth on its own. What can occur is that campaign spend can ramp up whilst return is negative or below target. In this instance, the agency benefits and your brand suffers heavily.
Other factors here as a client to consider are that if you have no existing performance or proof of concept on the website/product/service, expecting this model is unfair as there are too many unknowns to see that there is commercial opportunity for the agency. The risk is more that they provide the work and the outputs are unlikely to come due to broader factors.
A % of revenue model sometimes is viable, most partners would want to see some existing proof of concept though first as otherwise all of the risk is with them and not with the brand.
Hybrid (base fee +% of revenue)
A happy middle ground is what’s becoming more popular with Google and Meta Ads agencies. A hybrid model is where you would pay a base fixed monthly retainer fee and then in addition a smaller % of revenue or profit from the ads activity.
This works well as it covers hard costs and time for the agency to a base minimum whilst also incentivising them to scale sales for you. This way if you grow - the agency grows. If you have a challenging month in performance they do also. This alignment is a good way to secure a mutually beneficial long term relationship.
Qualifiers to make this more robust would be agreeing a % of revenue also at your target cost-per-acquisition or ROAS. As this way revenue can’t be scaled at the expense of your business generating a profit.
Generally this is a good all round option for both sides, the only challenges might come if there is no previous performance to model % of revenue on or if there is a front load of foundational work to complete. In this instance it likely won’t be viable for an agency to offer this.
Other factors to consider
Different agencies will have different service offerings. Another element to consider in cost is the broader skillsets and capabilities within the agency team.
Conversion rate optimisation is the most effective way to improve PPC and paid social campaign sales or lead volume, whilst also improving the return-on-ad-spend. This is a skillset which isn’t present in many PPC providers teams.
If this is included in your fee, paying a higher rate (or being on a fixed fee rather than a performance based) has a huge value on NET outputs which is what matters most.
Similarly, Meta and Google advertising goes hand-in-hand. As the two key advertising networks with the best tools and features, having a provider who is proficient in both means that you can take learnings from one to the other and scale much more effectively.
Having one provider managing your performance in this way is one fee rather than two and gives you more agility to learn and progress as the integration is there.
Knowledge in supporting areas such as UX, landing page wireframing and briefing, messaging, conversion tracking all add massive value to your campaign side performance so I’d always encourage you to understand if you need or should be speaking to a ‘service provider’ (as in someone who implements actions in the channel for you) or a consultancy partner who can actually drive outcomes and change.
One is very different from the other. Cost-effective and good campaign execution you can get from a freelancer or resource via UpWork.
In our experience though in the majority of cases it isn’t better Google Ads a client needs or Google Ads in isolation. It’s that plus conversion rate optimisation, analysis of customer journey and many other supporting factors to drive performance and achieve growth.
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