What does Google Ads management cost?

Two numbers, and they are not the same

Every ads conversation contains two costs that are constantly conflated. Management is what you pay someone to build and run the campaigns. Media spend is what you pay Google or Meta for the clicks.

We bill management; media goes on a card attached to an ad account registered to your business. That matters more than it sounds. It means you can see every dollar, you keep the account and its performance history if you leave, and nobody can mark up your media without you seeing it.

What a realistic starting budget looks like

Competitive local service categories run roughly $8 to $18 per click. At $33 a day you are buying two to four clicks — enough to learn from within a month, not enough to dominate.

Spending less than about $1,000 a month in a competitive category tends not to work, because the campaign never gathers enough data to optimise against. Spending far more before conversion tracking is verified is worse: you scale a machine that cannot tell you which half is working.

Cost per click is the wrong number

Cheap clicks are easy. Broaden the targeting, bid on vague terms, and the cost per click falls while the leads disappear. The numbers that matter are cost per lead and cost per booked job.

Getting to those requires conversion tracking that actually fires on the actions that make money — a submitted form, a call over sixty seconds — verified rather than assumed. A campaign optimised against page views is optimised against nothing.

The costs people forget

• The landing page. Sending paid traffic to a generic homepage wastes a large share of the spend, and Google scores the page as part of your ad rank.
• Call tracking, if calls are how customers reach you and you want to know which ads produced them.
• The learning period. The first four to six weeks buy data as much as leads. Budget for it.
• Speed to lead. An ad budget that generates leads nobody calls back within minutes is a budget spent on nothing.

How Revio prices it

Management from $1,000 per month, media billed separately to your own account. Conversion tracking is built and verified before spend scales, because the alternative is paying to optimise against a signal that is not real.

Common questions

Should I pay a percentage of ad spend?

Percentage-of-spend creates an incentive to spend more, which is not always the right advice. A flat management fee keeps the recommendation about results rather than about budget.

How long before Google Ads works?

Expect four to six weeks before the data is meaningful and around three months before performance settles. Anyone promising results in the first fortnight is describing luck.

Who should own the ad account?

You. An account in the agency's name means that leaving costs you the entire performance history, which is what makes the campaign work. This is worth insisting on before signing anything.