How to Choose a Google Ads Agency (2026)

The short answer

Choose a Google Ads agency on three things: who touches your account daily, how they are paid, and what it costs you to leave. Everything else — awards, badges, a deck full of logos — is downstream of those. US agencies price four ways: a percentage of ad spend (typically 10–20%), a flat monthly fee (commonly $1,000–$3,000 for a small to mid-sized account), hourly (roughly $100–$250/hr), or performance-based. A percentage pays the agency more when you spend more, whether or not it worked; a flat fee removes that conflict.

Before signing, get written answers to: who runs my account day to day, who owns the ad accounts, what happens to my data if I leave, what exactly counts as a conversion, what is the notice period, and does the fee rise when my spend rises. And if you are spending less than about $500/mo on Google Search or $400/mo on Meta, do not hire anyone yet — there is not enough data in a month to optimize, and you would be paying a management fee to watch noise.

What a Google Ads agency actually does

Most sales calls describe outcomes. Here is the work, so you can tell whether the person opposite you has done it.

The setup nobody sees

Before a single ad runs, someone has to decide what a conversion is. This sounds like a formality and it is the highest-leverage decision in the whole engagement. Google's bidding is a machine that optimizes toward whatever you tell it success looks like. Tell it a form load is success and it will find you people who load forms. Tell it a qualified booked call is success and it goes hunting for those instead.

In practice this means conversion tracking wired properly, values attached to different actions, offline conversions imported when the real sale happens later, and audiences and exclusions built so you stop paying to reach people who already bought. The single most common thing we find broken in an inherited account is what it was counting.

The build

Campaign structure, keyword research and match types, negative keyword lists, ad copy variants, extensions, geographic and schedule targeting, and the landing page the click lands on. The page is part of the job even when it is technically somebody else's job. Doubling a conversion rate without touching the campaign is common; you cannot do it by writing a better headline for the ad.

The daily part

This is where the money is actually made or lost: search term reports read and mined for negatives, bids and budgets adjusted, losing ad groups paused, winners funded, creative tested on a fixed cadence rather than when somebody remembers. It is unglamorous and it is roughly 80% of the value.

The reporting

A monthly account of what came in, what it cost, what it returned, and what changed and why. Written in sentences. A dashboard link is not a report — a dashboard tells you the numbers, a report tells you what they mean and what you are doing about them.

Ninety percent of what a good agency does is measurement and subtraction. Cutting a losing campaign in week two is worth more than a clever headline in week ten.

The four pricing models, and what each one rewards

You are not just choosing a price. You are choosing what the person managing your money is rewarded for, every day, for as long as this lasts. Read the "what it rewards" column twice.

Model	Typical US range	What it rewards	When it fits
Percentage of ad spend	10–20% of spend, often with a monthly minimum	Increasing your budget. Advice to spend less is advice to earn less.	Very large accounts where the workload genuinely scales with spend.
Flat monthly fee	$1,000–$3,000/mo for a small to mid-sized account	Keeping you. The fee is fixed, so waste costs them nothing to cut.	Almost every small and mid-sized advertiser.
Hourly / consulting	$100–$250/hr	Hours. Efficiency is not obviously in their interest.	An audit, a one-off fix, or an in-house team that needs a second opinion.
Performance-based	A fee per lead or a share of tracked revenue	Volume of whatever is being counted — including bad leads.	E-commerce with mature, trustworthy revenue tracking. Rare below that.

Scroll the table sideways to see every column →

Ranges are typical US market pricing for context, not quotes from named competitors. None of these figures include your ad budget, which you pay to Google directly.

Why the percentage model deserves a second look

It is the default in this industry and it is worth being precise about the objection. The problem is not that percentage agencies are dishonest. It is that the incentive points the wrong way on every decision, forever. Your budget goes up, their revenue goes up — automatically, with no requirement that the extra spend produced anything.

Run the arithmetic. At $10,000/mo in ad spend, a 15% fee is $1,500. At $40,000/mo it is $6,000, for an account that is often less work per dollar, not more. Meanwhile the single most valuable sentence an agency can say to a client — "cut this, it is not working" — costs them money to say. Plenty of good operators say it anyway. You are still asking them to be better than their own compensation structure, every month.

What "performance-based" usually means in practice

It sounds like perfect alignment and rarely is. Someone has to define the event that triggers payment, and whoever gets paid on that event now has an interest in producing more of it regardless of quality. Pay per lead and you get leads — including the ones that never answer the phone. It works where revenue tracking is airtight and the payment event is an actual sale. Below that it usually turns into an argument about attribution three months in.

How to choose one, in five steps

Follow these in order. Most bad hires happen because someone started at step three.

Work out what one customer is worth before you talk to anyone
Average sale value, multiplied by how many times a typical customer buys, minus what it costs you to deliver. That single number decides everything downstream: what you can afford to pay per lead, which channels are viable at all, and whether a management fee makes arithmetic sense. Walk into the first call with it written down. An agency that does not ask for it is not going to manage to it.
Shortlist on pricing model first, portfolio second
The pricing model governs the agency's behavior every day of the engagement. A case study governs nothing — it is a selected outcome from a client you cannot call. Decide which model you can live with, then look at who is good inside it. Three candidates is plenty; a shortlist of eight is a way of avoiding a decision.
Send the seven questions in writing and read what comes back
Email them rather than asking on a call. Written answers are more specific, they sit side by side for comparison, and they still exist in month seven when somebody remembers things differently. Vagueness in writing is itself an answer, and it arrives free.
Verify account ownership and the exit before you sign anything
Get it in the contract: the Google Ads account, the Analytics property, the conversion history, the audience lists and the creative are yours and remain yours. Then check the notice period and whether a penalty is attached to it. When leaving is cheap, staying is a decision you keep making rather than a trap you fell into.
Start small and judge on cost per customer, not clicks
One channel, a real budget, 60 to 90 days. Agree in advance on the one metric you will both look at, and make it cost per customer or return on total investment — including the management fee in the denominator. Impressions, clicks and click-through rate are diagnostics for the person running the account, not results for the person paying for it. If the first monthly report leads with impressions, you have learned something useful early.

Seven questions to ask before you sign

Each one has a good answer and a bad answer. The bad answers are the useful part.

1

Who runs my account day to day — name and seniority?

The person who sells is frequently not the person who works. Ask for a name, their years of experience, and how many accounts they handle. A junior carrying twenty-five accounts will touch yours for perhaps twenty minutes a week, and that is not a character flaw, it is a workload. Bad answer: "our team". A team is not accountable to you; a person is.
2

Who owns the ad accounts — and can I see that in writing?

The Google Ads account, Google Analytics, Tag Manager and Meta Business Manager should be created under your business, with you as owner and the agency as a user you can remove in thirty seconds. Bad answer: "we run everything through our MCC, it is more efficient." It is more efficient — at making you expensive to leave.
3

What happens to my data if I leave?

You should keep conversion history, audience and remarketing lists, search term data, creative assets and the tracking setup. That history is what the bidding algorithms learned from, and rebuilding it costs months of budget. Bad answer: anything involving "proprietary" or a rebuild fee.
4

What exactly are you counting as a conversion?

This is the question that reveals whether they are an operator or a reporter. Ask specifically: is a form load a conversion? A phone call under thirty seconds? A chat widget open? Do you deduplicate? Do you import offline conversions when the sale closes later? Bad answer: a number with no definition behind it. Padded conversion counts are the most common way a bad account looks good on paper.
5

What is the notice period, and is there a penalty?

Six and twelve month terms with an early termination fee remain common in the US market. They protect the agency, not you. A confident operator will accept a short written notice period, because their retention plan is the results. Bad answer: "twelve months, because Google Ads takes that long to work." It does not — first leads on Search often arrive in 24 to 48 hours.
6

Does your fee go up when my spend goes up?

Ask it that bluntly, and ask what the fee would be at double your current budget. This is the incentive question in its plainest form. Bad answer: any explanation of why more spend requires proportionally more work. Occasionally true on enormous accounts. Almost never true on a $5,000/mo one.
7

What will you tell me to stop doing?

The best diagnostic in the whole list, because nobody prepares an answer for it. A senior operator will have already spotted something in your setup worth killing — a campaign type that does not suit you, a landing page leaking conversions, a channel that is wrong for your customer. Bad answer: a list of additional things to buy. Marketing improves mostly by subtraction, and someone who only adds has not looked closely.

Four red flags worth walking away over

Not warning signs. Deal-breakers.

"We guarantee X leads a month"

Nobody can honestly guarantee a result in paid media. The outcome depends on your offer, your market, your close rate, seasonality and competitors who raise their bids without consulting you. So a guarantee is one of two things: a closing tactic that will be quietly forgotten, or a commitment that gets met by loosening the definition of a lead until the number arrives. Both cost you the same.

Ad accounts owned by the agency

Campaigns run inside the agency's own manager account, with you given a read-only view or a PDF. When you leave you take nothing: no conversion history, no audience lists, no learning the algorithm has accumulated on your budget. It is presented as convenience. It is a switching cost, and it is deliberate.

Twelve-month lock-ins with a termination fee

The stated reason is that results take time. The real function is retention insurance. Search does not need twelve months to show whether it works — first leads often land in 24 to 48 hours and performance stabilizes in 2 to 4 weeks. A long term with a penalty tells you the agency has decided it needs to hold clients who would otherwise go.

Reporting on impressions and clicks rather than customers

A report that opens with impressions, reach and click-through rate is measuring effort. Those are real diagnostics for the person managing the account, and they are not results for the person paying. If you cannot find "how many customers, at what cost, for what return" on the first page, the report exists to look busy. Ask for a sample report before signing, not after.

What results are realistic, and how long they take

The honest version, with the benchmark numbers attributed so you can go and check them.

The timeline

24–48 hours: on Google Search, first leads often arrive almost immediately, because you are appearing in front of demand that already exists rather than creating it.
2–4 weeks: performance usually stabilizes, once there is enough conversion data for the bidding to optimize against instead of guess.
60–90 days: the fair point to judge the engagement. Enough cycles to separate signal from a good or bad fortnight.
1–3 months: if organic is also in scope, that is when rankings move. Technical SEO and AEO work itself lands in 10–20 business days, and AI citations tend to follow within weeks.

The benchmarks, and how to use them

According to WordStream's 2025–2026 Google Ads benchmarks, the average cost per click across all industries is $5.42 in 2026, up from $5.26 in 2025, and the average conversion rate is 8.18%. Both averages are close to useless on their own, because the spread between industries is enormous:

Cheapest clicks: arts & entertainment at $1.60, restaurants & food at $2.05, travel at $2.12.
Most expensive clicks: legal services at $8.58, dentists and home improvement at $7.85, education at $6.23.
Highest conversion rates: animals & pets at 16.22%, auto repair at 15.51%, education at 13.14%.
Lowest conversion rates: finance & insurance at 2.64%, furniture at 2.99%, careers & employment at 3.05%.

Use these to sanity-check a proposal, not to set a target. A lawyer paying $8.58 a click is normal; a restaurant paying it is not. And a 3% conversion rate is poor for a pet business and good for an insurance one. If an agency quotes you a projected cost per lead without asking what industry you are in, they are quoting the all-industry average at you and hoping.

What good actually looks like

Two real examples from campaigns Gabriel has run. A SaaS fintech in San Francisco went from 12 to 85 qualified leads a month on Google Search with cost per lead down 60% — and most of that came from correcting what the account was counting as a conversion, not from new campaigns. A B2B marketplace in the United States reached 5.2x return on ad spend in 90 days, with the growth coming from cutting the losing half of the keyword set before scaling the half that worked.

Client identities are protected under confidentiality agreements. Paid media results vary by industry, offer and execution — this is what happened, not what anyone can promise you.

When hiring an agency is the wrong move

This section costs us money to publish and it is the most useful part of the page.

Your ad budget is under about $500/mo on Search or $400/mo on Meta. This is arithmetic, not snobbery. At an average $5.42 cost per click, $500 buys roughly 90 clicks in a month. At an 8.18% conversion rate that is about seven conversions — not enough for the bidding algorithms to learn from and not enough for any human to draw a conclusion from either. You would be paying a management fee to watch noise. Put the money into budget first and hire someone once there is data worth managing.
You do not know what a customer is worth. Without that number nobody can tell you whether a $60 lead is a bargain or a disaster. Work it out first; it takes an afternoon and it changes every decision that follows.
Your page does not convert. Sending paid traffic to a page that leaks is the most expensive mistake in this business, and no amount of campaign management fixes it. Fix the page, then buy the traffic.
Nobody can answer the phone. If leads already sit unattended for two days, more leads is not the intervention you need. Speed to first contact usually beats volume.
You are in a category Google restricts. Weapons, tobacco and certain supplements get disapproved regardless of who writes the ad. Any agency that takes the retainer anyway is taking your money.

If two or more of those describe you today, the right move is to fix them and come back. We will tell you that on the call, at our own expense, because a client who should not have hired us cancels in month two anyway.

Who wrote this

How Reyter is set up, since you have read this far

Held to the standard of the guide above, honestly. If another agency answers the seven questions better, hire them — that is a genuinely good outcome for you.

A flat monthly fee, published. $1,200/mo for one channel, $1,900/mo for Google and Meta together, $2,397/mo with the organic and AI visibility layer on top. It does not move when your ad spend moves.
Your ad budget is not billed through us. It goes from your card straight to Google and Meta, on ad accounts registered in your business's name. We never mark it up and never touch the money.
You own everything. Ad accounts, Analytics, conversion history, audiences, creative. We are a user you can remove.
Month to month, 10 days' written notice either way, no penalty. There is a contract — one page, public before you talk to us. What there is not is a lock-in.
The senior who sold it runs it. Five new clients a month is the cap, and it is a capacity number rather than a marketing one.
One-time builds if the foundation is the bottleneck: a landing page from $997, a website from $2,497, an SEO + AEO overhaul from $3,497, with optional maintenance from $497/mo.
No guarantee of a specific result. We will not promise you a number, because nobody honestly can.

Every price we charge, on one page · What Google Ads management includes · Guide: what AEO is and why it matters

— including when the honest answer is that you should not hire anyone yet.

Questions buyers actually ask

How much does a Google Ads agency cost in the United States?

Three common shapes. A percentage of ad spend, usually 10% to 20%, often with a monthly minimum. A flat monthly retainer, commonly $1,000 to $3,000 for a small to mid-sized account. Or hourly, roughly $100 to $250 an hour for consulting rather than ongoing management. None of those include your ad budget, which you pay to Google separately.

Is a percentage of ad spend ever a fair pricing model?

It can be workable on very large accounts where the work genuinely scales with spend. On a small or mid-sized account it mostly creates a conflict: the agency earns more when you spend more, whether or not the spend worked, and every recommendation to cut waste is a recommendation to cut their own invoice. Good people override that incentive. It is still there every day.

What is a good average cost per click on Google Ads?

Across all industries the average is $5.42 in 2026, up from $5.26 in 2025, according to WordStream's 2025-2026 Google Ads benchmarks. The spread matters more than the average: arts and entertainment averages $1.60, restaurants and food $2.05 and travel $2.12, while legal services runs $8.58, dentists and home improvement $7.85 and education $6.23. Compare yourself to your industry, never to the overall average.

What conversion rate should I expect from Google Ads?

The all-industry average is 8.18% in 2026 per WordStream's 2025-2026 Google Ads benchmarks, and the range is enormous. Animals and pets averages 16.22%, auto repair 15.51% and education 13.14%, while finance and insurance sits at 2.64%, furniture at 2.99% and careers at 3.05%. A 4% conversion rate is poor in one category and excellent in another.

How long before a Google Ads agency produces results?

On Google Search the first leads often arrive within 24 to 48 hours, because you are appearing in front of demand that already exists. Performance usually stabilizes over 2 to 4 weeks, once the account has enough conversion data to bid on. Judge the engagement at 60 to 90 days. Judging it at week one tells you about your market, not about the agency.

Should I hire an agency or a freelancer?

A good freelancer is often cheaper and just as skilled, and on a small account that is a real advantage. The trade is continuity and breadth: one person gets sick, takes on a bigger client, or does not also do tracking, landing pages and creative. What actually matters is the seniority of whoever touches the account daily, which is a question you can ask either of them.

What is the minimum ad budget worth hiring an agency for?

Roughly $500 a month on Google Search and $400 on Meta, with about $900 if you want both. Below that there are not enough clicks and conversions in a month to optimize against, so you are paying a management fee to watch noise. Spend the money on the budget first and hire someone once there is data worth managing.

Who should own my Google Ads account?

You, always. The account should be created under your business with you as owner and the agency added as a user you can remove. Same for Google Analytics, Tag Manager and Meta Business Manager. If the agency owns the account, leaving costs you the conversion history, the audience lists and the machine learning that history paid for.

Can an agency guarantee me a number of leads?

No, and an honest one will say so. Results depend on your market, your offer, your close rate, seasonality and competitors who change their bids without asking you. A guarantee is either a sales tactic or an invitation to hit the number with low-quality leads. What can reasonably be guaranteed is process, transparency and your ability to leave.

What is a normal notice period for a Google Ads agency?

Six to twelve month terms are still common in the US market, usually with an early termination fee. Month-to-month with short written notice exists and is worth looking for. Reyter runs on 10 days' written notice from either side with no penalty. There is a contract either way — the question is what leaving costs, not whether paperwork exists.

What should I ask for in the monthly report?

Four things: how many leads or sales came in, what each one cost, what that returned against total investment including the management fee, and what changed in the account this month and why. If the first page of the report is impressions and click-through rate, the report is measuring effort rather than outcome.

How much does Reyter charge?

A flat $1,200 a month for one channel, $1,900 for Google and Meta together, and $2,397 with the organic and AI visibility layer included. One-time builds are separate: a landing page from $997, a website from $2,497, an SEO and AEO overhaul from $3,497. The fee never changes with your ad spend, and your ad budget goes straight from your card to the platforms.

Put us through your own seven questions

Six questions about your budget, what a customer is worth and where the traffic lands. You get a specific recommendation — including "you are not ready to hire anyone yet", when that is the honest answer.

Book the 30-minute call instead

No sales sequence and no pressure on the call. If we are not the right fit we will say so and point you somewhere better.

How to choose a Google Ads agency without regretting it