If you are actively evaluating a pay per click advertising company right now, you are probably past the awareness phase. You know what PPC is, you have a rough budget in mind, and you want to know what separates a strong agency from one that burns your spend and points to click volume as evidence of success.
This guide covers the decision practically: how a PPC advertising company differs from a freelancer or in-house team, what the major agency models look like, what to verify before signing, how pricing structures work, and the red flags that are worth walking away from.
Pay-per-click advertising is the model where advertisers pay each time a user clicks on an ad. The paid search channel runs primarily on Google Ads and Microsoft Ads, though the same CPC model also governs paid social placements on Meta, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
A pay per click advertising company manages that complexity on your behalf. In practice, this includes campaign architecture (how accounts, campaigns, and ad groups are structured), keyword selection and match type strategy, bid management, ad copy testing, landing page alignment, conversion tracking, and reporting. At a well-run shop, all of these functions are connected. Bidding decisions feed landing page tests. Keyword data informs creative. Attribution reporting shapes where budget expands and where it pulls back.
Where a PPC company differs from an in-house hire or a freelancer is primarily in platform depth, team structure, and accountability. A strong agency has specialists who run accounts across dozens of clients in your vertical, which compresses the learning curve. An in-house hire can own context and relationships, but takes months to ramp and carries fixed cost regardless of performance. A freelancer offers flexibility but typically lacks the process infrastructure to run campaigns at scale or respond quickly when something breaks.
None of these options is universally superior. The right structure depends on your team's existing capabilities, your ad spend volume, and how much internal bandwidth you have for oversight.
The market for paid advertising agencies has matured, and there are now fairly distinct models worth understanding before you start conversations.
These firms run paid search alongside paid social, SEO, email, and sometimes conversion rate optimization under one roof. The advantage is integration: a team that understands your full funnel can make smarter decisions about where to invest. The trade-off is that PPC may not be the deepest capability in the house. If your primary need is Google Ads management at scale, a generalist firm may underperform a specialist on pure execution.
These agencies focus exclusively on paid search and sometimes paid social. They often run more disciplined testing frameworks, deeper negative keyword management, and tighter bid logic because paid media is their entire practice. The limitation is that they rarely think beyond the channel, which can lead to disconnected strategy if you also need organic growth or lifecycle marketing.
A subset of PPC specialists focus on a single platform, often Google Ads or Meta. For brands where one channel dominates revenue, this can be the right fit. For brands with multi-channel needs, it creates fragmentation across vendors and reporting systems.
Our PPC agency guide covers how to match agency type to your stage and spend level in more detail. If Google Ads is your primary channel, the Google Ads agency guide addresses platform-specific evaluation criteria.
When you start talking to agencies, three structural factors reveal more than any case study or pitch deck.
Google runs a certification program through Skillshop, and agencies that maintain Google Partner or Premier Partner status have cleared minimum ad spend thresholds and passed platform exams. Premier Partner status — granted to the top 3% of partners in each country — requires demonstrated client growth and retention in addition to spend minimums. Google's Partner program criteria are published and worth reviewing before you ask an agency about their status.
Certification is not a performance guarantee. An uncertified freelancer can outperform a certified agency on a given account. But certification does indicate that the agency has a real book of business and that their team stays current on platform changes, which in Google Ads is not trivial.
This is a non-negotiable. You should own your Google Ads account, your conversion tracking properties, and your audience lists. An agency should have access to your account, not the reverse. If an agency runs campaigns in their own manager account and you have read-only or no access, that is a structural problem: you lose your data, your history, and your audiences if the relationship ends. Verify this before you sign.
Strong agencies report on cost per acquisition, revenue attributed to paid, and return on ad spend — not just impressions, clicks, and CTR. They share campaign-level and ad group-level data, not just rolled-up summaries. And they connect paid performance to your CRM or analytics stack so you can see how paid leads move through pipeline.
For a comparison of how top-performing shops approach account structure and measurement, our best PPC agency comparison walks through the evaluation framework in detail.
Pricing structures vary significantly across the market, and the model shapes incentives in ways worth understanding.
The most common structure. Retainers for PPC management typically range from $2,500 to $8,000 per month for growth-stage brands, depending on scope, platform count, and account complexity. Retainers provide predictable agency revenue, which generally correlates with stable account staffing. The risk is that a flat fee creates no direct incentive to grow your results once the account is stable.
Common for larger accounts. Agencies typically charge 10 to 20 percent of managed spend, with minimums that vary by firm. This model aligns the agency's revenue with the scale of your investment, but it can create pressure to maintain or increase spend even when the marginal return on additional budget is diminishing. Watch for agencies that resist pulling back spend when efficiency deteriorates.
A growing model, especially among buyers who want shared risk. Structures include cost per qualified lead, revenue share (commonly 10 to 20 percent), or a base retainer plus performance bonuses. These models work well when attribution is clean and the agency has meaningful influence over the full conversion path. They work poorly when your sales cycle is long, your CRM is messy, or your landing pages are outside the agency's control.
Appropriate for discrete scopes: a Google Ads account audit, a campaign architecture buildout, or a landing page testing sprint. Useful when you have in-house execution capacity but need outside expertise for a specific phase.
Our PPC management companies overview covers how different pricing models play out across agency tiers and spend levels.
Most bad agency relationships are predictable. These signals appear early, usually in the sales process or in the first month of engagement.
Reporting in vanity metrics. If the first deliverable is a report dominated by impressions, reach, and click volume with no mention of CPA, ROAS, or revenue, that is the reporting you will get for the life of the engagement. Agencies that have confidence in their results lead with business outcomes.
No access to your own account. Any agency that wants to run your campaigns in their own account, or that delays providing you admin access, is structuring the relationship to benefit themselves at your expense.
Guaranteed results. No ethical agency can guarantee specific ROAS, CPAs, or rankings before they have run a day of campaigns in your account. Guarantees are a sales tactic, not an operational commitment.
One-size strategy across clients. If the agency can't explain how your campaign architecture differs from a client in a different category, they are likely running a templated approach. PPC strategy should reflect your margin structure, conversion funnel, competitive landscape, and seasonality.
Opaque fee structures. Legitimate agencies have clear contracts with defined scope, management fees separated from ad spend, and explicit terms around what happens to your account data if the engagement ends.
The first 60 to 90 days with a pay per click advertising company reveals whether they are actually structured to run accounts well or just to close business. A credible onboarding sequence typically includes:
Audit phase (weeks 1 to 2). The agency reviews your existing account structure, conversion tracking, audience setup, and historical performance data. If you are starting from scratch, they build a baseline from competitive research and keyword analysis.
Strategy alignment (week 2 to 3). The team presents their campaign architecture recommendations, targeting approach, and initial budget allocation. This is where you verify that they understand your margin structure and conversion economics, not just your ad spend budget.
Build and launch (weeks 3 to 4). Campaigns are built, tracking is verified end-to-end, and ads go live. A strong agency will not launch without confirming that conversion tracking is firing accurately, because bad data corrupts every optimization decision downstream.
Optimization cadence (months 2 and 3). Weekly or biweekly calls, regular negative keyword additions, A/B tests on ad copy and landing pages, and bid adjustments based on actual performance data. The agency should be making discrete, documented changes with clear rationale, not treating your account as a black box.
If you are evaluating multiple firms at this stage, our paid search agency guide includes a side-by-side comparison of how different engagement models approach account ramp and ongoing optimization.
The right pay per click advertising company for your business depends on three variables: your current spend level and how much you expect to scale it, your internal marketing team's capacity to provide strategic input and oversight, and the channel mix you need covered.
For brands spending under $20,000 per month in ad spend, a specialist boutique or a full-service growth agency with a dedicated paid search practice will generally outperform a large generalist shop where your account is managed by a junior team member. For brands at $50,000 per month or above, Premier Partner agencies with vertical-specific experience and dedicated account teams become worth the premium.
In either case, the evaluation questions that matter most are not about awards or client logos. They are about who will manage your account day-to-day, what your reporting will look like, whether you own your data, and how the agency has handled underperformance in the past.
EmberTribe runs paid search for DTC brands and growth-stage companies with a performance lens from the first week: cost-per-acquisition targets set at onboarding, full account ownership transferred to the client, and reporting that connects ad spend to revenue without burying the numbers in click metrics. If you are comparing options and want to understand how that approach maps to your specific situation, we are happy to walk through it.
Further reading: PPC advertising services explained and Google Ads management services.
This is the first installment of a tutorial video series called, Quick Tip Tuesday #QTT! It's a weekly series of videos that bring you highly actionable advertising tactics in 90 seconds or less.
In this first episode of "Quick Tip Tuesday", we'll walk you through how Facebook advertisers can grow their audience for free while they run their campaigns.
If you want to make the most of your campaigns, spending 10 minutes or less each week, this tip is for you!
💡 Boost your Custom Audience match rate with this quick tutorial. →
Hey there, in this quick video I wanna show you how you can get more mileage out of your Facebook advertising campaigns without spending more money and really spending no more than 10 minutes a week.
This is going to make your advertising campaign more effective, it's going to let you take advantage of interacting with some of the people who have been interested in your ads, but haven't taken action yet.
So let's take a look.
The beauty of running Facebook ads is that it's a social platform, so as you run ads, people are going to start liking and sharing your ads. So what I want to show you is in three easy steps, how to make the most of when people engage with your ad.
Step one is you have to find your ad in the Ad Manager. Now, we're gonna click Preview which is that little eyeball in the upper right.
Okay that this point, scroll down and click the link where it says View Post Permalink with Comments. Okay, (step two) the next thing that you're gonna do is go down here.
You're going to see where people have liked or engaged with your ad.
Now step three, there's an option here to invite the people who have liked this post.
Now here's the beauty of this; you might have paid for the ad to get it out there and to get it in front of people, but inviting people to like your page is actually completely free.
Now great, six people, big deal. We attracted some new followers to the page, but what if you have an ad that you run for a lot longer and say there's like a thousand or so people who liked it?
Well now you can go through and start inviting all sorts of people who have engaged with your ad and showed interest in the content that you're sharing. When you've built up a decent amount of social proof (which is basically digital advertising gold), you can reuse that ad with social proof for different audiences.
So use this tactic to make the most out of your Facebook advertising by inviting people for free to your site to like your page.
Most advertisers pour budget into Google Search and Display campaigns while overlooking one of the most targeted placements in the entire Google Ads ecosystem: Gmail. Google Sponsored Promotion (GSP) ads appear directly in a user's Gmail Promotions tab, formatted to look like a native email. When a user clicks the collapsed ad, it expands into a full-width creative that can include images, video, and a clear call to action.
The strategic advantage of Gmail ads is simple. Because you can target users based on the emails they receive, you can place your brand directly in front of people who are already engaged with your competitors or complementary products. You are not interrupting a random browsing session. You are reaching someone who has an active relationship with a company in your space and showing them a better alternative.
For brands looking to grow market share without inflating search CPCs, Gmail ads offer a low-cost, high-intent channel that most competitors are not even thinking about.
The real power of GSP ads is not the ad format itself. It is the targeting model. There are two categories of businesses you should be targeting with Gmail campaigns:
Complements are businesses, tools, or services that your target audience uses alongside your product. They are not direct competitors, but they serve the same buyer profile. For example, if you sell a landing page builder, your complements might include email marketing platforms like Mailchimp, ConvertKit, or ActiveCampaign. Users of those tools almost certainly need a landing page solution, making them a high-quality audience.
Competitors are the brands that sell directly against you. By targeting their domain in your Gmail campaign, your ad will appear in the inboxes of users who receive their marketing emails, onboarding sequences, and promotional offers. This is the digital equivalent of placing a billboard outside your competitor's storefront, except it is personalized, measurable, and far less expensive.
The combination of complement and competitor targeting gives you access to a pre-qualified audience. These users have already demonstrated interest in your category through their existing email subscriptions and purchasing behavior.
Gmail campaigns should not operate in isolation. They work best as part of a multi-channel growth marketing strategy where each channel plays a distinct role:
By positioning Gmail ads in the awareness-to-consideration phase, you create an additional touchpoint that warms up prospects before they ever search for your brand or product category.
Follow these steps to create your first GSP campaign targeting competitor and complement audiences.
In your Google Ads account, click "Create a New Campaign" and select "Display Network Only." Gmail ads run through the Display network, so this is your starting point.
Enter your campaign name, select your target location, and set your bidding strategy and daily budget. For Gmail campaigns, start with a Manual CPC bidding strategy so you maintain control over costs while gathering initial performance data. A daily budget of $20 to $50 is a reasonable starting point for testing.
Click "Save and continue" to move to the ad group configuration.
Create a naming convention that maps each ad group to a specific competitor or complement. For example: "GSP - Competitor - Mailchimp" or "GSP - Complement - LeadPages." This structure makes it easy to compare performance across targets and scale the campaign over time.
Start with a max CPC between $0.10 and $0.50. Gmail clicks tend to be significantly cheaper than Search clicks, so you do not need to bid aggressively to win placements. You can adjust bids up or down based on initial performance.
Under targeting options, choose "Display keywords" and enter the website URL of your competitor or complement. This is the critical step that defines who sees your ad.
When you enter a domain like "mailchimp.com" as a display keyword, Google will show your ad to Gmail users who have received emails from that domain. This is how you reach an audience that is already engaged with a competing or complementary brand.
Click "Narrow your targeting further" and choose "Placements" as your targeting method. This is a step many advertisers miss, and skipping it will cause your ads to show across the entire Display network rather than exclusively in Gmail.
Search for "mail.google.com" and add it as your placement target. This ensures your ads appear only within Gmail inboxes and nowhere else on the Display network.
Click "Save and continue." On the Ad Creation page, click "Skip ad creation." Gmail ads cannot be created in the standard ad builder, so you will need to use the Ad Gallery.
Navigate to the "Ads" tab in your account, click the red "Ad" button, and select "Ad Gallery" from the dropdown menu.
In the Ad Gallery, click "Gmail Ads" to access the Gmail-specific ad templates.
Select "Gmail image template" for the simplest and most effective format. Other template options are available, but the image template provides the best combination of visual impact and ease of setup.
Fill in the template fields:
One of the strongest advantages of Gmail ads is the ability to split-test variations of every element. Create at least two to three versions with different subject lines, images, and descriptions. Test one variable at a time to isolate what drives performance.
Click "Save" to finalize your ad. Your campaign is now live and will begin serving to Gmail users who match your targeting criteria.
Your Gmail ad appears alongside real emails. If your subject line reads like an advertisement, users will skip it. Study the subject line patterns that perform well in email marketing: curiosity-driven questions, specific numbers, and clear benefit statements all tend to outperform generic promotional copy.
The expanded Gmail ad is only the first click. If users land on a generic homepage after clicking a specific offer, you will lose them. Create dedicated landing pages that match the messaging and offer in your Gmail ad. This alignment improves both conversion rates and Quality Score.
Once you validate that your initial targets are producing cost-efficient clicks and conversions, expand your campaign by adding new competitor and complement domains as separate ad groups. Each new domain you add opens up an entirely new audience segment.
Performance will vary significantly across targets. A competitor with a large, engaged email list will generate more impressions and clicks than a smaller complement. Review performance at the ad group level weekly and adjust bids to allocate more budget toward your top-performing targets.
Gmail ad clicks are top-of-funnel interactions. Most users will not convert on the first visit. Make sure your remarketing pixel fires on the landing page so you can follow up with Display, Search, and social remarketing ads that bring these users back to convert.
Gmail ads do not generate the immediate volume of Search campaigns or the flashy creative opportunities of video and social ads. They are a surgical targeting tool that delivers incremental reach at a fraction of the cost. Because they require a different setup workflow and a targeting mindset rooted in competitive intelligence, most advertisers never bother.
That is exactly why they work. Low competition means lower CPCs, higher impression share, and the opportunity to reach your competitors' most engaged audiences before they even start searching for alternatives.
If you are looking for new growth channels that deliver qualified traffic without bidding wars, Gmail ads deserve a place in your paid media mix.
Growing up, I loved visiting my grandparents out in the country.
One humid August afternoon, I grabbed a pail and headed out to the farm. It was blueberry season. If I could bring back enough blueberries to Grandma's kitchen, it would turn into pie (aka a slice of heaven on earth).
So I picked blueberries like a madman that day, furiously grabbing at the bushes. But no matter how hard I worked, the pail would barely fill.
It was far too late before I noticed the quarter-sized hole in my pail. A cluster of blueberries trailed behind me, never to be recovered again.
Here's a troubling fact: 95% of the visitors who reach your website will never come back again.
That's not a quarter-sized hole in your pail, it's a crater.
Of course, the 95% rule will vary depending on your industry. If you want a quick gut check on where you stand, just open up your Google Analytics profile and look at the ratio between new/returning visitors.
Wherever the numbers fall for your site, the story is probably the same: the majority of people aren't coming back.
You've worked so hard to drive traffic to your site. Furiously writing content, hustling on social media and even paying for visitors.
But that hard work is wasted when users visit your site, don't convert, then leave and never come back.
Most marketers make the mistake of treating their visitors as a "disposable audience". Our answer to losing 95% of our blueberries is to...pick more and more blueberries.
There's a better way to fix this problem and it can lead to explosive growth for your business.
Retargeting is a tool that's been around for awhile now, but a lot of marketers still haven't put it into practice.
Retargeting, also known as "remarketing", is a way to stay in front of your prospective customers with display ads that follow them around the web.
Ever shop online? You've probably been retargeted. Let's say you've been window shopping for a new laptop. Somehow, magically, that same laptop starts showing up in your Facebook news feed, on the sidebar of some random blog you're reading, etc.
It's not a coincidence, it's retargeting!
There are two ways to approach retargeting:
Site-Based: Site-based retargeting is the most common approach. When a user visits your site, they are "tagged" (cookied) through a pixel provided by a retargeting platform. Once a user is tagged, you'll be able to serve them ads throughout a broad network of websites and apps.
The beauty of this approach is that you can set up refined campaigns based on the pages that users did (or didn't) view. For example, a user reached a checkout page but did not complete their order.
Why didn't they buy? Maybe they didn't have their credit card on hand, maybe they ran out of time, maybe they wanted to shop around. Whatever the reason, retargeting gives you a second, third, fourth chance to close the deal.
List-Based: List-based retargeting is also known as "custom audience targeting" and "CRM Retargeting". Unlike site-based retargeting, which targets visitors of specific pages on your site, list-based retargeting uses email addresses.
With site-based retargeting, users are tagged directly when they interact with your site. With the list-based approach, a retargeting vendor will use a network of data partners to tag a user based on their email address.
Image credit: Retargeter
The applications are endless. Do you want to re-awaken cold leads that haven't visited your site in awhile? Segment your list and get back in front of them. Want to up-sell existing customers or advertise a complementary product? List-based retargeting is a powerful tool at your disposal.
Retargeting isn't just a tactic to increase sales. It can be used to build brand awareness and amplify your content marketing efforts.
A key ingredient to building trust with your audience is to get repeat visits to your site. The more value you can provide with free content upfront, the more people will trust your brand.
Larry Kim of Wordstream implemented retargeting to re-engage their blog visitors. They saw a 50% lift in repeat visits once retargeting ran its course.
Site-based retargeting is a powerful way to re-engage your audience. If your blog is organized by categories in the URL, like, "YourDomain.com/blog/PPC/Blog-Post", it's easy to create retargeting rules that promote new content to past site visitors based on what they've read previously.
For example, create a retargeting rule that serves ads to visitors who read anything on your blog in the "PPC" category over the last 90 days. Did you just publish a new blog post that fits into that category? Serve ads to those audience segments and jumpstart traffic to your post.
Worried about breaking the bank for something that doesn't necessarily have a direct impact on sales?
Good news. Getting people back to your site is typically less expensive than getting them there in the first place. I say "typically", because costs will vary between ad exchanges and there's always an exception to the rule.
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