The Best PPC Agency for You Depends on One Number

I read the pages ranking for “best ppc agency” before writing this. Position two is a directory that sorts firms by review count. Two more are listicles, and the one at position seven opens by naming the company that publishes it. Three more results are Reddit and Quora threads. Not one of them tells you what any of these firms charge, and not one names a single case where a given agency is the wrong hire.

Those are the only two questions that matter when you are the one signing. So this is a roundup organised by what you are actually choosing between, with the fee model for each and the conditions under which each is a mistake. I run one of these businesses, so I have put myself in it, last, with the cases where you should hire somebody else.

So which is the best PPC agency?

There is no best PPC agency, and the number that decides which type fits you is your monthly ad spend. Under roughly $5,000 a month, a full-service agency’s minimum fee will eat the margin the work is supposed to produce. Between roughly $5,000 and $100,000 a month, an independent consultant or a small specialist shop is usually the best value, because the person you met is the person doing the work. Above that, you are buying capacity and process as much as skill, and the larger firms start to earn their fee.

That is the whole answer. Pay‑per‑click, if the term is new to you, just means you are charged when somebody clicks your ad rather than when they see it — Google Ads, Microsoft Ads and most of Meta’s inventory work this way. The rest of this post is the detail behind that recommendation and the checks that stop you signing a bad one.

The five types you are actually choosing between

Five kinds of supplier compete for this work. Each one genuinely wins a row, and the losing column is the one the listicles leave out.

The named firms are there as examples of a type, described in their own published words, not as a ranking. Directive states plainly that it is a business‑to‑business marketing agency, which is useful information: if you sell swimwear, that is a reason to look elsewhere, and it is to their credit that they say so on the homepage. I have written the longer version of the last two rows in in‑house versus agency versus consultant.

What does a PPC agency actually charge?

Most charge either a flat monthly fee or a percentage of what you spend on ads, and the two incentivise opposite behaviour. WebFX, one of the few large firms that publishes any number at all, lists PPC services starting at $750 a month and puts the usual management fee at 10% to 20% of ad spend. Most of the firms in that SERP publish nothing and route you to a sales call.

• Percentage of spend. Simple, and the model with the obvious flaw: the only lever that reliably raises the fee is raising your budget. Cutting waste cuts their income.
• Flat monthly fee. Predictable, and neutral on budget — the recommendation to spend less costs them nothing. The risk is the opposite one, that a fixed fee on a growing account quietly stops being good value for either side.
• Hourly. Honest for a defined project such as an audit or a rebuild. A poor fit for ongoing management, where the valuable hours are few and the routine ones are many.
• Performance‑based. Rare, and rarely what it sounds like. The measure is usually a platform‑reported conversion number the agency also controls the settings for.

Whichever model you are quoted, ask what happens to the fee if you halve your spend. The answer tells you more about the incentive than the contract does. My own numbers are on the what Google Ads costs a Shopify store page.

What does a Google Partner badge actually prove?

It proves spend volume and exam passes, not results for you. Google’s published requirements to become a Partner are a 90‑day ad spend of $10,000 across managed accounts, a minimum optimization score of 70%, and at least 50% of account strategists certified in Google Ads.

Read those three again. The spend bar is cleared by having clients, not by serving them well. The certification is a multiple‑choice exam. Optimization score is Google’s own measure of how closely an account follows Google’s own recommendations — a number any agency can raise by accepting suggestions, some of which are broad match keywords and budget increases. A badge is a floor, not a signal. It rules out the firm that has never run an account, and that is all it does.

Who should not hire an agency at all?

Anyone spending under about $2,000 a month, and anyone who has not yet sold the product profitably through any channel. Below that spend there is not enough data in the account for anybody to manage it well, and a management fee on top of a small budget usually means more than a third of your marketing money is being paid to a person rather than to Google.

The second case is the more expensive mistake. Advertising is amplification. If the product, the price or the page does not convert traffic you already have, paid traffic converts no better and costs more. I have turned down accounts for this reason and it is almost always the right call for both sides.

Where I am the wrong choice

I am one person, and that is a real constraint, not a humble‑brag. Do not hire me if you need guaranteed coverage while I am away, a team that can absorb a sudden tenfold budget increase, or work in languages I do not read. Do not hire me for business‑to‑business lead generation with a long sales cycle; that is a different craft and Directive and firms like it do it properly.

Do not hire me if what you want is a weekly deck. I write short updates and spend the time in the account instead, which suits some owners and frustrates others. And if you are a large brand that needs a procurement‑friendly supplier with insurance schedules and a named account team, a bigger firm will make your life easier. The cases where I am the right call are narrow and specific: direct‑to‑consumer stores, usually on Shopify, spending roughly $5,000 to $100,000 a month, where the owner wants the person doing the work on the call. The results page shows the accounts that shape looks like.

What should I check before I sign anything?

Make sure you own the advertising account, and that you hold admin access to it. This is the single most common way stores get hurt, and no page ranking for this query mentions it. If the agency creates the Google Ads account under its own ownership, your campaign history, your conversion data and your audience lists leave with them.

Google documents five access levels for a Google Ads account: email‑only, billing, read‑only, standard and admin. Only admin can grant access, change other people’s access levels, and accept or reject manager account link requests. You want admin on your own account, with the agency linked to it as a manager. That arrangement costs nothing, changes nothing about how the work is done, and means a bad breakup is an inconvenience rather than a restart.

1. Confirm the account is registered to your company email, not the agency’s.
2. Confirm you personally hold admin access, and check it again after onboarding finishes.
3. Ask for the notice period and what happens to the account on the day the contract ends.
4. Ask who specifically will be in the account each week, by name and by job title.
5. Ask for one example of a client they told to spend less, and what happened.

How do I know if it is working?

Compare total revenue against total advertising spend for the whole business, monthly, and ignore the dashboard for the first quarter. The platform‑reported return inside Google Ads counts conversions Google attributes to itself, which is a number your agency has a great deal of influence over and you have almost none.

The honest version is arithmetic you can do yourself: take what the business banked this month, divide it by everything you paid every ad platform this month, and watch that one ratio over six months. It will be lower than the dashboard. It is the one that pays salaries. If a prospective agency objects to being measured that way, that is the answer to your question.

On timing, be patient but not indefinitely patient. Expect a month of setup and learning, a second month where you can see whether the direction is right, and a decision point somewhere in month four. Anyone promising a specific return before they have seen your account is guessing, and anyone still asking for patience in month six has run out of it.

Questions people ask