PPC Management: Fees, Work and Reporting
PPC management is the ongoing work of running paid search and shopping ads: research, campaign build, bidding, ad testing, landing page feedback and reporting. Agencies charge a flat monthly fee, a percentage of ad spend, or a mix of both. Each model can be fair. What matters is that the work is written down, you own the ad account, and reports tie spend to leads or sales.
Pay-per-click advertising is simple to start and easy to waste money on. Anyone can open a Google Ads account and run a campaign in an afternoon. Keeping cost per lead under control month after month is a different job, and it is the job you hire a PPC manager to do.
This guide explains what PPC management includes, how agencies charge for it, how to judge whether a fee is fair, and what good reporting looks like. It applies to Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising, and the principles carry over to paid social.
What PPC management includes
A competent manager handles five kinds of work:
- Research. Keywords, search intent, competitors’ ads and the realistic cost of a click in your market.
- Build. Campaign structure, ad groups, ads, extensions (assets), conversion tracking and audiences.
- Optimisation. Bids, budgets, negative keywords, search term reviews and device or location adjustments.
- Testing. New ad copy, landing page variants and bidding strategies, one change at a time.
- Reporting. What was spent, what it produced and what happens next.
The balance between these changes over time. The first months of a new account are heavy on research, build and tracking. Once the structure is sound, the work shifts to steady optimisation and testing. A proposal that charges the same for both phases is not wrong, but it is worth asking how the hours are spent once the build is finished, and what the manager will do when results flatten.
If you sell products online, ask whether shopping campaigns and the product feed are included. Feed quality (titles, images, prices and stock status) often matters as much as bids, and some agencies treat it as a separate job.
Two things often sit just outside the fee and are worth asking about: landing page changes, and conversion tracking fixes on your website. Without both, the best-run account still struggles.
Fee models explained
There are three common ways to charge. None is automatically better.
| Model | How it works | Works well when | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flat monthly fee | Fixed fee regardless of spend | Spend is stable and the scope is clear | Fee stays the same if the work shrinks |
| Percentage of spend | Fee is a share of monthly ad spend | Spend varies with seasons or growth | Incentive to recommend higher budgets |
| Hybrid | Base fee plus a percentage above a spend threshold | Accounts that may grow quickly | Complicated invoices, unclear thresholds |
| Setup fee | One-off charge for research, build and tracking | New accounts or messy rebuilds | Paying twice if the agency changes |
What published pricing shows
Most published figures come from agencies selling PPC, so treat them as indicative bands rather than survey data:
- In the UK, agencies commonly charge 10 to 20% of spend, or a flat £300 to £2,000 a month (Advertizingly). One UK agency lists PPC management at £98 a month as an add-on (RWD).
- In India, 10 to 20% of spend is described as common, with Bangalore agencies at 15 to 25% (OneCity), and flat fees from ₹8,000 to ₹40,000 a month at the small end (upgrowth).
Remember that these are management fees only. Every click is paid to Google or Microsoft on top.
How to judge whether a fee is fair
Compare fees against work and results, not against each other:
- Ask for hours or tasks per month. How often are search terms reviewed? How many ad tests run each month?
- Work out the fee as a share of spend, even for a flat fee, so you can compare models on equal terms.
- Check minimum spend and minimum term. A low fee with a long lock-in may cost more than a higher fee with a short notice period.
- Ask what is excluded. Landing pages, tracking fixes, creative and shopping feeds are often extra.
- Agree the measure of success. Cost per lead, cost per sale or return on ad spend, written into the proposal.
Ownership and access
The ad account, the conversion data and the history inside it are valuable. They should belong to you.
Google’s help page on access levels in a Google Ads account describes several roles, from email-only and read-only through standard to admin, with admin holding full control, including who else has access. A sound setup looks like this:
- The account is created in your organisation’s name, with your billing details
- You hold admin access; the agency has standard access or links through its manager account
- Conversion actions, Google Analytics and Merchant Center are in your name
- Ad copy, keyword lists and landing pages remain yours if you leave
- The agency agrees in writing to hand over the account intact at the end
Be cautious of any agency that runs ads from its own account and will not transfer it.
What good PPC reporting looks like
A good monthly report is short, honest and tied to money:
| Section | What it should show |
|---|---|
| Headline numbers | Spend, conversions, cost per conversion, revenue or lead value, against last month and last year |
| By campaign | Which campaigns produced results and which used budget without return |
| Search terms | New negative keywords added and new opportunities found |
| Tests | What was tested, the result, and what was kept |
| Next month | Planned changes and any budget recommendation, with the reason |
Warning signs include reports that lead with impressions and clicks, conversion counts that do not match your enquiries or sales, and recommendations to raise budget with no evidence behind them. If tracking is unreliable, fixing it comes before anything else; web analytics set-up is often the first job in a new account.
The landing page is half the result
Ads bring the click; the page earns the enquiry. Google’s Quality Score includes landing page experience, which its help centre describes as how relevant and useful the page is to people who click the ad. A strong account sending traffic to a slow, generic home page will underperform a modest account sending traffic to a focused page that matches the search.
Our landing page best practices guide covers message match, speed, forms and testing. If you need pages built for campaigns, see our landing page design service.
Questions to ask before you sign
- Who will manage the account day to day, and how much experience do they have in my sector?
- Which fee model do you use, and what exactly does it cover?
- What is the minimum term and notice period?
- Will I own the account and all the data in it?
- How will you track calls, forms and sales?
- What will you change in the first month?
How Hostlyx manages PPC
Hostlyx is a Zorixo Services company with its delivery team in Bengaluru, India. Customers in the UK and US are invoiced by Zorixo Ventures Ltd, a UK company, through Stripe, in GBP or USD. We offer PPC management and Google Ads management, and because we also build websites, we can fix tracking and landing pages without a second supplier.
Accounts stay in your name, and each proposal states the fee model and the monthly work in writing.
Get a fixed quote
Tell us your monthly ad budget, your target customers and how you measure a good lead. We will reply with a fixed written proposal that states the fee, the work included each month and how we will report on it.