Have your Google Ads managed – by maitiq

What does Google Ads management at maitiq cost?

The price is set individually per account and scope of services. Relevant factors are the support model, the number and complexity of the accounts, risk and service effort. The management fee and the Google media budget are shown separately. One-off or additional work is itemised separately in the quote.

Illustrative example, no customer data: if a company currently pays CHF 60,000 per year in management fees for a defined scope of services, the benchmark for maitiq is CHF 30,000 for the same scope – the media budget remains the same in both cases. This is an owner statement by maitiq and a worked example, not an observed customer result.

When comparing offers, at least four figures should be kept separate: Google media budget, one-off setup, ongoing management and internal coordination time. Anyone who mixes them cannot fairly compare agency, freelancer, in-house team and managed service.

Reviewing a quote right now? The method for comparing on the same basis – six cost blocks, the implied hourly rate and a fillable worksheet – is in Which costs belong in the comparison?.

Why costs belong in the choice of partner

What matters is not the monthly price but the whole operation: a low retainer does not help if tracking, reporting, campaign maintenance, coordination or internal follow-up work come on top. Conversely, a higher fee is not automatically better if tasks, response times and evidence remain unclear.

So do not compare «CHF per month» alone. Compare a defined operating scope: one-off onboarding, ongoing analysis, concrete proposals, coordination, implementation, reporting, data work, tools and internal time. Advertising spend remains separate from the management fee. Taxes, third-party software and one-off projects get their own lines.

The media budget is not an agency fee: it finances the ad auctions at Google, while the fee pays for the planning, operation, monitoring and further development of the account. Anyone who mixes up the two amounts can neither compare offers nor recognise where a cost reduction arises.

The price alone says little: a low fee can become expensive if measurement, search query monitoring or handover are missing. What matters is the comparable scope of services.

The effort is not determined by the media budget alone: the number of accounts and markets, languages, campaign types, product feeds, tracking dependencies, approval paths, reporting obligations and readiness to respond all play a part as well. A smaller, multilingual account can be more demanding than a larger one with a few stable campaigns. An offer should name these factors instead of hiding them behind «Full Service».

Which costs belong in the comparison?

Create two columns: year one and the following years. Year one contains both the one-off costs – onboarding, audit, measurement concept, account structure, migration, training and initial tools – and the recurring costs: retainer or hours, software, recurring data work, internal reviews and specialists. The following years contain only the recurring costs; the one-off items no longer apply. Count each item only once, either as setup or as transition.

Do not calculate a fictional saving. Enter only documented offers and internal assumptions. Mark empty values as open, not as zero. Compare scenarios with the same advertising spend, the same number of accounts and the same scope of services. A percentage of the advertising budget is only comparable once the minimum, the tier structure, the services included and extraordinary work are known.

Which pricing models do Google Ads agencies use?

Six basic forms are common: fixed price or retainer, a percentage of the media budget, an hourly or daily rate, a project price, performance-based remuneration and hybrids of these. None of them proves good or bad support; each sets different incentives – with the percentage model the fee grows along with the media budget, with a fixed price the scope must be clear enough that efficiency does not turn into under-servicing, with the hourly model a cost ceiling is needed, and with performance-based components success, data source, attribution and corrections must be defined before the contract begins.

The LSA/SWA Sector Indicator 2026 published on 7 January 2026 shows that Swiss advertisers use various models in parallel. In the published evaluation, quotations are named by 46%, agile pricing by 31%, percentage fees by 18%, team hire by 8% and performance-based remuneration by 3%. The figures come from a survey of 145 advertisers in German- and French-speaking Switzerland. They are not added up here: the source does not report them as exclusive market shares. They concern the communications industry in general, not Google Ads, and say nothing about the level of a fee.

The guide to Google Ads agency pricing models adds a decision matrix, contract clauses and a comparison with the sector indicator for each model.

What should the recurring fee include?

A robust quote names not only activities but also responsibility and rhythm: who reviews search queries, budgets, conversion definitions and automation? Which changes require approval? What response time applies to measurement errors or unexpected spend? Which verifiable performance measure is agreed? And who owns the account, the campaign history and the data?

Google documents client account control: the client account keeps its data, and its users can dissolve a manager link with ownership at any time. The practical handover nevertheless belongs in the contract; Google's statement does not prove ownership of external tools or creative assets. The complete offer review with gates and exit conditions is in the offer checklist.

What must the scope of services include?

A reliable scope of services answers at least ten questions:

• Which accounts, campaigns and markets are included?
• Which data sources are read?
• Which tasks are carried out once, weekly and monthly?
• What counts as analysis, what as a proposal and what as implementation?
• Who approves budget, bid, ad and tracking changes?
• Which tasks are explicitly excluded?
• How do errors, outages and missing data become visible?
• Which reports are delivered with which definition?
• How much training and knowledge transfer is included?
• What does termination look like with regard to export, access and documentation?

«Optimisation included» is not a service description. Name the actual work – accounts, campaigns, search queries, budgets, ads, measurement and reporting – and how decisions follow from it. A provider does not have to deliver every specialist area itself; but it must say who is responsible for tracking, landing pages, CRM, legal matters and creative work.

How do you review ongoing management?

Ask about recurring operations, not about a one-off audit slide. A good process starts with available, sufficiently fresh data. It shows which accounts or workflows were excluded and documents why no proposal was made. It separates urgent exceptions from periodic analysis. It keeps the current account status, the proposal, the decision and later evidence apart.

Missing evidence, timeouts, exclusions and empty results remain visible.

How do you assess an implementation partner?

An implementation partner must explain more than the initial configuration. Ask for a plan covering the assessment of the existing setup, access, measurement readiness, pilot, acceptance, operation and handover. Assign every task to a responsible role. Ask which data and systems are actually supported.

Which evidence is meaningful?

Process evidence is more concrete than general promises of success: an example of an anonymised decision log without customer data, an unfilled report template with its metric definitions, a role matrix, a handover checklist and a clear escalation path. References and certificates can complement, but do not replace, the review of the current team and scope. The change history in Google Ads helps to reconstruct many account changes, but it is not a complete internal approval record.

Build a reliable shortlist

Assess must-have criteria first: controlled account rights, suitable specialist roles, evidenced limits of the measurement, documented decision and approval steps and an agreed handover process. A provider that cannot evidence a must-have criterion should not qualify just because it scores well on other criteria. Only then compare working method, specialisation, response times and costs.

Hold the same case-based interview with all candidates. Present a synthetic account situation with missing tracking, budget deviation and an unclear search term. Ask which evidence is needed first and when no change is deliberately made. The quality of the follow-up questions and the documented clarification steps is more meaningful than a spontaneous optimisation list.