PPC Management Pricing
How PPC Management Fees Actually Work
Percentage of spend, flat fee, or hybrid — the three models, what sits inside each, what drives the number up or down, and what is never bundled into it. Plus every rate we publish: WorkspaceCMS PPC Local campaigns from $499/month, and custom-scoped eCommerce PPC built from our $185/hour rate.
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Two Numbers, Not One
Almost every confused PPC pricing conversation comes from collapsing two separate numbers into one. There is media spend — the money that goes to Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon or LinkedIn, billed by those platforms to accounts you own. And there is the management fee — what an agency charges to plan, build, measure and improve the campaigns that spend it. They are different line items, they scale for different reasons, and an agency that quotes them as a single blended figure has made it impossible for you to tell which one is working.
This page covers the second number. It explains the three fee models the industry actually uses, what work sits inside a management fee, the variables that move it, and what should always sit outside it — then publishes the two rate ladders we actually sell against. One is a fixed campaign ladder for local businesses running on WorkspaceCMS, starting at $499/month. The other is a custom scope for eCommerce and national programs, built from hours at $185/hour and benchmarked against the same tier logic as our published SEO retainers.
Fee Models
Percentage of Spend vs Flat Fee vs Hybrid
All three are legitimate. Each one creates a different incentive, and the right choice depends on how stable your budget is and how much of the work scales with it.
Percentage of ad spend
The fee is a defined percentage of the media you run through the accounts each month, invoiced separately from the media itself.
Fits: Accounts where budget moves a lot month to month — seasonal retail, promotional calendars, brands scaling a proven channel.
Watch for: The incentive points at spend, not profit. It only stays honest when the contract also names the outcome the spend is supposed to produce (ROAS, CPA, qualified-lead volume) and when scaling budget genuinely creates more work — more campaigns, more creative, more feed surface.
Flat monthly fee
A fixed retainer covering a written scope: named channels, a named campaign count, a named reporting and optimization cadence.
Fits: Accounts with steady budgets and a stable scope — lead-gen programs, B2B, single-channel search accounts, and any client who needs a predictable line in the budget.
Watch for: Scope is the whole contract. If the retainer doesn't say which channels are inside it, what happens when you add a second country, or how a landing-page build is handled, the disagreement arrives in month three instead of month zero.
Hybrid
A flat base that funds the always-on work — account hygiene, reporting, strategy time — plus a variable component tied either to spend above a threshold or to a performance target.
Fits: Accounts that are growing but not yet predictable, and accounts where one channel is mature and another is being launched.
Watch for: The variable half has to be measurable from a source both sides can see. A performance component keyed to a metric only one party can define is not a pricing model, it's an argument on a schedule.
A fourth arrangement — pure pay-for-performance, where the agency is paid only on results — sounds attractive and is usually a poor fit for paid media. The agency controls the auction; it does not control your pricing, stock, delivery times, sales team response, or site experience. When one party carries all the risk for outcomes it only partly controls, it manages toward the cheapest measurable conversion rather than toward revenue.
Scope
What Sits Inside a Management Fee
Whichever model you choose, the fee is buying the same categories of work. When you compare two proposals, compare these five — not the headline number.
Strategy and account architecture
Campaign and asset-group structure, match-type and intent mapping, audience and geo segmentation, budget arbitration across channels, and the quarterly plan that decides where the next dollar goes.
Build and iteration
Ad copy and creative variants, extension and asset coverage, testing calendars, negative-keyword and search-term work, bid-strategy selection and tuning, budget pacing.
Feed and catalogue work
For any account running Shopping or Performance Max, feed quality is the campaign. Title and attribute optimization, disapproval triage, and Merchant Center hygiene are ongoing work, not a one-time setup task.
Measurement
Conversion tracking that is actually trustworthy — enhanced conversions, server-side tagging, GA4 alignment, offline-conversion import for lead-gen. Every bid strategy is downstream of this. Bad signal makes every other line item on this page pointless.
Reporting and review
A recurring report that reconciles to the platform, a call cadence, and a named strategist who can explain what changed and why.
Two of those deserve their own pages: Google Shopping feed management covers the catalogue side, and conversion optimization covers what happens after the click — the half of paid-media performance that no bid adjustment can fix.
Variables
What Drives Your Number Up or Down
Management fees track the hours the account genuinely consumes. These six variables are what move that, and they are the questions any competent strategist will ask you before quoting anything.
Number of channels
One search account is not the same job as search plus Shopping plus Meta plus Amazon. Each platform carries its own build, creative, and reporting surface.
Catalogue size and complexity
A 200-SKU store and a 40,000-SKU store need different feed architecture, different campaign segmentation, and different amounts of ongoing disapproval and margin work.
Competition in the auction
Dense auctions demand more frequent creative iteration, tighter query control, and closer bid supervision to hold position without buying unprofitable clicks.
Number of locations or markets
Multi-location and multi-country programs multiply campaign counts, budget-pacing decisions, currency and language variants, and reporting rows.
Regulated categories
Alcohol, supplements, firearms, CBD, healthcare, legal and financial services carry platform policy restrictions, certification requirements, and higher disapproval rates — all of which are management hours.
Starting condition of the account
An account with clean tracking and a coherent history is cheaper to run than one that needs conversion tracking rebuilt before a single bid can be trusted. This is what an audit is for.
The fastest way to turn those variables into a real number is a PPC audit of the account as it stands today. An audit tells both sides what the first ninety days of work actually is, which is the only honest basis for a fee.
What Is Never Inside the Fee
- ›Media spend. The money that goes to Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon or LinkedIn is yours, billed by the platform to your own accounts. It is never bundled into a management fee here.
- ›Platform and tool fees. Third-party bid tools, feed platforms, call-tracking, and heatmap or session tools are pass-through costs, named individually before anyone signs.
- ›Production-heavy creative. Video production, photography, and full landing-page or site builds are scoped as their own projects rather than being absorbed silently into a retainer.
- ›Out-of-scope work. Anything outside the written scope is quoted before it starts.
You should also own every account. Ad accounts, Merchant Center, analytics, and tag containers belong to your business, with the agency added as a user. If a proposal requires running your media through an account the agency owns, you cannot leave with your own conversion history — and that history is the most valuable asset the program builds.
Published Figures
Two Ladders, and the Condition That Separates Them
There are two published ways to buy campaign work here, and they are not interchangeable. Which one applies to you is decided by two facts about your business: what your site runs on, and whether you sell locally or nationally.
| Standard packages | WorkspaceCMS campaigns | |
|---|---|---|
| Who it is for | Brands on their own stack — Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce, headless. | Businesses whose site runs on WorkspaceCMS. |
| Geographic scope | Local or national — both ladders published. | Local only — single and multi-location businesses, not national or global SEO. |
| Prerequisite | None. The retainer stands on its own. | An active WorkspaceCMS site plan, from $89/mo. The campaign is an add-on billed on top of the plan, not instead of it. |
| Local SEO entry point | $899/month | $499/month |
| PPC entry point | Custom scope, built from hours at $185/hour | $499/month |
| Terms | Six-month initial term on monthly retainers, then month-to-month. | Month-to-month — cancel anytime. Ad budget funded directly in your own Google/Meta account. |
The campaign ladder is materially cheaper, and the reason is structural rather than promotional. When the site runs on WorkspaceCMS we control the platform, so technical implementation, landing-page creation and schema changes do not burn agency hours negotiating someone else’s theme or waiting in someone else’s dev queue. That saving is real, and it is also exactly why the two conditions above are non-negotiable: take away the platform, or take the program national, and the hours come back.
Ladder One
WorkspaceCMS PPC Local Campaigns
Fixed monthly campaign tiers for local businesses on WorkspaceCMS. The published campaign ladder covers paid media and organic together, so both are listed here — many local programs run the pair.
PPC Local
| Tier | Per month |
|---|---|
| Essentials PPC Local | $499 |
| Growth PPC Local | $699 |
| Premium PPC Local | $1,200 |
Month-to-month — cancel anytime. Ad budget funded directly in your own Google/Meta account.
Local SEO + AI
| Tier | Per month |
|---|---|
| Essentials Local | $499 |
| Growth Local | $699 |
| Premium Local | $999 |
6-month commitment, then month-to-month
Two conditions that travel with every one of those numbers
- ›An active WorkspaceCMS site plan is required, from $89/mo. The campaign fee is an add-on on top of the plan — quote yourself the campaign tier and the plan together, or your budget will be short.
- ›Local only — single and multi-location businesses, not national or global SEO. A national or global program pays the standard ladder below regardless of what platform it runs on.
Ad budget is still yours and still separate — funded directly in your own Google and Meta accounts, never inside the campaign fee. Full campaign detail is published at workspacecms.ai/campaigns, and the platform itself is covered on our CMS platform page.
Ladder Two
Standard Packages — Your Own Stack
If your store runs on Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce or a headless build, this is your ladder. eCommerce PPC on this side is scoped per account rather than sold as a shelf tier — but the published search retainers below are the benchmark the scope is built against, and they show the tier logic exactly: what changes between levels is scope volume, not the seniority of the people on the account. National costs more at every level because the keyword universe is wider and the competition is harder.
| Tier | Local / month | National / month |
|---|---|---|
| Launch | $899 | $1,499 |
| Essential | $1,599 | $2,499 |
| Pro | $2,499 | $3,299 |
| Plus | $3,299 | $4,299 |
| Premium | $4,499 | $5,999 |
One-time onsite projects
- 5 Hours$1,699
- 10 Hours$3,199
- 15 Hours$4,399
No contract — an hour bucket for focused cleanup work rather than an ongoing campaign.
Out-of-scope and custom work
$185/hour — the published rate for anything outside a written scope, and the rate a custom eCommerce PPC scope is built up from as a transparent line-item proposal. It is the number to ask about when a program has multiple channels, a large catalogue, or several markets.
Every tier’s full scope is published on the eCommerce SEO Packages & Pricing page. Anything else you see quoted as an “industry average PPC management fee” is a survey artifact, not a quote — we would rather send you a scoped proposal built from your own account than publish a range that happens to be wrong for you.
What Changes Between Engagement Levels
Scope, not staffing. A smaller retainer buys fewer channels and a slower cadence — it does not buy a junior version of the team.
Single channel
One platform — usually Google Ads. Search and one supporting campaign type, conversion tracking verified, monthly reporting, a defined testing calendar. The right starting point when you need to prove the channel before funding a second one.
Multi-channel
Search plus Shopping and Performance Max, a second engine, or paid social — with feed work and cross-channel budget arbitration inside the scope. This is the shape most eCommerce PPC programs settle into.
Complex / custom
Large catalogues, multiple markets or locations, regulated categories, offline conversion import, or lead-gen programs where the CRM is the scoreboard. Priced as a line-item scope built from hours at the published $185/hour rate.
Request a proposal
Get a fee quoted against your actual account
Tell us the channels you run, roughly what you spend, your catalogue or service footprint, and what a conversion is worth to you. A senior strategist replies with a recommended model, a written scope, and the fee that goes with it — or tells you the account doesn’t need an agency yet. Prefer to talk first? Contact us.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does PPC management cost?
There are two published answers, and which one applies depends on your platform and your geography.
Local businesses on WorkspaceCMS buy fixed PPC Local campaigns: Essentials PPC Local at $499/month, Growth PPC Local at $699/month, and Premium PPC Local at $1,200/month. Two conditions come with those numbers every time: they require an active WorkspaceCMS site plan (from $89/mo, billed separately as the campaign is an add-on), and they are local only — single and multi-location businesses, not national or global programs. Month-to-month — cancel anytime. Ad budget funded directly in your own Google/Meta account.
Everyone else — eCommerce brands on Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce or headless, and any national program — gets a custom scope built from hours at our published $185/hour rate. For a sense of the tier logic those scopes are benchmarked against, our published search retainers run from $899/month local and $1,499/month national at Launch up to $5,999/month at national Premium.
What moves a paid-media fee inside that: the number of channels, catalogue size, auction competition, number of locations or markets, whether the category is regulated, and the starting condition of the tracking. A quote that arrives before anyone has asked those questions is a guess wearing a number.
Why is the WorkspaceCMS PPC campaign so much cheaper?
Because we control the platform. When the site runs on WorkspaceCMS, landing pages, tracking, schema and technical implementation are things we ship directly — they don’t burn agency hours negotiating someone else’s theme or waiting in someone else’s dev queue. That is a structural saving, not a discount, which is why it cannot travel outside its two conditions: the campaign requires an active WorkspaceCMS site plan (from $89/mo) and its scope is fixed: Local only — single and multi-location businesses, not national or global SEO. On the organic side the same effect shows up plainly: local SEO starts at $499/month as a campaign versus $899/month on the standard local ladder. Details at workspacecms.ai/campaigns.
Can a national brand buy the WorkspaceCMS campaign price?
No. Local only — single and multi-location businesses, not national or global SEO. A national or global program pays the standard ladder regardless of what platform it runs on, because the work genuinely is larger — a wider keyword universe, harder auctions, more campaigns, more creative and more reporting surface. If you are national, price yourself against the standard tiers (Launch $1,499/month through Premium $5,999/month) or a custom PPC scope at $185/hour, not against the campaign entry point.
Is the management fee separate from my ad spend?
Yes, always. Media is billed by Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon or LinkedIn directly to accounts your business owns. The management fee is our invoice for the work. Keeping them separate is what lets you audit both — you can see exactly what the platforms charged and exactly what management cost, and change one without renegotiating the other.
Which fee model should I choose?
If your budget swings with seasons or promotions and the work genuinely scales with it, percentage of spend is defensible. If your budget is steady and the scope is stable, a flat fee is easier to plan around and removes any incentive to spend more than the account can convert. Hybrid suits accounts that are growing unevenly — a flat base for the always-on work plus a variable piece tied to a metric both sides can see in the platform. In every case the contract should name the scope and the outcome, not just the number.
Do you charge a setup or onboarding fee?
Onboarding work — account audit, tracking verification, structure planning, feed review — is real work and has to be paid for somewhere. We scope it explicitly rather than hiding it: either it’s named inside the first month of the retainer or it’s a separate line item you approve before it starts. Start with a PPC audit if you want to see the scope before committing to a retainer.
Do I own my ad accounts and conversion data?
Yes. Your Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta, Merchant Center, GA4 and tag containers stay in your name with us added as a user. If the relationship ever ends, you keep the accounts, the campaign history, and the conversion data every bid strategy depends on. Any arrangement that pools your media through an agency-owned account should be treated as a lock-in cost, not a convenience.
Why isn't eCommerce PPC sold as a fixed tier the way SEO is?
Because the two products are shaped differently. Our organic-search work is sold as fixed tiers — from $899/month to $5,999/month, every tier’s scope on the eCommerce SEO Packages & Pricing page — because the deliverables are countable in advance: pages, articles, audits. Local paid media is countable too, which is why the PPC Local campaigns above carry fixed prices from $499/month. eCommerce paid media is where it breaks down: the same headline budget can mean one search campaign or six platforms with a 40,000-SKU feed behind it. Publishing one number for that would be marketing, not pricing — so there we publish the $185/hour rate the scope is built from and quote the account.