Google Ads management
PPC Management Services That Show You Where Every Dollar Goes
Our PPC management services run your Google Ads inside an account you own, report the exact amount Google charged you with our fee shown separately on every invoice, and spend the hours most accounts never get: reading the search terms, switching off the settings that quietly widen your targeting, and tracking every call an ad produces. That is not a favour. Google's own policy for agencies requires most of it, and you are entitled to ask any provider whether they meet it.
Your account. Google's exact costs. Our fee on every invoice. Monthly terms.
On this pageGoogle's rulesAccount checkBudget leaksPricingFAQ
1
Google Ads account for each advertiser an agency manages, as Google's policy requires
3
figures an agency must report at account level: costs, clicks and impressions
5
access levels in a Google Ads account, and only Admin controls who else gets in
0
part Quality Score plays in the ad auction, in Google's words a diagnostic tool
Sources: Google Ads Help, third-party policy, third-party transparency requirements, access levels and Quality Score. All read November 2026.
In 30 seconds
- Google has rules for agencies. One account per advertiser, account level reporting, and the exact amount Google charged shown apart from any fee.
- Your account stays yours. You are an admin, with a second admin, and we work through a manager link you can remove.
- We read the search terms weekly. Negative keywords come from what people actually searched, and settings that widen your targeting are checked by hand.
- A flat management fee. Your ad spend goes to Google directly, so our advice on budget is not tied to our income.
What Google requires
What Google requires of anyone managing your Google Ads
Google publishes a policy for third parties, the agencies and consultants who run ads for other businesses. It is written for agencies, which is perhaps why so few of them mention it to clients. It is the clearest checklist there is for judging a PPC management company, and we work to every line of it.
| Requirement | Google's words | What it means for you | What we do |
|---|---|---|---|
| One account per advertiser | "a separate account for each end-advertiser that you manage" | Your ads, history and data are never mixed into an agency's shared account | Your own account, linked to ours as a manager |
| Account level reporting | "data on costs, clicks, and impressions at the Google advertising account level" | You see the account's real numbers, not a summary someone chose for you | Every report starts from the account totals |
| Google's exact charges | "the exact amount charged by Google, exclusive of any fees that you charge" | Media spend and management fee are never blended into one figure | Google's charge and our fee as separate lines |
| Fees disclosed | a separate fee must be clearly explained and disclosed "on all customer invoices" | No margin hidden inside the click costs | Our fee is on every invoice, in plain sight |
| Your customer ID | customer IDs provided "when requested" | You can always find, open and check your own account | Given at setup, before anything is spent |
| Honest claims | be "honest and transparent about your company, services, associated costs, and expected results"; avoid "false, misleading, or unrealistic claims" | A guaranteed number of leads should worry you, not reassure you | Forecasts with their assumptions written down |
Quotes from Google's third-party policy and transparency requirements for third parties, read November 2026. Google also says advertisers should have "the ability to contact Google directly with concerns about a third-party partner".
Google's charge and the fee, never blended
Every line of the invoice, explained
Why the blended invoice is the problem
The commonest arrangement in small business PPC management is a single monthly figure that covers ad spend and management together. It is simple, and it makes it impossible to know how much of your money reached Google. Google’s requirement that agencies report “the exact amount charged by Google, exclusive of any fees” exists for precisely that reason, and it is the first thing worth checking on any invoice you already receive.
We go one step further than the policy asks. Ad spend is billed to your own payment method by Google, so it never passes through us at all. Our invoice carries one line, our management fee, and the report shows what Google charged you that month, taken straight from the account.
Three questions the policy lets you ask
Whose name is on the account? What did Google charge us last month, exactly, and what did you charge on top? Can I have the customer ID and sign in myself? A PPC management company that meets Google’s policy can answer all three in a minute. Hesitation on any of them is worth taking seriously, because each one is something Google says an advertiser is entitled to.
None of this says anything about whether an agency is good at the work. It says whether you will be able to tell. The rest of this page is about the work.
Interactive check
Is your Google Ads account working for you?
Switch on everything that is true today. It is a checklist, not a benchmark, and the score shows where to start.
Your budget is exposed. Start with who controls the account and what Google really charged.
Want the real answer? Give us read only access and we will check it.
Get a free account auditAccount ownership
Who controls your Google Ads account, and why it should be you
An account holds years of history: which keywords converted, what each click cost, which ads won. That history is worth a great deal to whoever runs the account next. It should belong to the business that paid for it.
Admin access is the one that matters
A Google Ads account has five access levels: email only, billing, read only, standard and admin. Only an admin can give other people access, change their access level and unlink a manager account. If the only admin on your account is your agency, then in practice the agency controls who can see your advertising, including you.
Google also recommends that an account has at least one additional admin, so that losing access to a single person does not lock everyone out. We set your account up with you as an admin, and with a second admin of your choosing, before any campaign goes live.
How we work inside your account
We manage your account through a link to our manager account, which is how Google intends agencies to work. You can see every change we make in the account’s change history, and you can unlink us yourself at any time. If we part ways, nothing is transferred or rebuilt: the campaigns, the conversion history and the data simply stay where they always were.
If an agency has built your campaigns inside its own account, ask now how the history would move if you left. Some agencies make that easy, and some discover that it is not possible. Either way it is a question for the start of a relationship, not the end.
Where the budget goes
Where PPC budgets leak, and the settings behind it
Most wasted ad spend is not a bad ad. It is a setting that quietly widened who could see the ad, and nobody went back to look. Each of these is documented in Google's own help pages.
| Setting | What Google's help says | What it can do to a small budget | What we do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Auto-applied recommendations | Can apply recommendations "regularly", including adding "broad match keywords" and adjusting bid strategies and targets | Keywords and bidding you never approved, changing month by month | Reviewed by hand; nothing applied without a reason |
| Location option | "Presence or interest" is the "default and recommended option", reaching people interested in your area as well as people in it | A plumber's ads shown to people researching a city they do not live in | Presence only, for a business that serves a radius |
| Search terms report | Terms without enough query activity "are omitted from the search terms report in order to keep with our standards on data privacy" | Part of what you pay for is never visible as a search term | Negatives built from what is visible, and match types chosen with the gap in mind |
| Smart Bidding | Bids are set automatically toward a goal such as a target cost per acquisition | Without accurate conversion tracking, the system optimises toward the wrong thing | Tracking verified before any automated bidding |
| Ad schedule | Ads can run at any hour unless a schedule is set | Calls arriving when nobody can answer them | Ads scheduled to the hours calls are answered, or an answering service in place |
Google Ads Help: auto-applied recommendations, location options, search terms report, read November 2026.
Broad match is a tool, not a default
Broad match lets Google show an ad for searches it judges related to your keyword, and with good conversion data and Smart Bidding it can find searches a phrase match or exact match keyword would miss. With a small budget and thin data, it more often finds searches you would never have paid for. We start most service business accounts on phrase and exact match, build a list of negative keywords from the search terms, and widen the match types only where the conversion data supports it.
The same caution applies to Performance Max, Google’s campaign type that runs across its networks from a single budget. It suits businesses with strong conversion tracking and a clear value per sale. For a local service business with a modest budget, a well run search campaign usually tells you more and wastes less.
The weekly search terms review
The search terms report is the closest thing to a list of what you actually bought. Reading it every week, and turning the irrelevant searches into negative keywords, is the most valuable hour in PPC management and the one most often skipped. It is also where a small budget is won: a handful of wasted searches a day adds up to a large share of a modest month.
Because Google withholds low volume terms for privacy, the visible list never covers everything. That is a reason to read it more carefully, not less, and to choose match types that keep the invisible part small.
Every tap on an ad is paid for, whether the search fitted or not.
How much of your ad spend goes to the wrong searches?
Give us read only access and we will go through your settings and the last ninety days of search terms.
Conversions
For a service business the click is not the result. The call is.
A click is something you pay for. A call, a form or a booking is something you can earn from. PPC that cannot tell the two apart is optimising for the wrong one.
The call an ad produces is the number that counts
Conversion tracking comes before bidding
Before any campaign spends, we set up conversion tracking for the actions that matter to you: calls from the ads, calls from the website, forms and bookings. Calls are counted by length, so a ten second wrong number does not count as a lead. Where you use a CRM, closed jobs can be fed back to the account, so bidding learns which searches turn into revenue rather than which ones produce noise.
Call tracking also answers the question every owner asks: which calls came from the ads? Each call is attributed to the campaign and keyword behind it, so the monthly report shows cost per lead and cost per job, not just cost per click.
The call nobody answered
An ad that produces a call outside your hours, or while you are on a job, has cost you the click and the customer. We schedule ads to the hours someone can answer, or pair the account with an AI receptionist that answers ad calls around the clock, so the money spent on the click is not wasted at the last step.
Landing pages matter for the same reason. An ad for an emergency repair should land on a page about emergency repairs, with the phone number at the top and the service area stated plainly. Sending every ad to the home page is one of the most expensive habits in small business advertising.
What is included
What our PPC management services include
Ten parts, run every month. The audit decides where the first month goes, because most accounts have one or two problems costing more than all the others together.
01
Account audit and structure
A review of the existing account, or a new one built properly: campaigns by service and by area, ad groups tight enough that the ad matches the search, and the settings in the table above checked one by one.
For a new account, the structure is planned around how your customers search, not around the products you sell.
AuditCampaign structureSettings checkedYour account
02
Keyword research and match types
The searches that lead to work, priced: what each costs per click, how many there are, and which ones your competitors already pay for. Match types chosen for the budget, starting narrow.
Keyword research for PPC is about intent and cost, so it often differs from the list an SEO plan would produce.
Buyer intentCost per clickPhrase and exactCompetitor terms
03
Negative keywords from the search terms
The search terms report read every week and the irrelevant searches added as negatives, with shared negative lists across campaigns so a lesson learned once is applied everywhere.
This is the part of PPC management that saves the most money and gets the least attention.
Weekly reviewNegative listsWasted spendSearch terms
04
Ad copy and responsive search ads
Responsive search ads written from what your customers ask: the service, the area, the speed, the reason to call you rather than the next result. Assets for calls, locations and sitelinks where they apply.
Ads are tested against each other, and the losing versions are replaced rather than left running.
Responsive search adsCall assetsSitelinksTesting
05
Bidding and PPC budget management
Bids and budgets set by what each campaign returns, moved toward the services and areas that produce work. Smart Bidding, such as a target CPA, once conversion tracking is proven, and manual control until then.
PPC budget management also means pacing: the month’s budget spread so the account is not empty by the twentieth.
Smart BiddingTarget CPAPacingBudget moves
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Location targeting and ad schedule
Ads shown to people in the area you serve, with the location option set to presence where a radius is what matters, and scheduled to the hours your phone is answered.
Bids can be raised for the areas and times that produce the best jobs, and lowered for the rest.
Presence targetingService radiusAd scheduleBid adjustments
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Conversion and call tracking
Calls, forms and bookings tracked as conversions, calls counted by duration, and closed jobs fed back from your CRM where it can be connected.
Tracking is checked before any automated bidding, because Smart Bidding learns from whatever it is told counts.
Call trackingForm trackingCRM feedbackVerified first
08
Landing pages that match the ad
A page for each main service and area, with the phone number above the fold and the promise in the ad repeated on the page. We build them, or brief your developer, and test changes that raise the conversion rate.
Landing page experience is one of the three parts of Quality Score Google reports, and it is the one owners can fix fastest.
One page per serviceMessage matchMobile firstTests
09
Remarketing, where it earns its place
Ads shown again to people who visited and did not call, for services where customers take time to decide, such as a replacement or a renovation. Not for emergencies, where the customer has already called someone else.
Remarketing is set up only when there is enough traffic to make it worth the spend.
Considered purchasesAudience listsFrequency capsOnly if it pays
10
Reporting as Google requires, and more
Costs, clicks and impressions at account level, Google’s exact charges, our fee shown separately, cost per lead and cost per job, the search terms reviewed, and the changes made with the reason for each.
A report you can read in ten minutes and question line by line.
Account totalsExact chargesCost per leadChange log
Reporting
What our PPC reports show you every month
The first page of every report is the account itself: what Google charged you, the clicks and impressions, the conversions, and the cost per lead, month against month. That is the part Google’s third-party policy requires, and we put it first because it is the part you should check against your own invoices from Google.
The second page is what produced the leads: which services, which areas, which search terms, and which calls turned into booked work where your CRM tells us. The third is what we changed and why, from new negative keywords to bids moved between campaigns, so the work behind the numbers is visible rather than assumed.
What the report does not do is lead with impressions or click through rate. Both matter, and both are in it, but a month of cheap clicks that produced no calls is not a good month, and a report that opens with them is describing activity rather than results.
Anything that breaks between reports, a disapproved ad, a tracking tag that stopped firing, a sudden rise in cost per click, is raised when we see it rather than saved for the end of the month.
Account totals first, the work behind them second.
Check the numbers
What a PPC budget turns into
Move the controls to match your market. Your cost per click is in your account, or in Google's Keyword Planner for a new one; the rest you know.
Every input is yours; nothing here is a forecast or a published average. The management fee is left out so you can compare it against the result yourself.
At these numbers, every dollar of ad spend returns 2.3 dollars of revenue, before the management fee.
Those are your inputs. The audit shows your real account.
Get a free account auditPricing
PPC management pricing: how the models compare
There are four common ways to charge for PPC management, and each one rewards something different. The model matters as much as the price, because it decides what your agency is paid to do.
| Model | How it works | What it rewards | Watch for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Percentage of ad spend | The fee is a share of what you spend with Google | Spending more | Advice to raise the budget, from the party paid more when you do |
| Flat monthly fee | A fixed fee set by the scope of the account | Doing the work well within the budget you have | A fee too low to cover a weekly search terms review |
| Performance based | Paid per lead or per sale | Lead volume, if lead quality is not defined | Who decides what counts as a lead, and whose account it runs in |
| Bundled spend and fee | One monthly figure covering both | Margin you cannot see | Whether you can see Google's exact charges, as Google's policy requires |
| Moha | A flat monthly management fee; your ad spend paid to Google directly | Results within your budget | Our fee on every invoice, Google's charges in every report |
What sets our PPC management cost
The number of campaigns, services and areas, how many landing pages are needed, whether the account is new or being repaired, and how much tracking has to be built. A single service in one area costs less to manage than a group of locations with several services each.
Flat fee PPC management, and why we prefer it
A flat PPC management fee means our advice on your budget is not tied to our income. If the right answer is to spend less, we can say so. The fee is quoted after the free audit, and changes only if the scope does.
Affordable PPC management, honestly
Affordable PPC management exists, and some of it is fine for a small account. Ask what is left out. The usual answer is the weekly search terms review and the tracking, which are the two parts that decide whether the budget is wasted.
Packages and terms
We do not sell fixed PPC management packages, because two accounts with the same spend rarely need the same work. Terms are monthly with a notice period, and the account is yours throughout, so leaving costs you nothing but the notice.
Search ads or Local Services Ads
Local PPC management: search ads, Local Services Ads, or both
For local service businesses, Google sells two different ad products, and they work in different ways. Choosing between them is one of the first decisions in local PPC management.
Local Services Ads
Local Services Ads charge per lead rather than per click: Google’s own description is that you “only pay when a customer gets in touch from your ad”. They are available only for certain service categories, and a business that passes Google’s screening shows the Google Verified badge. Ads appear in their own block, and the controls are far simpler than in a search campaign.
That simplicity is the point and the limit. You choose categories and areas, set a budget and answer the leads; you cannot write the ads or pick the keywords. For trades where the category is available and the leads are good, they are often the cheapest calls a business gets.
Source: Local Services Ads Help, read November 2026.
Search ads
Search campaigns charge per click and give full control: the keywords, the ads, the landing pages, the hours, the areas and the bids. They work for any business, including the categories Local Services Ads do not cover and the services within a trade that you most want to sell.
Many local businesses run both: Local Services Ads for the core category, and search ads for the high value services and the areas where they want to grow. The map pack sits beside both, which is why we plan paid search alongside the map pack work beside paid search rather than separately.
Choosing a provider
How to choose a PPC management company
Lists of the best PPC management company for small business are mostly written by agencies. These questions work on any of them, ourselves included, and each one is grounded in what Google publishes.
Whose account is it?
Yours, with you as an admin. A provider that runs your ads in its own account owns your history.
What did Google charge?
Ask for last month's exact Google charges and the fee, separately. Google's policy requires both to be clear.
Who reads the search terms?
Ask how often, and for last month's new negative keywords. The answer shows whether anyone is looking.
Are recommendations auto-applied?
Ask to see the auto-apply settings. Broad match and bid changes should be decisions, not defaults.
What counts as a conversion?
A ten second call is not a lead. Ask how calls are counted and whether closed jobs feed back.
What is guaranteed?
Google tells agencies to avoid unrealistic claims. A guaranteed number of leads is one.
The best PPC management company for you
Size matters less than attention. A large agency can run a small account well, and a single consultant can run it badly, or the other way round. What decides it is whether someone reads your search terms every week, knows why each setting is set the way it is, and tells you plainly when the right move is to spend less.
Google partner badges
A partner badge tells you an agency meets Google’s programme requirements. It is a reasonable minimum, not a measure of how your account will be run. The questions above tell you more in ten minutes than a badge will.
See who really controls your account.
The audit shows who holds admin access, what Google charged you, and which settings are widening your targeting.
PPC and SEO
PPC management and SEO: what each does that the other cannot
Paid search buys a place at the top today and stops the day the budget does. Organic search takes months and keeps working. Most businesses need some of both, in proportions that change over time.
What PPC does first
PPC tells you within weeks which searches turn into work, at what cost. That is information an SEO plan would take months to collect, and it is the best brief there is for which pages to build. It also covers the searches you will never rank for organically, and the seasons when demand spikes faster than rankings can follow.
When to run them together
Where both are needed, running them from one plan means the research, the tracking and the reporting are shared, and the paid budget can move away from searches the organic pages start to win. That is the service described on our page for organic and paid search planned together. This page is for businesses that want the paid side managed on its own.
Why Moha
Why businesses choose Moha for Google Ads management
Our Google Ads management starts from the parts of PPC that are easiest to neglect and hardest to see from outside: the search terms, the settings, the tracking and the invoices. Those are where most budgets are lost, and they are where a client cannot tell, from a summary report, whether anyone is doing the work.
We make the work visible. Your account, with you as admin. Google’s exact charges in every report, our fee on every invoice, every change in the account history with the reason in the report. If something we try does not work, the report says so, and the next month’s plan says what changes.
And we keep the incentives straight. A flat management fee means we gain nothing when your budget rises, so when the right answer is to spend less, or to put the money into a landing page instead of more clicks, we can say it.
Your account
You as admin, a second admin, our access through a manager link you control.
Exact costs
Google's charges reported as Google's policy requires, our fee apart.
Search terms weekly
Negatives added every week, from what was actually searched.
Calls counted
Conversions that mean work, not clicks that mean spend.
A plan for the month, with the reason for every change.
How it works
How we start and run your PPC campaign management
Five stages. Nothing spends until tracking is proven, and nothing changes without a reason in the report.
01
Week 1
Audit
Ownership and access, settings, structure, tracking, search terms and spend, with a written list of what is costing most.
02
Week 2
Tracking
Calls, forms and bookings set up as conversions and tested, with you as admin and a second admin added.
03
Weeks 2 to 4
Build or repair
Structure, keywords, negatives, ads, landing pages, locations and schedule, then launch on a controlled budget.
04
Weekly
Search terms and bids
Negatives added, bids and budgets moved toward the campaigns producing work.
05
Monthly
Report and plan
Account totals, exact charges, cost per lead and job, changes made, and next month's plan.
Free account audit
Find out where your ad spend is going
Give us read only access to your Google Ads account and we will check ownership, the settings in the table above, your tracking and the last ninety days of search terms.
You get a written summary of what is costing most and what we would change first. No new account and no commitment needed to get it.
Free
We reply from hello@gomoha.io, usually the same working day.
FAQ
PPC management questions business owners ask
From what owners ask in Google's Ads community, in small business forums and trade groups, and in the questions people type into a search box.
What is PPC management?
PPC management is the ongoing work of running pay per click advertising, usually Google Ads, and you will also see it called PPC advertising management or PPC ad management: choosing keywords, writing ads, setting bids and budgets, reading the search terms, tracking conversions and reporting the results. Google Ads was called AdWords until 2018, which is why some people still search for AdWords PPC management.
How much does PPC management cost?
Agencies charge a percentage of ad spend, a flat monthly fee, per lead, or a bundle of spend and fee. Ours is a flat monthly management fee quoted after a free audit, with your ad spend paid to Google directly. The fee depends on the scope of the account, not on how much you spend.
Is PPC legitimate, and is it worth it?
Yes, it is a standard way to reach people searching for what you sell. Whether it is worth it depends on your cost per click, how many clicks become leads and what a job is worth. The calculator above shows the arithmetic with your own numbers.
Who owns the Google Ads account?
You do, with admin access, and we work through a manager account link you can remove at any time. If we stop working together, the account and all its history stay with you.
Is ad spend included in your fee?
No. Google bills your own payment method directly, and our invoice carries only our management fee. That keeps Google's exact charges visible, which Google's third-party policy requires agencies to report.
What is the minimum ad spend?
There is no fixed minimum, but the budget has to buy enough clicks each month to learn from. In a market where a click costs twenty dollars, a few hundred dollars a month produces too few clicks to judge anything. The audit tells you what is realistic for your market.
How long until PPC brings results?
Ads can produce calls within days of launch. A well tuned account takes longer: usually two to three months of search terms, negatives and bid changes before the cost per lead settles.
Should I use broad match?
Sometimes. Broad match works best with strong conversion tracking, Smart Bidding and enough budget for the system to learn. For a small local account we usually start with phrase and exact match and widen only where the data supports it.
Is Performance Max right for a service business?
It can be, once conversion tracking is solid and there is enough budget for it to learn. For a local service business with a modest budget, a well run search campaign usually wastes less and shows you more.
Does a higher Quality Score lower my costs?
Google describes Quality Score as a diagnostic tool and says it "is not an input in the ad auction". What the auction uses is Ad Rank, which Google calculates from the bid, the quality of the ads and landing page, and the context of the search, among other factors. So the things Quality Score measures, expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance and landing page experience, still matter, which is why we work on them directly.
Can competitors bid on my business name?
Yes. Google does not restrict trademarks used as keywords. It restricts a direct competitor using your trademark in the text of their ad, and acts on complaints from the trademark owner. A small campaign on your own name is often the cheapest protection.
Do you manage Local Services Ads?
We advise on whether they fit, because they charge per lead and only cover certain categories. Where they fit, we plan your search campaigns around them so the two do not compete for the same calls.
How often will I hear from you?
A monthly report and review, and a message as soon as anything breaks: a disapproved ad, tracking that stops, or costs that move sharply.
Will you raise my budget?
Only if the numbers say it would pay. Our fee is flat, so we gain nothing from a bigger budget, and we would rather you spent less and kept the account.
Is there a long contract?
No. Terms are monthly with a notice period. Because the account is yours, leaving needs nothing more than removing our access.
Do you build landing pages?
Yes, or we brief your developer. A page for each main service and area, matching the ad, with the phone number at the top.
What makes the best PPC management company for a small business?
Attention to the parts nobody sees: the search terms, the settings, the tracking and the invoices. Ask any provider the six questions above and compare the answers.
Do you guarantee leads?
No. Google tells agencies to avoid unrealistic claims about results, and a guaranteed lead count is one. We forecast with the assumptions written down and report against them.
Ready when you are
See your account the way Google says you should
Send us read only access and we will show you who controls the account, what Google charged, which settings are widening your targeting and what the search terms say, before you commit to our PPC management services or anyone else's.
Photographs via Pexels, each cropped with the Moha logo added: charts and a laptop by Lukas Blazek, a calculator and invoice and an invoice reviewed by Kindel Media, a call by the van by Gustavo Fring, a phone in use by Towfiqu barbhuiya, a chart reviewed by Kaboompics and a plan on a whiteboard by Yan Krukau.