Most Google Ads quotes mix up three separate costs, and some leave out a fourth that Google adds itself. This article pulls them apart, shows how to work out a budget from your own numbers and lists what to get in writing before you sign.
In short
Once you split a quote into its parts, it becomes much easier to tell whether it's fair.
| Cost | What it pays for | Who you pay |
|---|---|---|
| Ad spend | The clicks on your ads. | Google, from your own card or bank account, into your own Google Ads account. |
| Management | Planning, building, optimising and reporting on the campaigns. | An agency, a freelancer or an employee. |
| Setup | Account structure, conversion tracking, links to Analytics, your shop or your CRM. | Some agencies charge for it separately. Some don't. |
A fourth cost, the country surcharge, is covered further down.
If an agency gives you a single monthly figure, ask which of the three it includes. "€1,500 a month" including ad spend and "€1,500 a month" plus ad spend are very different offers. The second one could cost you three times as much.
Nobody can give you a correct budget without knowing your numbers. You can work it out from two of them: roughly what a click costs in your market, and how many visitors you need, on average, for one sale or enquiry.
Twenty enquiries a month at €45 each means €900 of ad spend. Whether that pays depends on how many enquiries turn into customers and what a customer is worth to you. If one in four becomes a client worth €2,000, the maths works. If one in twenty becomes a €300 client, it doesn't, and no amount of optimisation will fix that.
There's a second reason a budget can be too small. Google's automated bidding learns from conversions. A campaign that records only a handful a month learns slowly, and its results swing from week to week. For Target ROAS on Search and Shopping, Google requires at least 15 conversions in the past 30 days.
Since March 2024 Google has required Consent Mode v2 for users in the European Economic Area. Visitors who decline cookies are only partly visible to Google, so a clean consent setup affects how well your budget performs, and not merely your compliance.
Google adds a surcharge to ads shown in a few countries that tax digital services. It appears as a separate line on your Google invoice, on top of ad spend. It's charged by where the person who saw or clicked the ad is located, not by where your company is registered.
| Country | Surcharge on ad spend | Announced change |
|---|---|---|
| Austria | 5% | None |
| Spain | 3% | None |
| Italy | 2.5% | 3% from 1 January 2027 |
| France | 2% | 3% from 1 January 2027 |
| United Kingdom | 2% | None |
Source: Google Ads Help, jurisdiction-specific surcharges. Status October 2026.
The detail that catches people out is location targeting. Google's default setting shows ads to people "in, or regularly in, or who've shown interest in" your target area. A Slovene or German campaign can therefore serve some ads to users in Austria, and Google says the surcharge applies to those too. If you don't sell there, set location targeting to "Presence" only. To see where your ads actually ran, check the user location report under Locations.
There are three common models. None is right for everyone, but each has a typical way of going wrong.
| Model | Where it works | Where it goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Flat monthly fee | Small and stable budgets. You know the cost, and the agency gains nothing from pushing your spend up. | As the budget grows, the work grows but the fee doesn't. Expect a renegotiation, or less attention on your account. |
| Percentage of ad spend | Mid-sized budgets, where the fee tracks the workload. | The agency earns more when you spend more. For B2B lead generation, where fewer but better leads is often the goal, that incentive points the wrong way. |
| Pay for results | Only where "result" is clearly defined and measured by a system the agency can't change. | If the agency controls the tracking, it effectively sets its own fee. Disputes over what counts as a lead are common. |
Our view: a flat fee is the only honest model below about €1,000 of monthly spend, because a percentage of a small budget doesn't pay for proper work. Above that, a percentage is fine as long as you, not the agency, decide how much to spend. That's how our own pricing is built.
| Package | Monthly ad spend | Management fee |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | up to €1,000 | €300 per month |
| Growth | €1,000 to €5,000 | 20% of ad spend |
| Premium PRO | over €5,000 | on request |
Prices exclude VAT. EU business clients with a VAT number are invoiced under the reverse-charge rule.
You pay ad spend directly to Google. There's no setup fee and no annual contract; you can cancel monthly. The Google Ads account belongs to you and stays with you if you leave.
We also offer a 100% guarantee to increase your ROI: if your return hasn't gone up within 60 days, we keep working for free until it does. What's included in management is described on our Google Ads service page. Adworld is based in Kranj, Slovenia, and works with clients across Europe by phone and video call.
An employee costs a good deal more than their salary once you add employer social contributions, holidays, software, training and the months it takes to recruit and onboard. In return you get someone who knows your business from the inside and is there every day.
Until paid search fills a full-time role, an agency is usually cheaper. One drawback people rarely mention: at larger agencies you often talk to an account manager while someone you never meet does the actual work. At Adworld, the owner, Klemen Kveder, works on client accounts himself.
Hiring tends to make sense once you run several channels across several markets and there's enough work for a full week, every week. Before that point, a part-time employee who also does email and social media usually ends up with no time for the search terms report, which is where most wasted spend hides.
If an agency hesitates on the first point, treat it as a warning. An account built inside the agency's own manager account, with your company only as a user, can't be taken with you, and with it go years of conversion data.
A small budget is rarely the real problem. A small budget split across too many campaigns is.
Search, Display, Performance Max, remarketing
One Search campaign, highest-margin offer
How the auction, Quality Score and campaign types work is explained in our guide to how Google Ads works, and the basics of paying per click in PPC advertising explained. If you already run Google Ads and want to know whether the money is well spent, get in touch and we'll tell you plainly where budget is being wasted.
No. You pay it to Google directly.
Setup is work we have to do anyway for management to work: account structure, conversion tracking, links to Analytics and your shop or CRM. Charging for it separately would mean you pay more before you've seen any result.
Clicks start as soon as the ads are approved. For online shops, first sales usually show within a few weeks. B2B takes longer, because there's a gap between an enquiry and a signed deal. You can judge profitability after roughly two to three months of stable running.
Yes. Our published results include Kanzlei Rieger, a German law firm with 260% more potential clients, and APESA.ch, a Swiss company whose sales and revenue grew by over 138%. We work with clients across Europe by phone and video call.
Yes, with a month's notice. Your account and its data stay with you.
Yes. Google charges it based on where the ad is shown, not where your business is registered. If an Austrian user sees your ad, the Austrian rate applies, even when your company is in Slovenia or Germany.
We check settings, conversion tracking and search terms and show where budget leaks. Free, no commitment.