Paid advertising
What a Google Ads campaign manager does and how to choose the right one for your business
What a Google Ads campaign manager actually does, how the service is priced and what should happen in the first month of a new account. Plus the metrics worth understanding, red flags when choosing a provider, and how paid and organic work together.
In short
A Google Ads campaign manager does keyword research, builds the account structure, writes ads, sets up conversion tracking, filters out irrelevant searches with negative keywords and reports on cost per inquiry. To choose a good one, check that the account is registered in your name, that the management fee model is clear and separate from the ad budget, and that the report shows inquiries and deals, not just clicks.
Contents
Google Ads campaign management is the ongoing work of researching, building, measuring and improving your ads, so your ad budget brings in inquiries and deals, not just clicks. A good campaign manager starts with reliable conversion tracking, builds the account around your customers' search intent, and reports to you in terms of cost per inquiry, not impressions. Choose one based on transparency: an account in your name, a clear payment model and a report you can verify.
Many business owners come to this topic after a bad experience: a campaign that was set up once, ran for months without anyone touching it, and burned through the budget on searches that had nothing to do with the business. In this guide we'll break down what really happens in a managed account, how the service is priced and what should happen in the first month. If you're already looking for someone to manage it for you, here's our paid ads management service for Google, Facebook and Instagram.
What a Google Ads campaign manager actually does
Managing a campaign isn't a one-time setup. Google updates its system all the time, competitors change their bids, and your customers' searches change with the seasons. These are the main areas of the work, roughly in the order in which they happen.
Keyword research and search intent
Everything starts with the question of what your customer types when they're ready to buy. מנעולן בחולון ("locksmith in Holon") and איך פותחים דלת נעולה ("how to open a locked door") sound close, but the first one brings a phone call and the second brings a curious reader. A campaign manager maps keywords by intent, checks search volumes and the estimated cost per click in Google's Keyword Planner, and chooses match types: broad, phrase or exact. If you don't have a picture of the demand in your field yet, proper keyword research before you spend anything on ads saves a lot of trial and error. With us, it's a one-time report for ₪250 + VAT.
Account structure: campaigns and ad groups
A healthy account is built so that each ad group deals with one topic, and each ad speaks exactly in the language of the keywords in its group. A business that offers three different services usually needs a separate campaign or ad group for each service, with a budget that reflects how profitable it is. The right structure also lets you control locations, hours and devices, for example to stop showing ads during hours when nobody answers the phone.
Bids and bidding strategy
Google offers automated bidding strategies that aim for maximum conversions, a target cost per conversion or a target return on ad spend. They work well only when they get reliable conversion data in sufficient volume. When conversion tracking is wrong, smart bidding optimizes for exactly what you didn't want, so an essential part of the work is knowing when to switch strategies and when to give one time to learn.
Ads and ad assets
A responsive search ad takes up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions, and Google assembles combinations from them. A good manager writes headlines that are genuinely different: one with the service and the area, one with a clear advantage and one with a call to action. Alongside that come ad assets, formerly called extensions: sitelinks, callouts, a phone number for direct calls, location and images.
The landing page
The click is only half the battle. If the searcher looked for תיקון מזגן בראשון לציון ("AC repair in Rishon LeZion") and landed on your general home page, a large part of the budget goes to waste. A serious campaign manager checks the landing page, recommends changes to the headline, the speed and the form, and sometimes a dedicated page. To understand when a dedicated page is enough and when it's worth investing in a full website, read our guide on when a landing page beats a full website. The landing page experience is also one of the components of the Quality Score of every keyword.
Conversion tracking
This is the component that separates campaign management from gambling. Without conversion tracking, there's no way to know which keyword brought in a customer and which one only cost money. You define as a conversion whatever really matters to the business: a form submission, a call from the ad, a click to WhatsApp or a purchase, and you check that every conversion is counted only once. Businesses that close deals by phone can also import the deals they actually closed into Google, so the system learns to bring in buyers, not just inquiries.
Negative keywords and the search terms report
The search terms report shows what people actually typed before they clicked your ad, and it's almost always surprising. An employment lawyer will discover clicks on דרושים עורכי דין ("lawyers wanted"), and a moving company will find searches for הובלה עצמית ("DIY move"). Every search like that goes on the negative keyword list, so the ad won't show for it again.
Reporting
A good report answers three questions: how much we spent, how many inquiries and deals it brought in, and what we're changing next month and why. Here's what the work cadence looks like in a managed account:
| Frequency | What gets checked and updated in the account |
|---|---|
| Several times a week | Search terms report, negative keywords, budget anomalies, disapproved ads |
| Once a week | Bids, ad group performance, hours, locations and devices, your feedback on the quality of the inquiries |
| Once a month | A summary report, new ads against old ones, the budget split between campaigns, a review of the landing pages |
| Once a quarter | Account structure, seasonality, new campaigns and a fresh look at the bidding strategy |
How campaign management is priced: three models
Before you compare offers, it's important to separate two payments. The ad budget goes to Google for the clicks, directly from your payment method and in an account registered in your name. The management fee is what you pay whoever manages the account. When the two are mixed together on one invoice, it's hard to know how much actually reached Google. Management fees come in three common models:
| Model | How it works | The advantage | The drawback |
|---|---|---|---|
| A percentage of the ad budget | The management fee is derived from the size of your monthly spend on Google | Grows along with the scope of the work, simple to understand | Creates an incentive to raise the budget, even when that doesn't pay off for you |
| A fixed monthly retainer | A fixed amount every month, based on a scope of work defined in advance | Predictable and easy to plan for, not tied to your spend | When the account grows a lot, the scope of the work doesn't always grow with it |
| A hybrid model | A fixed base payment plus a percentage above a certain spend threshold | Balances stability with scaling to the scope of work | Harder to compare across offers |
Some agencies also charge per lead. It sounds fair, but if what counts as a lead wasn't defined in advance and in writing, it's easy to generate lots of cheap inquiries that never turn into customers. With any model, ask what exactly is included: how many campaigns, whether writing the ads and reviewing the landing pages are included, and whether there's a separate setup fee. At VeloLinx, the management fee starts from ₪1,800 a month + VAT, and the exact amount is set after a short assessment of your business, based on the number of channels and campaigns. The fee is known in advance, the ad budget is completely separate, and there's no long-term commitment.
The first 30 days in a new account
The first month determines whether the campaign will be built on data or on guesses. This is what it looks like when it's done right:
| Stage | What happens in the account | What you should get |
|---|---|---|
| Days 1 to 5 | A kickoff call: what counts as a deal and how much a customer is worth. Access to an existing account, or a new account opened in your name, conversion tracking set up and checked to make sure it counts correctly | Confirmation that the account is registered in your name, and a list of the conversions being measured |
| Days 6 to 12 | Keyword research, building the campaign structure, writing ads and assets, an initial negative keyword list and a review of the landing page | A walkthrough of the structure and the ads before they go live |
| Days 13 to 30 | Going live and the learning period: close monitoring of the search terms, adding negative keywords, adjusting bids and a conversation with you about the quality of the inquiries | A short update every week |
| End of the month | The first report: cost per inquiry, which keywords brought good inquiries, what gets paused and what gets more budget | A work plan for the second month |
Keep in mind: in the first month the numbers aren't stable yet, and big decisions based on a single week of data are usually a mistake. And if at the end of the month you can't clearly answer "How much did an inquiry cost us?" then something basic is missing, and it's usually conversion tracking.
The metrics worth understanding, no statistics degree required
You don't need to be an analyst to read a Google Ads report. Four metrics tell most of the story.
CPA: cost per inquiry or per purchase
How much one conversion costs you. For example, if you spent ₪4,000 in a month and got 40 inquiries, your cost per inquiry is ₪100 (both amounts before VAT). That number only means something next to another number: how much a customer is worth to you. A cost of ₪100 per inquiry before VAT is excellent if you close one deal out of every five inquiries and earn thousands from it, and a problem if you sell a product for ₪150.
ROAS: return on ad spend
Mainly relevant for online stores. You divide the revenue from the campaign by what you spent on it. For example, revenue of ₪12,000 from a spend of ₪3,000, both before VAT, is a ROAS of 4, or 400%. Keep in mind that ROAS measures revenue, not profit: the same ROAS can be very profitable in a business with a high margin and lose money in a business with a thin margin.
Conversion rate
How many of the clicks turned into a conversion. A low conversion rate usually points to a gap between what the searcher was looking for and what they found: imprecise keywords, an ad that presents a different offer from the one on the page, or a slow, confusing landing page.
Search impression share
Search impression share shows the percentage of times your ad actually appeared out of all the times it was eligible to appear. Google also breaks down the lost impressions into two causes, budget and rank. Losing to budget means the campaign stopped too early in the day. Losing to rank means the bid or the quality of the ad isn't enough. It's one of the most useful metrics when you're deciding whether to increase your budget.
Click-through rate (CTR), cost per click and Quality Score are diagnostic metrics: they explain why something is happening, but they aren't the goal. A campaign with an impressive click-through rate and no inquiries still isn't working.
Red flags when choosing a campaign manager
- The account isn't in your name. If the account was opened by the agency and you don't get admin access, the day you leave you'll lose the history and the data. Among the access levels of a Google Ads account, there's a clear difference between admin and standard access, and admin access should stay with the business owner.
- An ad budget that runs through the agency's invoice. It isn't always a deal breaker, but if you can't see exactly how much reached Google, you have no way to know the real price of the service.
- Talk of "first place on Google" or a fixed number of leads. Ad position is decided all over again on every search, based on the bid, the quality of the ad and the context of the search. Anyone who quotes a fixed number of inquiries before seeing your account and your market is selling you hope.
- A report that talks only about impressions and clicks. If the report has no cost per inquiry or revenue, or there's no conversion tracking at all, there's no basis for any decision.
- Silence in the change history. Google Ads keeps a record of every change in the account. An account nobody has touched for weeks is an unmanaged account, even if the invoice arrives every month.
- A long contract with no way out. A good service doesn't need to lock you in for a year with a heavy exit penalty.
- The same template for every business. Someone who doesn't ask what a customer is worth to you and what your closing rate is doesn't know what they're supposed to optimize.
Questions worth asking on the intro call
- Whose name will the account be in, and what level of access will we get?
- What exactly counts as a conversion for you, and how do you check that it's measured correctly?
- How many times a week does someone go into the account, and what do they do there?
- What will the monthly report look like, and can we see an example?
Google Ads and organic SEO: how they work together
Paid and organic results appear on the same page, and they work best when you plan them together. A campaign brings traffic from the day it goes live, but it stops the moment the budget runs out. Organic SEO takes time, but it builds an asset that keeps bringing in inquiries even without paying for every click.
- Paid data steers organic. After a few weeks of a campaign, you can see which keywords bring real inquiries. Those are the keywords worth building service pages and content around on your site.
- Paid bridges the time gap. While the site builds authority, the campaign keeps the inquiries flowing. Later on, you carefully consider cutting back on keywords where the site already ranks well, because sometimes the two results together bring in more than either one alone.
- A local business also has the map. For a business that serves a specific area, a Google Business Profile is a third channel worth planning together with the other two. We covered this in our comparison of an organic Google Business Profile and paid ads for a local business.
If you're also weighing advertising on social media, read our comparison of organic SEO on Google and social media marketing, which explains the difference between capturing existing demand and creating new demand. Our organic SEO packages start at ₪1,790 a month + VAT, and when paid and organic are managed under one roof, the data from both feeds a single work plan.
Frequently asked questions
How much does Google Ads campaign management cost?
The cost has two separate parts: the ad budget, which is paid directly to Google for the clicks, and the management fee. The management fee is set as a percentage of the budget, as a fixed retainer or as a combination of the two, depending on the scope of the work. The ad budget is derived from the cost per click in your field and from the amount of data the campaign needs in order to learn.
Can you run a Google Ads campaign yourself?
You can, mainly in a small account with one service and one area. What's usually missing is the time to go through the search terms report regularly, and a correct setup of conversion tracking. If you manage it yourself, start with phrase or exact match, build a negative keyword list from day one, and don't accept the system's automatic recommendations without checking them.
How long until a Google Ads campaign starts bringing in leads?
Ads can start showing right after they're approved, so the first inquiries sometimes come in within the first few days. The first weeks are a learning period in which irrelevant searches are filtered out and bids are calibrated. The pace of results depends on your field, your budget, the competition and your offer, so there's no way to set a number of inquiries in advance.
Who owns the Google Ads account when you work with a campaign manager?
The account should be registered in the name of the business, with your payment method and with admin access on your side. The campaign manager gets management access, usually through a manager account linked to yours. That way the history, the data and the ads stay with you even if you change providers.
What should a monthly Google Ads report include?
At the very least: the spend, conversions by type, the cost per conversion, a comparison with the previous month, what worked and what didn't, and what was changed in the account and why. For an online store, add revenue and ROAS. A good report ends with decisions for the next month, not just with charts.
Is a Performance Max campaign right for a service business?
A Performance Max campaign shows ads across several Google channels at once, including Search, YouTube, the Display Network, Gmail and Maps, and makes most of the decisions on its own. It can work well when there's reliable conversion tracking and enough data. For service businesses with a limited budget, a regular Search campaign usually gives more control over the keywords and the quality of the inquiries, so it's common to start with one.
What to do next
Before you choose a campaign manager, write down three numbers: how much a new customer is worth to you, how many inquiries you need to close one deal, and how much you're willing to invest in the first month to learn. With these numbers, every intro call becomes a practical test. If you'd like us to look at your existing account together or build a new campaign, all the details are on our paid ads management page, and you can also send a message to 050-741-8449.
