Service
PPC management services
One paid search programme across every network, not a Google account with side projects.
PPC management covers everything you buy on a per-click basis: Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, Shopping, display, and remarketing. The reason to run them as one programme rather than separate accounts is that they share a budget, a conversion definition, and an audience, and treating them separately means three sets of numbers nobody can add up. Google Ads is usually the largest part of that programme, and it has its own page because it deserves the depth.
9x
ROAS increase in three months
2.5x average lift
60%
lower cost per conversion in one month
35% average improvement
The problem
Why does multi-network PPC drift apart?
Because each network gets its own conversion setup, reporting and budget logic, so nobody can add the numbers up or compare them fairly.
Most accounts start on Google, add Microsoft later because someone read that it is cheaper, and never reconcile the two. The result is two conversion setups that count differently, two reporting cadences, and a budget split decided by whoever last asked for more.
Shopping and display then get bolted on with their own logic. Display in particular tends to run unattended for years, quietly buying placements on made-for-advertising sites, because nobody owns it.
The fix is not more dashboards. It is one conversion definition applied everywhere, one cost per acquisition target derived from your economics, and budget allocated by marginal return across the whole programme rather than per network.
Scope
What does PPC management cover?
Every network you buy clicks on: Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, Shopping and feeds, display and video, remarketing, all under one shared conversion definition.
Every network you buy clicks on, measured the same way.
Google Ads
Usually the largest share of the programme and the one with the most depth. Search, Performance Max, Shopping, and remarketing are covered in detail on the Google Ads management page, which this engagement includes rather than replaces.
Microsoft Advertising
Genuinely cheaper clicks on a smaller audience that skews older and more desktop. Worth running when your buyers are there, and worth skipping when they are not. Import from Google as a starting point, then diverge, because copying a Google account wholesale reliably underperforms.
Shopping and feeds
Feed quality moves Shopping performance more than bidding does. Title structure, attribute completeness, and the campaign hierarchy that lets you bid differently on your best margin products, across both Google and Microsoft.
Display and video
Placement exclusions maintained rather than set once, frequency capped, and audiences built from behaviour. Display is where unattended budget goes to die, so it gets an explicit owner and an explicit ceiling.
Remarketing
Segmented by depth of engagement and sequenced, running across search and display together so the same person is not pursued twice at full price.
One measurement layer
A single conversion definition, deduplicated across networks, so cost per acquisition means the same thing everywhere and the budget conversation is about marginal return rather than about whose report to believe.
Process
How does a PPC engagement run?
Audit every network together, unify the conversion definition, derive one allowable cost per acquisition, then allocate budget by marginal return rather than by habit.
Audit every network at once
Reading Google in isolation hides the double counting and the audience overlap. The audit covers all of them together, including the networks nobody has looked at in a year.
Unify the conversion definition
One definition of a conversion, applied identically everywhere, verified against a real submission. Until that exists, the networks cannot be compared and any budget split is a guess.
Set one target from your economics
An allowable cost per acquisition derived from gross profit, not from what the account happens to be achieving. That number then governs every network.
Allocate by marginal return
Budget moves to wherever the next pound performs best, reviewed on a schedule that respects each campaign's learning period.
Report as one programme
One number for the whole of paid search, with the per-network detail underneath it rather than instead of it.
Coverage
What does the audit behind this work look at?
Every engagement opens with the audit, and these are the first of the areas it reads before anyone recommends a single change.
Account structure and campaign architecture
Whether campaigns are split along lines that let you control budget and read results, or along lines that made sense to whoever built them three years ago. Structure decides what you are able to steer later, so a structural fault caps every other improvement.
Campaign type mix
Where the money actually sits across Search, Performance Max, Shopping, Demand Gen, Display and Video. Most accounts have drifted into a mix nobody deliberately chose, usually one campaign at a time and often after a platform representative recommended it.
Budget allocation and pacing
Whether budget follows marginal return or last year's habit, and whether campaigns are capped, underspending, or spending the day's budget before the hours that actually convert.
Bidding strategy and the signals feeding it
Which strategy each campaign runs, whether it has the conversion volume that strategy needs to work, and what signal it is optimising toward. A bidding strategy is only ever as good as the data feeding it.
Conversion actions
What the account counts as a conversion, which actions are set to Primary, and whether each one is worth steering spend toward. This is where most accounts turn out to be quietly broken.
Conversion tracking integrity and import paths
Whether conversions are counted once, counted at all, and imported from the systems that hold the truth. We verify this rather than assume it, because every other number in the account is derived from it.
- 12 further areas are covered on the audit page.
All 18 are listed on the Google Ads audit page.
Deliverables
What do you receive?
A written multi-network audit, one verified conversion definition, restructured campaigns, an exclusion architecture you own, and monthly reporting for the programme as a whole.
- A written audit covering every paid network you run
- One deduplicated conversion definition, verified on a real device
- An allowable cost per acquisition derived from your own economics
- Rebuilt or restructured campaigns per network, with the reasoning recorded
- Placement, audience, and negative exclusion architecture you own
- Monthly reporting for the programme, with per-network detail underneath
Start with the audit
Google Ads audit
What we read before recommending any of this, and what it covers. There is a free version if you would rather start there.
Related reading
How to audit a Google Ads account
The long-form version of the thinking behind this service.
Related services
- Google Ads management
Accounts built to be measured, then managed against what the measurement says.
- Performance marketing services
Every channel that can be measured against an outcome, run against the same outcome.
Before you brief anyone
- What this kind of work costs
Third-party benchmark data, named and dated. We publish no rate card and the pages say why.
- Whether an agency is the right model at all
Agency against in-house and against a freelancer, each reaching a recommendation rather than a pitch.
- What is different in your vertical
Platform policy constraints, conversion definition problems and negative keyword themes by industry.
- What your own numbers support
Calculators for target cost per lead, in-house cost against an agency, and whether you can test at all.
Questions
What do buyers ask about PPC management?
How this differs from Google Ads management, whether Microsoft is worth running, how budget should split between networks, and what happens when tracking is broken.
How is this different from your Google Ads management service?
Scope. This page covers the whole paid search programme across every network you buy clicks on. Google Ads management is the deep specialty inside it, and it is where the search, Performance Max, and Shopping detail lives. If Google is the only network you run, start there instead; you would be paying for coordination you do not need.
Is Microsoft Advertising worth running?
It depends entirely on whether your buyers are on it. Clicks are usually cheaper because the auction is less contested, but the audience is smaller and skews older and more desktop. We check your existing analytics for the answer before recommending it, rather than assuming.
Can you just import our Google campaigns into Microsoft?
As a starting point, yes, and it is the fastest way to launch. As a finished state, no. Match type behaviour, audience sizes, and competitive dynamics differ enough that an unmodified import consistently underperforms a campaign set that has been allowed to diverge.
How should budget be split between networks?
By marginal return, not by a fixed percentage. The question is never whether a network is profitable overall, it is whether the next increment of spend on it beats the next increment somewhere else. That is only answerable once every network reports against the same conversion definition.
Do you manage display and remarketing too?
Yes, and they get explicit ceilings. Display is the part of a PPC programme most likely to be running unattended, so it gets maintained placement exclusions, a frequency cap, and a named budget rather than whatever is left over.
What if our tracking is a mess across networks?
Then that is the first engagement, and it is usually an audit rather than a retainer. Unifying the conversion definition changes what every other number means, so doing it after a restructure would invalidate the restructure.
Start with an audit
Send us what you are running. We will tell you what we would look at first in PPC, and whether it is the right place to start at all.