Running paid search in several countries is not one campaign with translated ads. Costs, competitors, search behaviour, payment habits and advertising law all differ by market, and a structure that pools them hides a market that is losing money inside one that is working. The agency's job is to keep them separable and still coordinated.
Structure so each market can be judged alone
Separate campaigns and budgets per country, with currency and conversion values set so the reporting is comparable, is the baseline. Pooled budgets drift to whichever market converts most easily, which is often the cheapest rather than the most valuable. Ask to see how the account is structured before signing, and ask how a market would be paused without disturbing the others.
Translation is not localisation
Keyword research has to be done natively in each language, because the terms people actually search are rarely the translations of your English ones. Ad copy needs a native writer, and the landing page needs to exist in that language with the correct markup so the right version is served. A campaign pointing translated ads at an English page wastes the click at the last step.
Local rules and payment expectations decide conversion
Advertising rules, required disclosures, consent requirements and what a buyer expects to see at checkout vary by market, and each can quietly suppress conversion. Personalised advertising rules and category restrictions differ too. An agency should be able to name the constraints in each target market before it forecasts anything.
Who answers the enquiry, in what language, at what hour
The most common failure in cross-border paid search is not the account at all: leads arrive in a language or a time zone nobody covers. Settle that before the spend. If there is no local answer, restrict the markets to those you can serve properly rather than buying clicks you cannot convert.
Questions people ask about international ppc agency
One account or one per country?
One account with separate campaigns per market is usually enough, and it keeps the reporting together. Separate accounts are for genuinely separate businesses or billing entities.
Should we use automated translation for ads?
Not for the ads or the landing pages. It reads as machine output in most languages and costs conversion in the market you are paying to enter.
How do we compare markets fairly?
Set conversion values in a single reporting currency and compare cost per acquisition against local margin, not against each other's raw cost per click.
What is the commonest expensive mistake?
Letting a pooled budget fund the cheapest market. It flatters the blended numbers and starves the markets worth winning.