PPC specialists, compared on published evidence

Agencies with a verified published price

How to choose a paid media specialist

1. Match the specialism to the channel mix. Search, shopping feeds, paid social and connected TV are different disciplines that often live in different teams. Write down which channels you will actually run in the next year, then ask each candidate to show recent work in those specific channels rather than in paid media generally.
2. Audit the measurement before the media. Ask how conversions are tracked, whether calls are counted, how offline closes are fed back, and who verifies the tags. A specialist who wants to fix measurement in the first weeks before scaling spend is describing the correct sequence, not stalling.
3. Pin down the fee and the incentives. Flat retainer, share of ad spend, or performance-based: each creates different incentives. A share-of-spend fee rewards the specialist for spending more, so if you use it, cap it and pair it with a written scope of the work included at that level.
4. Keep ownership of the accounts. Ad platform accounts, conversion tags, audiences and historical data should live in entities you own with the specialist granted access. Otherwise the account history that makes bidding efficient leaves with the agency when the contract ends.

What separates a specialist from a generalist

The visible difference is where their time goes. A generalist tends to spend it on account maintenance: keyword lists, bids, negative keywords and reporting. A specialist spends more of it on the parts that actually move an auction outcome, which are offers, creative, landing pages and the feed of conversion data the platform bids against. Automated bidding has shifted the work in this direction across the industry, and a candidate still selling manual bid management as the core service is describing a job that mostly no longer exists.

The second difference is in what they refuse to do. A specialist will tell you when a channel is wrong for your category, when your margin cannot support the click prices, or when the landing page has to change before spend increases. Willingness to say no before taking the money is one of the few signals available to you at the pitch stage.

Claims that should slow you down

Guaranteed positions, guaranteed cost per acquisition and claimed insider access to an ad platform are the three most common. Google's hiring guidance says nobody can guarantee a number one ranking in search and warns against anyone claiming a special relationship with Google; both cautions carry over to paid channels, where competitors' bids are outside anyone's control. A serious specialist gives a range, states the assumptions and revises when data arrives.

Case studies deserve the same scrutiny. Ask which client, which quarter, what the baseline was, and what else changed in the business at the time. A result that coincided with a product launch or a competitor leaving the market is not evidence of the specialist's contribution. Named references who will take a call beat any anonymised chart.

Setting up a relationship that can be audited

Agree the reporting cadence, the metric definitions and the escalation path in the contract. Decide whether a lead counts before or after your sales team qualifies it, whether calls count and at what duration, and which platform's attribution you will treat as authoritative when two disagree. These decisions are cheap now and contentious later.

Then agree the exit: notice period, written handover of account structure and naming conventions, and confirmation that administrative access stays with you. A specialist confident in the work has no reason to resist any of it.

Questions people actually ask

What do PPC specialists charge?

Common models are a flat monthly retainer, a share of ad spend, or a mix. Published figures in this index come from the agencies' own pages with the date each was checked, and they represent an entry floor for a defined scope rather than a likely bill.

Is a freelancer as good as an agency?

For a single channel and a modest budget, often yes, and usually cheaper. Agencies earn their overhead when you need several channels, creative production or continuity cover. The risk with a freelancer is single-person dependency, so ask what happens during illness or holiday.

Should the specialist also build landing pages?

Someone must, and most wasted budget is lost after the click. If the specialist does not do it, name who does and make sure that work is scheduled and funded before spend scales, or the account will be optimised against a page nobody is allowed to change.

How quickly can we judge the work?

Give the first weeks to measurement and structure, then allow the bidding systems time to accumulate data. Judge trends across a quarter rather than a month, and do not scale budget until you have verified that conversions are being tracked correctly.

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