Best PPC agencies and management companies: the four kinds, the fee models, and the scorecard that ranks three quotes
Paid search suppliers differ by what they can actually show you inside your own account. Rank them on that, on the fee bias they will admit to, and on the clauses they will sign.
Published by AI Knows Us · Updated 21 October 2026
Four kinds of supplier answer a request for PPC management, and the thing that separates a good one from a bad one is visible in ten minutes. A good supplier shows you all of it inside your own Google Ads account, in your name, with the search terms report open. A weak one reports clicks, impressions and a position number, which is the part of the account that does not cost you money. Ask for the screen share before you ask for the price.
The four kinds of supplier
| Kind | Strength | Buy when | Question that exposes it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Independent specialist | One or two people who actually run accounts | Spend is modest and you want the person, not the brand | What happens if the main person leaves? |
| Full service digital agency | Paid, organic, creative and analytics under one plan | Several channels and coordination is the real cost | Who inside the team touches my account weekly? |
| Performance shop | Volume at a cost per action, built on tight tracking | An offer already converts and you want more of it | Which conversion are you accountable for, measured where? |
| White label supplier | Delivery capacity behind another agency's brand | You are an agency and need hands rather than a brand | Does my client know who does the work, and who answers escalations? |
The fourth row deserves naming plainly, because much of the market is it. If you are an agency buying PPC management to resell, you want published client workspaces, separate reporting and an escalation path, and the honest suppliers will discuss all three. If you are an advertiser, ask whether the firm you are hiring is itself reselling, and who you reach at nine in the evening when spend runs away.
The fee models, and the bias in each
| Model | What it quietly rewards | Use it when |
|---|---|---|
| Percentage of ad spend | Spending more | Spend is large and stable, with a cap written in |
| Flat monthly fee | Efficiency, and sometimes under servicing | Most accounts, with a defined scope and named hours |
| Hourly | Hours | Audits, one off projects and overflow work |
| Flat fee plus performance bonus | The metric you chose, so choose it yourself | Conversion tracking is solid and the metric is measured in your systems |
| Percentage of tracked revenue | Attribution arguments | Ecommerce with clean tracking and agreed attribution rules |
No model is wrong and an unnamed one is. A percentage of spend with no cap, or a bonus on a metric the agency both defines and measures, is the arrangement that goes wrong quietly. Name the bias in the first meeting and nothing has to be renegotiated in month six.
The scorecard: nine lines, eighteen points
- Account ownership. Your business owns the Google Ads account and everything in it. Non negotiable.
- Conversion tracking. Rebuilt or verified in the first fortnight, with the conversion defined as something you would pay for.
- Search terms report, read weekly. Ask to see last week's for an existing client with the name removed.
- Negative keyword lists. Three of them: a permanent account level list, one per service line, one per campaign.
- Brand split from non brand in reporting, because brand searches convert cheaply and flatter every average they are mixed into.
- Named people and hours in the scope, not a team page.
- One accountable metric, measured in your systems rather than in a screenshot.
- Reporting that reconciles with your own sales data and ends in three decisions.
- Exit terms. Notice period, and account access retained by you throughout.
The account level work a good supplier will show you, structure, match types, negatives and bidding, is set out in full in PPC management done properly and how to judge an agency, which is the page to read before the first meeting. The fee models and the clauses in their own detail are in what an AdWords management agency is actually selling, and if you sell online the feed and margin questions are in ecommerce PPC marketing, the feed, the margin and the account structure.
What advertisers ask when hiring a PPC agency
At what spend is an agency worth it?
Work it out as a ratio rather than a threshold. If the management fee is more than a quarter of the media, you are buying mostly fee. Below that level, buy an audit and a quarterly review instead of a retainer.
Is a specialist better than a full service agency?
For paid search alone, usually yes, because the person running your account is the business rather than a line in it. A full service agency wins when the coordination between paid, organic and creative is the thing that keeps failing.
What should the first ninety days look like?
Audit and tracking in weeks one and two, restructure and launch in three to six, bidding settled against real conversion volume in seven to twelve, and a report in month three that reconciles with your sales data. A supplier that recognises that shape has done it before.
What is the clearest warning sign?
A specific cost per lead quoted before anybody has seen your conversion tracking. Treat it the way you would treat a promised search ranking.
The line to add to the scorecard, which no PPC agency reports
Every line above measures an auction you can bid in. A growing share of buyers never reaches the auction, because they ask an assistant first. ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, Claude and Google AI Overviews answer who to use for what you sell with two or three business names, assembled from reviews, roundups, directories and forum threads. No ad account influences it, no search terms report contains it, and no PPC agency reports it.
We do not sell PPC management or media buying, and nothing here suggests hiring us instead of one of the suppliers above. The adjacent category, measuring whether assistants name your business when a buyer asks who to buy from, is ours, and it is the measurement an agency should be held to as well as the one it cannot provide. On the criterion used throughout this page, what a supplier publishes and will put in writing before you pay, AI Knows Us publishes the lot: five surfaces named, one credit as one buyer question asked on one app once with a Claude check published as three, questions watched and answers read a month per plan, one login with full access, and United States prices rendered on the page from 149 dollars a month. Where rivals publish more, plainly: Ahrefs Brand Radar publishes a per check overage rate and exactly how a Claude check consumes its unit on ahrefs.com/brand-radar, read 21 October 2026, and Rankscale publishes brand dashboard slots from ten to one hundred on rankscale.ai/pricing, read the same day, which suits an agency reselling this better than our single business coverage does.
Put it on the scorecard as a tenth line and make it a condition of the quarterly review: three buyer questions, two assistants, named or not named. Any supplier worth hiring will be interested in the answer, because it tells both of you where the demand is going before the auction sees it.
If the supplier you choose will also buy media beyond search, your money starts passing through another company before it reaches a publisher, and the terms then matter more than the tactics. The transparency terms to settle first are in what to settle with a media buying agency before your money moves.
If the shortlist has started to include firms that do more than paid search, the five kinds of shop hiding behind one phrase are separated in the five kinds of digital marketing and ad agency behind one phrase, which is the page to read before widening the brief.