“PPC management” shows up on almost every agency’s homepage, but it rarely means the same thing twice. One proposal might cover research, a full campaign build, and weekly optimization for $2,500 a month. Another might mean someone checks your bids twice a month for the same price. Both get called “management” on the invoice.
NYC’s agency market is crowded enough that comparing two or three quotes side by side is realistic, which also makes it easy to compare the wrong thing: two monthly numbers with nothing underneath them.
Before you weigh price, it’s worth knowing what a properly scoped PPC management engagement actually includes, and where the honest gray areas sit.
What “PPC Management” Actually Covers
Professional PPC management covers five connected areas: research and strategy, campaign build, ongoing optimization, performance reporting, and landing page guidance.
A quote that only covers one or two of these, most often just “ongoing optimization,” is closer to partial account monitoring than full management, even when the word “management” is right there in the proposal.
Every agency bundles these five pieces differently, and that bundling, not the sticker price, is what actually separates a $1,200-a-month proposal from a $4,000-a-month one covering the same size account. Here’s what each piece should include at minimum:
- Research & strategy: keyword research, competitor gaps, and a documented account audit before anything launches
- Campaign build: account structure, ad copy, and targeting set up around real search intent
- Ongoing optimization: the recurring bid, budget, and testing work that happens after launch
- Reporting: a standing cadence showing what changed and why, not just a dashboard link
- Landing page guidance: specific, prioritized feedback on what’s hurting conversions, not usually a full rebuild
Research & Strategy Before Anything Goes Live
Before an agency writes a single ad, real PPC management starts with keyword research organized by intent, a negative-keyword list to block irrelevant clicks, competitor analysis, and an audit of your existing account history if one exists. This groundwork sets your entire campaign structure, so it should be a deliverable you see, not an internal step taken on faith.
That last point matters more than it sounds. A real research phase produces something concrete: an actual keyword list, an actual negative-keyword list, a written note on what competitors are doing differently.
If an agency can’t show you any of that before launch, “strategy” is doing a lot of unearned work in their pitch.
- Keyword research organized by buyer intent, not just search volume
- Negative-keyword mapping to keep budget off irrelevant clicks
- Competitor gap analysis: where they’re visible and where they aren’t
- A full audit of your existing account, if you’re not starting from zero
- Conversion goals defined around your actual business, not just clicks or impressions
Campaign Build: Structure, Targeting, and Ad Copy
Campaign build covers how your account is structured: which campaign types run (Search, Performance Max, Demand Gen, and Shopping where relevant), how ad groups are organized around real search intent, and who actually writes the ad copy. A poorly scoped build shows up fast, usually as one enormous ad group covering everything a business sells.
Google’s own campaign lineup keeps consolidating, which matters more here than it might seem. Standalone Display campaigns folded into Demand Gen in 2026, and Dynamic Search Ads are being phased toward AI Max for Search.
None of that is something a business owner needs to personally track, but it’s exactly what a management fee should be paying someone else to track, so an account doesn’t keep running on a setup that quietly went out of date.
Who Writes the Ad Copy?
In a properly scoped engagement, the agency’s team writes and tests the ad copy, usually with a short review round so the client’s offers, voice, and compliance needs make it into the final version.
If a proposal expects a business owner to hand over finished ad copy, that’s a sign the engagement is closer to account monitoring than full management.
Ongoing Optimization: The Actual “Management” Part
Ongoing optimization is the recurring work that happens after launch: bid and budget adjustments, mining the search-terms report for new keywords and negatives, A/B testing ad variations, and monitoring Quality Score and ad relevance. This is the part a one-time campaign setup never covers, and it’s where most of an ongoing management fee is actually earned.
Google’s bidding systems now handle a lot of the moment-to-moment adjustments themselves through Smart Bidding and Performance Max.
That shifts the manager’s job rather than removing it: the real work becomes feeding the algorithm clean conversion data, sensible budget guardrails, and accurate audience signals, then catching it when automation starts spending in the wrong direction.
An account left alone for months with no one checking those inputs isn’t the same thing as a professionally managed one, even if the ads are technically still running.
- Bid and budget management, including seasonal or promotional adjustments
- Search-term mining and negative-keyword additions
- A/B testing ad copy, creative assets, and landing pages
- Quality Score and ad-relevance monitoring
- Evaluating new campaign types or features as Google rolls them out
Reporting: What You Should Actually See Each Month
Reporting should show what changed in an account and why, not just raw numbers pulled off a dashboard. At minimum, that means spend, conversions, cost per conversion, and a short explanation of what the agency adjusted since the last report, delivered on a cadence agreed to upfront rather than whenever someone gets around to it.
A dashboard link on its own isn’t reporting, it’s data. The actual deliverable is someone translating that data into what it means for the business and what happens next.
If a proposal doesn’t name a reporting frequency in writing, that’s worth asking about before signing, since “regular updates” and “a report every two weeks” are not the same commitment.
Landing Page Guidance: What’s Included, What Isn’t
Most PPC management includes landing page guidance, meaning specific, prioritized feedback on what’s likely hurting a page’s conversion rate, but a full page redesign or new build is usually its own project rather than part of the standard management fee. This is one of the more common scope gaps, so it’s worth asking about directly instead of assuming either way.
The reasoning behind that split is straightforward. Quality Score, and therefore cost per click, is partly determined by how relevant a landing page is to the ad and the search term behind it, so an agency that ignores the landing page is only optimizing half the equation.
But redesigning or building a page is a design and development project in its own right, with its own timeline, which is why most agencies scope it separately even when they flag problems with it constantly.
What This Actually Looks Like for a NYC Business
A realistic PPC management scope isn’t really a checklist, it’s a monthly cadence with a clear line between what the management fee covers and what gets billed separately.
The table below shows roughly where that line sits, and the example after it shows what the cadence looks like in practice.
| Deliverable Area | Usually Included in the Monthly Fee | Often Billed Separately |
|---|---|---|
| Research & Strategy | Keyword research, negative-keyword lists, competitor gap analysis, account audit | Full market or industry research reports |
| Campaign Build | Account structure, ad copywriting, audience and targeting setup | A ground-up rebuild fee for migrating a badly structured legacy account |
| Ongoing Optimization | Bid and budget management, search-term mining, A/B testing, Quality Score monitoring | — |
| Landing Pages | Conversion-focused feedback and prioritized recommendations | A full page redesign or new page build |
| Tracking & Reporting | Conversion tracking audit, monthly performance report, a standing call cadence | Custom CRM/GA4 integrations, ad-hoc deep-dive reporting |
Take a personal-injury law firm in Downtown Brooklyn, a genuinely competitive, high-cost-per-click category even by NYC standards.
A properly scoped month looks something like: search-term review and negative-keyword additions in week one, a Quality Score and ad-relevance check in week two, a mid-month landing-page conversion review, and a written report in the final week comparing cost per lead against the prior month, with a short call to walk through what changed and why.
That cadence is the “management” part of the fee, not just the ads running quietly in the background.
How to Compare Scope When Every Agency Quotes Something Different
The fastest way to compare two PPC proposals is to ask both agencies for a written scope of work, not a sales deck, and treat a vague answer as a data point in itself. A specific proposal names the platforms covered, the reporting cadence, and exactly where the management fee stops and ad spend or add-ons begin.
Four things worth requesting in writing before comparing prices:
- A scope of work naming each deliverable, not just a monthly total
- The specific platforms covered (Search, Performance Max, Demand Gen, Shopping, or others)
- A stated reporting cadence and what’s included in each report
- A clear line between the management fee, your ad spend, and any add-ons
If it’s still unclear whether an agency is even the right structure for a team, compared with a freelancer or an in-house hire, that trade-off is covered in PPC Agency vs. Freelancer vs. In-House. And once the actual scope needed is clear, how agencies price that scope, flat retainer, percentage of ad spend, or performance-based, deserves its own look, covered in PPC Management Pricing Models Explained.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the management fee include my ad spend?
No. The management fee and ad spend are two separate costs going to two different places: ad spend goes directly to Google (or Microsoft, Meta, and so on) to pay for the auction itself, while the management fee pays the agency or specialist running the account. Confusing the two is one of the most common reasons a proposal ends up feeling more expensive than it looked at first.
Does PPC management include building or redesigning my landing pages?
Usually not in full. Most PPC management includes landing page guidance, specific recommendations for what’s hurting conversions, but an actual redesign or new build is typically a separate project unless an agency explicitly bundles web design into the retainer. It’s worth asking directly before signing, since it’s one of the most common scope gaps.
Who writes the ad copy, me or the agency?
In a properly scoped engagement, the agency’s team writes and tests the ad copy, usually with a short client review round to confirm the offers, voice, and any compliance requirements are accurate. A proposal that expects a business owner to supply finished ad copy is typically closer to account monitoring than full management.
Is keyword research a one-time task or an ongoing part of management?
Both. Keyword research happens intensively before launch to build the account structure, then continues on a smaller scale every month as the agency reviews the search-terms report and adds new keywords or negatives based on what’s actually triggering ads. A fee that only covers the upfront research misses the part of the job that protects the budget over time.
Does PPC management cover platforms besides Google Ads?
It depends entirely on how the engagement is scoped, so it’s worth confirming rather than assuming. Some agencies use “PPC management” to mean Google Ads exclusively, while others bundle in Microsoft Ads or paid social; getting the specific platforms named in writing makes it possible to actually compare two proposals against each other.
What’s typically not included in a standard PPC management fee?
Common exclusions are a full landing page build, a one-time setup or migration fee for a messy legacy account, custom analytics or CRM integrations, and creative production like video or display assets. None of these are red flags by themselves since they’re normal add-ons, but they should be named upfront rather than surfacing later as a change order.
Do I keep access to my own Google Ads account?
Yes, in a well-run engagement a business always retains admin access to its own account, even while an agency manages it day to day. An agency that won’t grant access to an account the business is paying for, or that built the account under its own login, is worth raising as a concern before signing anything.
How do I know if the scope actually justifies the price?
Compare what’s inside two proposals, not just the total dollar figure. A $1,500-a-month proposal covering only bid monitoring can end up costing more per deliverable than a $3,000-a-month proposal covering full research, build, optimization, and reporting. The pricing model itself also shapes what “fair” looks like, which is covered in more depth in PPC Management Pricing Models.
