Free tool
What should PPC management cost?
Four pricing models plus the in-house option, priced against your actual spend. All figures are from published rate cards, so you can check them.
-
Aclick
Flat to $25k spend, then 10–15%
$4,000
20.0% of spend
-
Low-cost flat retainer
Typical white-label rate, e.g. $445–$999/mo
$700
3.5% of spend
-
Percentage of spend
Common agency model at 15%
$3,000
15.0% of spend
-
Tiered by spend
Flat below $10k, then ~10–12%
$2,200
11.0% of spend
-
One in-house specialist
US mid-level salary + overhead, monthly
$9,000
45.0% of spend
Sources: Logical Position, InvisiblePPC, Admiral Media and E2M Solutions published rate cards, checked September 2026. In-house figure is a loaded monthly cost estimate, not a quoted rate.
The number to watch is fee as a share of spend
At $5,000 a month of spend, a $700 flat retainer is 14% and a percentage model is cheaper. At $80,000, the same $700 retainer is under 1% – which sounds like a bargain until you ask how much attention $700 buys on an $80,000 account.
That crossover is why most agencies that publish anything use a hybrid: flat while the account is small enough that a percentage would not cover the work, percentage once it is large enough that the work genuinely scales with the budget.
What the fee should include
Campaign management, conversion tracking maintenance, reporting, and someone who answers when something breaks. What it usually does not include: creative production, landing page development, and the ad spend itself. If a proposal is vague about which side of that line the creative sits on, ask before signing.
The question nobody asks in the first call
Who actually works on the account, and how many other accounts do they have? A fee is meaningless without that. Twenty accounts per manager is a different product from six, at the same price, and only one of them gets your account looked at on a Tuesday.
Questions people actually ask
- Why does percentage of spend get criticised?
- Because it pays the agency more for spending more, which is not always your interest. It is defensible above a certain size, where more spend genuinely means more work, and indefensible as a way to price a small account.
- Is a flat retainer always better?
- No. A flat fee that does not move as the account grows eventually underpays the work and the account quietly gets less attention. The honest structures are flat up to a threshold and percentage above it, or flat plus a performance bonus.
- What about the in-house comparison?
- The $9,000 figure is a rough loaded monthly cost for one mid-level US paid media specialist – salary, taxes, benefits and tooling. It buys you one person's attention full-time, which is more than any agency gives you. It also buys one person's range of expertise, and no cover when they leave.
- Should management fees come out of the ad budget?
- They should be separate lines. When the fee is taken from the media budget, cutting spend cuts the agency's income, which creates an incentive nobody should want in the room during a downturn.
Our own numbers are published too.
Starting rate, the spend threshold where the model changes, and the minimum ad budget we will take on. No form required to see any of it.