Most Google Ads management fees are explained in a footnote, if they're explained at all. Ours fits in one line: 12% of your combined monthly ad spend, or a minimum, whichever is higher. The minimum is $950 for one platform, plus $400 for each extra platform. On any spend above $40,000 a month, the rate drops to 9%.
That's the whole formula. The rest of this page is arithmetic and reasoning, because a fee you can't check yourself isn't much of a disclosure.
The formula, written out
- Platforms we count: Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and LinkedIn.
- Minimum: $950 for one platform, $1,350 for two, $1,750 for three, $2,150 for four.
- Percentage: 12% of combined spend up to $40,000, then 9% on the part above $40,000.
- Your fee: whichever of those two numbers is higher.
"Combined" is the word doing the work. If you spend $6,000 on Google and $4,000 on Meta, we take 12% of $10,000. We don't run two percentages with two minimums.
Five worked examples
| Combined monthly spend | Platforms | Minimum | Percentage works out to | You pay |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $3,000 | 1 | $950 | $360 | $950 |
| $10,000 | 1 | $950 | $1,200 | $1,200 |
| $10,000 | 2 | $1,350 | $1,200 | $1,350 |
| $25,000 | 2 | $1,350 | $3,000 | $3,000 |
| $60,000 | 3 | $1,750 | $4,800 + $1,800 | $6,600 |
The last row is the one people check twice. The first $40,000 is charged at 12%, which is $4,800. The remaining $20,000 is charged at 9%, which is $1,800. Total: $6,600, or 11% of the full $60,000.
Where the minimum stops mattering
Every minimum has a crossover point, the spend level where 12% catches up with it. Below that line you pay the minimum. Above it you pay the percentage.
| Platforms | Minimum | 12% catches up at about |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | $950 | $7,917 a month |
| 2 | $1,350 | $11,250 a month |
| 3 | $1,750 | $14,583 a month |
| 4 | $2,150 | $17,917 a month |
So if you run Google alone at $5,000 a month, you're on the minimum, and you'll stay there until spend passes roughly $7,900. Your effective rate at $5,000 is 19%. We'd rather you saw that number here than worked it out from an invoice.
Why there's a minimum at all
A $2,000 account isn't a fifth of the work of a $10,000 account. Someone still reads the search terms every week, adds negatives, rotates ad tests, checks that conversions are firing and answers your questions. At 12%, a $2,000 account would pay $240 a month. We can't do that work properly for $240, and we'd rather not pretend we can by quietly doing less of it.
If $950 feels heavy next to your budget, it might be. Say you spend $1,500 a month on Google. The minimum would be 63% of your media spend, which is a lopsided ratio. In that case a one-off PPC launch setup ($1,250) or an ads account audit ($690), and then running the account yourself for a while, may be the better use of the money. We'll say so on the call.
Why each extra platform adds $400
Each platform is its own job: different audiences, different creative specs, separate tracking, separate reporting. On a small combined budget that extra work is real, and 12% of a small number doesn't cover it. The $400 pays for it.
Once combined spend is high enough, the add-on disappears into the percentage. At $25,000 across two platforms, the $1,350 minimum is irrelevant. You pay $3,000 either way.
Compared with a per-platform fee
Plenty of agencies charge their percentage and their minimum separately on every platform. Here's a hypothetical agency charging 15% or $1,000 per platform, whichever is higher, set against our formula. These are illustrative numbers, not any specific competitor's price list.
| Scenario | Per-platform model (hypothetical) | Oneirly |
|---|---|---|
| Google $6,000 + Meta $3,000 | $1,000 + $1,000 = $2,000 | $1,350 |
| Google $15,000 + Meta $5,000 | $2,250 + $1,000 = $3,250 | $2,400 |
| Google $4,000 only | $1,000 | $950 |
Most of the gap comes from the second minimum. That's the "my bill doubled when we added Meta" complaint, and it's the reason we price on combined spend.
What isn't extra, and what is
Not charged on top of the fee:
- A setup fee on existing accounts.
- A reporting or dashboard fee.
- Tool pass-through costs.
- Any mark-up on media. Your card pays Google, Meta, Microsoft and LinkedIn directly. Your ad money never passes through us.
Charged separately, only if you need it:
- A PPC launch setup at $1,250 for a brand-new account or a full rebuild on one platform. It's waived inside the Two-Track and All-Channel packages.
- Work outside the agreed scope, at $135 an hour with a 2-hour minimum.
How it shows up on your invoice
We calculate the percentage on the previous month's spend, as the platforms report it. The minimum is invoiced at the start of the month. If the percentage came out higher, the difference is billed on the next invoice. Ads-only management has a 2-month initial term, then runs month to month with 30 days' notice.
The fair criticism of percentage fees
A percentage of spend gives an agency a reason to push your budget up. That criticism is fair, and no fee model fully fixes it. Flat fees have the opposite flaw: they reward doing less as an account grows.
What we do about it:
- The rate drops to 9% above $40,000, so scaling earns us proportionally less.
- Our reports lead with leads, sales or revenue from your own records, before platform metrics.
- When an extra $5,000 a month isn't paying back, we say so, even though cutting it lowers our fee.
None of that guarantees results. Ad performance depends on your market, offer, site and competitors, and platforms change their rules often. What it does mean is that you can check every dollar of our fee against a number you already know: your spend.
Run your own numbers
Put your platforms and spend into the fee calculator. It runs the same formula as this page, in your browser, and shows whether a package would cost less once SEO or local work is in the plan. For reference, Groundwork is $1,750 a month for one platform with spend up to $7,500, plus light SEO or local SEO for up to 2 locations. Bought separately, the ads minimum plus local SEO for 2 locations comes to $1,910.
