Run your campaigns yourself, hand them to an employee, or pay a Google Ads agency? The answer does not come down to the price an agency quotes, but to the total cost of each option: media budget, management fees and the hours your team spends on it. Here is how to do that calculation, recognize the point where an agency starts paying for itself, and choose one well.
Key Takeaways
- The real cost of an ad campaign adds up three lines: the media budget, the management fees and the internal time, which is often forgotten.
- Agencies generally bill a monthly retainer, a percentage of the budget, or both, sometimes with a setup fee.
- Performance Max and Advantage+ make launching simple, but without reliable conversion tracking, automation quickly spends in the wrong direction.
- A good agency leaves you owning your ad accounts, delivers readable reports and does not lock you into a long contract.
What an ad campaign really costs
Comparing an agency’s price against “zero” for in-house management is a calculation error: every ad campaign, whoever runs it, carries three cost lines.
The media budget: what you pay Google and Meta
This is the money paid directly to Google or Meta for clicks or impressions. A poorly structured campaign wastes part of it on searches with no buying intent, regions you do not serve or audiences that are far too broad. As a guideline, the budgets generally seen in Quebec for an SMB run from $1,000 to $10,000 a month per platform; below that, there is not enough data to optimize.
Management fees: the common agency pricing models
Agencies bill their work under three models, often combined. The ranges below are indicative.
- Monthly retainer: a fixed amount, generally $500 to $5,000 a month for an SMB. It is the most predictable model for your budget.
- Percentage of the media budget: often 10% to 20% of the amounts spent, with a monthly minimum. Simple, but it rewards the agency when you spend more, not when you sell more.
- Setup fee: $1,500 to $3,000, one time, for the audit, the campaign structure, the conversion tracking setup and the first ads.
No model is bad in itself. What matters is knowing what the amount covers: campaigns, platforms, ad copy, landing pages and reports.
Internal time: the cost nobody counts
Running one or two campaigns properly generally takes 3 to 6 hours a week: reading search terms, excluding what does not convert, testing ads, checking that tracking works. If that time is yours and you value it at $75 an hour, 4 hours a week comes to about $1,300 a month, often more than an agency retainer.
Handing the task to an employee moves the problem rather than solving it. A full-time Google Ads specialist generally costs $55,000 to $80,000 a year in Quebec, as a guideline, which only makes sense with large budgets. A generalist who handles advertising between two other files, meanwhile, learns at your expense.
Running your own online advertising: when it works, and when it gets expensive
The situations where in-house management holds up
Running your campaigns yourself is reasonable with a modest budget, a simple offering, a well-defined territory and someone on the team who likes numbers and has time every week. A local services business with a dozen precise keywords can do perfectly well.
The condition is discipline: reading the reports every week, knowing what a customer costs and cutting what does not pay. Our post on cost per acquisition explains how to work it out.
Performance Max and Advantage+: when automation works against you
Google and Meta now push almost fully automated campaigns: Performance Max at Google, Advantage+ campaigns at Meta. The promise is appealing: you supply a budget, visuals and a goal, and artificial intelligence handles bidding, audiences and placements.
The problem: the algorithm optimizes exactly what you ask it to measure. If your tracking counts a simple visit to the Contact page as a conversion, it will find you plenty of visitors, not customers. If your brand is well known, Performance Max may claim credit for sales that would have happened anyway. And because these campaigns show little detail, a drift can run for weeks. We go into these mechanics in our post on Google Ads in 2026 and AI.
AI is an excellent tool in the hands of someone who feeds it good data and clear limits. Left alone, it spends your budget with a great deal of confidence.
The signs it is time to bring in a Google Ads agency
Certain signals show that in-house management is costing you more than it returns:
- You cannot say how many customers your ads generated last month, or at what cost.
- The budget gets spent every month, but the quotes or sales do not follow.
- You want to add a second platform, for example Facebook and Instagram alongside Google, without knowing where to start.
- Your media budget exceeds a few thousand dollars a month: at that level, every 10% of waste you avoid is worth several hundred dollars a month.
An agency pays for itself when what it saves you, in wasted budget and in time, plus the additional customers, exceeds its fees. Take a hypothetical example: with $4,000 of media budget a month, eliminating 15% of pointless spend frees up $600. Add the 4 weekly hours you get back, and a $1,000 retainer is covered before you even count the extra sales.
6 criteria for choosing a Google Ads or Facebook ads agency
On their websites, every agency looks alike. These six criteria tell them apart.
1. You remain the owner of your ad accounts
Your Google Ads and Meta accounts, your pixel, your audiences and your campaign history belong to you. The account must be created in your company’s name, with your payment method, and the agency should be granted access to it, not the other way around. If you leave, the history leaves with you.
2. Transparent, understandable reports
A good report answers three questions: how much you spent, how many enquiries or sales came out of it, and what each one cost. Be wary of reports full of impressions and click-through rates with no connection to your revenue.
3. Solid conversion tracking from day one
Without reliable tracking, no optimization is possible. Ask how the agency measures forms, calls and sales, how it connects enquiries to customers actually signed, and how it handles the consent for tracking cookies required by Quebec’s Law 25.
4. No abusive commitment
An initial three-month period is reasonable, because campaigns need time to learn. A twelve-month contract with no exit clause, on the other hand, mainly protects the agency.
5. Knowledge of the Quebec market and of French
People do not search with the same words in Montreal, in Quebec City or in Toronto. Ads translated word for word from English, or keywords that ignore local expressions, cost you money. Your agency has to write in the French used here, know Quebec’s language obligations and run bilingual campaigns where needed.
6. A landing page strategy
Sending paid clicks to a generic homepage wastes the budget. A good agency looks at where the clicks land: a fast page that matches the ad, with one clear call to action. Failing that, it should at least tell you what to fix.
The questions to ask before signing
Before committing to a digital advertising agency, ask these questions and write down the answers:
- Who owns the Google Ads and Meta accounts, and how do we recover access if we end the contract?
- What exactly does the retainer include: how many campaigns, which platforms, who writes the ads and creates the visuals?
- Which conversions will you measure, and how do you connect enquiries to sales?
- What is the minimum contract length, and what notice is required to end it?
- What result can we reasonably aim for in the first three months?
An agency that answers clearly, without promising results before seeing your data, generally knows what it is talking about. If you are still weighing the platform, see our comparison Google Ads vs Facebook Ads and our guide Facebook Ads for small business.
What we do at DVCOM
Our Google Ads and Meta Ads management is built for Quebec SMBs, with one ground rule: the ad accounts stay in your name, and every report opens with what a customer costs, not with a click count. Before launching anything, we check the conversion tracking and the landing page: that is where a large part of the result is decided.
We use Google’s and Meta’s automation, and AI to speed up analysis and ad writing, but budget and targeting decisions stay human. And if your budget is too small for outside management to pay off, we will tell you so.
→ Discover our approach on our Conversion Campaigns page.
FAQ — Google Ads agency and managing your campaigns
What does a Google Ads agency cost for an SMB in Quebec? As a guideline, the management fees generally seen in Quebec run from $500 to $5,000 a month for an SMB, or 10% to 20% of the media budget, sometimes with a setup fee of $1,500 to $3,000. The media budget, paid directly to Google, comes on top of those fees.
At what ad budget does an agency start paying for itself? Generally, when the media budget exceeds a few thousand dollars a month, or when in-house management takes you several hours a week. Below about $1,000 a month, disciplined in-house management or occasional coaching is often the wiser choice.
Do I stay the owner of my Google Ads account if I work with an agency? You should. The account must be created in your company’s name, with your payment method, and the agency is granted access to it. Insist on it in writing: if you change agencies, you keep your entire campaign history.
Can a Google Ads agency also manage my Facebook and Instagram ads? Yes, many agencies handle both, and it is often preferable: one team sees the whole journey, from discovery on Facebook or Instagram through to the search on Google. Check that both are included in the retainer and in the same report.
To see where you currently stand, try our free Marketing Budget Allocation tool. And if you would rather talk it through, get in touch.
