Commercial Reality
TherealcostofcheapPPCmanagement
A £1,500/month agency managing £30,000 in monthly ad spend. Here is what the maths actually looks like, and what it costs you over 12 months.
The hours maths
A £1,500/month retainer at a typical agency, after overheads, salaries, and margin, buys approximately 6-8 billable hours per month. Here is what proper management actually requires:
| Task | Hours needed/month | At £1,500/month? |
|---|---|---|
| Client communication and reporting | 2-3h | Covered (barely) |
| Platform updates and troubleshooting | 1-2h | Covered (barely) |
| Search term review and negatives | 2-3h | Skipped or rushed |
| Feed optimisation | 2-3h | Skipped or rushed |
| Bid strategy refinement | 1-2h | Skipped or rushed |
| Creative and copy testing | 2-3h | Skipped or rushed |
| Competitor and auction analysis | 1-2h | Skipped or rushed |
| Commercial analysis and strategy | 2-3h | Skipped or rushed |
| Total required | 14-21h | 6-8h available |
The gap is 8-13 hours per month. That is not a minor shortfall. It means the work that separates a good account from a wasteful one simply does not happen.
How neglect compounds over 12 months
Based on a £30,000/month ad spend. These are conservative estimates from patterns we see repeatedly in audit after audit.
Month 1-3
Irrelevant search terms go unchecked
8-15% of spend wasted on non-converting queries
Cumulative waste
£7,200 - £13,500
Month 4-6
No SKU-level profitability analysis
Budget flows to high-revenue, low-margin products
Cumulative waste
£18,000 - £32,000
Month 7-9
PMax brand cannibalisation unchecked
Paying for conversions that would have happened organically
Cumulative waste
£30,000 - £52,000
Month 10-12
No feed optimisation or governance
Poor product data suppresses Shopping performance
Cumulative waste
£42,000 - £72,000
12-month total
£42,000 - £72,000
in preventable waste on a £360,000 annual spend
Agency fee saved
£6,000 - £12,000
the "saving" versus a specialist agency
This is not about spending more on an agency
It is about the return on what you spend. A specialist agency at £3k/month does not cost you £1.5k more. It saves you £3.5k-£6k/month in waste they catch, margins they protect, and opportunities they find.
The cheapest agency is rarely the most affordable.
£1,500/month agency
Monitoring. Checking dashboards. Reacting to problems after they happen.
£3,000-£5,000/month specialist
Active management. Margin-aware bidding. Proactive governance. Commercial accountability.
Find out what your current setup is actually costing you
Our commercial audit shows you exactly where money is being wasted, and what the fix would look like.
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