What management costs, how to brief someone, and how to tell whether the people running your ads are doing the job.
Guide
Businesses compare an agency retainer against a salary and conclude that hiring is cheaper. The comparison is wrong in a specific way, and the arithmetic is worth doing properly before either decision.
3 min
Guide
White-label PPC means an outside senior runs the paid media while your agency keeps the client and the brand. Here is what it costs in 2026 and how to vet a partner before handing over an account.
4 min
Guide
Nobody in this market publishes prices, which is exactly why this page exists. What Google Ads itself costs against what a manager costs, my own management fee of R6,500 to R10,500 a month, the three ways agencies charge, and the media budget below which you should pay nobody a fee.
6 min
Guide
Five checks a non-marketer can run in about an hour to see whether an ads agency is earning its fee, plus the three things to settle first: who owns the account, what the change history shows, and what a monthly report should actually contain.
7 min
Guide
How to inherit a Google Ads account: the access levels and the invitation that get you in without swapping logins, then the fixed order to work in. Secure ownership, snapshot everything, read the change history, audit measurement before campaigns, change slowly.
6 min
Guide
Most briefs list channels and ask for creativity, which selects for confident talkers. Put measurement in the brief, ask one tracking question in the interview, and the field sorts itself.
3 min
Guide
Google Ads management is priced the same three ways in every market, and the numbers only make sense against one piece of arithmetic. Here are my published August 2026 rates as concrete reference points, and the one-customer test that tells you whether any fee is worth paying.
4 min
Guide
The whole hiring journey in order: the media budget you need before hiring anyone, freelancer against agency against in-house, the questions that filter the field, how to check a track record without being fooled, and what a good first month looks like.
7 min
Guide
An honest comparison of freelancers, agencies and fractional specialists for paid media, with real 2026 rates and the one test you should run on all three before signing anything.
4 min
Guide
Secure ownership of your accounts before you think about a replacement. What to lock down in the first 48 hours, what the contract normally entitles you to, how to keep the ads running while you decide, and how to judge the next person differently.
7 min
Essay
The retouching, the cutdowns, the second round of headlines: those used to be a line item, and the line item was most of the invoice. Now a junior with the right tool does an afternoon of it before lunch. An agency still pricing those hours is charging for the part of the work that got automated, and the client can feel it. The fee that survives is attached to a different thing entirely, and it was always the harder thing to sell.
4 min