If you’re considering hiring a Google Ads agency in Australia, one of the first questions you’ll ask is how much it costs. The honest answer is: it depends. But there are clear market ranges, pricing models that work in your favour and ones that don’t, and signals that help you evaluate whether what you’re paying makes sense.
This guide gives you straight answers. If you’re still deciding whether to hire an agency or manage internally, read the complete guide to choosing a Google Ads agency in Australia first.
What do Google Ads management fees actually include?
When you hire an agency, you’re paying two entirely separate things:
- Ad spend: the money that goes directly to Google to show your ads. The agency doesn’t keep this; it goes into your Google Ads account and you control it.
- Management fees: what the agency charges to design, manage, and continuously optimise your campaigns.
These two must be clearly separated in any proposal you receive. If an agency gives you a single bundled number without breaking it down, that alone tells you something about how they operate.
Pricing models: what’s out there
Flat monthly retainer
The cleanest model. The agency charges a fixed monthly amount regardless of how much you spend on Google. This aligns incentives correctly: the manager earns the same whether you spend $1,500 or $15,000, so they have no reason to push you to increase budget when it’s not justified by the data.
Percentage of ad spend
The most common model, and the one that should give you pause. If the agency charges 15–20% of your Google spend, they have a direct financial incentive for you to spend more, not for you to be more profitable. The larger your ad budget, the larger their invoice. That’s a fundamentally misaligned structure.
Hybrid pricing
Some agencies combine a low base fee with a percentage. This can make sense for very high-volume accounts, but read the terms carefully before signing anything.
Market rates in Australia: real ranges for 2026
For actively managed Search campaigns in Australia, these are the typical ranges:
| Account profile | Monthly ad spend | Management fee |
|---|---|---|
| Local business / small business | $1,500–$5,000/mo | $800–$1,500/mo |
| SME with national reach | $5,000–$15,000/mo | $1,200–$2,500/mo |
| E-commerce or complex accounts | $10,000–$50,000/mo | $2,000–$4,500/mo |
Below $800/month in management fees in Australia, there aren’t many hours of real work available. Agencies charging $200–300/month are almost certainly automating or delegating to someone without meaningful optimisation experience.
Above $5,000/month for a standard account, it’s reasonable to ask exactly what justifies that figure and who will actually be managing your account day-to-day.
What should you receive in exchange for management fees?
Serious management includes at minimum:
- Weekly review of the search terms report and negative keyword updates
- Ongoing A/B testing of ad headlines and descriptions
- Bid strategy adjustments tied to real performance data, not Google’s automated recommendations
- Monthly report that explains what was done, what worked, and what’s changing, not a PDF of charts without context
- Full access to your Google Ads account at all times, with no restrictions
If any of these isn’t explicitly guaranteed, you’re paying for basic account maintenance, not active management.
Why suspiciously low fees are a trap
Low-cost Google Ads management works like this: campaigns are set up once, Google’s automations are switched on, and the fee is charged every month without anyone touching anything meaningful. Google is very well designed to make it look like things are happening even when no one is actively optimising the account.
The problem isn’t that the account performs badly from day one. It’s that it never performs well. The algorithm needs the right signals: updated negative keywords, criteria-based bid adjustments, systematically tested ads. Without that, spend is wasted invisibly and the business owner concludes that Google Ads simply doesn’t work for them.
A real example: Foto Ruano Pro, a photography e-commerce store, achieved a 49x ROAS during a Black Friday campaign: $200,000 AUD in revenue from just $4,000 AUD in ad spend. That result required restructuring Shopping campaigns by profitability segment, adjusting product feed attributes, and deploying dynamic bidding scripts. It’s not the kind of outcome that comes from a set-and-forget account.
Questions to ask before signing anything
For a deeper guide on detecting whether your current agency is actually delivering results, see how to know if your Google Ads agency is good.
Before hiring any agency, ask these questions directly:
Who will manage my account day-to-day? At larger agencies, the sales team closes the contract and then hands it to a junior. Ask to meet the person who will actually do the work.
Do I have full access to my Google Ads account at all times? If the answer has any conditions attached, that’s a red flag.
Is there a lock-in contract? Agencies that are confident in their results don’t need lock-in clauses. They retain clients through performance, not contractual obligation.
What do your monthly reports look like? Ask to see a real example. If it’s a dashboard of impressions and clicks with no explanation of decisions made, you know what you’ll be receiving.
What does Adstralis charge?
Adstralis is a 100% Google Ads specialist agency, founded by Pau López Cots, a former Google Ads Consultant at Google’s Barcelona office, with two years of exposure to 330+ advertiser accounts per quarter across every major sector.
We work on a flat monthly retainer. The minimum recommended ad spend is $1,500 AUD/month. There are no lock-in contracts. If the results aren’t there, you can cancel with 30 days’ notice.
Fees are agreed based on account complexity and investment volume, always transparently before we start.
If you’d like to know whether working together makes sense, book a free call. No commitment required.