PPC advertising
Paid search and paid social campaigns built around unit economics, not vanity metrics.
Paid media that respects what you can afford to spend
Paid acquisition is straightforward in principle: pay less for a customer than that customer is worth. The discipline lives in measurement, creative, and structure. We work across Google, Microsoft, Meta, LinkedIn, and the less-obvious channels where your audience actually shows up.
How paid engagements work
Account structure and tracking
A well-structured account with reliable tracking is worth more than any clever bidding tactic. We start there.
- Conversion modeling and event taxonomy
- Server-side tracking and Consent Mode
- Cross channel UTM hygiene
- Offline conversion import where relevant
Search advertising
Google and Microsoft Search ads are the highest-intent paid channel. We focus on match-type strategy, negative discipline, and landing-page alignment.
- Search query mining and negatives
- Smart vs. manual bidding decisions
- Landing page experience and Quality Score
- Geo and device segmentation
Paid social
Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok, and emerging platforms each behave differently. Creative is the biggest lever; we plan production around it.
- Audience and creative testing frameworks
- Creative production calendar
- Retargeting and audience suppression
- Lookalike and interest discovery
Shopping and feed-driven
For commerce, the product feed often matters more than the campaign settings. We tune titles, attributes, imagery, and segmentation.
- Feed cleanup and enrichment
- Performance Max structure
- Brand-vs-non brand separation where possible
- Margin-aware bidding
Reporting and incrementality
We measure honestly. That includes acknowledging when paid is taking credit for conversions that would have happened anyway.
- Geo holdouts and incrementality testing
- MMM-style channel weighting for larger spends
- Honest attribution caveats in every report
What we focus on in PPC engagements
PPC engagements typically cover Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, Meta, LinkedIn for B2B, and increasingly TikTok for the audiences and offers that fit. The mix depends on the business, and we are explicit that not every channel is right for every advertiser, we will say so when a channel does not fit, even if it is a channel the team was hoping to be in. Within each channel, the work is the same disciplined craft: tight account structure, intent aligned keyword and audience selection, well-tested creative, conversion tracking that distinguishes form fills from qualified leads from revenue, and continuous optimization against the metrics that actually matter to the business.
How we report and how we make decisions
Our PPC reporting separates the platform metrics from the business metrics and emphasizes the latter. We are explicit about the difference between attribution and incrementality, many platforms over-report their contribution because of attribution windows and modeled conversions, and we use incrementality testing where the spend levels justify it. When a channel is not working, we say so and recommend reallocating; when an account has been over-built and can be simplified, we recommend simplifying. The relationship works best when the conversation is about the business outcomes the spend is producing, not about the platform optimizations the agency is performing.
Beyond the platform mechanics, the discipline that separates good PPC programs from mediocre ones is the discipline of saying no, refusing to bid on queries that don't convert, refusing to expand into channels where the unit economics don't work, refusing to chase short term volume at the expense of long term efficiency. Our PPC engagements include explicit conversation about where we won't recommend spending, not just where we will. That conversation often surfaces account history the previous manager preferred not to discuss, which by itself usually unlocks meaningful efficiency. Real account stewardship is partly about the optimizations and partly about the negative space, the spend that doesn't happen because someone is paying attention.
How we run paid programs
Paid media is the marketing channel where small structural decisions have the largest financial consequences. Account structure, conversion tracking quality, audience definitions, bid strategy, and creative refresh cadence each have outsized impact on cost-per-acquisition. Our PPC work focuses on those structural fundamentals before any creative or copy work.
We measure paid programs against business outcomes rather than platform metrics. Click-through rate and quality score matter only as inputs to the metric that actually counts: cost per qualified outcome (revenue, lead, signup) at the volume the business needs. We report against that consistently, even when it's less flattering than the platform-native dashboards. Honest measurement is what protects the budget over time.
Common questions
What's a reasonable monthly budget?
It depends on competition and your unit economics. We'll model it with you before recommending a starting spend.
Do you charge a percentage of spend?
We offer flat-fee and percentage models. Percentage models can create misaligned incentives, so we discuss the trade-offs openly.
Want a candid look at your paid program?
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