# What Does a Google Ads Agency Actually Do Each Month? > What Google Ads management should include each week and month, how to check the work in your own account, and what you should get for your fee in 2026. - Original page: https://performancemarketer.com.au/what-does-a-google-ads-agency-do/ - Published: 8 November 2026 - Last updated: 8 November 2026 A lot of business owners pay an agency every month and couldn’t tell you what they’re paying for. The report turns up, the numbers look fine, and the phone rings about as much as it did before. If that’s you, this post is a look at what the work is supposed to be, so you can tell whether it’s being done. Short answer first. Every week, a decent Google Ads agency reads your search terms and blocks the junk, checks budgets and bids, and makes sure the tracking still works. Every month it tests new ads and landing page changes, and reports on leads and booked jobs rather than clicks. And you can check all of it yourself in about two minutes, in the account’s change history, which shows every change and who made it. Here’s what a month looks like for us, give or take. ## Every week **Search terms.** The single most useful hour in Google Ads, and the one most often skipped. We read what people actually typed before they clicked, and block anything that won’t turn into a customer. Google explains the report in [about the search terms report](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2472708). In a plumbing account that means DIY searches and job hunters. In a law firm, it’s people looking for free legal advice or a law degree. New ones appear every single week, which is why it’s a weekly job. **Budgets.** Is each campaign spending what it should, and is the money going to the work you want more of? It’s surprising how often a campaign for the lowest-value job is quietly spending the most. **Bids and targets.** If a campaign is bidding towards a cost per lead, is that target still right? Too tight and Google stops showing your ads, and you wonder where the leads went. Too loose and you overpay for every one. **Tracking.** Are calls and forms still being counted, and only once? Websites get updated, forms get swapped out, a plugin changes something, and the tracking breaks without telling anyone. We check it every week because the one week you don’t is the week it breaks. **Lead quality.** The numbers in the account are only half the story, so we ask what came of the leads. A few minutes going through the job book with a client tells us more than any dashboard. ## Every month **New ads.** Ads wear out, and there’s always a better headline to try. A good agency tests new ads every month and keeps the ones that win, rather than running the same three forever. **Landing pages.** The page usually matters more than the ad. A clearer headline, a shorter form or a better photo can lift the share of visitors who get in touch without a cent more ad spend, and that’s where a lot of our best results have come from. **Google’s suggestions.** The recommendations tab never empties, and some of what’s in it, like broad match or auto-applied changes, mostly spends more of your money. We review each one and switch off auto-apply for anything we haven’t agreed to. **A report in plain English.** Leads, booked jobs where you share them with us, cost per lead, cost per job, what changed and what’s next. If your report is mostly impressions and clicks, it’s worth asking why. ## Every quarter **Structure.** Does the campaign layout still fit the budget and the business? We merged five campaigns into one for a Melbourne plumber and split one into three for a Brisbane plumber within the same few months. Both were the right call for that account at that time, and both would have been wrong for the other. **Bigger tests.** Performance Max, a new service, a new area, Facebook and Instagram alongside Google. Each test gets a start date, a budget and a number it has to beat before anyone gets excited about it. **Strategy.** Which work do you want more of next quarter? Seasonal changes, new staff, how much you can actually take on. The ads should follow the business, not the other way round. Sometimes the right move is to slow the leads down for a month because the business can’t get to them, which is a nice problem to have, but still a problem. ## Facebook ads work much the same way If your agency also runs your [Facebook and Instagram ads](https://performancemarketer.com.au/services/paid-social/), the rhythm is similar, with one big difference: creative. Facebook ads tire much faster than Google ads, so expect new images or videos every few weeks, a regular check on lead quality, and someone calling the leads back quickly, because a Facebook lead goes cold in hours. ## How to check your agency is doing the work Open your Google Ads account, go to [change history](https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/19888) and set the date range to 90 days. You’ll see every change, when it was made and by whom. It doesn’t need to be hundreds of changes. But if you’re paying every month and you see a handful of edits in a quarter, that’s a conversation worth having. Our [Google Ads audit checklist](https://performancemarketer.com.au/how-to-audit-your-google-ads-account/) has the other things to check while you’re in there. ## What you should expect from any agency - **You own the account.** It’s set up in your business’s name, and you have admin access to it. - **You know who does the work.** A name and a phone number, not an account manager who passes messages on to someone you’ve never met. - **Reports you can act on.** Leads and jobs first, everything else after. - **No lock-in.** If the results are there, a contract isn’t needed to keep you around. - **Straight answers.** Including “that didn’t work, and here’s what we’re changing”, which you’ll hear from us from time to time. That’s how we run [Google Ads management](https://performancemarketer.com.au/services/paid-search/): month to month, the account in your name, and you deal with me. Our fee starts from $2,000 a month plus ad spend. We go into how retainers work, and what they should include, in [digital marketing agency retainers in Australia](https://performancemarketer.com.au/digital-marketing-agency-retainer-australia/). ## When you don’t need an agency at all If you’re spending under about $3,000 a month on ads, you can often learn to run it yourself, and an agency fee would eat most of what you’d gain. Over about $5,000 a month, the time it takes and the mistakes you’d make usually cost more than the fee. In between, it comes down to how you’d rather spend your week. We wrote a whole post on [when to hire a marketing agency](https://performancemarketer.com.au/when-hire-marketing-agency/), and it doesn’t always say hire one. ## Questions people ask me about this ### How many hours should an agency spend on my account? It varies with the account, but hours matter less than what changes. Look at the change history and the results, not a timesheet. An hour in the right place beats ten in the wrong one. ### Should my agency own the Google Ads account? No. It should be in your business’s name, with the agency added as a manager. If you ever leave, you keep the account, the history and the data. ### My agency says the results are great, but we’re not busier. Who’s right? Your job book is right. Start by checking what Google is counting as a conversion, because that’s where most of these gaps come from. ### How do I choose a Google Ads agency? We wrote a full guide on [choosing a digital marketing agency in Australia](https://performancemarketer.com.au/choosing-a-digital-marketing-agency-australia/), and most of it comes down to asking who does the work and who owns the account. ## Want to see what a month with us looks like? Get in touch. Bring your current reports if you have them, and I’ll show you what I’d check first and what you’d see from us each month. [Book a call](https://performancemarketer.com.au/contact/) --- Performance Marketer Digital is a Melbourne performance marketing agency run by founder Hatim Abbas. It runs Google Ads, Facebook and Instagram ads, SEO and conversion tracking for Australian businesses, with clients across 23 industries. Management starts from $2,000 a month, plus ad spend. Phone +61 424 482 653. Book a call: https://performancemarketer.com.au/contact/