Is hiring a Google Ads agency actually worth it, or should a small store run it themselves?

A management fee is usually a percentage of what you spend, and it drops as you spend more. Our own tiers start at 10 percent on the first 10,000 euros of monthly spend, then step down to 9, 8, 7, and 6 percent as you cross each higher bracket.

So a small account pays close to the top rate, and a bigger account pays a lot less in percentage terms even though the cash amount is larger. That is why spend level matters more than revenue level when you decide whether to hire out.

We set a practical floor of around 5,000 euros a month in ad spend before we take on an account. Below that, Smart Bidding does not get enough sales data to run Performance Max properly, so an agency cannot do much better than you could do yourself. The fee would eat into the budget without buying you much extra performance.

If you are not there yet, run it yourself. Join a free community like the Google Ads eCom Lab, learn the real playbook, and grow your spend. Hire out once the fee is small next to the profit a sharp operator can add.

A good agency does not earn its fee by clicking buttons you could click yourself. It earns it by watching hundreds of accounts, spotting patterns faster, catching tracking and feed problems before they cost you real money, and scaling budget in a way that protects profit instead of chasing a vanity ROAS number.

If an agency cannot point to a clear reason it is worth more than the fee, walk away. No lock in and month to month billing is the right standard. If it is working, you will not want to leave anyway.