How much does it cost to hire a Performance Max agency?

Performance Max is not a side campaign you bolt an expert onto. For a modern ecom account it is the core of the account, running your products across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Gmail, and Maps from one campaign. So agencies price PMax management as account management, because that is what it is.

Typical pricing follows the usual ecommerce models: a percentage of ad spend, commonly 10 to 20 percent, or a flat monthly fee. Our own tiers start at 10 percent on the first 10,000 euros of monthly spend and step down to 6 percent above 150,000 euros, with no setup fee and no lock-in.

At 5,000 euros a month in spend, a 10 percent fee is about 500 euros. At 20,000 euros a month, a tiered structure means the blended rate has already started falling, so the fee grows slower than the spend does. That is the direction the math should always move.

Below roughly 5,000 euros a month, the math stops working. Smart Bidding does not get enough conversion data to run PMax well at that size, so an agency cannot beat what you could do yourself, and the fee eats the media budget the account needs. That is why we turn those accounts down rather than take the fee.

Google already automated the bidding inside Performance Max. What it did not automate is everything the algorithm feeds on: the product feed, the conversion tracking, the campaign structure, and the negative keyword hygiene around it. That input work is what a PMax fee should buy.

So before you sign, ask one question: what will you change that Smart Bidding is not already doing? The right answer talks about feed titles, tracking accuracy, structure, and Merchant Center health. If the answer is bidding strategy, you are being sold the one part Google gives every advertiser for free.