What You Actually Get from PPC Services: The 6 Deliverables That Move Revenue

What Is Included in PPC Services for an Ecom Store?

Two quotes land in your inbox with the same number at the bottom. Both promise campaign builds, bid management, budget control, testing and remarketing.

Every agency does that. One of the two also does the six things below. Nothing on either page tells you which one.

The 6 Deliverables That Decide Whether the Money Comes Back

These sit on top of the running work. You can inspect every one yourself. Most quotes go quiet on all six.

1. Product Feed Work in Merchant Center

On Shopping you never pick keywords. Google matches what people type against your product data. Performance Max takes search themes and negatives too, but the product data still does most of the matching. Your feed is your keyword list.

Done looks like: titles rewritten around the words buyers actually type. Google product category and product type set properly. Color, size, gender, material filled in. Every product with a barcode number carries it. Google calls that a GTIN. No barcode? The maker's part number goes in instead, as the MPN. Disapprovals cleared. Google reads all of it from the product data specification.

Our Product Feed Quality Index sampled 12,375 products across 251 real Merchant Center accounts on 28 July 2026. We pulled up to 50 products per store, first page of the feed. 81.3% carried neither a barcode number nor a maker's part number. Only 4.2% of titles came in under 50 characters. Many of those accounts are measured at onboarding, before our optimization work starts. So the numbers describe how feeds arrive, not how they leave.

That is the product data a new agency inherits. Feed work belongs on the deliverables list, not in a footnote.

Ask: show me ten of my product titles, before and after.

2. Conversion Tracking That Survives Safari and Ad Blockers

Tracking tells Google which clicks turned into sales. A browser-only tag misses a slice of them. Safari limits how long script-set cookies live. Ad blockers strip the tag before it fires. Google fills the hole with modeled conversions, its own estimate of the sales it could not see. An estimate is not your order list. So the bidding runs on a part-guessed number while the full budget goes out.

Done looks like: server-side tracking installed, then Google's conversions compared against your Shopify orders for the same dates. The install is not the proof. The match is.

Ours: server-side tracking, then Google's conversions checked against Shopify orders. Shopify is the source of truth for revenue. Full walkthrough in Google Ads conversion tracking for Shopify.

Ask: how close were Google's conversions to my Shopify orders last month?

3. Campaign Structure Built Around How Products Earn

Structure decides which products get the money. One campaign holding your whole catalog gives your bestseller and your dead stock the same treatment.

Done looks like: custom labels that split products by how they earn. Brand traffic reported apart from non-brand. Plain Search campaigns sitting under Performance Max so you can still see the query and control the bid.

Ask: which of my products sit in their own campaign, and why those?

4. Search Term and Negative Keyword Hygiene

People search things you would never sell to. You pay for every one of those clicks.

Done looks like: the search terms report read every week, junk blocked, and a block list you can see.

Ask: send me the terms you blocked last week.

5. Ad Creative and Copy

Headlines, descriptions, images, video. Performance Max mixes and matches whatever you give it. A thin asset group leaves it almost nothing to mix, so the same few headlines keep going out until someone adds more.

Done looks like: the agency writes the copy and makes the images, on a schedule, without asking you for a folder of photos first.

Ask: who writes my headlines and makes my images, and is that inside the fee?

6. Reporting Tied to Revenue You Can Check

A report is only worth reading if you can check it against your own back end.

Done looks like: weekly, revenue first, brand split from non-brand, and the bad weeks explained instead of buried.

Ask: what is my non-brand revenue on its own?

Which Line Items Are Padding?

These make a quote look long. None of them touches your account.

• Dedicated dashboard. Google Ads reports on itself and Looker Studio is free. If the account is in your name, nothing stops you opening it right now. The real question is who touches it on a normal Tuesday.
• Onboarding and strategy call. A call is where work gets agreed, not where it happens. Get the 30-day plan in writing.
• Monthly performance report. Falls out of the tools for free. Worse, monthly means a problem burns your budget for four weeks before anyone tells you. Ask for weekly.
• Competitor monitoring. Auction insights sits inside Google Ads, one click away. What matters is what they changed because of it, not that they looked.
• Account health check. Google's recommendations tab does this, and most of what it suggests is "raise your budget." Ask for your wasted spend number instead.
• Quarterly business review. A slide deck about a quarter that already ended. Whatever gets decided there could have been decided on Slack the same week.

None of this is a scam. Most of it is free or already inside Google Ads. A quote that leads with it is hiding a short list of real work behind a long list of access.

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A long quote is not a big service. It is a long quote.

What Should Sit Inside the Fee, and What Is a Fair Extra?

We draw the line here. All six sit inside the management fee, because that is the work. Other agencies draw it elsewhere, and that can be honest. Finding out after you sign is not. A fair extra is a named third-party tool with a vendor, an invoice, and a price you can look up.

Ours, in the open. The fee is a tiered percentage of monthly Google Ads spend. 10% on the first €10,000, then 9%, then 8%, then 7%, and 6% above €150,000. Each rate applies only to the money inside its own bracket, like income tax. It is charged per client on total spend across your stores. Two tools get billed on top. A Comparison Shopping Service partner at €24.90, usually shortened to CSS, which is the partner that submits your Shopping ads to Google in Europe. And a feed management tool at €49.90. Both are per store per month, and only once that tool is installed on that store. No setup fee. No markup on your ad budget. No lock-in. Every number sits on the pricing page.

Ask which platforms the fee covers, too. Most quotes with "PPC" on the cover mean Google only. Get the platform list in writing. Google Ads is the core focus of what we run, and we say so on our agency page.

Who Owns the Account When You Leave?

Not a deliverable. A contract term, and the one that outlives the deal. Costs nothing to get right. Wrecks you when it is wrong.

The Google Ads account, the Merchant Center account, the conversion tracking, the audience lists. If any of those sit in the agency's name, leaving means starting again at zero history. Google's bidding learns from that history. Rebuilding it takes months you already paid for once.

Right looks like: every account in your name, your own card on file with Google, and access handed back the day you ask for it.

Ours: the account, the assets and the tracking stay yours. You pay Google directly for the ad budget. Month to month, no lock-in.

Ask: whose name is on the account, and whose card pays Google?

The Line Item Nobody Quotes

The week Google switches you off. A Merchant Center suspension pulls your products out of Shopping. Performance Max loses the product side. The assets you gave it can still run on Google's other surfaces, but everything selling straight off the feed stops until the suspension lifts. On an ecom account that is usually the part carrying the revenue.

So ask, and get it in writing. Who files the appeal. On what day. What keeps selling meanwhile. The ugliest version is a misrepresentation suspension. Nobody puts that week on a quote.

What Changes Between Two Quotes at the Same Price?

Same fee, same promises on the cover. Line by line, two different products.

	Padded package	Deliverable-led package	What to ask
Product feed	Feed health monitored	Top sellers rewritten by hand	How many products, and when?
Tracking	Pixel installed at launch	Server-side, matched to Shopify	What did you match it against?
Structure	One campaign, all products	Split by how products earn	Show me the split for my catalog
Search terms	Reviewed monthly	Read weekly, negatives added	What got blocked last week?
Creative	Client sends the assets	Written and made in-house	Who makes it, how often?
Reporting	Monthly PDF, clicks first	Weekly, revenue first	Which number do you lead with?
Ownership	Account sits with the agency	Your name, your card pays Google	Whose name is on the account?
Extras	Setup fee, tools unnamed	Named tools, published price	Name every line and its vendor

How Do You Read a PPC Package Before You Sign?

Seven questions. Send them exactly as they are written and read what comes back. A vague answer is still an answer.

1. What changes in my feed in week one, and on how many products?
2. Who touches my account day to day, and how many accounts do they carry?
3. How do you track the sales Safari and ad blockers hide, and what do you check them against?
4. Is feed work inside the fee, or a separate project?
5. What is the monthly minimum, in writing? A 10% quote with a €2,000 floor is a 40% fee on a €5,000 account. That trap gets pulled apart in Google Ads management fees explained.
6. What is on my invoice besides the fee, and where is that price published?
7. Whose name is on the Google Ads and Merchant Center accounts, and whose card pays Google?

What Does the Work Look Like Week by Week?

A good team does the same few jobs on your account, over and over. None of it is a one-off project.

Feed and tracking come first, in the first two weeks. Then the daily work is small and boring on purpose. Software watches the account around the clock. It scans every account every hour for feed problems and odd spend. A person makes every judgment call. Is the ROAS dip a broken feed or just a Tuesday? Is the spend spike a winner finding its footing or a mistake?

Every week, someone reads the search terms report. That is Google's list of what people typed before they clicked. It does not show every query, but what it shows is real. You look for two things: money going to queries that will never buy, and queries that convert well enough to deserve their own campaign. Creative and the report run weekly too. Structure and scaling get a slower, monthly look.

Ask what changed on your account last week. A team doing the work can tell you.

Full Service or Semi-Managed?

Full service means they log in and make the changes. Bids, budgets, feed, creative, negatives. The work happens whether or not you had time this week. Semi-managed means they advise and you press the buttons. It is cheaper and fine if you have hours to spare in-house.

Either way, a full-service quote should name one senior operator who opens the account, not a support queue. Some providers price feed work, creative or tracking separately and still run the whole account well. That is allowed. Finding out in month two is not.

What stays with you in any package: your site design, your email and SMS flows, your pricing and your stock. No bidding fixes a product that is out of stock or priced wrong.

When Are PPC Services the Wrong Buy?

Three cases where hiring anyone, us included, is the wrong move.

Your spend is small. Take the fee, or the monthly minimum if that is higher, and divide it by your monthly ad spend. That share leaves your budget before a single ad runs. If it takes a big slice, the ads have to work that much harder just to pay it back. Put the money into media and run it yourself. The Google Ads eCom Lab is built for that case.

You want every channel on one plan. Google, Meta, Amazon and TikTok under one partner, one invoice. Then hire a full-service shop. Tinuiti is the honest example, by its own site the largest independent full-funnel marketing agency. Different shape of business to ours, and for plenty of brands it is the right call. Ours is narrow on purpose. If your plan needs all four run by the same team, we are not it.

Your account is stable and single-market. A senior freelancer often does the same job for the same money, and you skip a layer. We priced that one out in Google Ads agency vs freelancer.

Got a quote in your inbox right now? Send it over on WhatsApp and we will tell you which of the six it actually buys.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Feed Work Included in PPC Management Fees?

Sometimes. There is no industry standard, so you have to ask. At ZenoX it sits inside the fee, because on Shopping and Performance Max your product data does most of the matching. Plenty of good agencies quote feed work as a separate project. That is fair as long as they say so before you sign. What you cannot do is assume the headline fee covers it. Ask two things: is feed work in the fee, and how many products get hands-on treatment in month one. "We monitor feed health" is a dashboard, not feed work.

How Do I Spot a Padded PPC Retainer?

Count the line items that change something inside your account or hand you a number you can check yourself. Feed edits, a tracking match against your store orders, a campaign split, a block list, new ad assets, a weekly revenue report. Then count the rest: dashboard access, onboarding calls, competitor monitoring, account health checks, quarterly reviews. If the second list is longer than the first, you are paying for access and admin. Both lists cost you the same money, and only one of them shows up in your Shopify numbers.

Who Owns the Google Ads Account, You or the Agency?

You do, always. The Google Ads account, the Merchant Center account, the conversion tracking, the audience lists. All of it belongs in your name. Your own card should be the one paying Google. When an agency holds those instead, walking away means starting from zero history. Google's bidding runs on that history, so rebuilding it costs you months you already paid for. Ask whose name is on the account before you sign, not after. At ZenoX the account, the assets and the tracking stay yours, and the terms are month to month with no lock-in.

How Much Ad Spend Do You Need Before PPC Services Are Worth It?

There is no published industry floor and we will not invent one. Do the math on your own numbers. Take the fee, or the monthly minimum if that is higher, and divide it by your monthly ad spend. That is the share leaving your budget before a single ad runs. If it takes a big slice, put the money into media and run the account yourself for now. Hire when a broken feed or missing tracking costs you more in a month than a fair fee would.

What Does a PPC Agency Do for an Ecom Store?

Seven repeating jobs. Product feed work, which is titles, product IDs, categories and Merchant Center fixes. Conversion tracking that matches your real store orders. Reading search terms and blocking the ones that waste money. Campaign structure across Shopping, Performance Max and Search. Bids and budgets. Ad creative. And one plain report. Feed and tracking get built in the first two weeks. Anomaly checks, Merchant Center issues and small budget moves are daily. Search terms, negatives, creative and the report are weekly. Structure and scaling get reviewed monthly.

What Is Usually Not Included in a PPC Retainer?

Your site design, your email and SMS flows, your pricing, your margins and your stock stay with you. No amount of bidding fixes a product that is out of stock or priced wrong. Some providers also bill feed work, tracking setup, creative, extra countries, landing page work and tool fees on top. Almost no one publishes that list. Ask for it in writing before you sign, and treat a vague answer as an answer.

What Is the Difference Between Full-Service and Semi-Managed Google Ads?

Who presses the buttons. Full service means the provider logs into your account and makes the changes, so the work happens whether or not you have time this week. Semi-managed means they review, advise, and hand you a list, and nothing changes until you do it. Both are legitimate. Semi-managed is cheaper and works when you have someone in-house with hours to spend. Ask one question to tell them apart: who logs into my Google Ads account, and how often does someone open it?

Are Feed Tools and CSS Fees Included in a Google Ads Management Fee?

Often not, and that is where surprise invoices come from. Feed software, a CSS partner, bid software and reporting dashboards are billed separately by many providers. Ask for the full billable list with prices, in writing, before you sign. At ZenoX exactly two tools bill on top of the management rate, and both prices are published. A CSS partner (Comparison Shopping Service, the partner that submits your Shopping ads to Google) costs €24.90. A feed management tool costs €49.90. Both are per store per month, and you only pay once the tool is installed.