Google Ads costs a Melbourne business two separate things, and mixing them up is the most common budgeting mistake we see. There is the money that goes to Google as ad spend, and there is the fee you pay someone to run it. They behave differently, they scale differently, and a quote that blurs the two is hiding something.
Here is what each one actually costs in this market, how the fee models compare, and how to work out what you should be spending before you talk to anyone.
The short answer
Management fees in Melbourne commonly run $400 to $800 a month for a small, single-campaign account, and $500 to $2,000 a month for a multi-campaign account with shopping or lead tracking. Ad spend sits on top of that and is entirely yours to set. Google itself will let you start from around $10 a day, though at that level you are testing rather than competing.
The two costs, separated
Ad spend: what you pay Google
This is an auction. You pay when someone clicks, and what you pay per click depends on how many other businesses want that same search. In Melbourne, a click on a plumbing or legal search can cost many times what a click on a niche product search costs, and neither price is negotiable. It is set by demand.
Your spend is a dial, not a bill. You choose it, you can change it daily, and it should be set by what a customer is worth to you rather than by what feels affordable. If a job is worth a few thousand dollars in margin, spending meaningfully to win it makes sense. If your average order is small, the maths is tighter and Shopping or remarketing usually beats broad search.
Management fee: what you pay a person
This covers the work: research, campaign build, ad writing, bid strategy, negative keywords, conversion tracking, landing page feedback, and the ongoing job of cutting what wastes money. Done well it pays for itself several times over, because most of the value in Google Ads is in what you stop spending, not what you start.
The three fee models, and what each one does to your incentives
Percentage of ad spend
The agency takes a cut of what you spend with Google. It is simple and it scales with your account, which is the appeal. The problem is the incentive: your supplier earns more when you spend more, and less when they make your account more efficient. That is exactly backwards. If you use this model, agree in writing what happens when spend goes down because performance went up.
Flat monthly fee
A fixed amount regardless of spend. Predictable, easy to budget, and the incentives are neutral. The risk is scope: a flat fee that made sense for two campaigns quietly stops covering the work when you add Shopping, Performance Max and YouTube. Agree what the fee covers and what triggers a review.
Hybrid or performance-based
A smaller base fee plus something tied to results. It sounds fair and occasionally is, but it lives or dies on the definition of "result". If a result is a form fill, you will get form fills, including the rubbish ones. Only agree to this if the metric is one you would happily pay for a hundred times over.
What you should actually budget
Work backwards from a customer, not forwards from a budget.
This gives you a number grounded in your business rather than in someone's package tier. It also gives you the one metric that matters in the monthly report: cost per enquiry, tracked against that ceiling.
Where the money usually leaks
Why our fee is lower, and what that does to your return
A traditional Google Ads retainer pays for a team and the structure around it. We run lean instead. AI-led technology does the heavy analysis, the search-term mining, the reporting and the first pass on ad copy. One experienced expert sets the strategy, checks the work, and is accountable for the account. As an accredited Google Partner with over 14 years behind us, that is a different structure, not a different standard of work.
Because our overhead is lower, Our pricing is competitive because delivery is AI-enabled, excluding GST. What you are not spending on management overhead does not disappear. It goes into ad spend, which means more clicks, more enquiries and more of your budget reaching customers. Our fee going down is what makes your overall return go up.
Results we have delivered on this model: SatPhoneShop, a 15% increase in conversions and 10x ROAS. Six Barrel Soda, a 25% increase in conversions and 6x ROAS. Rush, an 18% increase in conversions and 5x ROAS.
Before you sign anything
Ask for the fee and the spend as two separate lines. Ask what happens to the fee if your spend halves. Ask who is in the account week to week. And ask to keep ownership of the Google Ads account itself, because if it is created under an agency's management account you can lose your entire performance history when you leave.
Want a straight read on what your current account is costing you? Book a free digital audit at dizian.com.au/contact, or see what our Google Ads management covers.
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