Google Ads Management

Google Ads rewards attention, not budget

Most Google Ads accounts do not fail because the budget is too small. They fail because nobody is looking at them closely enough, often enough. Search terms drift away from what the account was built to catch. Negative keyword lists stop growing. Bids sit on autopilot while the target cost per acquisition quietly stops matching what the business can actually afford. None of this shows up as a single dramatic mistake. It shows up as a slow rise in wasted spend that nobody notices until the monthly report lands.

We manage Google Ads as a weekly discipline rather than a monthly check-in. Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen all sit under the same set of standards, whatever the account mix. The work is the same whether the account spends £2,000 a month or £20,000: conversion tracking has to be trustworthy before anything else matters, bids and budgets get set from your margins rather than a platform default, and every week ends with a documented pass through search terms, negatives and bid changes. This page is the Google half of our paid media service.

What we do every week

This is the account standard we run, whatever platform mix the account uses.

• Search-term review across every active campaign, checking what triggered your ads against what you intended to target.
• Negative keyword lists updated from that review, including at the campaign and account level so the same irrelevant term cannot resurface in a different campaign.
• Brand exclusions applied on Performance Max, so a Performance Max campaign is not quietly buying clicks on your own brand name that Search would have won for less.
• A conversion tracking check before any spend decision. We do not adjust bids or budgets on an account where tracking is broken or unverified, because every optimisation built on bad data makes the account worse, not better.
• Target CPA and target ROAS bids set from your real margins, not from what Google’s recommendations page suggests.
• Budget pacing checks, so a campaign is not running out of budget by lunchtime one day and underspending the next.
• A monthly report tied to revenue or enquiries, not to clicks or impressions.

The automation rules we run

Alongside the manual weekly review, we set automation rules inside the account itself. These run continuously between our manual passes and catch the changes that cannot wait a week. Thresholds are set per account from your target CPA and typical conversion volume. We do not publish another client’s numbers here because a threshold that is right for a £15,000 a month account is wrong for a £2,000 a month one.

The pause rule stops an account bleeding spend on something that stopped working between our weekly reviews. The negative rule keeps the account’s search-term list current rather than relying entirely on the weekly manual pass. The promote rule is what actually grows an account’s efficiency over time: a term that converts well on broad match usually converts even better once it has its own exact match keyword and its own bid, because you can control what it costs directly instead of inheriting whatever the broad match algorithm decided to bid.

What is included

Account audit. Before we touch a live account we map what is there: campaign structure, conversion tracking, historical search terms, wasted spend and where the budget is going against where it looks like it is going.

Campaign structure and setup. Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen built and organised so budget and reporting map onto how the business sells, rather than onto a generic template.

Conversion tracking. Verified before anything else, then rebuilt if it is broken. An account cannot be optimised on data nobody trusts.

Bid and budget management. tCPA and tROAS targets set from your margins, reviewed and adjusted as performance data accumulates, not left on a default and forgotten.

Search-term and negative keyword management. The weekly review above, plus the automation rules that run continuously.

Ad copy and asset testing. Responsive search ads and Performance Max asset groups tested against each other, with the losing variants replaced rather than left to average down the account.

Reporting. A monthly report that ties spend to revenue or enquiries, in plain language, with the reasoning behind any changes we made.

Where Google Ads goes wrong

Broken or partial conversion tracking. An account can look like it is performing while reporting duplicate conversions, missing conversions, or both, and nobody adjusts anything until the real numbers surface months later.

Performance Max buying brand traffic. Left unmanaged, Performance Max will happily spend budget on your own brand name that a Search campaign would have won for a fraction of the cost, and the reporting will not tell you it happened.

Bids set once and left. Target CPA set at launch and never revisited as margins, seasonality or product mix change, so the account keeps optimising towards a number that stopped being correct months ago.

Negative lists that stop growing. An account’s negative keyword list should keep expanding for as long as the account runs. When it stops, it usually means nobody is reviewing search terms any more.

Reporting on the wrong metric. Clicks and impressions are inputs. Revenue and enquiries are the outcome. An account can look healthy on the first and be losing money on the second.

Accounts we manage

We run Google Ads in house, under our own manager account, for three live clients: Theatre Tokens, Official London Theatre and Pure Smiles. Theatre Tokens is the account we can show numbers for.

Theatre Tokens (run in house by Terrier since 17 June 2026): June 2026 delivered 1,410 account-reported conversions at £0.65 cost per conversion, a £0.10 average cost per click, £912 spend and 45.2% search impression share. See the Theatre Tokens case study.

We also manage Google Ad Grants accounts for eligible non-profits and cultural organisations. Grant accounts carry their own bidding, quality and policy rules, and we run them to those rules so the grant is kept and spent rather than lost.

Where it makes sense we run Microsoft Advertising alongside Google. The Google account structure is imported, bids and budgets are set separately for the smaller Bing audience, and both channels appear in the same monthly report. See the Paid Media overview for how the two fit together.

What it costs

Google Ads management runs on the same fee as the rest of our paid media work, from £750 a month excluding VAT with media billed at cost and no markup. The bands, and what moves an account between them, are set out on the paid media pricing page. There is no minimum term, 60 days’ notice, at any point.

If you want an independent read on your account before committing to anything, our account audit is £450 as a one off, credited against month one if you retain us.

Related services

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