Paid ads. Reviewed October 29, 2026
Ad spend vs management fee
Also called: Media spend, Ad budget
Ad spend is the money paid to Google or Meta for the ads themselves, and the management fee is what an agency charges to run them; a quote that blends the two hides what the ads actually cost.
In practice
Insist on paying the platforms directly from your own card in your own ad account. Then the spend is visible to the dollar, the account stays yours if the agency changes, and the fee is a number you can compare.
A percentage-of-spend fee rewards the agency for spending more. A flat fee does not.
For example
Skill Mammoth charges a flat $600 a month to manage Google Ads, with the ad spend paid directly to Google.
Related terms
- PPCPPC, pay per click, is advertising where the business pays only when someone clicks the ad, and Google Ads search campaigns are the main form of it for contractors.
- ROASReturn on ad spend is revenue from ads divided by the money spent on them; a ROAS of 5 means five dollars of revenue for every dollar of ads, before the cost of doing the work.
- Cost per leadCost per lead is total marketing spend on a channel divided by the number of calls, forms or chats it produced, and it is the number to judge a campaign on rather than cost per click.
Go deeper
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