Google Ads Management Pricing in Canada

TLDR

Google Ads management pricing in Canada at Unalike starts at CA$500 a month for one Search campaign, runs CA$750 to CA$1,000 for several campaigns, and starts at CA$1,500 for a full paid program. Ad spend is separate. We require at least CA$1,000 a month in ad spend. A new account build or inherited-account rescue is CA$1,000 one time, and accounts spending over CA$10,000 a month can use a 12% management model.

• Three fee models: flat monthly management, a one-time build or rescue, and percentage of spend for larger accounts.
• What the fee pays for: campaign structure, conversion tracking, search-term and negative-keyword work, ad changes, reporting, and a monthly call.
• What it does not pay for: the clicks themselves, major landing-page production, outside software, or creative production not named in the scope.
• Honest floor: below CA$1,000 in monthly ad spend, there usually is not enough activity for us to manage responsibly.

The fastest way to misunderstand a Google Ads proposal is to treat the management fee and the ad budget as one number. They pay for different things. The management fee pays the person doing the work. The ad budget pays Google when people click or interact with your ads.

This page answers the pricing question. If you are building a wider marketing budget, start with our complete Canadian marketing and SEO pricing guide, then bring the paid-search line back here and price it separately.

What Google Ads management costs in Canada

Management fees below are what Unalike charges. They are separate from your ad spend, which goes to Google, not to us.

Minimum ad spend we will take on: CA$1,000 a month. Below that there is not enough click volume in a month to optimise on, and you are paying a management fee to watch a campaign that cannot learn.

Management fees last reviewed 2026-08-31. Ad spend is billed by Google directly.

Those are Unalike's prices, not a claim that every Canadian agency charges the same amount. A proposal should make its own management fee, ad spend, scope, and extras equally easy to find.

Management fee, ad spend, and total budget are three different numbers

Your monthly paid-search budget has three layers:

1. Management fee. The fee for account work, analysis, reporting, and communication.
2. Ad spend. The amount Google is allowed to use to buy clicks and other ad interactions.
3. Extras. Landing pages, call-tracking software, product-feed cleanup, video, photography, or CRM work that is outside the management scope.

Say a business chooses the CA$1,000 multi-campaign tier and puts CA$3,000 into Google Ads. The base monthly cash outlay is then CA$4,000 before any extra production. Google describes monthly budgets using an average daily amount and a monthly charging limit of 30.4 times that daily budget. CA$3,000 divided by 30.4 works out to about CA$98.68 a day. Google may spend above that average on a busy day, while keeping the monthly charging limit in view. The exact rules are in Google Ads Help's guide to managing spend.

This distinction matters when two proposals look similar. One may quote CA$2,000 and include CA$1,000 in media. Another may quote CA$2,000 for management alone. Put every proposal into the same three rows before comparing it.

The three ways Google Ads management is priced

Flat monthly management

A flat fee works when the scope is stable. One campaign in one geography is CA$500 with us. Several campaigns, services, or markets are CA$750 to CA$1,000. The fee does not rise just because Google finds a more expensive click.

The written scope still matters. “Google Ads management” is not specific enough on its own. The agreement should name campaign types, markets, reporting cadence, tracking responsibility, and what counts as a new build.

One-time account build or rescue

The CA$1,000 one-time fee is for a defined project. A new build includes the initial structure, conversion actions, and first campaign set. A rescue is an audit and rebuild of an account you inherited.

That work should leave the business with a usable account, not a collection of screenshots. The business should remain an administrator. Google's account-ownership documentation explains that a linked manager does not take away the client account's data or administrative rights, and the client can unlink the manager. An agency can work through a manager account without owning your advertising history.

Percentage of ad spend

At more than CA$10,000 a month in ad spend, Unalike can charge 12% instead of a flat fee. At CA$12,000, that is CA$1,440. At CA$20,000, it is CA$2,400. The practical reason for the model is scope: larger accounts usually create more campaigns, search terms, creative changes, and reporting work.

The percentage should never be hidden inside the media budget. You should be able to see what goes to Google and what goes to the agency on separate lines.

What changes the management fee

Campaign count is only the first variable. Five differences change the amount of work.

Account spend and traffic. More spend produces more search terms, placements, devices, locations, and conversion data to review. It can also support a wider test plan. Spend alone does not justify a higher fee, but the work attached to it can.

Number of campaigns and geographies. A plumber advertising one service in Saskatoon is a smaller assignment than a company selling five services across Saskatchewan and Alberta. Each additional service or market creates its own keyword, ad, budget, and landing-page decisions.

Ecommerce and product feeds. Shopping and Performance Max campaigns depend on product data, assets, and merchant settings. Google describes Performance Max as a goal-based campaign type that can serve across Search, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, and Maps. That is broader than one Search campaign, and Google's Performance Max overview makes the added inventory clear.

Landing-page production. Recommending a better page is management. Writing, designing, building, and testing the page is production. A proposal should say which side of that line it includes.

Call tracking and offline sales data. Form submissions are only one kind of conversion. Google Ads Help lists website actions, calls, app actions, and offline conversions. A service business may need call tracking and CRM imports to connect ads to qualified leads. That setup can be simple or substantial depending on the systems already in place.

When a simple account grows into several markets, campaign types, or revenue systems, it typically moves out of the single-campaign tier. When the scope stays narrow, the fee should stay narrow too.

What the monthly management fee should include

A proper scope should tell you what happens after launch. At Unalike, the table commits to the core items for each tier. A fuller monthly scope can include:

• account and campaign structure;
• keyword selection and match-type decisions;
• search-term review and negative keywords;
• ad copy and asset changes;
• bidding and budget adjustments;
• conversion-action checks;
• landing-page recommendations;
• reporting tied to leads or sales where the data allows it; and
• a monthly call.

Here is what the first six weeks should look like on a new account.

Week 1: confirm account access, business goals, service priorities, geography, exclusions, and the conversion actions that matter. Decide who owns the website and tracking changes.

Week 2: build or repair conversion tracking, campaign structure, keywords, negatives, ads, assets, budgets, and location settings. Review the landing pages before traffic starts.

Week 3: launch in a controlled way. Check spend, queries, lead quality, broken forms, call routing, and obvious exclusions. Fix errors before widening coverage.

Weeks 4 to 6: compare search terms with real enquiries, adjust budgets and bids, rotate weak ads, and report what happened. Google advises allowing a new Performance Max campaign at least six weeks to ramp up and gather enough data for comparison, so it is a mistake to rebuild that campaign every few days. See Google Ads Help's Performance Max optimisation guidance.

Most weak account handoffs I see are not missing a clever bid setting. They are missing a shared definition of a qualified lead, a working conversion action, or a clear owner for the landing page.

What normally costs extra

The management fee should not become a blank cheque. These items should be included only when the proposal names them:

• Ad spend: billed by Google directly.
• New landing pages: copy, design, development, testing, and hosting changes.
• Creative production: photography, video, animation, or a large set of new display assets.
• Feed repair: product titles, categories, images, pricing errors, merchant disapprovals, and ongoing catalogue work.
• Third-party software: call tracking, landing-page tools, feed tools, or attribution products.
• CRM and offline-conversion work: mapping fields, cleaning data, imports, and sales-system changes.
• Additional channels: Meta, Microsoft Ads, or another network unless the full-program scope includes it.

Ask the agency to mark each item as included, excluded, or separately quoted. “As needed” is not a price.

The honest floor for ad spend

Unalike will not take on an account with less than CA$1,000 a month in ad spend. That is our operating floor, not a universal law of Google Ads.

Below that level, the management fee can consume too much of the total budget, and the account may generate too little activity for useful month-to-month decisions. A narrow owner-operated campaign can still run below CA$1,000 without an agency. The question is whether paying someone CA$500 to manage an even smaller media budget leaves enough money doing the job you hired the channel to do.

Use your own economics to test the floor. Say total monthly cost is CA$4,000, including CA$3,000 in media and CA$1,000 in management. If first-sale gross profit is CA$2,000 per customer, the program needs two new customers to cover that first-sale gross profit. If one in four qualified leads becomes a customer, it needs eight qualified leads, so the illustrative ceiling is CA$500 per qualified lead. Replace every assumption with your real close rate and gross profit before deciding whether the budget works.

When the required lead cost is impossible for the market, changing the management fee does not rescue the plan. The business may need a better offer, a higher-value service, stronger landing pages, or a different channel.

Saskatoon and Regina: price the account to the market you actually have

Local intent is real, but it is fragmented. An August 31 Search Console snapshot put unalike.ca at an average position of 3.6 for “google ads saskatoon” and 4.6 for “google ads management saskatoon.” Those two queries produced 58 impressions and zero clicks in the measured period. That is exactly why this page exists: the site had local visibility without a direct pricing answer.

The same review used DataForSEO's Canadian estimates for a wider local commercial set. “web design saskatoon” was estimated at 720 monthly searches and an 18.02 CPC, while “marketing agency saskatoon” was estimated at 170 searches and an 18.84 CPC. Those are keyword-provider estimates, not a promise about your traffic or click price. They show that commercial demand can be expensive and uneven even within one city.

For Saskatoon or Regina, start with one high-value service, one clear geography, and conversion tracking that distinguishes calls from forms. Add a second service only when the first campaign has enough real enquiries to teach you something. Accounts usually become wasteful when every service, suburb, and broad keyword is launched at once.

Questions to put beside every proposal

Before signing, ask for direct answers to these:

1. Is the management fee separate from ad spend?
2. Which campaign types, services, and locations are included?
3. Who owns and administers the Google Ads account?
4. Which conversions will be tracked, and who builds the tracking?
5. Are landing-page changes recommendations or completed work?
6. Are call tracking, product-feed work, creative, and CRM imports included?
7. How often are search terms and lead quality reviewed?
8. What will the report connect to: clicks, leads, qualified leads, or sales?
9. What triggers a higher fee?
10. What happens to access, data, and assets if the engagement ends?

A useful proposal makes those answers boringly clear. If the only concrete number is the total price, you still do not know what you are buying.

Related reading

• Canadian marketing and SEO pricing, with service-by-service ranges
• What social media management costs in Canada
• What a Canadian business website costs
• Small-business SEO packages compared by scope
• Book a call to scope the account