How much to charge for ads management: models and numbers

The question always arrives the same way: what do people charge to run ads. The useful answer is not a number, because identical work is worth different amounts depending on the model, the account size and what is included. What can be defined is your floor. Everything else follows from it.

The four models

Flat retainer. The most common and the most predictable for both sides. Its risk is scope: without a written boundary, the client adds requests and the fee dilutes month by month.

Percentage. Aligns incentives as the account grows, and breaks with small budgets. Fifteen percent of a small spend does not pay for the work, and that work is not proportionally smaller. Almost always paired with a monthly minimum.

Retainer plus performance. Sounds fair and requires a closed definition of the target and how it is measured, agreed before starting. Without that, every month end becomes an attribution argument.

Per project. Good for entering an account without committing months. It is also the honest way to charge for the initial build, which consumes far more time than ongoing management.

Calculating your floor

Without this, any price is a guess:

1. Real hours per account per month. Daily checks, weekly analysis, reporting, meetings. Mid-sized accounts usually land between 8 and 20 hours.
2. Your hourly cost. What you need to earn divided by genuinely billable hours, which are never all the hours in the month.
3. Margin, to cover holidays, churn and unbillable time.

Floor = hours × hourly cost × margin. Run it before quoting, not after the client pushes back on the number. Charging below that number is not an entry strategy; it is a decision to work for free that becomes obvious in month four.

A worked calculation

A mid-sized account, Meta and Google, monthly report and a fortnightly call:

At a target of US$ 60 per billable hour and a margin multiplier of 1.4 to cover non-billable time, the floor lands around 17 × 60 × 1.4 ≈ US$ 1,430 per month. That is not the price. It is the line below which the account costs you money.

Running this once across a client list usually produces one surprise: the smallest accounts, which felt light, have the worst hours-to-fee ratio. Almost always because the minimum work of operating an account does not scale down with the budget.

What pushes the price above the floor

• Budget size. More spend means more risk and more attention.
• Number of platforms. Meta, Google and TikTok are three routines, not one account.
• Business complexity. Long sales cycles, many products or offline closing demand more analysis.
• Reporting depth. A monthly dashboard is not the same product as weekly calls with recommendations.
• Who makes the creative. If you do, that is a separate service with a separate fee.

What to write in the proposal

Most fee disputes are not about the amount; they are about scope. Five lines prevent the majority:

• How many accounts and platforms are included.
• How many reports and meetings per month.
• Who produces creative and copy.
• What happens if budget changes significantly.
• What is explicitly not included.

That last line is the most uncomfortable to write and saves the most arguments.

What to charge separately, always

Some work quietly slips inside the monthly fee and should not, because it does not repeat monthly and does not cost the same:

• Initial account build. Structure, audiences, pixel, events, conversions. Many hours compressed into two weeks.
• Creative production. Another service, another cost, another timeline.
• Auditing an account inherited from another provider. Understanding what exists takes longer than starting fresh.
• Tracking and integrations. CRM wiring, custom events, offline conversion setup.

Including these "as a courtesy" in month one is the most common way to start a relationship at the wrong price, because the client incorporates them as part of the service.

Pricing when you are the only person

Solo operators tend to underprice for a specific reason: they count only the hours spent inside the ads manager. The hours that actually fill the week are the other ones — proposals that go nowhere, calls that could have been emails, the client who needs three reminders for creative assets.

A floor built on ads-manager hours alone produces a rate that collapses the moment the client list grows. Count the real week, including the unbillable parts, and divide by what genuinely gets billed. The number that comes out is uncomfortable and correct.

The trap of performance-only pricing

Commission on sales sounds attractive and fails when you do not control half the chain: the page, the price, stock, the sales team handling leads. If the client handles enquiries badly, your income falls for reasons outside your work. If you are going to take risk, take it on what you control — cost per qualified lead, not closed revenue.

Raising prices on an existing client

With data, not with a feeling. Bring the real hours from the last quarter, how scope grew since the original agreement, and what results were produced. An increase explained with a record of the work gets discussed; one announced without context gets resisted.

The best moment is after a good quarter with renewal in sight, not in the middle of a bad month.

For the deliverable itself, continue with client reporting for small agencies and the weekly ad report format. The pricing page shows how tool cost spreads across multiple accounts.