Paid Media Consulting
Paid media consulting · Sydney & Australia-wideMost businesses don’t have a Google Ads problem or a Meta problem. They have a paid media problem: budget split by habit, channels measured with numbers that don’t add up, and nobody owning the total. Our team brings 35+ years’ combined experience to fixing that, with senior, hands-on paid media consulting across every major platform. $100M+ managed, and no lock-in contracts.
35+ years experience · Read our reviewsA platform specialist optimises inside one account. A paid media consultant decides how much money each account should get in the first place, what each one is accountable for, and how you will know whether the answer was right. Those are different jobs, and the second one is where most of the money is won or lost.
It shows up the same way in almost every account that arrives here. Google Ads is reporting a strong return, largely because branded search is sitting inside the blended number. Meta is reporting a return too, on a seven-day click and one-day view window that credits it for sales Google also claimed. Between them the two platforms report more revenue than the business actually took. Budget is then moved between them on the strength of those numbers, which is roughly the same as navigating with two compasses that disagree.
The work here starts one level above the platforms. What can you afford to pay for a customer, given real gross margin and repeat rate? Which channels can plausibly deliver at that number, and at what volume before they saturate? What single measurement framework will every channel be judged against, so that moving budget is a decision rather than a guess?
Plenty of consultants will write you a strategy and hand it over. Plenty of agencies will execute without ever questioning the plan. Neither is much use on its own: a strategy that nobody builds is a document, and execution without a thesis is just activity that produces reports.
This practice does both. The plan is set at the top, then the campaigns are built and managed against it, and the plan is revised when the market answers back. Every account is led by an experienced specialist from audit through to optimisation, with a small support team helping execute. Strategy is never handed to a junior to learn on your budget.
Whether you need the whole programme run or a senior set of eyes on a team that is already running it, the components are the same.
Working back from gross margin to an allowable cost per acquisition, then choosing the channels that can actually deliver at that number. Some businesses need three channels. Very few need six, and saying so is part of the job.
How much goes where, what each channel is expected to return, and what happens to the total when you add or remove twenty percent. Allocation reviewed on a cadence, not defended out of habit.
Server-side tagging, consent mode, enhanced and offline conversions, and a single reconciled view where platform-reported numbers are checked against what the business actually banked.
Hands-on work in the accounts: structure, bidding, audiences, feeds, exclusions and the weekly maintenance that keeps automated campaign types honest rather than expensive.
On the social and video channels, creative is the targeting. A testing framework with enough volume behind each variant to produce a real answer, and a brief that tells the producer what to make next.
One page, in plain English, tying spend to pipeline and revenue with the caveats stated rather than buried. No 40-tab dashboard nobody opens between meetings.
What we found, what we changed and what happened next, with the numbers to back it up.
Video testimonial · 54 sec
“They took time to understand our margins, our best suburbs, and which jobs we actually want.”Arthur Martin, Marketing Manager, AGG Doors
Video testimonial · 1 min 16 sec
“Our cost per lead has decreased significantly and we’ve been able to scale up our ads.”Caitlin Cheung, Sharewise
Video testimonial · 1 min 24 sec
Website fixes, HubSpot lead quality connected to Google Ads, and a new Meta strategy built around showroom visits.
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Video testimonial · 37 sec
Three years of Google Ads and Meta Ads for an SEO agency: bidding strategy tests, clean search terms and a landing page strategy.
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Written case study
Off broad match and onto a tightly structured exact match setup, with bidding driven by real booked jobs. And each one now costs 7% less.
Read the case study →All three work. They fail in different ways, and the honest answer depends on your spend, your team and how much of the thinking you want to own.
| Senior consultant | Agency | In-house hire | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | The specialist you hired, with support | Senior wins it, junior runs it | One person, learning as they go |
| Typical monthly cost | Flat fee, scales with scope | Retainer or percentage of spend | Salary, on-costs, tools, training |
| Breadth of channels | Whatever the strategy needs | Broad, but often siloed by team | Usually strong in one or two |
| Time to useful output | Days | Weeks, after onboarding | Months, including recruitment |
| Fails when | You need 40 hours a week of execution | Your account is too small to matter to them | The one person leaves |
| Best fit | $20k–$500k monthly spend, small or no internal team | Very large spend with dedicated resourcing needs | Mature programme with a senior lead already in place |
There is a fourth option that works well and is often overlooked: keep the execution in-house and buy senior oversight. A standing review, a measurement framework and someone accountable for the allocation, without replacing the team you already have. The full comparison, with the questions to ask, is in the hiring guide.
Our founder, Jeremy, has been in paid media since 2005, across agencies, startups and in-house teams, on brands like Apple Australia, Westfield, PayPal Australia and Royal Caribbean. All of that experience goes into your account.
Not six channel reports that each look fine. One number, one owner, and a straight answer when the total is not moving.
Stay because the results are there. The work earns its keep month to month, and you can leave any time.
No incentive to keep spend in a channel because it is the one we are good at. If a channel should be switched off, that is the recommendation you get.
Every account has a senior specialist accountable for it, so it never gets whatever is left after the bigger accounts are served.
Jeremy has been helping me with my Google Ads and has been doing an amazing job within 6 months he has already brought in up to $220,000 worth of potential work with only $30,000 of ad spend. He knows what he is doing and you can rely on him!
Matthew Crouch | SmartfixHead of Marketing & Brand, SmartfixWe have worked with Jeremy as our SEM partner for just over 9 months now and he has been a standout contributor to our digital marketing performance.
When he came on board, our Google Ads account had been a mess for some time, and whilst prior partners had shared good ideas and shown promise, little had actually changed. Jeremy brought clarity, structure and deep platform knowledge from day one. He is not just technically capable, he is commercially minded, easy to work with, and calm under pressure.
No drawn-out onboarding or six-month “strategy phases”. We find what’s costing you money and start fixing it.
Takes 60 seconds. We typically reply within one business day.
We get to know your business, your margins and the customers you actually want, then go through your current accounts across every channel to find what’s working, what’s leaking budget and where the biggest wins are. It all starts with your free ad plan.
We choose the platforms, budget split, campaign structure and bidding that suit how your business makes money, and agree on the numbers that count: leads, bookings and sales, not clicks.
We write the ads, set up keywords and audiences on each platform, line up your landing pages and connect tracking to your CRM and calls. Everything is checked before a dollar is spent, and watched closely once it goes live.
No set and forget. A senior specialist is in your account every week, testing new ads, adjusting bids and budgets, and cutting waste, then putting more budget behind whatever is profitable.
Plain-English reports on what’s working, what we’ve changed and what’s next, and we’ll walk you through them. You’ll always know exactly what your ads are driving.
Three things a platform specialist usually does not. They set the allowable cost per acquisition from your real margins rather than accepting a platform's default goal. They decide how budget is split across channels and revise that split as evidence arrives. And they build one measurement framework that every channel is judged against, so the numbers reconcile with what the business actually banked. Campaign management sits underneath all of that, not instead of it.
Most Australian businesses pay a flat monthly management fee rather than a percentage of ad spend. Percentage-of-spend pricing creates an obvious conflict: the adviser earns more when you spend more, regardless of whether spending more is the right call. Paid Media Plus works on transparent flat fees with no lock-in contracts, so you are never penalised for scaling your budget and you can leave any time. The free audit comes first, so you see the opportunity before committing anything.
Not universally. An agency is the better answer when you need a large volume of production and coordination across many people, and your spend is big enough that you will be a priority account. A consultant is the better answer when the bottleneck is seniority rather than hours, which is the more common situation. The honest test is to ask who will be in your account on a Tuesday afternoon, and compare that answer to who is in the room during the pitch.
Usually fewer than you are running now. Every channel carries a fixed cost in attention, creative and measurement, and below a certain spend a channel never gathers enough conversion data for automated bidding to work. Two channels run properly will almost always beat five run thinly. Adding a channel should be a decision made against a saturation point in an existing one, not against a fear of missing out.
Both arrangements are common. Some clients hand over the whole programme. Others keep execution in-house and buy senior oversight: a standing review, a measurement framework and someone accountable for the allocation. You keep full ownership of your accounts, your data and your campaign history either way.
Quick wins from fixing tracking, cutting wasted spend and restructuring usually land in the first few weeks. Meaningful, compounding improvement in cost per acquisition and return on ad spend typically builds across the first 60 to 90 days, as accounts gather conversion data and bidding stabilises. Anyone promising a transformation inside a fortnight is describing luck, not a method.
The practice is based in Sydney and works with clients right across Australia. Paid media is run remotely, so everything from the audit through to ongoing management and reporting happens online. Location has never been the constraint.
No, there are no lock-in contracts, ever. The work is designed to earn its keep month to month, so you stay because the results are there, not because a contract forces you to.
The strategy, budget and measurement work that sits above the platforms, written out in full. Long, specific and free, because the thinking is not the hard part — doing it consistently is.
Working back from gross margin to an allowable cost per acquisition, choosing channels against saturation rather than fashion, and writing the whole thing on one page you can actually defend in a board meeting.
Working backwards from a revenue target, the minimum viable spend per channel, and when to move money rather than add more.
CAC, ROAS, MER and contribution margin, why platform numbers never sum, and a reporting stack that reconciles to the bank.
Pricing models and their conflicts, the twelve questions worth asking, the contract terms to insist on, and what good looks like at 90 days.
Looking for platform-specific detail? The technical Google Ads guides cover conversion tracking, Performance Max, negative keywords and account auditing step by step. And if you would rather work the numbers than read about them, the calculators do the arithmetic from this guide set.
See the Google Ads guides → Tools & calculators →Tell us a bit about your business and we'll send you a free ad plan: what we'd change first, where we'd put your budget, and the quick wins you can make this week. Make the changes yourself, or have us do it for you.
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