Most businesses do not have a Google Ads problem or a Meta problem. They have a paid media problem: budget split by habit, channels measured against each other with numbers that do not reconcile, and nobody accountable for the total. Senior, hands-on paid media consulting across every major platform. 20+ years' experience, $100M+ managed, no lock-in contracts.
20+ years in paid media · 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 senior-led 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.
In that order, and never out of it. Scaling an account that cannot measure itself only loses money faster.
Every channel reviewed against the same framework: tracking integrity first, then where the money actually goes, then structure and bidding. You get the findings and the three highest-impact fixes whether or not we work together.
Fix measurement so the numbers mean something, separate brand from non-brand, cut the spend that is not pulling its weight, and set an allowable cost per acquisition the whole programme is judged against. Most of the quick wins live here.
With clean data and a defensible allocation, budget moves toward what is genuinely incremental. Reviewed monthly, forecast quarterly, and reported against pipeline rather than impressions.
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.
Two decades across and inside agencies, startups and in-house teams, working on brands like Apple Australia, Westfield, PayPal Australia and Royal Caribbean. That experience goes directly 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.
Fewer clients means every account gets genuine senior attention, not 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!
When he came on board, our Google Ads account had been a mess for some time. Jeremy brought clarity, structure and deep platform knowledge from day one. Over the last 9 months he has helped us constantly refine and improve our ROAS.
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.
See the Google Ads guides →A free, no-obligation audit across every channel you are running, plus the three highest-impact fixes you can make this week.
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