Google Ads consultant: who should you choose in 2026?

Entrusting your Google Ads campaigns to someone means entrusting them with a portion of your revenue. A good consultant can cut your cost per lead by two-thirds in just a few weeks. A bad one can burn through your budget for six months without anyone ever really knowing what it generated.

The market is vast: freelancers, small specialized agencies, large media agencies, and in-house hires. At Growth Room, we frequently take over Google Ads accounts that were poorly managed or neglected, and we often see the same initial mistakes. Here is how to choose the right profile for your business, what it costs, and the questions that will help you filter the candidates.

Key takeaways

• The right choice depends on your budget, your need for availability, and the number of channels to manage.
• A digital marketing freelance consultant charges an average of just over €500 per day in France.
• Also, plan for a media budget of at least €2,000 to €2,500 per month to obtain actionable data.
• Insist that the advertising account remains in your name and that tracking is linked to your sales.
• Judge a consultant based on cost per customer or ROAS, never on clicks or impressions.

What does a Google Ads consultant do?

A Google Ads consultant designs, manages, and optimizes your advertising campaigns on Google: Search, Performance Max, Shopping, YouTube, and Display. In practical terms, their work covers:

• auditing your existing account and the competition;
• selecting keywords, structuring campaigns, and writing ad copy;
• setting up conversion tracking, all the way to sales or qualified leads;
• managing bids and budgets;
• testing ads, landing pages, and audiences;
• regular reporting with actionable recommendations.

The scope of work varies significantly from one provider to another. Some focus solely on campaign optimization, while others handle tracking, landing pages, and CRM integration. This is the first thing you need to clarify.

Freelancer, agency, or in-house hire: which Google Ads consultant should you choose?

There are three main options. None is objectively better than the others; it all depends on your budget, the number of channels you need to manage, and the level of availability you require.

The freelance consultant

An experienced freelancer is often a great choice for a small business with only one channel to manage. You get a single point of contact who is usually responsive, and costs are kept under control. The downside: they are on their own. If they go on vacation, get sick, or are overloaded, your campaigns will be put on hold. Furthermore, a Google Ads specialist freelancer rarely has the same level of expertise in Meta, LinkedIn, or advanced tracking.

The specialized agency

An agency provides a team: a lead consultant, but also specialists in tracking, data, or creative, as well as service continuity. They also have the advantage of seeing many accounts across various sectors, which helps speed up decision-making. The downside: in large agencies, your account might be assigned to a junior staff member. Always ask who will be managing your account on a day-to-day basis.

In-house recruitment

Hiring an in-house expert makes sense once you have significant budgets and multiple channels to manage on an ongoing basis. The cost is higher (salary, tools, training), the hiring process takes time, and the individual needs to be challenged regularly to ensure they don't get stuck in their ways.

How much does a Google Ads consultant cost in 2026?

According to the 2026 Malt rate barometer, a freelance web marketing consultant in France charges an average of €523 per day. Rates increase significantly with experience: around €390 per day for 3 to 7 years of experience, €580 for 8 to 15 years, and nearly €780 for over 15 years.

Agencies generally charge a monthly flat fee or a percentage of the media budget, depending on the scope of work.

In addition to these fees, there is the media budget, which is what you pay directly to Google. At Growth Room, we recommend a minimum of €2,000 to €2,500 per month to generate actionable data. The cost per click depends on the competition for your keywords and your industry: in many markets, it ranges between €0.50 and €2, but it can be much higher for highly competitive search terms.

What criteria should you use to choose the right Google Ads consultant?

Experience with your business model

Managing an e-commerce site, a B2B lead generation site, or a network of retail locations are completely different jobs. Ask for examples of accounts similar to yours, complete with figures.

Mastery of tracking

This is the most underestimated criterion. Without tracking that is reliable, Google optimizes based on the wrong signals, and no one knows what the campaigns are actually generating. A good consultant verifies conversion tracking before touching bids and knows how to connect Google Ads to your sales or CRM. For the tools to implement, our selection of 15 tools for a B2B Ads stack covers tracking, attribution, and reporting.

Transparency regarding the account

The advertising account must be in your name, and you must have administrator access. If the service provider creates the account under their own manager account, you will lose your history if they leave.

Certifications

Google Ads certifications and Google Partner status do not guarantee performance, but they do attest to a certain level of knowledge and a minimum volume of management. It is a useful filter, but not a sufficient criterion on its own.

Business-oriented reporting

Good reporting focuses on sales, qualified leads, cost per customer, and ROAS. Impressions and click-through rates are useful for management, but not for evaluation.

A dedicated point of contact

Who is actually working on your account? How many other accounts are they managing? How often do you have check-ins? These three questions often reveal more than any sales brochure.

What questions should you ask a Google Ads consultant before signing?

• Can you show me a case study similar to mine, with before-and-after figures?
• Who will be managing my account on a daily basis, and what is their experience level?
• How will you verify and improve conversion tracking?
• Will the account remain in my name, with full access?
• Which metrics will you track, and how often will I receive reports?
• What results can reasonably be expected after 3 months?
• What is the contract term, and what is the offboarding process?

What red flags should you look out for?

• Promising guaranteed results before even seeing your account.
• Refusing to give you account access, or creating the account under the agency's name.
• Reporting focused solely on clicks and impressions.
• Asking no questions about your margins, average order value, or sales cycle.
• Charging a percentage of ad spend without performance goals: this incentivizes the provider to spend more, not better.
• Launching campaigns without first verifying tracking.

What results should you expect from a good Google Ads consultant?

On the Google Ads accounts we manage, we see an average 32% increase in leads or sign-ups and an 18% decrease in customer acquisition cost, with a 9/10 customer satisfaction rating after 3 months. Here are a few concrete examples:

• Déménager Facile, a moving quote comparison site, generated 425 leads in 2 months using Google Ads, at an average cost per lead of €29, nearly 3 times lower than before. We reorganized the campaigns by department and city—for example, placing "moving Lille" and "mover Lille" into separate ad groups. The breakdown of Déménager Facile's campaigns shows the full structure.
• At Poiscaille, the cost per subscription on Google Ads dropped from €77 in November to €6 in January by tailoring campaigns to each stage of the customer journey.
• For EVA, a network of virtual reality arenas, Google Ads campaigns generated 438 bookings with a ROAS of 9 over 3 months.

These results share one common thread: foundational work on structure and conversion tracking before attempting to scale the budget.

You can spot a good Google Ads consultant by the questions they ask

Before discussing keywords or bids, a good consultant wants to understand your margins, average order value, sales cycle, and how your leads are handled. This allows them to set the right goal and manage your campaigns based on what truly matters: your sales. This is also how every collaboration begins in our Google Ads team, with an audit of the account and tracking before any optimization takes place.