What Google Ads actually costs in South Africa
Two numbers, kept apart: what Google charges for the click, and what somebody charges to run the account. How to read both, and the one figure most accounts never calculate.
Ask three agencies what Google Ads costs and you get three answers, none of which is a number. That is because there are two numbers, they belong to different people, and most quotes blur them on purpose.
The first number belongs to Google
Google charges per click, and the price of a click is set by an auction between everyone bidding on the same search. It has nothing to do with who runs your account. A search for "google ads agency" in South Africa costs an advertiser somewhere between one and forty dollars a click at the top of the page, according to Google's own planner — a wide range, because the top of the page is expensive and the bottom is not.
What matters is not the click price on its own. It is how many clicks it takes to start a conversation, and how many conversations it takes to make a sale. An account paying R 11 a click that turns one click in thirty into a graded enquiry is paying about R 330 a conversation. An account paying R 4 a click that turns one in two hundred into a form nobody answers is paying R 800 for nothing.
You cannot know which of those you are until the account can join the click to the enquiry. Most cannot.
The second number belongs to whoever runs it
The management fee is what an agency or a freelancer charges to plan, build and run the account. Three models are common in this market:
- A percentage of spend. Simple, and it means the fee rises whenever your budget does, whether or not the extra spend worked.
- A flat monthly retainer. Predictable. Ask what is inside it — most exclude landing pages, tracking and any content.
- Quoted on scope. A fixed number for a stated amount of work: this many campaigns, these landing pages, this wiring. It moves when the scope moves, not when the media does.
Whichever model you are quoted, ask two questions. Who owns the account? And what does the monthly report contain? If the answer to the first is "we do", every keyword and every conversion you have paid to learn about leaves with them. If the answer to the second is "a dashboard", you will open it twice.
The number nobody calculates
Take last month's total — media plus fee. Divide it by the number of conversations that actually started: WhatsApp messages, calls, forms that were answered. Not clicks, not impressions, not "leads" as the account counts them.
That is your cost per conversation, and it is the only number that lets you compare Google Ads with a flyer, a boosted post or a referral. Most businesses have never seen theirs, because the account was never wired to produce it.
If you would like yours worked out, send us what you ran last month. No charge. You keep the reading either way.