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Google Ads Agency

Hiring a Google Ads Setup: What It Should Include

Having Google Ads set up: a checklist for account, tracking, keywords and handover, the warning signs of a weak setup, and who owns the account afterwards.

Mijo Jurisic

Google Ads Consultant

15 min readUpdated
5.0 ★ · 16 Google reviewsGoogle Partner
Ink sketch: a target, tag, key and ad card snap into a frame like puzzle pieces, a ticked checklist beside them

In short

A good Google Ads setup is more than a few live campaigns: the account runs in your company's name with admin access for you, conversion tracking counts only real enquiries or purchases and respects Consent Mode v2, keywords and negatives are researched, and it ends with a written handover. With me, a lead generation setup costs from €1,500 as a fixed price and is usually done within 2 to 3 weeks; you pay the media budget to Google separately.

If you want to have Google Ads set up, you are buying something that is hard to judge from the outside. A setup looks finished as soon as ads are running. Whether the tracking is right, who owns the account and why the campaigns are built the way they are often only shows months later, usually when the numbers stop adding up or the working relationship ends.

So this article is not a price overview but a checklist. You will learn what belongs in a good setup, how to recognise a weak one and which questions to ask before you hire anyone. The pricing side of the topic, meaning setup fees compared to monthly retainers, is broken down in my article on Google Ads agency costs. If you would rather build it yourself, the guide on how to create a Google Ads campaign walks you through it step by step. Statements about Google features are backed by Google Ads Help; the sources are listed at the end.

What a setup is and what it is not

A setup builds a Google Ads account from scratch: account, tracking, structure, first campaigns. It is the right choice if you have never advertised before, or if an old account is so tangled that a clean restart is faster than any repair.

An audit, on the other hand, reviews an existing account. If you already have campaigns running and want to know what is going wrong, that is usually the better starting point. And management is the ongoing work afterwards: reviewing search terms, adjusting bids and budgets, testing ads.

This distinction matters because many offers blur it. A setup ends at launch. Whatever happens next has to be taken over by someone: you, your team or a provider. A good setup is therefore built and documented so that this handover works, no matter who takes over.

The checklist: what belongs in a good setup

I work through the following eight points in every setup, and you can ask about them in every offer you get. Not every point carries the same weight in every account, but none of them should be missing.

1. The account runs in your name

The account belongs to your company, with your payment method and admin access for you. That is a must, not a detail. Why it matters so much, and how Google handles ownership and access levels, is covered further down in the section on account ownership.

Two settings are decided the moment the account is created and cannot be changed later. According to Google Ads Help, the time zone and the currency are set permanently when the account is set up. Accept the defaults without looking and you live with them for good.

2. Conversion tracking that counts only real results

Tracking is where most setups fail, and it is the part you as the client can see least. Three things belong to it:

  • A clear definition. What counts as a conversion for your business? An enquiry through the form, a phone call, a purchase. Not a view of the home page or a scroll event.
  • Primary and secondary kept apart. Google distinguishes between primary and secondary conversion actions. Primary actions appear in the “Conversions” column and are used for bidding; secondary actions are for observation only and appear in “All conversions”. Primary conversions should be real business results only, and the same event must not count twice as primary, for example once through the Google Ads tag and once through a GA4 import.
  • Consent and data quality. For users in the European Economic Area, Google requires advertisers to comply with its EU user consent policy in order to use personalised ads and measurement. Technically this means Consent Mode v2 with the parameters ad_user_data and ad_personalization. Google distinguishes a basic implementation, where tags stay blocked until the user interacts with the banner, and an advanced one, where tags load with the default status “denied”. Enhanced conversions come on top: according to Google Ads Help, enhanced conversions for web and for leads are to be merged soon into a single feature with one on/off switch (as of October 2026).

By the end of a setup, every conversion action should have been triggered once as a test and found again in the account. How to check this yourself is described in detail in my guide to setting up Google Ads conversion tracking.

3. An account structure that fits your business

The structure follows your offer, not a template. Services with different margins or demand get their own campaigns, and searches for your company name (brand) run separately from everything else (non-brand). Otherwise the overall campaign dresses itself up with cheap brand clicks, and you cannot see what acquiring new customers really costs.

One thing I check in every local account is the location option. According to Google Ads Help, “Presence or interest” is the default and the recommended setting: ads then reach people who are likely to be in, or regularly in, your locations, but also people who have shown interest in those locations. With “Presence”, only people who are likely to be in, or regularly in, those locations remain. For a trade business that only works within a certain radius, I usually switch to “Presence”. That is my practice, not a Google recommendation.

4. Keyword research and negatives from day one

Keywords are researched, not guessed. Good research separates searches with buying intent (“emergency”, “quote”, “cost”) from informational searches (“tutorial”, “do it yourself”) and decides deliberately which of them get budget.

The negative keyword list is just as important. Terms such as “job”, “apprenticeship” or “free” belong on the exclusion list from the start for most service businesses, not after the first budget has been spent on them. A setup without prepared negatives learns at your expense.

5. Ads, assets and a landing page that matches

Responsive search ads with several headlines and descriptions, plus assets such as sitelinks, structured snippets and call assets. The ad promises what the landing page delivers: someone who clicks on “bathroom renovation” lands on the bathroom renovation page, not on the home page.

A working landing page with a clear way to get in touch is a prerequisite for me, not an extra. If it is missing, the setup cannot be completed in a meaningful way, and the page becomes a project of its own before launch.

6. A bidding strategy start that fits the data

A new account has no conversion history. A bidding strategy that optimises towards a fixed target per conversion has nothing to go on on day one. That is why I start conservatively, with a manageable daily budget and a strategy that fits the amount of data, and only switch once enough conversions have come in. From my practice: if you put a fresh account on aggressive targets straight away, you pay dearly for the learning curve.

7. Automation switches set on purpose

Google Ads comes with a number of automations that change the character of an account. One example is auto-applied recommendations. According to Google Ads Help, they can be turned on or off at any time in the settings. A good setup makes this decision deliberately and records it in the handover, instead of leaving it to whatever the default happens to be. The same applies to automatically created assets and to the question of how far Google may expand searches beyond your keywords.

8. Handover and documentation

The setup does not end with clicking “enable” but with written handover documentation. With me, it contains the tag map, the account logic, maintenance notes and a list of what should not be touched, plus a walkthrough call. It is meant to let you or your team run the account yourselves afterwards. Without this documentation, the knowledge about your account sits with one single person, and that person is not always reachable.

The handover also covers access outside Google Ads: Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics 4 and, for shops, Merchant Center. In my setups, the container runs on your own Tag Manager account, and you keep admin access.

How to recognise a weak setup

I see the following warning signs again and again in accounts I take over. None of them proves bad work on its own, but each one is worth a follow-up question:

  • The account sits with the provider. You have no admin access, or the payment method runs through the agency and you do not know whose name the account is registered in. This is the clearest warning sign.
  • Conversions count the wrong thing. Page views, clicks on the phone number without an actual call, or the same event counted twice as a primary action. The numbers then look good, but the bidding strategy optimises towards the wrong thing.
  • No Consent Mode even though users come from the EEA. This is a warning sign too, and it is not just a privacy question: according to Google, it is a requirement for personalised ads and measurement.
  • One campaign for everything. All services, all regions, brand and non-brand in one pot. Or, for a fresh account without data, nothing but Performance Max, which in my view is a gamble.
  • No negatives. If nobody has looked at the search terms report after the first few weeks, you are paying for searches that never fitted your business.
  • Unchecked defaults. Auto-applied recommendations and other automations are switched on without anyone being able to explain the decision.
  • Every account looks the same. The same structure for a dentist and an online shop points to a template, not a setup.
  • No handover documentation. If the answer to “Why is it built like this?” is a shrug, the most important part is missing.

Who owns the account

The question sounds like a formality, but it decides what happens when the working relationship ends. The campaign history, the conversion data and the learning of the bidding strategy are tied to the account. Whoever keeps the account keeps all of that.

According to Google Ads Help, Google Ads has five access levels: “Email only”, “Billing”, “Read only”, “Standard” and “Admin”. Only admins can grant access to others, change access levels, add or remove product links and unlink manager accounts. That is exactly why at least one admin access belongs to you, not just to the provider. How to protect admin access with passkeys and clean roles in 2026 is covered in my post on securing your Google Ads account.

Providers usually work through a manager account in which they bundle several client accounts. There are two ways to set this up:

  1. You create the account. Then you are an admin from the start. The provider sends a link request from their manager account, which a user with admin access to your account accepts. This is the route I prefer.
  2. The provider creates the account. According to Google Ads Help, an account manager who creates an account automatically becomes its owner. The owner can invite admins, transfer ownership and unlink other manager accounts. They can only deactivate ownership if at least one user with admin access to the client account exists. That is not a problem as long as it is sorted out: you get admin access, and ownership is transferred if needed.

With me the answer is simple: the account runs in your name or your company's name, and I get admin access. If we stop or you switch providers, nothing changes about your ownership.

What a setup costs

A setup is a one-off service and is therefore priced differently from ongoing management. With me, a lead generation setup costs from €1,500 as a fixed price that is agreed after the briefing. E-commerce and multi-brand setups are quoted on request, because the feed, Merchant Center and multiple brands shift the effort considerably.

When comparing offers, keep three things apart:

  • Setup price and media budget are two separate items. You always pay the click costs directly to Google, on top of the setup. You can roughly model how much budget makes sense for your market with the Google Ads budget calculator.
  • What is included in the price? A cheap setup without tracking is not a cheap setup but an incomplete one. Ask specifically about Consent Mode, conversion actions and handover documentation.
  • What happens afterwards? Ongoing optimisation is not included in my fixed price. You take over yourself or book management separately. A setup that is only available with a long follow-on contract is really a contract with a set-up fee.

How setup fees and monthly retainers generally differ between agencies and freelancers is shown in the overview in my article on Google Ads agency costs. I am deliberately not repeating that table here.

How long a setup takes

I do not promise a fixed date, because the timeline depends on things that are not in my hands alone. My setup is usually done within 2 to 3 weeks of the discovery call, and this is what the typical process looks like:

  1. Week 1: discovery and architecture. Business model, target groups, conversion paths. The result is a plan for the account structure.
  2. Week 2: build. Tracking with Google Tag Manager and Consent Mode v2, keyword research, ad copy, assets. The account is built, and everything stays paused.
  3. Week 3: launch and handover. A final review together, then launch with a conservative daily budget, a walkthrough call and the handover documentation.

In my experience, three things cause delays most often: missing access to the website or Tag Manager, a landing page that is not finished yet, and approvals that get stuck in day-to-day business. Ad review is rarely the bottleneck. According to Google Ads Help, most ads are reviewed within one business day.

After launch, the learning phase begins. The first few weeks are usually bumpy in my experience, and fluctuations during that time say little about the quality of the setup. If you run the account yourself afterwards, I typically recommend a short outside review four to six weeks after launch.

Questions to ask before you hire anyone

These questions quickly separate a well-thought-out setup from a template in a conversation:

  1. In whose name will the account be created, and will I get admin access?
  2. Which conversion actions are planned, which of them are primary, and how will you test that they count correctly?
  3. Is Consent Mode v2 included in the price, and which implementation will you use?
  4. What does the planned campaign structure look like, and why exactly like that?
  5. Which negatives are prepared for launch?
  6. Which automations are switched on, and who decided that?
  7. What is in the handover documentation, and will I get it in writing?
  8. What is included after launch, and is there a mandatory follow-on contract?

If you would rather put these questions to me: my Google Ads setup is built exactly along this list, as a fixed price from €1,500, with handover documentation and without an automatic follow-on contract. If you do not want to carry on yourself after launch, you can add ongoing Google Ads management separately.

Sources

As of: October 2026

Frequently asked questions

With me, a lead generation setup costs from €1,500 as a fixed price that is agreed after the briefing. E-commerce and multi-brand setups are quoted on request. The media budget, meaning the click costs, is paid on top and directly to Google. How setup fees and monthly retainers compare across the market is broken down in my article on Google Ads agency costs.

Tags:Google Ads SetupAccount SetupConversion TrackingAccount Access
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Mijo Jurisic

Google Ads consultant & founder of MJ Marketing. 5+ years of hands-on practice: from a self-taught start to advising direct Google Ads customers on behalf of Google. 500+ Google Ads accounts and €22M in media spend managed across the career.

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