---
title: "Managed Google Ads service with a hard monthly stop"
description: "Managed Google Ads service run from reviewed definitions. Every change passes a dry run, and a daily report lists campaigns over 2x the median cost per lead."
canonical: "https://laboetie.io/products/ads"
language: en
---
# Ads: managed Google Ads service

Ads is a managed Google Ads service from La Boétie. Our team builds each campaign tree from a reviewed definition. Every change passes one gate that applies a dry run and an audit trail. We pause campaigns with an hourly script before they can cross the monthly budget. Our daily report lists campaigns over twice the median cost per lead.

Status: In use. Access: Managed service. Every change passes one gate with dry run, idempotency and an audit trail.

## Capabilities

- All mutations pass one gate that provides dry run, idempotency and an audit trail.
- We build full Google campaign trees from one definition.
- We score keyword research on buyer intent.
- Offline conversions upload to Google and Meta.
- Each day, our report lists campaigns over twice the median cost per lead.

## What the managed service includes

The service covers keyword research, campaign build, offline conversion upload, spend control and a daily report. Our team writes each account as a reviewed definition and builds the full Google campaign tree from it. Each campaign seed produces a dated review report.

## How each account change is checked

Every change to an account passes one gate with three safeguards: a dry run, an idempotency key and an audit entry. Live writes stay off until an explicit setting enables them, and our team reads the diff before a change goes live. A retried script cannot apply a change twice, because the idempotency key blocks a repeat of a successful change. Dry runs and failures appear in the log alongside every other call.

## How to set a hard monthly spend limit in Google Ads

An hourly script inside the account sets a hard monthly stop in Google Ads. On a given day a campaign might spend up to twice its average daily budget, and Google caps the month at 30.4 times that budget. Each hour the script adds the cost so far this month to the most Google could still spend today. It pauses the campaigns before that total reaches the monthly envelope. On the 1st it resumes only the campaigns it paused, so a campaign paused by hand stays paused.

## Keyword research scored by buyer intent

Keyword ideas go through four buckets: commercial, comparison, informational and irrelevant. Irrelevant terms are rejected first, and informational terms go to organic search. The remaining ideas are scored on intent, monthly searches and competition, then clustered into single intent ad groups. Ranking on search volume alone would put definitions, reviews and job searches at the top of the list.

## Offline conversion tracking for Google and Meta

Offline conversion tracking sends the ad platform any sale closed by phone or other result recorded after the click. This service uploads those conversions to Google and Meta. Reports then show which campaigns brought sales.


## What a managed Google Ads service does

A **managed Google Ads service** means a team runs your ad account for you: structure, keywords, ads, bids, tracking and reporting. You pay for the work on top of the media budget that goes to Google.

Most agencies describe this work in the same terms. The real differences sit elsewhere: how changes reach your account, what protects your budget, and whether your sales data reaches the bidding algorithm. La Boétie runs Ads as a managed service built on its own operator tooling, so every campaign starts as a reviewed definition in code.

## What is included

| Area | What the studio does |
|---|---|
| Account structure | Campaigns, ad groups, keywords and ads defined in one reviewed file |
| Keyword research | Keyword Planner data with each term scored for buyer intent |
| Conversion tracking | Conversion actions created in the account, and offline conversions uploaded |
| Budget protection | A hard monthly stop that runs inside the ad account |
| Reporting | A daily report that flags weak campaigns |
| Change control | Dry runs, idempotency and an audit trail on every change |

Google and Meta share the same mutation gate. On Meta, the tooling covers the engine and offline conversions, and account work depends on your setup.

## How a campaign reaches your account

Most ad accounts change through clicks in an interface, so nobody can later say who changed what or why. In this service, every change is prepared and reviewed before it applies, and campaigns start only once tracking is confirmed.

## The safety model

Every write to your account follows the same protections.

| Risk | Usual agency setup | This service |
|---|---|---|
| A wrong bulk edit | Fixed by hand after the fact | Reviewed before it applies |
| A change runs twice | Duplicate campaigns | The repeat has no effect |
| A budget overrun | Noticed in the next report | Stopped inside the account |
| A question about a past change | Search the change history | A full audit trail |

## The hard monthly spend stop

Google's published rules let a campaign spend up to twice its daily budget on one day, and they cap the month at about 30.4 times that budget. A daily budget of 50 euros can therefore reach 100 euros in a day, and 1,520 euros in a month. The daily setting alone is a weak limit for a small account.

The service adds a hard monthly stop that lives inside your account, so it keeps working even if the studio's own systems go down. Campaigns your team paused by hand stay paused.

## Keyword research and buyer intent

Search volume alone is a poor guide, because a high volume keyword can bring readers who will never buy. The tooling pulls Keyword Planner data and classifies each term by intent.

| Intent | Example for a concierge business | Usual decision |
|---|---|---|
| Buying | manage my rental apartment | Priority |
| Comparing | rental management fees | Test |
| Learning | how to rent a flat on Airbnb | Usually a negative keyword |
| Unrelated | apartment for rent | Negative keyword |

Negative keywords stop your ads from showing on searches that waste budget. They often do more for a small account than a new keyword.

## Match types and bidding

Google decides whether a search matches your keyword according to the **match type**.

| Match type | What it covers | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Exact | Searches with the same meaning as the keyword | Your clearest buying terms |
| Phrase | Searches that include the meaning of the keyword | Most small accounts |
| Broad | Related searches, chosen by Google | Accounts with strong conversion data and active review |

Broad match relies on signals from your conversion data. An account with few conversions gives it little to learn from, and search term reviews become essential. The studio sets a match type per keyword in the definition, so the choice stays visible.

**Bidding** sets what you pay in each auction.

| Strategy | Goal | Needs |
|---|---|---|
| Maximize clicks | Most clicks for the budget, with a ceiling per click | Useful at launch, before conversion data exists |
| Maximize conversions | Most conversions for the budget | Reliable conversion tracking |
| Target CPA | A target cost per conversion | Enough conversions to learn from |

CPA means cost per acquisition. Automated bidding optimises toward the conversion you give it, so tracking quality affects results more than the choice of strategy.

## Ads and landing pages

A **responsive search ad** holds up to 15 headlines of 30 characters and 4 descriptions of 90 characters. Google tests combinations and shows the ones it expects to perform. Each ad group can carry several ads.

**Quality Score** is Google's 1 to 10 estimate of how well your keyword, ad and landing page fit one another. It has three parts: expected click rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. Clicks that land on a generic home page tend to convert poorly, so each ad group should point at the page that answers its search.

A strong landing page for paid traffic has these parts:

- A heading that repeats what the visitor searched
- One action, visible on a phone without scrolling
- Proof that fits the offer, such as real work or real reviews
- Fast loading on a mobile connection
- A form that captures the click identifier with the lead

The studio also builds sites, so it can change the page and the campaign together when a brief covers both. [Basis](https://laboetie.io/products/basis) builds a site from a chat conversation for a business that has none.

## Running ads in several languages

Each language gets its own campaign, with its own keywords, ads and landing page. Mixing languages in one ad group blurs the data and sends people to pages they cannot read. The one live account behind this service runs in Hebrew, English and French from a single definition, which keeps the structure consistent across all three.

## Offline conversion tracking

A click on a form says little about revenue. A lead can look good on the website and turn out worthless on the phone. **Offline conversion tracking** sends the real outcome back to the ad platform: the lead qualified, the deal closed, the contract signed.

The tooling uploads those outcomes to Google and to Meta. Smart bidding then learns from sales and stops optimising for form fills.

The setup needs three things from your side.

1. A way to capture the click identifier with each lead.
2. A CRM or sheet that records the outcome.
3. A regular export or an API connection.

## What gets uploaded, and when

Each stage of your sales process can become one conversion action.

| Stage | Example | Value for bidding |
|---|---|---|
| Lead | A form or a call | Plentiful, and of mixed quality |
| Qualified lead | Your team confirms a real need | The usual target |
| Meeting | A first appointment takes place | Stronger signal |
| Signed | The deal closes | Strongest signal, with a value attached |

Automated bidding needs volume, and two signed deals a month give it little data. Most small accounts should upload qualified leads.

The upload pairs each outcome with the visitor's Google click id. Hashed email and phone values can improve matching. The Meta side uses its own offline conversion path.

Check your consent setup first. Click identifiers and customer data are personal data in Europe, so your privacy policy and consent flow must cover them.

## Daily reporting

A report that arrives once a month shows a problem four weeks late. The daily report compares each campaign with the rest of the account and flags any campaign whose cost per lead runs over twice the median. The report reaches your team each morning.

## How to read a Google Ads report

Five numbers tell you most of what you need.

| Metric | What it means | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per lead | Spend divided by leads | The trend per campaign |
| Conversion rate | Leads divided by clicks | A drop usually points at the landing page |
| Impression share | The share of eligible auctions you entered | Low share means budget or rank limits |
| Search terms | What people really typed | Waste and new ideas |
| Cost per qualified lead | Spend divided by good leads | The number that matters most |

## Setting up conversion tracking

Set up tracking before the first campaign starts.

1. Decide what counts as a lead: a form, a call, a booking.
2. Create the conversion action in the account.
3. Place the tag on the confirmation step.
4. Store the click id with each lead in your CRM or sheet.
5. Send a test lead and confirm it appears.
6. Mark form views and page views as secondary, or remove them.

A common fault is a conversion counted on page load, so each refresh counts twice. Another is a tag that fires on the form view. Compare the leads in Google Ads with the leads in your inbox for the first week.

## Terms worth knowing

| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Impression | Your ad was shown |
| CTR | Clicks divided by impressions |
| CPC | Average cost of one click |
| CPA | Cost of one conversion |
| ROAS | Revenue divided by ad spend |
| Search term | What the person typed |
| Keyword | What you bid on |
| Asset | A sitelink, callout or call number added to an ad |

## How a Google Ads service is priced

Agencies usually charge in one of three ways.

| Model | How it works | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| Flat monthly fee | The same fee each month | Check what the fee covers |
| Percentage of ad spend | The fee grows with your budget | The agency gains when you spend more |
| Performance fee | Paid per lead or per sale | Lead quality disputes |

Ask for the fee and the media budget as separate lines, and check that the account belongs to you. The studio quotes each engagement after reading the brief, and has no public price list.

## Common sources of wasted spend

| Waste | Example | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Location set too wide | Showing to people interested in a city, far away | Use presence in the target area |
| Search partners | Clicks from sites outside Google | Start on Google Search alone |
| Display expansion | Banner traffic mixed into a search campaign | Keep the channels apart |
| Night hours | Calls nobody answers | Schedule ads for open hours |
| Broad match on day one | Unrelated searches | Begin with phrase and exact |
| Your own brand | Paying for people already looking for you | Decide on purpose, and measure it |

## A starter negative keyword list

Review the search terms report every week in the first months. These groups often appear for service businesses.

| Group | Examples |
|---|---|
| Jobs | jobs, salary, hiring, internship |
| Learning | course, training, tutorial, definition |
| Free seekers | free, template, example |
| Do it yourself | how to, DIY, yourself |
| Competing locations | City names outside your area |

Check each word against your offer before adding it. A training company must keep "course".

## How much budget a test needs

A useful test needs enough clicks to show a pattern. Start from your numbers.

| Input | Example |
|---|---|
| Average cost per click | 2 euros |
| Conversion rate of the page | 5% |
| Cost per lead | 2 divided by 0.05 = 40 euros |
| Leads wanted in the test | 30 |
| Test budget | 30 × 40 = 1,200 euros |

These figures illustrate the sum. Keyword Planner gives estimated bids for your own market. If the budget cannot reach about 30 leads in a month or two, narrow the campaign to one service and one area.

## Signs an account needs work

Open the account and look for these.

1. Search terms show many queries unrelated to your offer.
2. Conversions count page views or button clicks in place of real leads.
3. One campaign mixes several services, so one ad serves them all.
4. Ads send every visitor to the home page.
5. Nobody can say who made the last change.
6. The reported cost per lead has no link to what sales sees.
7. Spend passed the planned amount in a recent month.

Items 2 and 6 cost the most, because automated bidding then spends toward the wrong goal.

## Google Ads or Meta Ads

| Question | Google Search | Meta |
|---|---|---|
| Who sees the ad? | People searching for your offer | People who match an audience |
| Best fit | Existing demand | Creating demand, visual offers |
| Main creative | Text and landing page | Images and video |
| Main risk | Paying for the wrong searches | Cheap leads with weak intent |
| Offline conversions | Supported by this tooling | Supported by this tooling |

Most service businesses should start where demand already exists, which usually means search. Meta becomes useful once you can tell a good lead from a poor one, because offline conversions give it the signal it lacks.

## How an engagement starts

1. You send a brief with your market, budget and current numbers.
2. The studio reads your account, or plans a new one, and proposes a structure.
3. Conversion tracking goes in first, including the click identifier on your forms.
4. The definition goes through a dry run, and you can read the report.
5. Campaigns go live in a paused state, then start once tracking is confirmed.
6. The daily report and search term review begin.

## Who owns the account

Keep ownership of your Google Ads account and your conversion data. When an agency owns the account, leaving it can cost you the history your campaigns learned from. With this service, the account stays yours and the agency access is a link you can remove.

## What to ask any Google Ads agency

1. Who owns the account and the data?
2. How do you test a change before it goes live?
3. What stops a budget overrun, and where does that stop run?
4. Do you upload offline conversions?
5. How often do you review search terms?
6. Which number do you report as success?
7. What happens to the campaigns if we stop working together?

## Reading a search terms report

This report shows what people typed before they clicked. Read it with four questions.

| Question | Action |
|---|---|
| Is this person a buyer? | Keep, or add as a keyword |
| Is this a different service? | Add a negative keyword |
| Does it show a need you did not plan for? | Create a new ad group or page |
| Is it your brand? | Track it apart from the rest |

Work through the terms with the most spend first. Decide on terms with several clicks and no lead first.

## Seasonality and budgets

Demand moves through the year. Compare with the same period last year where you have data, and use Keyword Planner trends where you do not. Adjust budgets ahead of each seasonal change, since automated bidding takes time to react. Tell the team about promotions and closures, so ads never promise something you cannot deliver.

## Local service businesses

| Setting | Recommendation |
|---|---|
| Location | Your real service area |
| Ad schedule | Hours when someone answers |
| Call asset | A number that reaches a person |
| Location asset | Linked to your Google Business Profile |
| Landing page | One page per service and area |

Count a call as a conversion only past a minimum length, so wrong numbers stay out of your leads.

## When to stop a campaign

Stop or rework a campaign when its cost per qualified lead stays above what a customer is worth to you, after you have fixed tracking, search terms and the landing page. Work out that figure first.

| Input | Example |
|---|---|
| Average sale | 1,000 euros |
| Gross margin | 40% |
| Margin per sale | 400 euros |
| Close rate of qualified leads | 25% |
| Highest affordable cost per qualified lead | 100 euros |

The example is illustrative. Use your own numbers before you set a target.

## Google Ads glossary for lead generation

| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Quality Score | Google's estimate of how well a keyword, ad and page fit together |
| Impression share | The share of possible impressions you received |
| Smart bidding | Automated bids set for each auction |
| Enhanced conversions | Hashed customer data that improves measurement |
| Offline conversion | A sale or qualified lead recorded after the click |

## A monthly account review

1. Confirm that conversions still fire.
2. Compare leads in Google Ads with leads in your CRM.
3. Read search terms and add negatives.
4. Pause keywords with spend and no qualified leads.
5. Read ad performance and replace the weakest lines.
6. Check landing page speed on a phone.
7. Review budget against the coming month.

## Situations where Google Ads pays back poorly

Some businesses should wait. A very low search volume in your area leaves little to buy. A sale worth less than your likely cost per lead cannot pay back. An offer that people do not yet search for usually needs content or social first. Fix these before you spend on clicks.

## Questions to settle before the first campaign

1. Which service earns the best margin?
2. Which towns or regions do you want to win?
3. Who answers calls and forms, and how fast?
4. What counts as a qualified lead in your business?
5. What is the most you can pay for one?
6. Which claims are you allowed to make in your sector?

A written answer to each saves weeks of testing, and it gives the team one shared target.

## Campaign types compared

| Type | Where ads appear | Good for | Care needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search | Google results | People already looking | Search term review |
| Performance Max | Across Google's networks | Accounts with strong conversion data | Less control over placement |
| Display | Partner sites and apps | Awareness and retargeting | Low intent clicks |
| Video | YouTube | Showing a product or a person | Production cost |
| Demand Gen | Feeds and YouTube | Visual offers | Creative supply |
| Local Services Ads | A separate block for local trades | Eligible local services | Available by country and trade |

Most small service businesses should start with Search. Other types work better once tracking holds up and you know what a good lead looks like.

## Writing ads that earn the click

| Weak line | Stronger line |
|---|---|
| Quality service | Boiler repair in Lyon, same day |
| Contact us today | Get a quote in 24 hours |
| Best prices | From 80€ call out |
| Experienced team | 12 years, 400 reviews |

Use numbers you can prove. Repeat the searcher's words in a headline, and give one clear action. Claims need support on the landing page, and Google can reject an ad that makes one the page cannot back.

Test messages one at a time: price against speed, guarantee against experience. Replace the weakest line every few weeks, and keep notes on what won.

## Bidding on competitor names

Bidding on a rival's brand name is allowed in many markets, though using their trademark in your ad text can be restricted. These clicks tend to cost more and convert less, since the searcher wanted someone else. Test it on a small budget with an honest comparison page, and stop if the cost per qualified lead runs high.

## Remarketing

**Remarketing** shows ads to people who already visited your site. It suits long decisions, such as renovation or professional services. It needs consent in Europe, enough visitors to fill a list, and a frequency limit, since a repeated ad annoys people.

## B2B accounts

| Topic | B2B difference |
|---|---|
| Volume | Fewer searches, at a higher cost per click |
| Cycle | Weeks or months between click and sale |
| Conversion | Upload meetings and deals, since forms prove little |
| Keywords | Exclude students, jobs and free tools |
| Reporting | Judge by pipeline value, over a quarter |

## Questions a business owner should ask each month

1. How many qualified leads did we get, and at what cost?
2. How many became customers?
3. What did we learn from search terms?
4. What changed in the account, and why?
5. What will we test next month?

A short written answer to these five tells you more than a long report.

## Next step

[Send a brief](https://laboetie.io/brief) with your market, your budget and your current cost per lead, and the studio will reply with an account plan. Ads pairs well with [Analytics](https://laboetie.io/products/analytics) for measurement and with [Cortex](https://laboetie.io/products/cortex) for organic growth.


## Frequently asked questions

### What does a managed Google Ads service include?

A managed Google Ads service means a team runs the account for you, from research to reporting. At La Boétie that covers keyword research scored by buyer intent, campaign trees seeded from a reviewed definition, offline conversion upload, an hourly spend guard and a daily report. Each change passes one gate with a dry run, an idempotency key and an audit entry.

### Why did Google Ads spend more than my daily budget?

Google Ads treats the daily budget as an average. On a given day a campaign might spend up to twice that amount, and over a month Google charges no more than 30.4 times the average daily budget. We set the spend guard of this service from those two limits. The hourly script pauses campaigns before they cross the monthly envelope.

### Can you set a hard monthly spend cap in Google Ads?

Yes, with an hourly script inside the account. Because campaign budgets are daily averages, the script adds the month to date cost to the worst case left today. The script pauses the campaigns before that total reaches 30.4 times the daily budget. On the 1st of the month the script resumes only the campaigns it paused.

### What is offline conversion tracking in Google Ads?

Offline conversion tracking imports into the ad platform a result that happened after the click, such as a sale closed by phone or a qualified lead in a CRM. Google or Meta then counts that result against the campaign behind it. This service uploads those conversions to both platforms, so reports show which campaigns brought customers.

### How does the daily report find a campaign in trouble?

The report compares each campaign with the median cost per lead across the campaigns it covers. A campaign over twice that median gets a flag, which separates an outlier from the blended figure. The report lists total spend, conversions, blended cost per lead and median cost per lead for the same period.

### How is each account change recorded?

Every call to an account writes one line to an audit log, whether it ran as a dry run or live and whether it succeeded or failed. A retry has no effect, because an idempotency key ties each change to its first success. Each campaign seed produces a dated review report, and our team reads the diff before a change goes live.

### Do you manage Meta ads as well?

The tooling includes a Meta engine that covers campaigns, audiences, creatives and offline conversions. Its live record so far is on Google Ads, on one client account, which makes Google the channel with a track record. If Meta matters to your brief, say so when you send it and we will state what applies to your account.