New York · PPC
PPC agency in New York
New York is one of the most expensive click markets in the world, which means the cost of running the account badly is unusually high. We manage against qualified pipeline rather than clicks, and we take no cut of your media spend.
Get a free account auditWhat does a PPC agency in New York do?
A PPC agency in New York plans, builds and runs your paid search and paid social campaigns, and is accountable for what they return. The real job is deciding which searches are worth paying for in an expensive market, proving which clicks became revenue, and cutting the ones that never do.
Two ways to run the same budget
We audit a lot of New York accounts. The pattern below is not a strawman — it is what we find most often, and it is usually the reason the spend has stopped working.
What we usually find
Optimised toward the metrics that look good
- Conversions counted as form fills, so a lead that was never qualified scores the same as a signed contract
- Broad match left running against high-cost terms because it "brings volume"
- Budget spread evenly across campaigns rather than concentrated where the money actually comes back
- Agency fee charged as a percentage of media spend, which quietly rewards spending more
- Reporting that shows impressions, clicks and cost per lead, but never cost per closed deal
- Brand terms taking credit for demand that already existed
How we run it
Optimised toward money that arrives
- Conversions defined with you against real sales stages, then fed back from your CRM
- Match types and negatives managed tightly because in this market a wasted click is expensive
- Budget concentrated on the small number of terms that demonstrably produce revenue
- Flat fee, no percentage of media, no markup — our incentive does not move with your spend
- Reporting that leads with cost per qualified opportunity and what it became
- Brand and non-brand separated so you can see what the account is genuinely creating
If your current agency is paid a percentage of spend, ask them what would happen to their revenue if they halved yours. The answer explains a lot of accounts.
Where the money is usually lost
Four places. In a market with clicks this expensive, each of them costs more here than it would anywhere else.
Measurement that does not reach revenue
If the account cannot see which clicks became customers, every optimisation after that is guesswork dressed up as data. We wire conversions back from your CRM before we touch bidding, because otherwise we are tuning toward the wrong thing efficiently.
Always the first fixPaying for searches that were never yours
Research queries, job seekers, competitors checking positioning, and students. In cheap markets this is a rounding error. At New York click prices it is often a meaningful share of the monthly budget, and it is entirely removable.
Recoverable immediatelyLanding pages that undo the click
You can buy the most qualified click in the market and lose it to a page that loads slowly, buries the point, or asks for eleven fields. Ad accounts get scrutinised monthly; the pages they point at often have not been touched since launch.
The cheapest lever you ownBidding against your own organic listings
Paying for brand clicks you would have received free, on terms nobody else is contesting. Sometimes defensible when competitors bid on your name, frequently not — and it is one of the easiest things to test properly rather than assume.
Test it, do not assume it
How we take over an account
Audit before proposal
We go through the existing account and show you where the spend is going, what it produced, and what we would change. You get that written up whether or not you hire us, and it is specific enough to hand to another agency.
Fix measurement, then structure
Conversion tracking wired to real sales outcomes first. Only then campaign structure, match types, negatives and bidding — because restructuring an account you cannot measure is how agencies look busy without changing anything.
Concentrate and compound
Move budget toward what returns, cut what does not, and keep testing landing pages against the terms that matter. Paid search rewards the accounts nobody has left on autopilot.
Paid search will not fix a weak offer, and in an expensive market it exposes one faster. If your close rate is the actual problem, more traffic simply buys you more evidence of that at a higher price. We will say so during the audit rather than after six months of spend.
Questions
- How much should we be spending on Google Ads in New York?
- It depends on what a customer is worth to you and how long they stay, not on a benchmark. We work backwards: what a closed deal is worth, what proportion of leads close, what a qualified lead can therefore cost, and what that implies at current click prices. If the arithmetic does not work, the honest answer is that this channel is wrong for you.
- Do you charge a percentage of our media spend?
- No. We charge a flat management fee and take no markup on media. A percentage model pays the agency more for spending more of your money, which is a poor alignment in any market and a genuinely expensive one here. You keep direct ownership of the ad accounts throughout.
- How quickly will we see results?
- Faster than SEO — meaningful data within two to four weeks and a fair read on the account within a quarter. Wasted-spend fixes often show almost immediately. What takes longer is enough closed-deal data to optimise toward revenue rather than leads, which usually needs a full sales cycle.
- Should we run LinkedIn as well as Google?
- Only if your deal sizes support it. LinkedIn reaches precisely the right people here and charges accordingly, so below a certain contract value the arithmetic simply does not work and we will tell you rather than sell it. Google captures demand that already exists; LinkedIn creates it, at a price.
- Can we keep our existing accounts?
- Yes, and you should. We work inside accounts you own, and if we part ways you keep every campaign, all the historical data and all the learning. Agencies that run ads from their own accounts are holding something of yours hostage, and it is worth checking before you sign anything.
Sources
- Semrush US database, September 2026 — the $35.00 average cost per click cited above.
- Google Ads help documentation on conversion tracking, match types and Smart Bidding.
- Microsoft Advertising documentation on import and audience targeting.
- Oneskai engagement model — flat management fee, no media markup, client-owned ad accounts.
Related
Find out where the spend is going
A free audit of your existing account: what you are paying for, what it produced, the searches quietly draining budget, and what we would change first.
Written up and yours to keep, whoever ends up running it.