Who Pays for the Ad Spend? How Locksmith PPC Billing Works

You do — and that's exactly how it should be. Ad spend goes directly from your account to Google; the marketer never touches it. You own the account, the data and the history. Our fee is separate and simple: 10% per qualified customer the campaigns produce, with $0 upfront. That separation is what keeps locksmith advertising honest — and it's standard in our Google Ads for locksmiths engagements.

The spend flows you → Google, never through us

Here's the clean setup: you create (or grant access to) a Google Ads account in your business's name, you add your own billing, and Google charges you directly for every click. We manage the campaigns inside your account — structure, keywords, ads, budgets — but the money path never passes through our hands. This matters because it removes the oldest trick in agency billing: marking up ad spend or hiding what was actually spent. When you see the Google invoice yourself, there's nothing to hide and nothing to mark up.

Why you must own your ad account

An ad account run well becomes an asset: months of keyword data, audience learnings and conversion history that make every future dollar work harder. If that account lives in your agency's name, you don't own the asset — you're renting it, and leaving means starting over. Worse, some owners discover they can't even see what was spent. Always insist on full admin access from day one; a legitimate manager will welcome it. Google's own advertiser guidance assumes you control your account — anyone structuring it otherwise is structuring it for themselves, not you.

Our fee vs Google's bill: two separate things

Keep the two money flows apart in your head. Flow one: ad spend, you → Google, variable with your budget and market. Flow two: our fee, you → us, fixed at 10% per qualified customer the campaigns produce, $0 upfront. We don't take a percentage of ad spend (a model that rewards agencies for spending more, not performing better), and we don't bundle spend into a black-box "package." We already run this split with 20+ locksmith companies worldwide: Google gets its click costs, we get paid only when genuine customers arrive. If anyone ever proposes merging the two flows — one payment covering both spend and fees — ask for the itemized breakdown before agreeing to anything.

Red flags in PPC billing

Walk away from any of these: agencies that won't give you account access, "management fees" calculated as a percentage of ad spend, bundled packages where you can't see the underlying spend, and contracts that hold your data hostage if you leave. The healthy pattern is always the same — transparent spend you control, plus a fee tied to outcomes. When evaluating any marketing partner, the billing structure tells you whose interests come first before a single ad runs.

Billing transparency is the foundation everything else stands on. Locksmith Advertising keeps it clean: your spend goes to Google, your account stays yours, and we earn 10% per qualified customer with $0 upfront. If your current setup looks different from that, message us on WhatsApp — we'll help you read it honestly.