Soku AIGoogle Ads management, without the retainer.
Agencies charge $500–$3,000 a month to manage a Google Ads account. Soku puts an AI analyst on yours that does the same recurring work — audits, search-term cleanup, budget and bid recommendations, reporting — and applies changes only when you approve them.
Google
GA4
ShopifyROAS
2.4x
-21%CPA
$38.10
+31%Spend
$24,800
+14%What changed
ROAS fell 21% week-over-week while spend climbed 14%.
Why
Two scaling ad sets hit creative fatigue — frequency 4.8, CTR down 36%. Budget kept flowing to them.
Next action
Pause the 2 fatigued ad sets, shift $4.2k/day to the 3 efficient ones, and refresh creative for the top audience.
Too big to ignore, too small for a good agency.
Most accounts under $20k/month get junior attention on a senior retainer — or no management at all.
The retainer eats the budget
On a $3,000/month ad budget, a $1,000 management fee is a 33% tax before the first click. The math only works for the agency.
Monthly check-ins, daily waste
Search-term leaks and broad-match drift accrue every day. A monthly optimization pass means paying for weeks of waste between visits.
You can’t see what you’re paying for
A change-history export is not a management report. Many advertisers genuinely don’t know what their agency did last month.
The full management checklist, run continuously.
Everything a management service bills hours for, executed by an AI analyst that never rotates off your account.
Account audits
Structure, settings, tracking, and Quality Score reviewed continuously — the audit an agency runs once at onboarding, Soku runs every week.
Search-term hygiene
Irrelevant queries and broad-match leaks surfaced with negative-keyword recommendations before they burn the month’s budget.
Budget & bid optimization
Wasted spend flagged, reallocation recommended across campaigns — applied when you approve, tracked to outcome.
Creative & ad copy checks
Underperforming ads and fatigued assets identified, with fresh variants generated when you want them.
Conversion tracking watchdog
Tag and conversion issues caught early — the silent killer behind most “Google Ads stopped working” stories.
Plain-language reporting
What changed, why, and what to do next — the report a good account manager would write, delivered on schedule.
The blind spots a monthly check-in never catches
Search-term leaks, tracking gaps, fatigued creative, budget stuck in campaigns past their peak — each finding named, quantified in dollars, and paired with the fix. Flip through the tabs: this is the depth every audit runs at.
The report your retainer was supposed to buy
Every review comes back as a finished document — KPI movements with causes, the actions taken, and what’s recommended next. If you’re paying an agency today, compare this against what arrives at month-end.
📊 Google Ads Performance Review — Vela
Account: ###-###-#### · Agency-GG-Vela-01 Period: 14 days (May 29 – Jun 11, 2026) Conversion basis: "Payment" conversion group — cost-per-payment (CP-P) and ROAS-P
Snapshot
Executive Summary
The account's first-principle target is a non-brand ROAS above 25%. Over the trailing 14 days it ran at 9.24% — 15.8 ppt short. Only three countries clear the target on the aggregate: Peru (69.5%), Bangladesh (52.5%) and Argentina (49.9%).
The drag is concentrated: the US and Australia together take 33% of spend but return ROAS-P of just 8.1% and 4.3%. The account is in a structure-testing phase, not a stable-profit one — the fix is reallocation, not more budget. Move spend out of the high-CPA, low-ROAS countries and into the efficient ones.
ROAS-P by Country (14-day aggregate)
Ecuador, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, South Africa and Morocco also sit below target on thin volume.
What the Daily Trend Shows
Account-level ROAS-P only approached or beat the 25% line on 2 of 14 days (May 29–30). CP-P spiked to $358–$858 on Jun 7–9 — days with fewer than one payment conversion — so a handful of dry days are distorting the average. The pattern is volatility from thin conversion volume, not a steady decline.
Recommendations
Cut the bleeders. Australia ($1,390 → 4 payments) and Nigeria ($1,376 → 4) are the two largest uneconomic spends; pause or cap them and reclaim ≈ $2.7k of the 14-day budget. Pause the zero-conversion countries (Saudi Arabia, Malaysia, South Africa, Morocco).
Fix the US. It's 24% of spend at 8.1% ROAS. Split non-brand from brand, tighten match types and negatives, and rebuild the offer/landing before adding budget back.
Tilt into winners. Move freed budget toward Mexico, Argentina, Peru and Bangladesh — the four with both acceptable CPA and target-beating ROAS — and scale in small steps while watching CP-P.
Stabilize measurement. Conversion volume is thin enough that single days swing the average; evaluate on rolling 7-day windows, not daily, until volume builds.
Projected impact: reallocating the AU + NG + zero-conversion spend into the four efficient markets lifts blended ROAS-P toward the high teens at the same total spend — the first step back toward the 25% target.
What Happens Next
This review reads the connected Google Ads account through Soku's payment conversion group. Soku keeps monitoring CP-P and ROAS-P by country, flags the next market that crosses into uneconomic spend, and turns each finding into a next action — automatically.
google-ads-account-review.html
18.4 KB
From connected account to managed account.
- 01Connect Google AdsRead-only by default — Soku can’t touch campaigns until you allow it.
- 02Get the baseline auditA full account audit in minutes: waste, leaks, tracking, structure.
- 03Review recommendationsEach one explained with the expected impact, in plain language.
- 04Approve and applySoku executes approved changes and logs every one.
- 05Watch it compoundContinuous monitoring keeps the account clean between reports.
Agency vs freelancer vs AI analyst.
| Agency | Freelancer | Soku | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Typical cost | $500–$3,000/mo or 10–20% of spend | $50–$150/hr | Free to start; from $49/mo |
| Optimization cadence | Weekly to monthly | When booked | Continuous, 24/7 |
| Who does the work | Often a junior on your account | Depends on the individual | AI analyst, same depth every account |
| Transparency | Monthly summary call | Ad-hoc updates | Every finding and change visible, approve-to-act |
| Contract | 3–12 month terms common | Per engagement | Monthly, cancel anytime |
Agency and freelancer ranges reflect typical published US pricing; individual providers vary.
Management-grade coverage from $49/month — no percentage of spend
From connecting your account to the first full audit
Every finding, recommendation, and applied change is logged for you
Frequently asked questions
- How much do Google Ads management services cost?
- US agencies typically charge $500–$3,000 per month or 10–20% of monthly ad spend, whichever is greater, often with a 3–12 month contract. Freelancers run $50–$150/hour. Soku starts free and paid plans begin at $49/month, with no percentage-of-spend fee.
- Can AI really replace a Google Ads agency?
- For the recurring management work — audits, search-term cleanup, budget hygiene, reporting — yes, and it runs continuously instead of monthly. What Soku doesn’t replace is business strategy: you (or your agency) still decide positioning, offers, and goals. Many agencies actually run Soku on their client accounts for exactly this reason.
- Will Soku change my campaigns without asking?
- No. Soku is read-only by default. It diagnoses and recommends; a change is applied only after you review and approve it, and every applied change is logged.
- What if I already have an agency?
- Run the free audit anyway — it’s the fastest way to verify what your retainer is buying. Advertisers use Soku both to manage accounts directly and to keep their agency honest.
- How is this different from Google’s own recommendations tab?
- Google’s recommendations optimize for Google — they skew toward spending more (broad match, budget raises, Performance Max). Soku optimizes for your cost per result, and is just as likely to recommend cutting spend as adding it.
- What do I need to get started?
- A Google Ads account with some history. Connect it, and the first audit — the deliverable an agency would charge onboarding fees for — arrives in minutes, free.
Related resources
The onboarding audit, free, in minutes.
Google Ads Cost CalculatorWhat a budget buys in your industry — clicks, leads, CPL.
Campaign ManagementThe same loop, run across Meta and TikTok too.
Google Ads integrationHow Soku connects to your account.
AI Media Buyer vs Human Media BuyerWhere AI wins, where humans still do.
For AgenciesRunning Soku across a book of client accounts.
See what a retainer would find — free, today.
Connect your Google Ads account and get the full management-grade audit in minutes.