01The auction: what happens when someone searches
Google's Ad Rank page says Ad Rank 'is calculated every time a user does a search.' In each auction it is calculated first to decide whether your ad is eligible to show, and again to decide where it ranks against other eligible ads. Google lists six factors: your bid, the quality of your ads and landing page, the Ad Rank thresholds, the competitiveness of the auction, the context of the person's search, and the expected impact of your ad assets and other formats. The bid is the most you are willing to pay for a click, and Google says what you actually pay 'is often less.' So a bigger bid does not buy a place by itself, and an ad that misses the thresholds does not show at all.
- Six factors: bid, ad and landing page quality, thresholds, auction competitiveness, search context, ad assets
- Your bid is a ceiling, and you often pay less
- Google says higher quality ads can often lead to lower costs per click
- An ad below the minimum thresholds does not show
02Paying per click, and what a budget really caps
Google's maximum CPC bid page says a click 'won't cost you more than the maximum cost-per-click bid' you set, with exceptions when options such as Enhanced CPC or bid adjustments are in use. Check which bidding setup your campaign uses before you assume anything. Budgets are averages. Google says that on some days you might not reach your average daily budget and on others you might exceed it, but for most campaigns you never pay more than twice that average on one day, or 30.4 times it in a month. So a budget is a monthly ceiling you can plan around, not a daily meter.
- The maximum cost-per-click bid caps each click, with exceptions when bid adjustments or Enhanced CPC are used
- The daily budget is an average: some days under, some days over
- For most campaigns: at most twice the average daily budget in a day, 30.4 times in a month
- We quote no cost-per-click figure: it depends on the search, the place and the competition
03What you actually control: searches, place and the page
Three controls matter more than the bid for a local business. Keywords and negative keywords decide which searches you appear for: Google says negative keywords 'let you exclude search terms from your campaigns' and that 'one key to a highly targeted campaign is choosing what not to target.' Location targeting decides where. Google recommends broad 'Presence or Interest' targeting on Search as a best practice, and, as we read the page, narrower 'Presence' targeting is the option for reaching only people physically in the chosen locations. The landing page is part of the auction too, because Google counts its quality. A click that lands on a slow page with no phone number is a click you paid for.
- Keywords: the searches that match what you sell, in the words customers use
- Negative keywords: exclude searches that cost clicks and never become customers
- Location: check whether the campaign uses Presence or Interest, or Presence only
- Landing page: quick on a phone, one clear action, phone number or form in view
04The money: what clicks cost and what management costs
We quote no cost-per-click figure. It depends on the search term, the place and the competition in the auction, and any number that did not come from your own account is a guess. PROOF48's GROWTH plan manages Meta and Google ads for 1,497 EUR a month, with ad spend billed separately. It also includes 10 new ad creatives a month, audience research and retargeting, and conversion tracking through Pixel, CAPI and GA4. Compare the fee with the media. If you planned to spend 300 EUR a month on clicks, the fee would be about five times the media. That 300 is a round number for the sum, not a recommendation.
- GROWTH: 1,497 EUR a month, or 14,970 EUR billed annually, ad spend billed separately
- Includes Meta and Google ad management, 10 new creatives a month, audience research and retargeting
- Conversion tracking through Pixel, CAPI and GA4, with a weekly dashboard
- Set the fee against the media budget before you decide
05Where PROOF48 is the wrong choice
Google Ads is self-serve, and Google's help pages are free. If you are comfortable in the account and your ad budget is small, running it yourself is a sound choice, and a management fee that dwarfs the budget is the wrong purchase. GROWTH also makes little sense before you have a website that converts. If you have none, start there: up to about five pages, 500 to 2,500 EUR, built in 48 hours and paid for after the preview. Nobody can promise an ad position, since Google's thresholds decide whether an ad shows at all. And if nobody searches for what you sell yet, Google has little demand to catch: our post on Meta or Google first covers that case.
- Small ad budget and comfortable in the account: run it yourself
- A fee far above the media budget is the wrong purchase
- No website that converts yet: build that first, 500 to 2,500 EUR, 48 hours
- Nobody searches for what you sell yet: little demand for Google to catch
Consent first, then counting: the groundwork behind ad tracking
None of the eight builds at /work reports ad results, and we publish no ad figures. What SunVolt Club does show is the groundwork a campaign needs: a public membership page in Romanian and English with the price on it, a Stripe checkout, and cookie consent wired into analytics before any tag fires. That is the order we would set up the tracking behind a campaign, consent first and conversion counting second. We do not publish SunVolt's member count or revenue, because those are theirs to disclose.
See the build: SunVolt ClubQuestions, answered
Do I pay when someone only sees my ad?
Google's maximum CPC bid help describes charges in terms of clicks and a maximum cost-per-click bid. Bidding setups differ, so check what your campaign uses before you launch.
Can I cap what I spend in a month?
Google says that for most campaigns you never pay more than twice your average daily budget on a day, or 30.4 times it in a month. Set the average daily budget with that ceiling in mind.
Will Google Ads put me first?
Nobody can promise it. Ad Rank is calculated in every auction from six factors, and an ad below the minimum thresholds does not show.
How much should I spend on clicks?
That depends on your margin and your market. A sensible starting point is what a new customer is worth to you, not a rule of thumb. We give no cost-per-click figure.
Where PROOF48 fits
Google Ads is an auction on every search where the bid is a ceiling, quality counts, and a budget caps spend over a month. For a local business the levers are the searches, the place and the landing page, and the fee must be weighed against the clicks. PROOF48's GROWTH plan, at 1,497 EUR a month plus ad spend, manages Google and Meta ads, and we say plainly when running it yourself fits better.
Cosmin Tiu · Founder, PROOF48
Cosmin has worked in online marketing and software development since 2018, and has built with AI every day since January 2023. He still writes code from scratch daily, in Python, React, Rust and C#. PROOF48 ships business websites in 48 hours and invoices afterwards, so every opinion on this blog was paid for in real builds, not in theory.