PPC stands for pay per click. In Australia, most people use it to mean Google Ads and stop there. That causes a problem when you go to hire, because running search ads and running paid social are two different jobs, and the words on an agency’s website do not tell you which one you are buying.
So we checked. On 12 September 2026 we ran live Google searches in Australia for “ppc agency” and “ppc agency australia”, asked ChatGPT for the best PPC agency in Australia, then opened the website of every agency that came back. We looked for one thing on each site: which paid ad platforms the agency says, in its own words, that it runs.
Of the 12 agencies below, four list all five of the big paid channels. Two list only two. Same two words in the job title, very different service. Below is the full comparison, what each channel is actually good for, what agencies charge, and the point at which paying one starts to make sense.
What “PPC” covers in 2026
PPC is not a platform. It is a billing model. You pay when someone clicks. That model now runs across five main places, and a real PPC agency should be able to tell you why your money belongs on one rather than another.
- Google Ads. Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube and Performance Max. This is where people who already want your thing go and type it in. It is the highest intent traffic you can buy and usually the most expensive per click.
- Meta Ads. Facebook and Instagram. Nobody on Facebook is searching for a plumber. You interrupt them with something interesting instead. Cheaper clicks, colder people, and the creative does most of the work. We wrote about the split between these two in Google Ads vs Facebook Ads.
- Microsoft Ads. Formerly Bing Ads. Microsoft says its search ads appear on “Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and other search engines”, and its display ads run across MSN, Microsoft Edge and Outlook. The audience is smaller than Google’s but it skews older and more corporate, and the clicks usually cost less because fewer advertisers bother.
- LinkedIn Ads. The only channel where you can buy by job title, company size and industry. Expensive per click. Worth it when one customer is worth five figures or more.
- TikTok Ads. Short video. Works for products people can understand in three seconds. Rarely works for professional services.
There is a sixth thing worth naming because it turned up on several of the sites we opened: ads inside AI assistants. Online Marketing Gurus, Impressive Digital and Click Click Media all list ChatGPT ads as a service on their PPC pages. It is very new. Treat any agency pitch on it as an experiment rather than a proven channel.
How we built this list
Everything here comes from three checks we ran on 12 September 2026.
- Live Google results. We pulled the first 20 results in Australia for “ppc agency” and for “ppc agency australia”, including the local map results and the AI Overview at the top.
- A ChatGPT test. We asked ChatGPT, with web search on and Australia as the location, for the best PPC agency in Australia, and recorded every business it named.
- A site check. We opened each agency’s own PPC or services page and wrote down only the ad platforms the agency itself lists. If a channel is not on their site, we have marked it “not listed”, which is not the same as “they cannot do it”. It only means they do not advertise it.
The order below is based on one measurable thing: how many of the five main paid channels each agency publishes on its own website. Where agencies tie, the one that appeared in our live Google check goes first. That is a ranking of advertised breadth, not of quality. We have no way to measure quality from the outside, and neither does anyone else writing one of these lists.
One finding is worth calling out before the table. Across both checks, only one agency appeared in the Google results and was also named by ChatGPT: Rocket Agency, in Sydney. Its website blocked our automated check, so we have left it out of the table rather than guess at its channels. Alley Group, in North Sydney and Caulfield North, also appeared in the Google results and lists Google, Microsoft, YouTube and paid social, but did not name LinkedIn clearly enough to score.
The 12 agencies compared
“Yes” means the agency lists that channel on its own site. “No” means we could not find it there on 12 September 2026.
| Agency | Main city | Google Ads | Meta Ads | Microsoft Ads | LinkedIn Ads | TikTok Ads | In Google top 20 today | Named by ChatGPT today |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Online Marketing Gurus | Sydney and Melbourne | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| 23 Digital | Melbourne (St Kilda) | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Reform Digital | Melbourne | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Spicy Web | Frankston, Victoria | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Impressive Digital | Melbourne | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Click Click Media | Norwest, Sydney | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| Gravitate Digital | Tweed Heads South, NSW | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No |
| AdVisible | Sydney | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| SIXGUN | Richmond, Melbourne | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | Yes |
| Digital Next | South Melbourne | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | Yes |
| Uprise Digital (yes, this is us) | Cremorne, Melbourne | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
| AEK Media | Melbourne and Sydney | Yes | No | Yes | No | No | Yes | No |
The agencies in detail
1. Online Marketing Gurus
Sydney and Melbourne, with offices listed in Singapore, the United States and the UAE. Their PPC page names the widest channel list we found: “Google Search, Shopping, Performance Max, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Microsoft Ads”. No pricing is published. Their Google result on 12 September 2026 showed a 4.9 star rating from 622 votes, the highest review count of anyone in this list.
2. 23 Digital
Offices in St Kilda in Melbourne, Baulkham Hills in Sydney and Murarrie in Brisbane. Their paid media page lists Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube and programmatic display. No pricing published. They offer a free 30 minute account analysis. Their Google result showed a 5 star rating from 232 votes.
3. Reform Digital
Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Queenstown in New Zealand. Their PPC page covers Google Ads, Shopping, Display, Remarketing and YouTube, and says they are “a proud partner of Microsoft Advertising (formally known as Bing Ads)”. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn and Pinterest ads all appear in their service menu. No pricing published. Their Google result showed 5 stars from 166 votes.
4. Spicy Web
Head office at Wells Street in Frankston, Victoria, with a second Melbourne office in South Bank by appointment. All five channels listed, plus Pinterest and YouTube. They are one of the few that publishes a starting figure: “from $2200 Per Month”. They also make a specific point about Microsoft Ads being overlooked and cheaper per click for B2B, which matches what we see in most Australian accounts.
5. Impressive Digital
Melbourne head office, with pages for Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Gold Coast, Adelaide and Hobart. The longest platform list of the lot if you count everything: Google, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Amazon, Pinterest, Reddit and Snapchat. Microsoft Ads was the one obvious gap. Their fee model is unusual and stated openly: “Our fees are performance-based and tied to a target we agree on together.” They also say they work best with businesses spending $5,000 or more per month on ads.
6. Click Click Media
Based at Norwest in Sydney’s north west. They say they have been running paid campaigns for Australian businesses since 2008 and have managed over $115 million in ad spend. Google, Microsoft, programmatic, plus Meta and LinkedIn “where channel mix supports”. They publish the clearest pricing we found anywhere in this search, which we come back to in the fees section below.
7. Gravitate Digital
The page that ranks is titled for Brisbane, but the address on the site is Tweed Heads South in northern New South Wales. Worth knowing if being able to sit in a room with your agency matters to you. They list Google, Bing, Meta, LinkedIn and Amazon ads. No TikTok, no pricing. Their Google result showed 5 stars from 71 votes.
8. AdVisible
Sussex Street in the Sydney CBD. Named by ChatGPT in our test on 12 September 2026, with a 4.9 rating from 118 reviews on its Google business listing. Their site lists Google Ads across Search, Display, YouTube and Shopping, plus Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn under social. They also do SEO, web design and creative work, so they are a broader shop than a pure PPC specialist. No pricing published.
9. SIXGUN
Bromham Place in Richmond, Melbourne. Also named by ChatGPT in our test. Heavier on SEO than on paid: their search marketing list covers Google Ads, Google Shopping, Google Remarketing and YouTube, and their social work covers LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook. No Microsoft or TikTok listed. On pricing they say they avoid a packaged approach and set the scope around your budget.
10. Digital Next
Buckhurst Street in South Melbourne, with a Brisbane office. Named by ChatGPT in our test, with a 4.9 rating from 123 reviews on its listing. Their paid list is Google Ads, Google Shopping, Google Remarketing, Bing advertising and Facebook advertising and remarketing. No LinkedIn or TikTok on the site. They publish a useful honest line about industry pricing: “most agencies will charge anywhere between $75 to $150 per hour”, with premium agencies above that, though most client work runs as a fixed monthly fee.
11. Uprise Digital (yes, this is us)
Gwynne Street in Cremorne, Melbourne, working with clients Australia wide. We run Google Ads and Meta ads across Facebook and Instagram, alongside SEO and AI search work. We do not list Microsoft, LinkedIn or TikTok, because we do not run enough of them to claim them. By the measure used for this list, that puts us second from the bottom, and we have left it that way rather than quietly change the measure. If your plan depends on LinkedIn or TikTok, one of the agencies above is a better fit than we are.
12. AEK Media
Collins Street in Melbourne and Crows Nest in Sydney. Their PPC page is squarely search: Google Ads, Google Shopping and Bing Ads, described as a way to reach people on Bing and Yahoo. No social channels on that page. If your business lives on search intent and you have no interest in paid social, a search only shop is a reasonable thing to want.
Which channel suits which type of business
Local service businesses
Plumbers, electricians, lawyers, dentists, builders, clinics. Your customer has a problem right now and types it into a phone. Start with Google Search ads, and only Google Search ads, until the phone is ringing at a cost you are happy with. Meta works as a second step once you know what a lead is worth, because it fills the gap between jobs rather than catching people at the moment of need. Microsoft Ads is worth a small test after Google is stable, since the clicks are usually cheaper and the setup is mostly a copy of what already works.
Ecommerce
Google Shopping and Performance Max first, because the product image, price and shop name are all in the ad before anyone clicks. Meta second, and for most stores it eventually becomes the bigger of the two, because that is where you find people who did not know your product existed. TikTok is a real option if your product demonstrates well in a few seconds. Skip LinkedIn. Facebook and Instagram also do not behave the same way, which we cover in Facebook ads vs Instagram ads.
B2B and high value sales
If one customer is worth $10,000 or more and the buyer has a job title you can name, LinkedIn earns its high click price. Pair it with Google Search on the specific terms your buyers use, and give Microsoft Ads a genuine test, because the corporate desktop audience on Bing and Outlook is a real thing and fewer competitors bid there. Long sales cycles also need a split between awareness work and lead capture work, which we cover in awareness or conversion campaigns.
What PPC agencies charge, and the four fee models
Almost nobody publishes prices. Of the 12 sites we opened, three showed a number. Here are the models you will be quoted, and what each one does to the agency’s incentives.
| Fee model | How it works | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Flat monthly retainer | A set fee no matter what you spend | Simplest to budget. Ask what happens to the fee if you double your spend, and get the answer in writing. |
| Percentage of ad spend | Usually 10 to 20 per cent of what you spend | The agency earns more when you spend more, whether or not spending more was the right call. |
| Hourly | Billed per hour worked | Digital Next publishes a typical industry range of $75 to $150 per hour, with premium agencies higher. Good for audits and one off fixes, awkward for ongoing management. |
| Performance based | Fee tied to an agreed result | Impressive Digital publishes this model on its PPC page. Make sure the agreed target is a sale or a real lead, not a click or a form fill from a bot. |
For actual numbers, Click Click Media publishes management fees “from $1,200/month” for service businesses and “from $1,500/month” for ecommerce and multi location businesses, all excluding GST and month to month with no long term contract. Spicy Web publishes “from $2200 Per Month”. Those two figures are the closest thing to a public floor price we could find on 12 September 2026 for Australian PPC management.
Whatever model you pick, the ACCC is clear that claims in advertising, including an agency’s claims about itself, should be true, accurate and based on reasonable grounds. If an agency promises a specific position, a specific number of leads or a guaranteed return before it has seen your account, ask what that promise is based on and ask for it in the contract. We do not guarantee results, and we would be careful with anyone who does.
The spend where hiring an agency starts to make sense
This is the question most of these listicles skip, so here is plain arithmetic.
If your management fee is $1,200 and your ad budget is $1,000 a month, then 55 per cent of the money leaving your bank account is paying the agency, not buying clicks. No amount of skill fixes that ratio. A sensible upper limit is that management should sit somewhere around 15 to 25 per cent of your total monthly spend on ads plus management. Above that and you are buying advice you do not have the budget to act on.
Click Click Media says it plainly on its own site: “PPC management as a service is overkill below $3,000 per month in ad spend”. Impressive Digital says it works best with businesses investing $5,000 or more per month. Those two published thresholds bracket where the Australian market actually sits.
Below roughly $1,500 a month in ad spend, you are usually better off with a one off setup and a quarterly audit, or with a fixed low cost package that does not pretend to be full management. To sanity check the numbers before you commit, our PPC ROI calculator lets you work backwards from what a customer is worth to what you can afford to pay for a click, and what Google Ads costs in Australia covers typical click prices by industry.
How to read a PPC report without being fooled
Most monthly reports lead with the numbers that always look good. Here is what each line is actually worth.
| Metric | What it tells you | Act on it? |
|---|---|---|
| Impressions | How many times the ad was shown | No. It rises whenever the budget or targeting widens. |
| Clicks | How many people clicked | No. More clicks at a worse cost per lead is a loss, not a win. |
| Click through rate | Whether the ad matches what people searched | Only as a diagnostic. It says nothing about money. |
| Spend | What actually left your account | Yes. Every other number should be read next to it. |
| Conversions | Enquiries, calls, bookings or sales | Yes, but only once you know what is counted as one. |
| Cost per conversion | Spend divided by conversions | Yes. This is the number the whole report exists to explain. |
| Return on ad spend | Revenue divided by spend, for ecommerce | Yes, if the revenue figure comes from your shop, not an estimate. |
| Qualified leads | Enquiries your sales team would actually want | Yes. This is the one you have to supply, and it is the one that matters most. |
Two things to insist on. First, ask exactly which actions are counted as a conversion. Google’s own conversion tracking documentation covers website actions, app installs, phone calls and offline conversions, and an agency can quietly count a newsletter signup or a click on a phone number the same way it counts a booked job. If page views or button clicks are in the conversion column, the cost per conversion is fiction. Our guide to GA4 conversion tracking walks through setting this up so the numbers mean something.
Second, send lead quality back the other way once a month. Tell the agency which enquiries turned into work. Without that, the account gets optimised towards whatever is cheapest to produce, which is almost never your best customer.
When Australians go looking for a PPC agency
Our search data pull on 12 September 2026 shows around 590 searches a month in Australia for “ppc agency”, 260 each for “ppc agency melbourne” and “ppc agency sydney”, 210 for “ppc management australia” and 90 for “best ppc agency”. For comparison, “google ads agency” sits at about 1,300 a month, which tells you how many Australians still treat the two terms as the same thing.
The month by month figures show a pattern worth planning around. Searches for these terms sit low through winter, then jump sharply in September and again in March. In the twelve months to July 2026, “ppc agency” went from about 210 searches in August to roughly 1,900 in September, and “ppc agency melbourne” went from about 90 to 1,300 over the same two months. Whatever drives it, two things follow. If you are a business owner, you will be shopping at the same time as everyone else and the good agencies will have the least capacity. If you are the agency, September is when the phone rings.
Eight questions to ask before you sign
- Which of the five channels will you run for me in the first 90 days, and why not the others?
- Who owns the Google Ads and Meta accounts if we part ways? The answer should be you.
- What exactly counts as a conversion in the report?
- What is the fee, and what happens to it if my spend doubles?
- Is there a lock in term, and what is the notice period?
- Who does the day to day work on my account, and is that person in Australia?
- What is the minimum spend you think my industry needs to see a result?
- Can I see a live account, with the client’s name removed, showing spend next to cost per lead?
FAQ
What is the difference between a PPC agency and a Google Ads agency?
In practice, often nothing. Many agencies use “PPC” as a more professional sounding way of saying Google Ads. The test is the platform list on their own website. If Microsoft, LinkedIn and TikTok are missing, you are hiring a Google Ads agency regardless of what the page is called. That is completely fine if Google is where your customers are, but you should know which one you are buying.
How much does PPC management cost in Australia?
Of the twelve agencies we checked on 12 September 2026, only three published a number. The published starting figures we found were from $1,200 a month for a service business, from $1,500 a month for ecommerce, and from $2,200 a month for a broader package. One agency published a typical industry hourly range of $75 to $150. Most agencies quote after seeing your account, and the fee usually moves with how much you spend and how many channels you run.
What is the minimum ad budget worth hiring an agency for?
Around $3,000 a month in ad spend is where the Australian market seems to draw the line, based on what agencies publish themselves. One of the agencies in our list says on its own site that management is overkill below that figure, and another says it works best above $5,000. Under about $1,500 a month, a one off build plus a quarterly review usually returns more than a monthly retainer, because the fee would otherwise eat a large share of your total budget.
Should I run Google Ads or Facebook ads first?
If people actively search for what you sell, start with Google. Someone typing “emergency plumber Brisbane” is much closer to buying than someone scrolling Instagram. If your product is a discovery purchase that nobody knows to search for, start with Meta. Most businesses end up running both, but running both from day one on a small budget usually means neither gets enough data to work. There is a longer comparison in our post on Google Ads vs Facebook ads.
Is Microsoft Ads worth running in Australia?
It is worth testing once Google is working, not before. Microsoft says its search ads reach people on Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo, and its display inventory includes MSN, Edge and Outlook. The audience is a fraction of Google’s, but clicks are usually cheaper because fewer advertisers compete, and the campaign can often be imported from your existing Google account with little extra work. For B2B and older audiences it frequently pays for itself.
Why did different agencies show up in Google and in ChatGPT?
They are answering different questions with different sources. Google’s results were dominated by agencies with strong pages built for the exact phrase, plus directory sites. ChatGPT leaned heavily on business listings and on review directories, and its written answer cited a review directory for nearly every name it gave. In our test on 12 September 2026, only one agency appeared in both. If you are shortlisting, check both, because neither list on its own is the market.
Getting help
If you want a second opinion on an account you already run, have a look at our Google Ads and Facebook and Instagram ads pages. We are open about what we do and do not run, as the table above shows. If another agency on this list fits you better, that is a useful outcome too.
