What an interim Google Ads expert actually is
An interim Google Ads expert is a senior operator who takes temporary ownership of a paid search function, fixes what is structurally broken, and hands the channel back to the in-house team. The engagement is measured in months, not years, and it ends on purpose.
That is different from three things the phrase can also mean. It is not an agency, which sells ongoing management and is paid to keep the channel running. It is not a freelance PPC specialist, who is hired to optimise inside the account, not to question whether the account should exist at the current budget. It is not a permanent hire, which means a recruitment process and a salary commitment before you know what the role should be.
The uncomfortable part
A Google Ads problem is not always a bidding problem. It can be an attribution problem, a margin problem, or a demand problem wearing a Google Ads costume.
One symptom: spend is flat or rising, the platform reports a healthy return, and the finance view does not agree. Somebody asks why, and the answer can arrive as a deck about match types.
The channel is being credited for demand it did not create.
Branded search converts beautifully because those people were already coming. Strip brand terms out and the picture changes. If nobody has run a geo holdout or a proper incrementality test, the reported return is a measurement artefact, not a result.
Unit economics were never checked against contribution margin.
Target ROAS gets set from a revenue number rather than a margin number. On a EUR 5M to EUR 100M business with mixed product margins, that is the difference between profitable growth and buying revenue at a loss in public.
The account is structurally fine and the budget is simply too large for the addressable demand.
This is the finding nobody wants. There is a ceiling on how many people search for what you sell, and past it you are paying to reach people with no intent. No optimisation recovers that. The only correct move is to move the money.
I will tell you which of these it is early, and I will tell you if the answer is that you do not need me.
What I do, in order
Week one. The account and the ledger, side by side.
Account structure, Quality Score distribution, search terms, conversion actions, and the consent and tagging setup that determines whether any of it is trustworthy under GDPR and Google Consent Mode v2. Then the same period against actual contribution margin from your finance system, not platform-reported revenue.
Weeks two to four. Stop the losses.
The changes that need no committee: wasted spend, broken conversion actions, duplicate attribution, mismatched geo and language targeting, and any campaign whose true incremental return cannot be defended.
Month two. Decide the channel's job.
Paid search does one of three jobs: capture existing demand, defend brand against competitor bidding, or test messaging cheaply before it goes into channels with longer feedback loops. A channel doing all three without saying so is a channel nobody can evaluate. I write down which job it has and what budget that job justifies.
Month three onward. Hand it back.
Documented account structure, a naming convention that survives me, a reporting view your board can read, a budget rule tied to margin rather than to last quarter, and the hiring specification for whoever owns this next. The exit is the deliverable.
When you should not hire me for this
Say no to this engagement if any of these are true:
- Your paid search spend is small enough that my fee would exceed the savings. Hire a good freelancer, or use Google's own recommendations with a sceptical eye.
- You already know the answer and want someone to say it out loud. That is a political problem and an external operator will not solve it durably.
- You need someone in the account daily, forever. That is an agency or an in-house hire. I am neither, and pretending otherwise wastes your money.
- The real problem is that the product does not convert. Paid search will make that fail faster and more expensively. Fix the page first.
Engagement shape
Engagements run EUR 5,000 to EUR 25,000 per month, three to twelve months, with a 30-day exit clause. The price follows how much of the function I take on and how many days a week that takes.
There is no onboarding period. I work inside your accounts, your analytics, and your finance data from week one, which means access on day one is the one thing I need from you.
Questions and answers
What is the difference between an interim Google Ads expert and an agency?+
An agency sells ongoing management and is paid to keep the channel running. An interim operator is paid to reach a decision and then leave. The agency relationship is designed to continue, the interim engagement is designed to end. If your paid search needs steady hands on a working machine, an agency or an in-house specialist is the better fit. If it needs someone to decide whether the machine should run at this size, that is an interim mandate.
How quickly can you start?+
Within a week, when a slot is open: I only start two new mandates a quarter. A reply within 24 hours. There is no discovery phase billed as a project. Week one is diagnosis and it is part of the engagement.
Do you work inside an existing agency relationship?+
Yes. An interim operator can ask an agency questions the client cannot ask without damaging the relationship. I do not take over execution unless there is nobody to execute. I set the standard the execution is measured against.
What does it cost?+
EUR 5,000 to EUR 25,000 per month, set by how much of the function I take on and how many days a week that takes. Mandates run three to twelve months, in monthly cycles with a 30-day exit clause. The tier structure is published rather than quoted case by case.
Which countries and languages do you cover?+
Netherlands and Benelux primarily, in Dutch and English. Campaigns targeting other EU markets are in scope, though I will say plainly when a market needs a native speaker for ad copy rather than a translation.
Will you recommend spending less?+
Sometimes, and that is the job. When the account is sound and the budget is larger than the demand that exists, the correct first move is to reduce spend and move the budget. An operator whose recommendation is always to spend more here is not diagnosing, they are selling.
Book a 30-minute call, or email me directly: the link opens a message with the six things I need to know already written in, so the first conversation starts from something real. No form, no account.
hi@marketingupgrade.pro · I reply within 24 hours, and if the answer is no, I say so.
Start an intake
The intake is a short form. If paid search is not your problem, I will say so and tell you what is.
Related
- How to recruit an interim CMO, including the questions that would disqualify me
- Track record
- Marketing glossary, with plain-words definitions of ROAS and the attribution models
- The break-even ROAS calculator, the number every Google Ads account has to clear to pay back
- A free marketing audit, the day-one read on where a site is leaking