Shopify Ads Agency — Google Ads, No Contract

This is for a Shopify store with margin to spend and a product people already buy, ready to hire someone to run Google Ads. It is not for a store with no conversion tracking, no margin headroom, or a checkout that leaks. And it is not for anyone who wants a guaranteed ROAS.

Below is the detail: what I run, what it costs, who touches the account, and what happens if you leave.

Who this is for, and who I turn down

The stores I work well with are already selling. There is order history, a known average order value, and someone who can tell me the real cost of goods rather than a guess. The catalogue is in decent shape in Merchant Center, or can be. And there is enough budget to gather data inside a month instead of dribbling spend across six campaigns.

I turn down three kinds of store. The first has no proven demand. If nothing has sold organically, through a marketplace, or through a friend’s Instagram, paid search will not create the appetite — it will only find people already looking. You will spend a few thousand dollars discovering that.

The second has margin that cannot survive it. Ads take a cut, the platform takes a cut, returns take a cut, and my fee takes a cut. Where gross margin is genuinely thin, no arrangement of campaigns fixes the arithmetic. I would rather say that on the first call than manage a decline politely for six months.

The third wants a ROAS promised in writing. I will not do it. I do not control your prices, your stock, your competitors’ bidding, or the auction. I will commit to what I build and how we judge it.

What I actually do on a Shopify ads account

The order matters. First I check whether the money is measurable at all — conversion tracking, value passing correctly, consent handling, and whether Google Ads and your Shopify order data agree. Then the product feed, because feed quality decides more of Shopping performance than bid strategy does. Then account structure: what runs as Performance Max, what runs as Standard Shopping, what runs as Search, and what stays out entirely. Then negatives and exclusions. Then the landing experience, because the click is the cheap part.

What I do not run: Meta as a standalone service, TikTok, influencer campaigns, or affiliate programs. If your business needs those, hire someone who does them properly rather than someone who adds them to a Google retainer.

The feed is the campaign

Most underperforming Shopping accounts have a feed problem wearing a bidding costume. Titles that start with your brand name when nobody searches your brand. Missing GTIN or MPN where the category expects it. A single generic product type on every item, so Google has no structure to match against. No custom labels, which means no way to bid differently on your best-margin products or your slow movers. Images with text overlays that risk disapproval. Prices in the feed that disagree with prices on the page, which suspends items quietly.

So the feed work is real work. I restructure titles so the words a buyer types appear near the front. I fill product type and Google category properly. I build custom labels for margin band, bestseller status and season, so bidding can treat a high-margin item differently from a thin one. Where Shopify’s native channel app cannot express something, I use supplemental feeds and feed rules instead of editing eight hundred products by hand.

This work pays twice now, because the same structured product data feeds AI shopping surfaces. I wrote that up separately in how ChatGPT picks products from a Shopify feed, and the on-site half of it in the Shopify schema properties that matter.

Performance Max against Standard Shopping

This is the question every store owner asks, and the honest answer is that it depends on what you can afford to give up. Performance Max reaches inventory that Standard Shopping cannot, and its automation genuinely works on accounts with enough conversion volume to learn from. What it takes away is visibility and control. Search terms are partially obscured, placement control is limited, and it will happily spend on your own brand traffic and report it as a win.

Standard Shopping gives you search term data, product-level bidding, and negative keywords that behave the way you expect. It usually costs more attention to run. On a small or newly launched account it is often the better first move, because you learn what the auction actually looks like for your catalogue before handing the decisions to a system.

How I decide: if the account has real conversion history and a clean feed, Performance Max earns its place — brand excluded, asset groups split by product theme rather than dumped into one, listing groups separating your margin bands. If the account is thin on data or the feed is a mess, automation spends faster in the wrong direction. Fix the feed, run Standard Shopping to learn, then decide.

Brand search, and who gets credit for it

Here is the most common way a Shopify ads report flatters everyone. Someone already knows your brand, searches it, clicks your ad instead of your organic listing, and buys. The campaign records a sale it did not create.

So I separate brand from non-brand early and keep them separate forever. A dedicated brand campaign where brand defence is worth paying for, brand exclusions applied to Performance Max, and reporting that shows the two sides apart. Sometimes the conclusion is that brand spend should be cut, and that conversation is easier when the numbers are already split.

The same logic applies across channels. Paid and organic compete for the same clicks on your own name, and the comparison is worth making deliberately rather than by accident. I set that out in Shopify SEO against Google Ads at each store stage.

Break-even ROAS against the full margin stack

Most stores judge ads against a target ROAS somebody picked because it sounded healthy. The number that matters is the one where you stop losing money, and it comes out of your own margin.

Break-even ROAS is one divided by your gross margin as a decimal. Suppose your gross margin is 40 percent: one divided by 0.4 is 2.5, so a 2.5 ROAS is the point where ads pay for the product and nothing else. Every campaign below that is buying revenue at a loss.

The trap is what people leave out of “gross margin”. The real stack is cost of goods, inbound freight and duty, payment processing, pick and pack, outbound shipping you subsidise, returns and the refurbishing of returned stock, discount codes, app subscriptions, and my fee. Put all of it in and the break-even number moves. Then decide whether you are optimising for first-order profit or buying a customer you expect back — a defensible choice, but one to make on purpose, with a repeat rate you have measured.

I ask for those numbers on the first call. If you do not have them, getting them is the first job, ahead of touching the account.

When I tell you not to run ads

There are stores where the right advice is to spend nothing until something else is fixed. A checkout that fails on mobile. Conversion tracking broken for months, so every number in the account is fiction. Stock that sells out faster than campaigns can be paused. A product page that converts so poorly paid traffic only makes the leak more expensive.

There is also the budget-too-small case. Spread thin across several campaigns, a small budget never gathers enough signal for any of them to learn, and you pay for months of noise. Concentrating everything on one campaign and a narrow slice of the catalogue beats a tidy structure that starves.

And the seasonal case. If most of your year lands in one quarter, ramping in the wrong month wastes money that should be waiting. I would rather tell you to start in eight weeks than take eight weeks of fees for nothing.

Tracking that tells the truth

Before spend changes, measurement gets fixed. One conversion action counted once, not the same purchase recorded by the Shopify channel app, a hardcoded tag and a GA4 import simultaneously. Conversion value passing correctly, ideally net of tax and shipping so ROAS means something. Enhanced conversions configured. Consent handled properly where it applies, because missing consent shows up as missing conversions and then as bad decisions.

Then I reconcile Google Ads against Shopify’s order data, and against a post-purchase “how did you hear about us” answer where the store collects one. Those three never agree exactly. They should at least agree on direction. When they do not, I find out why before recommending anything.

Landing pages and speed, because the click is the cheap part

Paid traffic lands on the pages a store already has, and those pages are usually built for browsers rather than for someone arriving mid-intent from a specific query. A slow product page costs money twice on paid traffic: once in the visitors who leave before it renders, and again in the auction, where landing page experience feeds into what you pay.

So I look at the destination alongside the campaign. Whether the Shopping click lands on the right product rather than a collection. Whether the mobile LCP image is lazy-loaded when it should be preloaded. Whether three apps load their bundles above the fold. Whether the page answers shipping cost and returns policy without a scroll, since those are the two objections that kill an unfamiliar-brand purchase.

The performance side is documented in the Shopify Core Web Vitals playbook, and the conversion side in the ten Shopify CRO levers I would test first. Read both before you increase budget on a page that is not ready for it.

What it costs

Two tiers, flat monthly, published so you can decide before you call.

Starter — $800 a month. One Google Ads account managed end to end. Merchant Center and feed setup, including title structure, product types and custom labels. Campaign build and ongoing management. Conversion tracking audited and fixed. Search term and placement review with negatives maintained. A monthly report and a call with me to read it.

Core — $1,500 a month. Everything in Starter, plus supplemental feeds and feed rules for larger catalogues, brand and non-brand separation with dedicated campaigns, systematic creative and asset testing in Performance Max, landing page recommendations implemented rather than emailed, and margin-based bidding using custom labels. Most stores spending seriously end up here.

Ad spend is separate and goes to Google on your card. I do not mark it up, I do not bill it through my account, and I do not charge a percentage of it — which means my fee does not rise when I tell you to spend more. Landing page builds and CRO programmes are quoted separately as projects. For market context, there is a breakdown of real Shopify CRO invoices and a comparison of Shopify agencies that puts my pricing next to everyone else’s.

What the price does not include

Ad spend. Product photography and video, though I will tell you what to shoot and why. Apps and subscriptions. Feed management tools, if your catalogue is complex enough to need one beyond what Shopify provides. Custom development. And Meta, TikTok or Amazon, which I do not run.

I write this out because a quiet “starting at” number is how an $800 retainer becomes a $3,000 invoice by month two. You will know the number before it happens.

How the first 90 days run

Days 1 to 30

Week one is access, measurement and arithmetic. I audit the existing account if there is one, check every conversion action, reconcile against Shopify orders, and build the margin picture with you. I go through Merchant Center for disapprovals and warnings, which on most stores nobody has opened in a year.

By the end of week two you have a written findings document and a plan: which campaigns run, at what budget, on which slice of the catalogue, and what we expect to learn. Weeks three and four are feed work and the campaign build. If spend is already running, I do not switch it off on day one — measurement gets fixed first, so we can tell what the change did.

Days 31 to 60

Learning and pruning. Search terms reviewed and negatives built. Products that consume budget without converting get separated rather than left to drain the campaign. Asset groups and listing groups restructured based on what the first month showed. Landing page fixes ship for the destinations taking the most traffic.

This is usually where efficiency moves, and it moves by removing waste before it moves by finding wins. Expect the account to get smaller before it gets bigger.

Days 61 to 90

By day 90 we should be able to answer whether paid is contributing profit against your real break-even number, with brand separated out so the answer is honest. If it is, the conversation turns to scaling budget on the products carrying it. If it is not, we look at whether the constraint is the feed, the offer, the margin or the landing page — and I will tell you if the answer is that ads are not the right channel for this store right now.

It is also the point at which cancelling costs you nothing, which is the design of this arrangement.

Who does the work

I lead every account personally, supported by a team of 17.

The strategy, the audit, the margin work, the structural decisions and the monthly call are mine. I decide what runs and what gets cut. When you email, you get me. Production work — feed builds, asset production, tracking implementation, landing page changes — runs through specialists on my team, because that is how the work gets done at a sane price and a sane speed.

I run Sprout Sage Solutions out of Chandigarh, India, and have been running it since 2020. I say that up front because you will find it anyway. My hours overlap the US morning and the European afternoon, and I schedule calls around your day.

Proof, and what it is actually worth

Here is what I can substantiate. I have shipped 450+ websites since starting Sprout Sage Solutions in 2020. I have 224 jobs delivered on Upwork with a 96% Job Success score, where the review history is public and you can read every line of it. There are 17 Google reviews on the business profile.

There are case studies on this site with real client work behind them. I will tell you what each engagement was rather than quoting someone else’s number as a forecast for your account.

The Shopify Core Web Vitals engagement is the most relevant, because it covers the destination side of paid traffic: LCP work, image handling and app script auditing on a live store. The form rebuild teardown covers a multi-step flow and a mobile call-to-action moved into thumb reach — the same problem as a checkout that leaks paid clicks. The Shopify organic engagement is not a paid project and I will not present it as one; it is here because the product data work overlaps directly. The full set sits at the case studies hub.

The three objections I hear most

“Why not just let Google’s automation run it?”

You can, and on a clean account with a good feed it will do a competent job. The catch is what automation cannot decide for you. It will not tell you your feed titles are wrong, that your break-even ROAS is higher than your target, that half your conversions are brand traffic you already had, or that the product it is scaling has the worst margin in the catalogue. Automation optimises toward the goal you hand it. Choosing the right goal is the job.

“Why not hire a big ecommerce agency?”

Sometimes you should. If you need a dedicated team across several channels, formal reporting for investors and a vendor your board recognises, hire the big firm. That model is built for it and mine is not.

The other trade worth naming is how they charge. Percentage-of-spend pricing means your agency earns more when you spend more, which is a conflict nobody enjoys discussing in a QBR. I charge a flat fee, so my incentive when I tell you to cut budget is neutral. In exchange you get a smaller firm in a different time zone with a finite roster.

“What if it doesn’t work?”

Then you cancel. No notice period, no termination fee, and you keep everything I built. That is the only guarantee I make, because it is the only one I control.

What I ask is that we define “work” in month one, in writing, against your real break-even number rather than a ROAS target somebody invented. Paid media disputes almost always trace back to two people using different definitions of profitable.

What you keep if you leave

Everything, and it matters more here than in most disciplines. The Google Ads account stays in your ownership with your billing. The Merchant Center account is yours. The feed rules, supplemental feeds, custom labels, negative keyword lists, asset libraries and conversion setup all stay where they are. The historical data — which is the actual asset in a paid account — stays with you.

No contracts. Cancel any month. Keep everything built. I do not run client campaigns from an agency-owned account, because that holds your performance history hostage, and I would rather keep clients who want to stay.

Questions store owners ask me

What is the minimum ad budget worth starting on?

There is no universal figure, and anyone quoting one has not seen your category. What matters is whether the budget generates enough conversions per week for a campaign to learn, given your average order value and your category’s click costs. I will work that out with you on the first call and say so honestly if the answer is “not yet”.

Will you work with a competitor in my category?

No. Two stores bidding on the same products with the same person running both accounts is a conflict, not a service. If I am already working with a direct competitor I will say so and decline.

Do you run Performance Max or Standard Shopping?

Both, depending on the account. The decision comes from conversion volume, feed quality and how much control you need. I will explain which one I am recommending and why, and you can disagree.

Can you fix my feed if it is a mess?

That is usually the first month of work. Most feed problems are fixable through feed rules and supplemental feeds without editing products one at a time. If the underlying product data in Shopify is genuinely incomplete, that needs your team or a data project, and I will scope it rather than pretend it is included.

Do you handle Merchant Center suspensions?

Yes. Most suspensions come from policy basics — missing returns or contact information, price and availability mismatches between the feed and the page, or misrepresentation triggered by something in the checkout. I work through the cause rather than filing appeals and hoping.

Should I be running ads and SEO at the same time?

Often yes, and they support each other. But if the budget only funds one, the answer depends on your stage, your margin and how urgently you need revenue. That question is answered properly in the SEO against ads comparison, including the stages where I would pick one and drop the other.

What happens if my ROAS drops after you take over?

Sometimes it does, early, and the reason is usually that measurement got fixed and the old number was overstated. I will tell you that while it happens, not at the end of the quarter. If it drops for a real reason, we diagnose it together — feed, offer, competition or landing page — and you can leave any month if the answer is not good enough.

Do you do conversion work on the store as well?

Landing page recommendations are part of Core, and I implement the ones inside scope. A full testing programme is a separate engagement, laid out on the Shopify CRO page so you can judge whether it is worth buying before you buy it.

Book a 30-minute call

The call is free and there is no deck. I open your Google Ads account, Merchant Center and Shopify analytics live, and give you three specific things to fix that week whether or not you hire me. If the honest answer is that you should not be running ads yet, I will say so on the call.

Book the free 30-minute call, or call me directly at +91 97297 12388.