How to choose a PPC agency in Dubai

If you search for a Google Ads agency or a PPC company in Dubai you will find a long list of near identical websites, and most of them promise the same things. The way to tell them apart is to stop reading their promises and put the same questions to each of them. This page sets out the order in which I would do that if I were the one buying.

A note on who is writing. This site is published by Web Marketing International FZCO, which is a PPC agency and sells the services discussed here. I may be one of the providers on your list, so I wrote the method to let you score me exactly as you score anyone else, with the PPC proposal scorecard. Nothing on this site ranks agencies.

Decide what the ads must do

Before you ask anyone for a proposal, write down the action that makes the ads worth paying for: a phone call, a form, a booking, a sale. Write down the monthly amount you can put into advertising, separate from any fee, and the point at which you would stop. Send that same page to every agency. Proposals written against the same brief can be compared. Proposals written against different briefs can only be admired.

Fix the scope: Google, Microsoft or both

PPC covers more than one platform, and agencies quote for different mixes. Ask each one to state in the proposal which platforms it will manage (Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, or both), which campaign types, and what is excluded. A proposal that says “PPC management” and nothing more has not told you what you are buying. If you want Microsoft Advertising included, say so in the brief rather than discovering later that it was never in the price. The questions that bring this out are in questions to ask a PPC agency before you hire it.

Settle account ownership

This is the point I would not compromise on. Google Ads works through manager accounts: an agency links the client account to its manager account, and an administrator of the client account has to accept the request^[2]. A client account can have only one owner, and the owner has full administrative access and data access privileges^[1]. The same page says that users of a client account cannot transfer or turn off ownership, they can only unlink the manager^[1].

My view, which is not a rule of the platform, is that your business should create the account in its own name and give the agency access. Then the history of what you spent and what it bought stays with you if the relationship ends. The checklist in what to have in place before a PPC agency starts walks through it.

Check conversion tracking

Reports are only as good as the definition of a result behind them. In Google Ads you choose what counts as valuable, such as a purchase, a sign-up or a phone call, and the tracking records it after someone interacts with your ads^[3]. Conversions can be marked as primary, which means they can be used for bidding, or secondary, which means they are for observation only^[3]. Microsoft Advertising describes the same idea with its own tag, and says advertisers can track online purchases and lead form submissions^[6]. Ask the agency which actions it will track, whether it sets the tracking up itself, and whether any account that is already running is counting the right things.

Find out who builds the ads

The meeting is rarely held with the person who will run the account. Ask for the name and role of the person who will build and change your campaigns, how many other accounts they handle, and which parts of the work are passed to other suppliers. Ask who writes the ad text and who decides which search terms to stop paying for. The answers tell you more about what you will receive than the size of the agency.

Separate the fee from the ad spend

Keep two numbers apart: what you pay the agency and what goes to the advertising platform. Ask who sets the budget and who can change it. Google describes a campaign’s average daily budget as an average rather than a daily cap: on some days you may not reach it and on others you may exceed it, and the page gives a daily spending limit of two times the average daily budget and a monthly limit of 30.4 times it, for most campaigns^[4]. So agree in writing what the monthly figure is, who watches it and what happens if it is reached early. I do not give price ranges on this site, because what PPC costs is a separate question from choosing who runs it.

Treat badges and promises with care

A Google Partner badge is worth noticing. Google’s own guidelines say only Partners or Premier Partners can display it and that it cannot be used in a way that implies Google sponsors or endorses the company^[5]. It is a status in a programme, not a recommendation. Promises deserve more suspicion. Google’s advertising policy does not allow ads that make inaccurate claims or entice people with an improbable result^[7]. That rule is about ads, not agency pitches, but I would apply the same test to any agency that promises a figure for leads or sales before it has seen your account. How to read the numbers in a proposal is covered in reading a PPC proposal and its reports.

Score, decide, and what I would not do

Enter each answer in the scorecard, treat any deal-breaker as decisive, and then speak again to the two highest scoring agencies about the questions you have not yet asked.

• I would not sign before I knew who owns the ad accounts and what I receive if I leave.
• I would not compare an agency that answered every question with one that answered half.
• I would not accept a headline number nobody has defined.
• I would not choose on the fee alone, because the fee is the smaller part of the decision.

If I am one of your shortlist, my Google Ads consultancy is described on my own site, and the disclosure applies: I am writing this and I stand to gain if you choose me. Contract terms differ, so take professional advice on the contract itself.