How Much Does Paid Advertising Cost in Australia?

If you’re considering investing in paid ads, one of the first questions you’ll have is how much it actually costs.

The short answer: it depends on your ad spend, the platform you choose, and whether you’re running campaigns yourself or working with an agency. Here’s the honest breakdown of all three.

At a glance: what paid advertising costs

Prefer one all-inclusive number instead of per-platform fees? Retainers start at $4k + GST a month and cover Google, Meta, LinkedIn and more. Below, here’s what drives these costs, how platforms like Google and Meta differ, and what to budget.

Typical advertising budgets

Monthly budgets vary with your business size and goals. A rough breakdown:

• Small businesses: $1,500 to $9,000 a month
• Mid-sized companies: $10,000 to $50,000 a month
• Enterprises: $50k+ a month

Not sure where you land? We break it down in our guide to setting the right budget for your ad campaigns, and if you want to know exactly what return your ads need to break even, our ROAS calculator works it out in about ten seconds.

Results also aren’t instant. Here’s how fast paid ads actually work.

CPC vs CPM: what’s the difference?

Two of the most common pricing models in digital advertising:

• CPC (cost per click): you pay only when someone clicks. Ideal when you want traffic, leads or sales.
• CPM (cost per thousand impressions): you pay for every 1,000 times your ad shows. Better for brand awareness, where visibility is the goal.

Either way, you need to know what good looks like. Here’s how to measure paid ad performance, and why MER, your marketing efficiency ratio, often tells the truth better than platform-reported numbers.

Average costs by platform

Every platform prices differently. These are rough industry averages to set expectations, not quotes, and they shift constantly with your industry, targeting and competition.

• Google Ads (search): CPC usually sits between $1 and $2 for most industries. In competitive niches like law or finance it can climb past $30. For the real detail, here’s how much Google Ads costs in Australia.
• Facebook and Instagram: CPC typically falls between $0.50 and $12.50, with CPM from around $5 to $30. Strong for visual storytelling and tight targeting. Here’s the full breakdown of what Facebook ads cost in Australia, plus how paid search and paid social compare.
• LinkedIn: a B2B focus, so CPC tends to run higher, roughly $5 to $15, with CPM often between $30 and $65. Best for targeting professionals and specific companies.
• YouTube: cost per view is often $0.10 to $0.30, and CPM ranges from around $10 to $30 depending on targeting and creative. More in our guide to YouTube ads, formats and cost.

Not sure which platform fits? Start with choosing the right advertising platform for your business.

What about agency fees?

If you’re not running campaigns yourself, budget for management. Agencies usually charge one of three ways:

• Percentage of ad spend: commonly 10 to 20 percent.
• Flat monthly fee: often $500 to $5,000.
• Performance-based: the agency earns more as it generates leads or sales.

A good agency also brings strategy, testing and optimisation. Whether to do it yourself or hire help is its own decision, and we weigh both in managing paid ads yourself vs hiring an agency. It’s also worth knowing what actually sits inside PPC management, what good management looks like month to month, and how agencies should report results.

Ad spend vs agency fees (they’re not the same thing)

Ad spend is the money that goes straight to platforms like Meta or Google. Agency fees pay for the strategy, setup, monitoring and optimisation that make that spend work. Some agencies bundle the two, which makes it hard to see where your dollars are actually going. That’s like paying for a car without knowing whether the petrol’s included.

Keep them separate and track them both. As a rough floor, expect ad spend to start around $1,500 a month to gain traction. The agency fee sits on top, and it’s the part worth understanding properly, so here’s exactly how ours works.

Our service fees

Management fees scale with your ad spend. The tiers are in the table up top, from $500 a month under $2,500 of spend to custom pricing past $15k. Fees are per platform, and each platform’s tier is set by its own spend, not your combined budget. Creative on management is a separate pack from $750 a month; on the retainer it’s included up to 8 pieces. The full picture, including the fee as a share of spend at every tier, lives on our paid ads pricing page.

Retainer pricing: from $4k a month (not fixed)

Our retainers start at $4,000 a month, but they’re not one-size-fits-all. What you pay scales with the complexity of your funnel, the number of platforms (Google, Meta, TikTok and so on), your monthly ad spend, and how many creative testing cycles you’re running.

More spend means more data, which means more strategic oversight. A business putting $10k a month into ads needs a different level of care than one spending $2k, so we scale the retainer to impact, platforms and spend. Some months lean heavy on testing, others just need light optimisation. You’re not locked into cookie-cutter packages.

A full-service retainer covers Google, Meta, LinkedIn and TikTok management, ongoing optimisation, reporting and strategy, competitor analysis and market research, graphic design and minor video editing (up to 8 creative pieces a month), landing page CRO support, and ad hoc help, with a long-term growth focus built in.

The investment: retainers start at $4k + GST a month with all platforms included, on a three-month commitment.

From the studio Forget the management fee for a second. The number that matters is what you keep after the spend, the fee and the offer all shake out. I’ve seen businesses haggle to save $200 on management while quietly setting fire to ten times that in untracked ad spend. Sort the tracking and the offer first, then negotiate the fee.

Onboarding fees: what’s included and why

No cookie-cutter templates or AI-generated junk here. Before any ongoing management starts, most agencies (us included) charge a one-time onboarding fee. It buys a deeply strategic setup phase built to maximise ROI before you spend a cent on ads. Ours runs from $900, with single-platform setups typically landing between $900 and $1,500; more platforms and heavier creative volume move the quote, and you’ll have the exact number in writing before you commit. Here’s what it covers:

• Business and audience discovery: a deep dive into your goals, offers, market, competitors and unique value.
• Platform setup and integrations: getting your accounts (Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, your CRM) configured, tracking installed, and pixels and conversions firing correctly.
• Creative and copy development: suggesting or creating ad graphics and video edits, and writing conversion-focused copy.
• Landing page optimisation: reviewing or building landing pages to convert your ad traffic.
• Compliance checks: making sure campaigns meet platform policies and industry rules.

Why onboarding is important

Think of onboarding as laying the groundwork before building a house. Skip it and you risk wasted spend, broken tracking and underwhelming results. Done properly, your campaigns launch with clarity, precision and the best possible shot at ROI from day one. Throwing money at Meta without prep is like running a marathon in thongs. You’ll burn out before the first water station.

Final thoughts

If you’ve been burned by dodgy agencies or cheap ad managers who boosted a few posts and called it a strategy, fair enough. But paid ads work when the strategy works. We won’t waste your time or budget. We’ll challenge your assumptions, tighten your funnel, and show you how to make paid media drive real revenue, not just traffic.

When you’re ready to get serious, book a discovery call and we’ll get into the numbers together.

Paid advertising cost FAQs

How much does paid advertising cost per month?

Two separate numbers: your ad spend, paid to the platforms, and your management fee or retainer, paid to whoever runs the campaigns. Most businesses put anywhere from a few hundred to tens of thousands a month into ad spend, while management runs from around $500 a month up to a full retainer, depending on complexity.

What’s the difference between ad spend and management fees?

Ad spend is the money that goes straight to Google or Meta to show your ads. Management fees pay for the strategy, setup, tracking and optimisation that stop that spend being wasted. Keep them separate on every invoice so you can always see where your money goes.

How much should I budget to start?

As a rough floor, expect ad spend to start around $1,500 a month so there’s enough data to make real decisions. Below that, campaigns rarely get a fair read. Your management fee sits on top of that number.

Do you charge a percentage of ad spend?

No. We charge a management fee by spend tier, or an all-inclusive retainer from $4,000 plus GST a month with every platform included. Percentage-of-spend models quietly reward the agency for spending more of your money, which we’re not into.

Is there a minimum commitment?

Our retainers run on a three-month minimum, because paid ads need a couple of months of data and iteration before the numbers settle. Anyone promising overnight results is selling you a lottery ticket.