This is for founders and marketers who need to set a budget or compare proposals for advertising in the Netherlands. It covers Search and Shopping. It doesn’t cover brands spending tens of thousands a month on YouTube or display: there you pay per thousand impressions, not per click. One thing up front: nobody can quote you an exact media cost in advance, because Google prices every click in an auction. A fixed price up front is about the work, not the result.
How much does Google Ads cost per month?
Google Ads costs at most 30.4 times your average daily budget per month. That’s Google’s own rule: by the end of the month you won’t have spent more than 30.4 times your average daily budget (Google Ads Help, About overdelivery and your average daily budget). A €20 daily budget means €608 a month at most. On a busy day a campaign can spend up to twice the daily budget; Google evens that out over the month. How high your budget is, is your call. In Google’s words: “The amount of your budget is entirely up to you” (Google Ads Help, Choose your bid and budget). There’s no technical minimum. There is a sensible one, see below.
A daily budget is the amount you let a campaign spend per day on average; Google turns it into a monthly cap of 30.4 days.
| Daily budget | Maximum per month | Rough clicks per month at €1.43 per click* |
|---|---|---|
| €10 | €304 | ± 210 |
| €20 | €608 | ± 425 |
| €50 | €1,520 | ± 1,065 |
| €100 | €3,040 | ± 2,125 |
* €1.43 is the median of the 13 industry estimates below. Worked example, not a promise.
How much does a click on Google cost?
A click on Google costs what the next advertiser bid, plus a little, and often less than your maximum. Every search runs an auction. According to Google, your actual CPC is often lower than your maximum CPC, because you only pay what’s needed to clear the ad rank thresholds (Google Ads Help, Actual cost-per-click). What pushes the price up: competition on the keyword, what a customer is worth in your industry, and the quality of your ad and landing page.
CPC (cost per click) is what you pay when someone clicks your ad; on Search, an impression without a click costs nothing.
Measured, Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, Netherlands database, 21-10-2026 (average CPC, estimated from ad data; converted to euro at the ECB reference rate of 20-10-2026, 1 euro = 1.1215 US dollar, rounded):
| Dutch keyword (what it means) | Searches per month | CPC (€) |
|---|---|---|
| laptop kopen (buy a laptop) | 18,000 | 0.36 |
| hardloopschoenen (running shoes) | 24,000 | 0.40 |
| warmtepomp (heat pump) | 34,000 | 0.62 |
| zonnepanelen (solar panels) | 33,000 | 1.16 |
| hypotheek oversluiten (remortgage) | 1,500 | 1.25 |
| tandarts (dentist) | 12,000 | 1.34 |
| cv ketel vervangen (replace boiler) | 9,700 | 1.43 |
| advocaat (lawyer) | 17,000 | 1.52 |
| loodgieter (plumber) | 10,000 | 1.78 |
| verhuisbedrijf (removal company) | 3,100 | 3.12 |
| boekhouder (accountant) | 7,000 | 3.57 |
| dakdekker (roofer) | 5,300 | 5.35 |
| autoverzekering (car insurance) | 49,000 | 6.24 |
Two lessons. One: ecommerce keywords are cheap per click, services with a high customer value are expensive. Two: the gap between the cheapest and the most expensive is a factor of 17. A “Dutch average CPC” tells you nothing about your bill. For comparison, the largest US benchmark study of 2026 (WordStream/LocaliQ, Google and Microsoft Ads, April 2025 to March 2026, 20 industries) lands at an average of about €4.83 per click and €59.46 per lead (Search Engine Journal, 16-06-2026; converted at the ECB rate of 20-10-2026). US numbers, US competition. Don’t copy them into a Dutch budget.
How much does Google Ads management cost?
Google Ads management costs whatever hours and experience go into your account. That’s why proposals differ so much. Two agencies both selling “Google Ads management” can deliver completely different things: a few hours of maintenance a month, or a specialist in your account every day. So the question isn’t what management costs. It’s what you get for it, and who does the work.
What management costs depend on:
| Factor | What it does to the cost |
|---|---|
| Hours per month | Reading one search terms report properly takes an hour. Turn every proposal back into hours and ask how many go into your account. |
| Who works in your account | A junior running twenty accounts or a senior specialist in your account every day: you won’t see it in the proposal, you will see it in your results. |
| Campaigns and channels | One Search campaign is a different job from Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Meta side by side. |
| Measurement | Setting up and guarding conversion tracking, consent and server-side tagging is work. Without measurement, Google’s bidding optimises on nothing. |
| Rhythm and contact | A monthly report is cheap to produce. Daily adjustments and a weekly call are not. |
| Budget | The more money moves through the account, the more there is to watch, and the more a mistake costs. |
You’ll see three pricing models. Fixed fee: a set amount per month for agreed work. Percentage of ad spend: the fee moves with what you spend. Hybrid: a fixed base plus a percentage. With the percentage model, keep in mind that the fee grows with what you spend, not with how well the money is spent.
Ask every provider:
- How many hours a month go into my account?
- Who does the work, and how many other accounts do they run?
- How often do you adjust: daily, weekly or monthly?
- What’s excluded: conversion tracking, landing pages, Meta, the Shopping feed, setup work?
- What happens to the fee if my budget doubles or halves?
A cheap package can be exactly right for one local service on a small budget. For an online store with a product feed, several channels and tracking that has to hold up, you’re buying a different product. So don’t compare price tags. Compare hours, people and rhythm.
What does it cost with us? On request. We look at your account first, then you get a price. No package off the shelf.
What does it cost to start a Google Ads campaign?
Starting a campaign costs your first month of media budget plus the work to set it up properly. That work: keyword research, an account structure, ads and above all conversion tracking that works. Ask whether it’s in the proposal or billed separately. Without measurement, Google’s bidding optimises on nothing and you pay from day one for clicks you learn nothing from.
A conversion is the action you count as success, like a submitted quote form or a purchase. Count only what’s worth money: a submitted form, not a click on the “contact” button.
Why are my Google Ads so expensive?
Google Ads usually gets expensive through waste in the account, not through the click price itself. This is the order in which we go through an expensive account:
- Read the search terms report. Find the terms with spend and no conversions; they’re the biggest leak.
- Add negative keywords. Words like “jobs”, “free” or “DIY” don’t belong in most accounts.
- Check what counts as a conversion. If the account counts clicks, pageviews or double-counted forms, Google optimises on noise.
- Pull brand traffic out of generic campaigns. Someone searching your name belongs in a separate, cheap brand campaign.
- Set location targeting to “presence”. The default also lets in people who merely “show interest” in your area.
- Check automatic expansion. In older Search campaigns we saw AI Max switched on after Google’s September 2026 changeover without anyone choosing it; check which search terms it adds.
- Look at the landing page. A slow or unclear page lowers your Quality Score and so raises your cost per click.
Quality Score is Google’s 1-to-10 rating of how well your keyword, ad and landing page fit together; a higher score means you pay less per click for the same position.
Is Google Ads worth it?
Google Ads is worth it when a customer brings in more margin than it costs to win them. Work it backwards. If a new customer is worth €400 in gross margin and one in ten leads becomes a customer, a lead can cost €40 at most to break even. At €2 per click and a 4% conversion rate, a lead costs €50. You’re above the line, so fix your page or your offer first, not your budget. Worked example, not a measured figure. The same maths for online stores is called break-even ROAS.
| Situation | Advice |
|---|---|
| High customer value, people actively search (plumber, lawyer, software) | Search first, with tight negatives |
| Online store with a product feed and clear margins | Shopping or Performance Max, with margin as the target |
| Nobody searches for what you sell yet | Search delivers little; create demand via Meta or YouTube first |
| Customer value below the expected cost per lead | Don’t start until the offer or page converts better |
How we work
We keep in close contact: we sit down with you every week and you can reach us every day, because an account mostly grows from small corrections every day, not from one big fix a month. Across €2.8 million in managed ad spend and more than 5,500 ads (measured, Google Ads and Meta, all accounts, all time, 20-10-2026), that’s the pattern that keeps coming back: whoever stays close sees sooner where things can improve. You can read more about our approach to Google Ads management.
Curious how your account is doing? Send us your account. Within a week you’ll hear what we see and what we’d tackle first.
FAQ
Do you pay per click or per impression on Google Ads?
On Google Search you pay per click: an impression without a click costs nothing. On display and YouTube you can also pay per thousand impressions or per view. For most small and mid-sized Dutch accounts, Search with pay-per-click is the starting point.
Can Google spend more than my daily budget?
Yes, up to twice your average daily budget on a single day, according to Google Ads Help. Over the month, never more than 30.4 times the daily budget. For a hard cap over a period, new campaigns can use a campaign total budget.
Why do Google Ads management proposals differ so much?
Because you’re buying different things. A small package buys a few hours of maintenance on one campaign; full management buys a specialist in your account every day, running several channels and guarding the measurement. Compare hours and who does the work, not the price tag.
Is SEO cheaper than Google Ads in the long run?
Per visitor usually yes, but SEO takes months before traffic arrives; Google Ads delivers from day one. We see them as a sequence, not a choice: ads for today’s demand, SEO for the demand that stays.
What’s a good starting budget for Google Ads?
Enough to buy dozens of clicks per campaign within a month, or you learn nothing. Work it out as clicks you want per day times the expected cost per click from the table. At €2 per click and ten clicks a day, that’s €20 a day, about €608 a month.
Is a percentage of spend or a fixed fee better?
A fixed fee, if it matches the amount of work. A percentage rewards spending more. Either way, ask what happens to the fee when your budget drops, and whether setup is billed separately.
Sources
Accessed 21-10-2026.
Measured by aida ads
- Ahrefs Keywords Explorer, Netherlands database: search volume and average CPC for 13 keywords (Ahrefs reports in US dollars; we converted to euro).
- Managed spend and number of ads: Google Ads and Meta, all accounts, all time, measured 20-10-2026 (same figures as on aida-ads.com).
Platform
- Google Ads Help, About overdelivery and your average daily budget. support.google.com
- Google Ads Help, Actual cost-per-click (CPC): Definition. support.google.com
- Google Ads Help, Choose your bid and budget. support.google.com
Exchange rate
- European Central Bank, euro reference rate USD of 20-10-2026: 1 euro = 1.1215 US dollar. ecb.europa.eu
Third parties
- Search Engine Journal, Brooke Osmundson, What Are Good Google Ads Benchmarks?, updated 16-06-2026 (WordStream/LocaliQ data, April 2025 to March 2026). searchenginejournal.com