What does Google Ads management cost in Montreal?

Two bills, not one

Hiring someone to run Google Ads in Montreal means paying two different parties:

1. Google, for the clicks. You set the budget, and it is charged to your card.
2. The manager (agency, freelancer or studio), for setting up and running the campaigns. Usually a monthly fee, often with a one-time setup fee.

Most "Google Ads agency Montreal" pages talk about results and hide the second bill. Web Tonic's October 2026 list of 18 Montreal Google Ads agencies marks 17 of them "quote-based"; the only price shown is Web Tonic's own, from US$3,000 a month. So you usually learn the fee on a sales call, after the pitch.

What Montreal managers publish

Here is every management fee I could find published by a firm serving Montreal, on pages consulted in October 2026:

If you are comparing Laval agencies too, my French guide to Google Ads agency prices in Laval covers them and explains what the Google Partner badge measures.

Flat fee, percentage or tiers: what each model costs you

Managers price in three ways. The model matters more than the headline number when your budget is small.

• Flat monthly fee. Same price whatever you spend. Predictable; best for budgets under about $3,000.
• Percentage of spend. Usually 10% to 20%. Looks cheap on a small account, but most agencies add a monthly minimum, so a 15% fee on $1,000 rarely means $150.
• Tiers by spend. The fee steps up as your budget grows, as in Raw Art Media's plans.

Here is the share of your total monthly cost that goes to management, using the published prices above:

Two things stand out. On small budgets, every model takes a large bite, which is why the setup and the tracking need to be right from day one. And as spend grows, a flat fee gets cheaper in relative terms, while a percentage keeps growing with your budget even if the work does not.

Do not forget the setup fee over a full year. At a $1,000 monthly budget, year one costs $18,300 with Always Booked ($900 + 12 × $1,450) and $17,600 with Raw Art Media's Essentials plan ($800 + 12 × $1,400), before taxes.

What clicks cost by trade

The management fee is the smaller bill. Clicks are the bigger one, and they depend on your trade. LocaliQ publishes averages from its clients' Google and Microsoft Ads campaigns; the page does not say which countries are included, so treat these as orders of magnitude, not Montreal prices:

Source: LocaliQ search advertising benchmarks, 2026. The all-industry average is $5.42 a click.

For a local check, Google's Keyword Planner (Canada, pulled October 26, 2026; bids reflect the previous 30 days) shows a top-of-page bid of $3.75 to $12.51 for "web design montreal", a term searched 100 to 1,000 times a month. Run the same check for your own services and area before you set a budget. I did it for 143 local keywords on October 26, 2026 (Montreal and Laval): "plumber montreal" shows $3.91 to $13.84 and "dentist montreal" $2.52 to $9.02. The full tables are in the Montreal Google Ads cost-per-click study, and the Google Ads budget calculator turns them into a monthly budget.

A worked budget: a dental clinic in Rosemont

Assume a clinic spends $1,500 a month on Google and pays a $450 flat management fee. The click cost and conversion rate are LocaliQ's dental averages; replace them with your own numbers after a month of tracking.

If a new patient is worth several hundred dollars over a year, $97.50 per lead can work. If your real conversion rate is 5%, you get about 9 leads and the total cost per lead rises to about $217. That is why call and form tracking has to be installed before the first dollar is spent: without it, nobody can tell you your real rate.

French ads and the September 2026 language change

Montreal adds a rule most Google Ads guides from outside Quebec ignore. Under section 52 of the Charter of the French Language, commercial publications must be available in French, and another-language version is allowed only if the French one is of comparable quality and accessible. In March 2025, the OQLF wrote to a Montreal merchant that commercial posts on Facebook and Instagram fall under that rule. An English-only ad account for a Montreal business is a risk not worth taking.

Google has also changed the mechanics. Starting in September 2026, it began removing the campaign-level language setting from Search campaigns: ads are matched by the language of the ad, and when a search has a clear language, Google prioritizes an ad and landing page in that language, according to Search Engine Journal. In practice:

1. Write French ads that point to French pages, and English ads that point to English pages, in separate ad groups.
2. Do not rely on a language setting to keep English ads away from French searches; it no longer exists for Search.
3. Ask your manager who writes the French copy. Machine translation shows in the ad and in your conversion rate.

This is general information, not legal advice.

Five questions before you sign

1. Whose name is on the Google Ads account? It should be yours, with your card, so you keep the history if you leave.
2. What is the total monthly cost? Budget plus fee, and the setup fee spread over 12 months.
3. Is there a minimum term? Month to month or 6 to 12 months.
4. How are calls and form requests tracked? You want a cost per call and per request, not just clicks.
5. Who writes the French ads and the landing page? A good ad sent to a weak page wastes the click.

What Always Booked charges

Google Ads management at Always Booked costs from $900 for setup, then $450 a month, month to month. You set the ad budget and pay it directly to Google. Setup includes conversion tracking for calls and forms and, when I built your site, a dedicated landing page; each month you get a plain-language report. Ads in French and English are written by me, the same person you speak with from the first call. If your current site is not ready to receive paid traffic, start with the website or read my page on web design in Montreal.

Questions