Skip to content

Performance media

Paid Search & Display

Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, programmatic display and remarketing — bought together, optimised continuously by the AOS platform under senior strategy. Performance media that responds to attribution signal in hours, not weeks.

  • Lower cost per primary action through continuous optimisation
  • Faster decision cycles than weekly account-management cadence
  • Closed-loop attribution to revenue, not just form fills

Paid search and display is the work of getting the right ad in front of someone with intent, at the moment they have it, at a cost that returns acceptable margin. We run it through the Autonomous Operating System — the platform handles continuous optimisation across Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, programmatic display and retargeting; senior strategists own the configuration, creative direction and commercial relationship.

What we run

The standard programme covers:

  • Google Search and Performance Max for intent capture and considered-purchase coverage
  • Google Shopping for ecommerce SKU-level visibility
  • Microsoft Ads where the audience overlap with Google Search is meaningful (often higher in B2B)
  • Google Display and YouTube for upper-funnel awareness, retargeting and view-through capture
  • Programmatic display via DV360 or equivalent for audience reach beyond Google's owned inventory
  • Cross-platform retargeting against first-party audiences captured at the site/app layer

Channel mix is set per programme based on funnel stage, audience economics and what your data signal can support — not a fixed template.

How the work runs

Inside the AOS

The continuous optimisation loop

Five repeating phases run continuously, not in weekly batches.

  1. Configure

    Senior strategists set the policy

    Commercial targets (CAC ceiling, payback, blended ROAS), channel envelope, brand and policy guardrails, qualified-lead definition. The platform never moves outside these bounds.

  2. Plan

    Media plan + creative briefs

    Budget allocation across channels, audience strategy, creative direction and a measurement plan that the executions layer can ship.

  3. Execute

    Push live across platforms

    Approved campaigns ship to Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, programmatic and retargeting via official APIs. Idempotent — re-running config produces the same end state.

  4. Optimise

    Continuous reallocation + variant testing

    Specialist agents monitor performance, reallocate budget across channels and audiences within agreed bounds, ship creative variants, pause underperformers, escalate anomalies.

  5. Attribute

    Closed the loop on revenue

    Conversions and revenue flow back from your CRM and ad platforms into the optimisation layer. The system optimises against real commercial outcomes — not just last-click ad-platform conversions.

What it costs

Paid search and display sits inside our standard fee schedule — a sliding-scale percentage of monthly media spend. The fee covers strategy, execution, creative variant production, landing-page work tied to the campaigns, the AOS platform and the live reporting dashboard.

Use the calculator below to compare your current paid search setup (in-house, agency, hybrid) to what the same media spend would cost run through an AI-powered model. Media spend is held constant on both sides — the comparison is on what you pay to RUN the programme, not the working spend itself.

Interactive · Cost Calculator

What would this cost vs your current setup?

Set your in-house headcount, agency retainer, tools and media spend on the left. The right shows what the same media spend would cost run through an AI-powered model.

Your current setup

Current annual cost (excluding media)

£180,000

People + agency + tools. Media spend is held constant on both sides.

AI-powered agency · annual cost (excluding media)

£85,202

Management fee on £20,000/month spend at 23.0% + your existing tools.

Difference

£94,798/year

£7,900/month freed up. Reinvested into media, that’s an extra 4.7 months of working spend each year.

Build your growth plan→

Indicative only. Loaded cost per head includes salary, oncosts, software seats and overhead. Real proposals model your specific channel mix, attribution and margin targets via the discovery.

What 'good' performance looks like

Channel-level benchmarks are starting reference points, not promises — every programme calibrates against your own historical performance. The lookup below shows indicative cost-per-click, conversion rate and cost per primary action by industry, channel and region.

Interactive · Channel Benchmark Lookup

Indicative paid channel benchmarks

Pick your industry, channel and region. The numbers are starting points the optimisation layer calibrates against.

Cost per click

£3.62

Local currency, indicative

Click-through rate

6.66%

Click rate on impressions

Conversion rate

7.52%

Click → primary action

Cost per primary action

£48

Cost per lead

How to read this

Per-channel benchmarks compiled from public industry reports (WordStream, LocaliQ, Databox, LinkedIn marketing benchmarks) plus Involve Digital portfolio data, in USD baselines. Industry multipliers are applied to search-style channels; social channels get the conversion-rate adjustment only because CPC there is behaviour-driven, not query-driven. Regional CPC multipliers and currency conversion are applied last. High-ticket B2B uses a 0.25× CVR dampener so the click → qualified-enquiry rate stays realistic. These are starting points; real proposals calibrate against your own actuals.

Want benchmarks calibrated against your real account data, not just industry averages? The Growth Discovery models your specific mix.

Run the discovery→

AI-powered vs traditional paid search delivery

Operating model

What changes when paid search runs through the platform

Dimension
AI-powered (this service)
Traditional agency
Decision cycle
Continuous within agreed bounds
Weekly status meetings
Creative refresh
30-50 fresh variants per channel per month
5-10 variants per channel per month
Attribution
Closed-loop CRM revenue signal
Last-click + monthly reconciliation
Reporting
Live dashboard, full ad-account access
Monthly slide deck
Where humans focus
Strategy + creative direction + judgement
Strategy + execution + reporting
Cost shape
Lower fixed cost, % of media spend
Higher fixed cost, % of media spend

Where this service wins

  • B2B services + high-ticket programmes with long sales cycles where closed-loop attribution makes the difference between optimising to form fills vs closed-won revenue
  • Mid-market businesses (£10k-£100k/month media) that want senior-agency execution at a fee structure that scales efficiently
  • Brands that have hit a creative-velocity ceiling with their current setup — where in-house bandwidth or agency cycle time is capping testing volume
  • Operations with reliable conversion tracking and CRM feedback that can support continuous optimisation against real signal

Where it doesn't fit

  • Programmes below £5-7k/month media spend — at that scale, neither AI-powered nor traditional agency models work cleanly; marketing SaaS plus owner-operated execution usually wins
  • Businesses with broken tracking, missing CRM feedback or no commercial targets — foundation work first, see our [readiness playbook](/insights/ai-marketing-readiness-playbook)
  • Heavy approval cultures where every creative variant or budget shift requires committee sign-off — caps the velocity benefit; classic delivery may be the better fit

Read deeper on this

  • What is an AI-powered marketing agency? — the pillar definition that positions paid search inside the wider model.
  • Inside an autonomous growth engine: how the work actually gets done — the seven-layer architecture this service runs on.
  • What does an AI-powered marketing agency cost? — pricing detail and the fee schedule explained.
  • Why your CAC is climbing — and what to do about it — the systemic forces pushing paid search CAC up across most accounts.
  • Conversion tracking foundations for AI-led marketing — the technical work upstream of paid search optimisation working.

FAQs

Common paid search and display questions

Do you manage Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, programmatic and retargeting all in one engagement?

Yes. Bought together, optimised together. Channel mix is set per programme based on intent stage and audience economics, not by separating into per-channel retainers.

What's your fee model?

Sliding-scale percentage of monthly media spend: typically 35-40% on programmes under £5k/month, dropping to 10-12% above £100k/month. The fee includes strategy, execution, creative variant production, landing-page work tied to campaigns and the AOS platform itself. No per-seat software fees, no separate platform licence.

Do you run Google Performance Max?

Yes — when the data signal supports it. PMax works well when conversion tracking is clean, deal value is passing back via offline conversion imports, and the audience-feed inputs are deliberate. It works badly when tracking is noisy or commercial targets are vague — those programmes are usually better on conventional Search + Shopping campaigns until the foundations are right.

How quickly do you launch a new programme?

Typical 30-day setup: discovery and configuration in week 1-2, tracking and attribution audit in week 2-3, campaigns go live by day 30. The optimisation layer accumulates meaningful data over days 30-60, with closed-loop attribution from CRM flowing by day 60-90. By day 90, working-spend efficiency is materially above the pre-engagement baseline.

Do you charge a media markup?

No. You fund the media directly (your ad accounts, on your card) or pre-fund a media budget the agency pays from. Reputable agencies don't mark up the media — be cautious of any setup that obscures this.

Will the platform make decisions our team isn't comfortable with?

Decisions inside the agreed policy bounds (budget reallocation across channels, creative variant rotation, pausing underperformers) execute without per-decision approval. Decisions outside the bounds (raising budget caps, shifting commercial targets, opening new channels, approving major creative direction shifts) escalate to a named human. The bounds are agreed in discovery and refined as the relationship matures.

How do you handle creative production?

Creative direction stays human — campaign concept, brand voice, big visual ideas. The platform produces and tests variants inside that direction, ships winners, retires losers. Brand rules (forbidden words, mandatory inclusions, tone constraints, visual asset libraries) are machine-checked so variants that fail the brand test don't ship.

Can we trial this on one channel before committing across the full mix?

Sometimes. Single-channel pilots structurally underweight the rebalancing capability that's a meaningful part of the value — the platform's most consistent win is reallocating budget across channels in response to performance. Where pilots make sense, they typically run on the channel where you have the cleanest tracking and the clearest commercial target.

What happens to our existing Google Ads / Microsoft Ads accounts?

You keep ownership. We manage with delegated access. If we part ways, you keep the accounts, the conversion history and the campaign assets. This is non-negotiable on our side — we won't take ownership of accounts on a client's behalf.

Do you work with brands outside the UK / Australia?

Yes. We run programmes across UK, Australia and the US. Channel benchmarks, regional CPC variance and currency conversion are built into the AOS platform from day one — multi-region campaigns are part of how the system was designed, not an afterthought.

Sources and further reading

  • Google — Search Ads benchmarks — annual industry benchmark updates for Google Search Ads.
  • McKinsey — The state of AI — research on AI-driven optimisation in marketing functions.
  • Gartner — CMO Spend Survey — annual benchmarks on paid media as a share of marketing budget.

Next step

Put an AI-powered agency behind your marketing.

Run the Growth Planner for a tailored plan, or scope an end-to-end engagement with our team.