Question
What does a PPC manager actually do?
A PPC manager decides which searches your ads show for, what you pay for each click, where the click lands and whether it became a customer, and adjusts all four every week from the account's own data. In practice that means reading the Search Terms report, keeping keywords, match types and negative lists in order, proving that conversion tracking counts real enquiries, setting bid strategies and budgets, writing and testing ads, and reporting cost per lead every month.
Answered by Daniel Stoychev, Webso Digital · 4 September 2026
The weekly work
Most of the job is a routine rather than a series of clever moves. Once a week the manager opens the Search Terms report, sorts it by cost and reads every search that spent money without converting, adding the ones that could never have bought to a negative list. The same sitting covers the conversion actions, to check that forms and calls are being counted once and that nothing broke when the website was updated; the bid strategies and budgets, to see where impression share is being lost and whether cost per conversion moved; and the ads, for assets that never serve and headlines that could say something more useful. Google's recommendations are read and, mostly, declined, because they are written to increase spend.
The monthly work
Once a month the manager writes a report, and a good one leads with money: what was spent, how many leads it produced, what each cost, and what you said those leads were worth. It lists what was changed and why, what Google suggested and was refused, and what is planned next. It is written so that you can check every number in your own account, which you can only do if the account is in your name.
The work that happens once
At the start, the manager builds or rebuilds the account: the campaign structure, the keywords and match types, the negative lists, the conversion tracking, the ads and the settings that widen targeting by default. Later, less often, they build or fix the landing pages, set up Shopping feeds or Performance Max asset groups where the numbers justify them, import the account into Microsoft Ads, and connect your CRM so that qualified leads and closed deals feed back into the bidding.
What a good one refuses to do
- Leave auto-apply recommendations switched on.
- Report clicks and impressions as if they were results.
- Hold the account in their own manager account so that leaving means starting again.
- Run two clients against each other in the same auction.
- Charge a percentage of spend, which pays them more when you spend more whatever comes back.
How to check yours is doing it
Two reports inside your own account answer the question in an hour. The change history shows every change made, by whom and when; a month with no entries is a month with no management. The Search Terms report for the last ninety days, sorted by cost, shows whether the searches that could never have bought have been excluded; if the top rows are full of jobs, courses and towns you do not serve, nobody has been reading it.
Where this leads
The service this question belongs to is Google Ads management, and the longer read is our guide How to read the Search Terms report: the weekly routine that pays for most PPC management.
Follow-up questions
- Is a PPC manager the same as a Google Ads specialist?
- In practice, yes. PPC covers paid search on Google and Microsoft, and sometimes Shopping and remarketing. A specialist who only runs Meta or LinkedIn ads is a different job with different reports.
- How many hours a month does an account need?
- A small Search account needs a couple of hours a week to be read properly, plus the report. Larger accounts with Shopping, Performance Max and several locations need more, which is why fees step up with the spend band rather than with promises.