The most competitive auction in the UK by a wide margin, with financial and legal advertisers setting a high floor. Customer acquisition costs run well above the rest of the country.
Most wasted budget comes from asking one channel to do the other's job. Here is how the work divides in London.
Nobody opens Instagram planning to buy from you. Meta's job is to interrupt well enough that they want to, then stay in front of them until they do.
Read the detail: Meta Ads in London
Someone typing your category into Google has already decided they want it. The job is being there, and making the next step obvious enough that they take it.
Read the detail: Google Ads in London
Why this matters to your bottom line. When both run without shared measurement, they claim the same conversions and you fund the same customer twice. Sorting attribution out first typically recovers more margin than any bidding change, and it costs nothing extra.
Two separate numbers, and only one of them is paid to me.
Paid by you, directly to Meta and Google, on your own billing account. Realistically you need around £1,800 a month across both channels before the data becomes readable enough to act on.
Below that figure you are not testing, you are guessing expensively. I will tell you on the call if that is where you are.
A flat monthly retainer for the work — strategy, build, testing, optimisation and reporting across both platforms. Based on account size, never a percentage of your spend.
A percentage model rewards me for spending more of your money. That is a strange incentive to build into an agreement you are relying on.
Your risk is limited by design. Media spend sits on your billing account so you can stop it yourself at any hour. The retainer is month to month with 30 days notice. The ad accounts, pixels and data are in your name, so if we part ways you keep every bit of history you paid to build.
Structure, tracking and 90 days of spend across Meta and Google, checked against your actual margins rather than platform-reported returns.
One source of truth so the two channels stop claiming the same conversions and you stop funding customers twice.
Meta builds demand, Google captures it. Budgets and targets set against what each is actually responsible for.
Money moves toward whatever holds up profitably at higher spend, reported monthly in language you can act on.
Financial services, professional services, technology, hospitality, luxury retail.
England, within United Kingdom.
Zone and borough level targeting outperforms London-wide bidding. Central and outer London are effectively different markets.
Compliance still applies: UK GDPR and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations.
You can start with one, and often should. Which one depends on whether people are already searching for what you sell. If they are, Google first. If they do not know they need it yet, Meta first. Running both badly is worse than running one well.
By what each is accountable for, not by a fixed ratio. Typically the channel capturing existing demand gets funded to the point where it stops finding profitable volume, and the rest goes to creating new demand. That split gets reviewed monthly against results, not set once.
Media spend goes directly to Meta and Google on your own billing account — around £1,800 a month across both is where the data becomes readable. My fee is a flat monthly retainer on top, based on account size. Never a percentage of your spend.
I will not quote one before seeing your account, and you should be wary of anyone who does. What I will do on the call is tell you honestly whether your margins, your offer and your budget make paid ads viable at all.
Month to month, 30 days notice, and the ad accounts, pixels and data stay in your name throughout. You keep every bit of campaign history you paid to build, which matters because that history is what the bidding algorithms learn from.
Me. The person on the call is the person in the account, every month. The client list is kept deliberately short for exactly this reason — there is no junior to hand you to.
Bring your accounts and your margins. You will get a straight view of where the money is going and what I would change first — whether or not you hire me.
Book a free strategy call →The city sets the auction. The national picture and your measurement set everything else.
National benchmarks, the privacy rules that apply, and how the calendar shapes cost across the whole market.
Local targeting is worthless if the conversion data is wrong. This is usually the first job and the cheapest win.
A written review of where spend actually goes, ranked by impact. Yours to keep either way.