Paid advertising where every dollar is measured.
I'm Lior Zabari and I manage media budgets in client accounts, fewer than 20 accounts at a time. The person talking to you is also the person who goes into the account and makes the changes.
A reply from me personally, usually within the hour during Israel working hours.
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Google campaign management is the ongoing management of a paid advertising account: research, account structure, conversion measurement, budget management and optimization against cost per lead. At Mr. Make the work is done by Lior Zabari himself, who manages media budgets for clients, in fewer than 20 active accounts at a time.
The rule I work by: if the measurement isn't right, we don't start campaigns. There's no point improving what can't be measured.
Clients I've worked with
From the family business to the international brand.
- iCount
- Mr. Alex Jewelers
- Best Brilliance
- the123
- Ninja School
- PTravels Club
- Genesis Tours
- Proof
- Rogel
- Sahbook
- Coravana
- Crewzz
- Padel Time Club
- Semicom
- Smartair
- Suncar
- Amadora
- Skeep
- Fratelli
- DAFNI
What paid advertising is, and how it's decided who shows first
Paid advertising is a model where you pay the platform to show an ad, and usually pay only when someone clicks it. It's called PPC, short for Pay Per Click. Paid advertising, PPC and paid search are three names for the same work. The difference from organic SEO is that here the result shows from day one and disappears the day the budget runs out.
The part most business owners don't know is that Google doesn't sell the top spot to the biggest money. There's an auction, and it runs again on every single search. The ranking is set by a metric Google calls Ad Rank, made up among other things of your bid, the quality of the ad and the page at the moment of the auction itself, the context of the search, entry thresholds Google sets, and the level of competition in that auction. Note a distinction almost nobody makes: what runs in the auction is a quality recalculated on every search, not the 1-to-10 "Quality Score" you see in the interface. That score is an after-the-fact diagnostic tool at the keyword level, and Google states explicitly that it's not an input to the auction. Both rest on the same three things: how likely the ad is to be clicked, how relevant it is to the search, and the experience of the page it leads to.
Someone types a search
Google checks which advertisers set a keyword matching this search, and which of them meet the targeting conditions set: area, hour, device, audience type.
The output: a list of candidates for the auctionAn auction runs, in a fraction of a second
Each candidate gets a score combining their bid with the quality of the ad and the page. A good ad with a fast, relevant page can beat a higher bid and pay less for it.
The output: the order of the ads on the pageThe visitor clicks, and you pay
You pay for the click, not for the impression. If nobody clicked, you didn't pay. The actual price is usually lower than the maximum bid you set.
The output: a site visit or a phone callThis is where the real work starts
The click isn't the goal. What happens after it, meaning whether the visitor left their details or bought, is what decides whether the campaign is profitable. This is the stage where most of the accounts I look into are losing money.
The output: a lead, a sale, or nothingWhy a campaign runs, and the customers don't come
The four things I find in almost every account I enter for the first time. None of them is a fault. All of them are decisions made once that nobody went back to.
Measurement counts visits instead of customers
The account reports conversions, but a conversion is defined as a page view or a click on a phone number. You pay for traffic and get a report that says everything is excellent.
Keywords that bring the wrong audience
Searches that look close and in practice bring students, competitors and job seekers. Without a maintained negative list, this comes back every month.
An account structure built for launch, not for maintenance
Everything in one campaign, or twenty campaigns that can't be compared. When the moment comes to decide what to scale, there's nothing to look at.
A report that explains what happened, without what to do
Pretty numbers at the end of the month that lead to no decision. A good report ends in three lines: what to scale, what to switch off, what to test.
Google, Meta, or both
The difference between the platforms isn't technical, it's one question: is your customer already searching for what you sell. On Google they search. On Meta they scroll, and you interrupt them. Both ways work, but not for the same business and not at the same stage.
| What matters | Meta, Facebook and Instagram | |
|---|---|---|
| The visitor's state | Looking for a solution now | Searched for nothing, exposed while scrolling |
| What decides who sees it | The search term typed | Interests, behavior and demographics |
| Ad type | Text in search, products in Shopping | Visual, image or video |
| When it works best | When there's existing demand for what you sell | When demand has to be created or the product is visual |
| When it wastes money | When nobody is searching for your category | When the product needs a long explanation before a decision |
| Learning pace | Fast, because the intent is clear | Slower, the system needs data volume |
A local service business
A locksmith, a dentist, a plumber. Google almost always first, because the demand exists and is urgent. Meta only after search is profitable.
An online store
Google Shopping for those who already know what they want, and Meta for creating demand and bringing back whoever abandoned a cart. Here the two platforms really complement each other.
A service nobody searches for
A new product or a category that doesn't have a name yet. Google alone won't work, because there's nothing to search for. We start from Meta.
A B2B business
A small, defined audience. LinkedIn is expensive per click but precise, and Google works on professional terms. Meta usually wastes money here.
Same budget. Different split.
Most accounts don't have a budget problem, they have a split problem. Part of the money buys clicks that would never have become a customer in this life or the next. The first job is to move the line.
What paid campaign management includes
This list is what actually happens every month. There's no menu to choose from here.
End-to-end measurement
From the click, through the inquiry, to the closed deal. Including a connection to your system when there is one.
Audience and keyword research
What people search for, in which language, and which of those searches is really worth money.
Building the account structure
A division you can read six months from now and understand what works, including names and conventions.
Ads and creative assets
Writing, variations and structured testing of what wins, instead of swapping by gut feeling.
Budget and bid management
How much to each channel, when to scale and when to stop before the month burns out.
Negatives and lead quality
Weekly maintenance of what you don't want to pay for, and tracking the quality of inquiries and not only the quantity.
Landing pages aimed at one action
Checking what happens after the click. The best campaign doesn't save a page that asks for seven things.
A monthly report that ends in a decision
What worked, what didn't and what changes this month. Three lines that can be answered with yes or no.
From the first call to the first decision
Fit call
Half an hour. What the business sells, to whom, what a customer is worth and what's happening today. At the end of the call I say whether there's work here or not.
The output: a straight answer, even when it's noAccount and measurement audit
Access to the existing account and analytics. I check what's measured, what's counted twice and what's completely invisible. This is the stage where it becomes clear why the reports looked good.
The output: a findings document with what's right and what isn'tFixing the foundation before the budget
Real conversions, a connection between the advertising and the system that closes deals, and cleaning up the structure. Only after that do we touch the money.
The output: an account whose numbers can be trustedRunning and collecting data
In the first two weeks we only collect data. Changing something every two days is the sure way to never know what worked.
The output: a baseline for comparisonOptimization and a report that leads to a decision
From here it's a monthly rhythm, and at the end of every month there's one clear decision for what's next. You decide, I bring the data.
The output: a monthly report in three action linesThe five mistakes I find in almost every account
These aren't beginners' mistakes. I find them in accounts that have been managed by an agency for two years. Each one costs money every day it stays there, and all of them can be fixed without increasing the budget.
Conversions that count the wrong thing
The account reports hundreds of conversions, and on inspection it turns out to count every click on the WhatsApp button, including from people who wrote and vanished. The system optimizes itself against that number, so it brings more and more worthless inquiries.
The fix: redefine what counts as a conversion, and give each type a different valueBroad match without a negative list
Google expands a keyword to searches you didn't intend. A business selling kitchens pays for "kosher kitchen", "office kitchenette" and "kitchen recipes". In an account with no negative keyword list this can be a third of the budget.
The fix: read the actual search-terms report, not the keywordsEvery ad leads to the homepage
Someone searched for a specific service, clicked, and landed on a page about everything the business does. They have to search again inside the site. Bounce rate jumps, Quality Score drops, and the cost per click rises.
The fix: one landing page per intent groupAutomation switched on without data
Google's smart bidding strategies are excellent, but they learn from conversions. An account that turns them on before measurement is correct and volume is sufficient teaches the system to chase the wrong audience, and afterwards it's hard to fix.
The fix: manual or semi-manual until there's data, and only then automationNobody looks at what happened after the lead
The campaign reports a low cost per lead, and the business owner feels there are no deals. Both feelings are correct. Without closing the loop between the inquiry and the deal, the system optimizes for quantity and not quality.
The fix: feed back to Google what happened in the end, manually at firstWhat we measure, and what to ignore
Every advertising report has dozens of numbers, and most of them say nothing about profit. These are the five I look at, in this order, and it's also the order in which I present them in the monthly report.
| Metric | What it says | When it misleads |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per lead | How much it cost to bring one inquiry | When some of the inquiries are spam or customers who aren't relevant to you at all |
| Share of quality inquiries | How many of the inquiries were really a potential customer | When nobody actually marks this, and then there's no data |
| Cost per closed deal | The number that decides whether you made money | In industries with a long sales cycle, where the answer comes two months later |
| Return on ad spend (ROAS) | In an online store: how much revenue came back for every unit of ad spend | When you look at it without gross margin. Break-even is one divided by ROAS, meaning at a ROAS of 4 you break even exactly on a 25% margin. Below that you lose, above it you profit |
| Customer lifetime value | How much a customer is worth over the whole relationship, not in the first deal | When it's calculated on a feeling and not on past data |
| Page conversion rate | Whether the problem is in the campaign or on the site | When it's measured on mixed traffic and not only on traffic from the campaign |
Three numbers that are almost always shown in reports and I give no weight to: number of impressions, click-through rate on its own, and ad position. You can improve all three and lose more money than before. They help diagnose a problem, but they're not a goal.
What passes through my hands
I publish the scope of the work and not clients' results, because most of my agreements block publishing data. What you can check is the scope and the certifications.
Want me to look at the account before we decide anything?
What the real difference is, including the downsides
The right question isn't whether a freelancer or an agency is better, but how much attention your account gets and how transparent what happens in it is.
| What matters | Personal management with me | Agency |
|---|---|---|
| Who touches the account | Me. The same person you spoke to in the first call | Usually an account manager in front of an execution team that rotates |
| How many accounts at a time | Fewer than 20, with a high budget per account | Dozens to hundreds of accounts per team |
| Ownership of the account | The account, the history and the data in the business's name. From day one | Sometimes the agency's account, and the data stays with them |
| Availability and backup | One person. There's a written access and handover procedure, but no team to replace me in a second | Built-in human backup |
| What happens on vacation | I give notice in advance and leave the account in a stable, documented state | Someone else continues |
| Commitment | Month to month. You can stop with advance notice | Usually a one-year commitment |
Where the price starts and what moves it
Two separate amounts that are important not to confuse: the media budget paid directly to Google or Meta, and the management fee paid to me. I don't take a percentage of the budget, because that creates an incentive to increase it.
| Component | Who gets paid | How it's set |
|---|---|---|
| Media budget | Directly to Google, Meta or Apple | By how many customers you want and what a customer costs in your industry |
| Monthly management fee | Me | A fixed amount by the number of platforms and the scope of work. Not a percentage of the budget |
| Initial account audit | Me | A one-time cost, credited back if we continue to ongoing management |
| One-off jobs | To me or to a vendor | A landing page, measurement setup or creative. Priced in advance and separately |
When I say no
When there's nothing to measure
If the advertising can't be connected to what happened afterwards, we'll start from that. Without it I don't start campaigns.
When the budget is too small to learn from
Below a certain threshold there isn't enough data to decide anything, and that's a waste of your money and my time.
When you're looking for a guaranteed result
I don't promise a number of leads and I don't promise first place. Anyone who promises is selling you something else.
When you need a team that's always available
If you need a response at every hour of every day, an agency with shifts will serve you better.
Questions about paid advertising and campaign management
How much does paid advertising on Google cost?
The cost is made of two separate amounts: the media budget, paid directly to Google, and a monthly management fee paid to whoever manages it. The media budget is set by how much a customer is worth in your industry and how many customers you want a month, and the management fee is set by the scope of work and the number of platforms. I work for a fixed amount, not a percentage of the budget.
How soon do we see results?
The first two weeks are data collection, not improvement. The first well-founded decision usually comes after 14 days of running, and a stable picture emerges after two to three months. Anyone showing you an improvement in the first week is looking at noise.
What happens if the campaign manager isn't available?
That's the real downside of working with one person, and it has a clear answer. The account is opened in the business's name and you are the primary admin from day one, the account structure and conventions are written in a document, and every significant change is documented. If we stop working together tomorrow, whoever comes after me gets an account they can continue with, not a riddle.
Is a freelancer suitable for large budgets too?
Yes, and that's exactly where personal management wins. A large budget needs daily attention to one account, not the same hour split across dozens of accounts. The accounts I manage are few and high-budget, which is the exact opposite of a model where one person holds dozens of small accounts.
What is the difference between organic SEO and paid advertising?
Paid advertising buys exposure now and stops the moment you stop paying. Organic SEO builds an asset that keeps bringing traffic and takes months before it starts working. For most businesses the right answer is to combine: paid brings customers while organic is being built. You can read about the other side on the organic SEO and GEO page.
I'm already working with someone. Is it worth switching?
Not necessarily. In the account audit you can see within an hour whether the problem is the management or somewhere else entirely, for example the offer itself or what happens after the inquiry. If the account is well managed I'll say so, and that has happened more than once.
Who owns the account and the data?
The business. Always. The account is opened in the business's name, the history stays yours, and I get management access, not ownership. If we part ways, you don't lose years of data and you don't need to ask permission to access your own account.
Which platforms do you work on?
Google (Search, Performance Max, Shopping, YouTube and remarketing), Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and Apple Search Ads for apps. The choice between platforms is made by where your audience is searching, not by what I like to manage.
Can we stop mid-way?
Yes. I work month to month with advance notice, no annual commitment. The reason is simple: if a contract is needed to keep a client, something in the work is wrong.
Do you commit to a number of leads?
No. I commit to the process, to transparent measurement and to availability, not to a number that depends on the market, the season and the competition. What I can commit to is that you'll know exactly what each lead cost and what happened with it.
What is Quality Score and why does it matter to me?
Quality Score is a rating on a scale of 1 to 10 that Google gives each keyword in the account, not each ad, and it rests on three things: how likely the ad is to be clicked, how relevant it is to the search typed, and the experience of the page it leads to. It's important to know that the score itself is a diagnostic tool and not an input to the auction, and Google says so explicitly. What does directly affect how much you pay per click is that very same quality, only recalculated on every search. The score in the interface is the window through which you see it. Two advertisers in the same auction can pay very different prices for the same spot, and the one whose ad and page are better pays less. That's why the first thing I fix in a new account is usually not the budget but the match between the search term, the ad and the page.
What is the difference between Google Ads and Google AdWords?
There is no difference, it's the same system. Google changed the name from Google AdWords to Google Ads in mid-2018, along with a rebranding of its advertising tools. Many business owners still search for "AdWords", so the old name lives on in conversations and searches, but it's the same interface and the same account.
Can I run a paid campaign on my own, without a campaign manager?
You can, and in some situations it even makes sense. If the monthly budget is too small for a management fee to be proportionate, or if you sell one product to one audience and it's very clear what people search for, there's a good chance you'll manage with a simple campaign and basic measurement. Where it breaks is not the setup but the maintenance: reading the search-terms report, building a negative list, and deciding what to switch off. That's weekly work, and most business owners simply never get to it. If you're managing on your own and want me to look once and tell you what to fix, that's exactly the account audit.
Is paid advertising suitable for a small business, or only for large ones?
The size of the business matters less than the question of how much one customer is worth to you. A small business selling a service at a profit of a few thousand can be very profitable in paid advertising, even on a modest budget. A business selling a product at a profit of a few dozen, on the other hand, needs very large volume for it to work, and paid advertising is usually not the right channel for it. The calculation I do in the first call is simple: how much a customer is worth, how many inquiries it takes to close one, and what that means for the maximum cost per inquiry.
Why doesn't my ad show when I search for myself on Google?
Several possible reasons, and most of them are not a fault. Google doesn't show the ad on every search: it stops showing an ad to someone who searched again and again without clicking it, it doesn't show ads outside the targeting area you set, and it doesn't show them once the daily budget is spent. More importantly, every search you do yourself records an impression without a click, and lowers your click-through rate. Instead of searching, Google Ads has a dedicated tool called "Ad Preview and Diagnosis" that shows exactly what is displayed and why.
What is cost per acquisition and how is it different from cost per lead?
Cost per lead is how much you paid to get one inquiry. Cost per acquisition, also called CPA, is how much you paid to get one paying customer. The difference between them is your close rate. If cost per lead is 120 and you close one in five, cost per acquisition is 600. Most reports show only the first, which is why a campaign can look excellent in the report and go unnoticed in the bank. I ask for the close rate in the first call, because without it you can't say whether the budget makes sense.
More in marketing
Let's start with a fit call
Half an hour, no cost and no commitment. Send a business name and what's happening in your advertising today, and we'll see if there's work here. The full account audit is a separate, priced stage.
Prefer to talk? +972 52-877-5515