Your ad account, your ad spend
The first thing to settle in any Google Ads or Meta Ads arrangement is whose account it is. In Vesk's model the ad account is yours, in your name, with your payment card on it. You pay Google or Meta directly for every click and view. That spend is not part of the plan and it never passes through us, so the cost of the ads is always visible to you in the platform that charges it.
That matters because an ad account holds your history: which audiences worked, which words people searched, what each click cost. If an agency owns the account, you lose all of it when you leave. If it is yours, you keep it, whoever runs it next.
What one ad campaign setup includes
An ad campaign setup is a fixed-size task: 8 tokens, quoted before it starts. It has three parts.
- 1Audience
Who should see the ad. On Google that means the searches you want to appear for and the area you serve. On Meta it means the people, places and interests you want to reach.
- 2Creatives
The ads themselves: the words, the image or the video, and the call to action. More creative, for example a short video, is sized and quoted separately: a short video is 4 tokens, a carousel 2, a post 1.
- 3Launch
Setting up the campaign in your account, checking the settings, and switching it on at the budget you chose.
If you also need a page for the ads to send people to, a campaign landing page is 8 tokens. Sending paid traffic to a home page that tries to do everything is one of the quickest ways to waste ad spend.
Google Ads and Meta: which one first
Use Google when people are already searching for what you sell: "emergency plumber", "physiotherapy near me", "wedding photographer Calgary". The person has a need today, and your ad appears at that moment. Use Meta when the customer does not know to look for you yet: a new restaurant, a seasonal offer, a product people did not know they wanted. There the ad earns attention rather than catching it.
Most small businesses start with one platform and a single campaign, learn what works, and only then add the other. Running two at once on a small budget usually means neither gets enough spend to teach you anything.
What Google Ads management costs for a small business in Canada
Agencies in Toronto quote Google Ads management at roughly $800 to $2,500 CAD a month on top of ad spend, in one published market scan. Canadian agency hourly rates run $142 to $212, and a mid-level freelancer in Toronto bills $75 to $120 CAD. Ask whether a fee is flat or a percentage of spend, because it changes who benefits when you raise the budget.
Vesk prices the work as tasks, not as a monthly management fee:
| What you pay | How it works | Typical amount (CAD) |
|---|---|---|
| Agency management fee | A monthly fee on top of ad spend, flat or a percentage | About $800 to $2,500 a month in Toronto |
| Vesk ad campaign setup | 8 tokens once per campaign, from your monthly plan | About $800 to $1,010 depending on the plan |
| Vesk plans | 8, 20 or 40 tokens a month | $1,010, $2,120 or $3,980, plus tax |
| Ad spend | Paid by you to Google or Meta, in your own account | Whatever you decide; it is not part of any plan |
The Starter plan is 8 tokens, which covers one campaign setup. Growth and Scale leave room for the creatives, landing page and content around it. Changes to a running campaign are quoted in tokens before we start them, like any other task.
How a campaign runs
- 1Kickoff: what a customer is worth
We map how your business makes money, what a new customer is worth to you, and how many enquiries you can handle. That tells us how much ad spend makes sense. Nothing is charged until the kickoff is done.
- 2Agree what counts as a result
A phone call, a form, a booking. We settle that before launch so the numbers mean something when you read them.
- 3Set up the account in your name
You create or verify the ad account and add the payment method. We are added as users.
- 4Campaign setup
Audience, creatives and launch, 8 tokens. First delivery arrives in week 1 after the kickoff.
- 5Review
You see every task in the platform and get a weekly project update. The monthly meeting with the senior lead covers what you spent, what it produced and what to change.
What we promise and what we do not
We do not promise leads, sales or a return on ad spend. Those depend on your offer, your price, your reviews, how fast you answer, and a market we do not control. Anyone who guarantees them before the ads run is guessing.
We do promise a campaign built carefully and launched on time, work you can see, a straight account of what you spent and what happened, and a recommendation to stop what is not working. Vesk Marketing is in early access, and our published proof is Mittel, a brand identity, website and marketing strategy project, rather than an ad campaign case. The first month is guaranteed with a full refund and 8 bonus tokens, so you can judge the work before you commit.
Why small-business ads waste money
- The ad sends people to a home page instead of a page built for the offer.
- The location or audience is too wide, so you pay for clicks from people who can never buy.
- No one decided what counts as a result, so the report cannot say whether it worked.
- The campaign is stopped after two weeks, before it has had time to teach you anything.
- Nobody answers the phone or the form fast enough.
- The ad account belongs to a previous agency, so the history is gone. See what to do when your agency is not delivering.