Hire PPC experts
who live inside the account.
A dedicated specialist, or a pod, who spends their week where the account actually lives: campaign structure, bid strategy, search-term hygiene, ad-set testing. Vetted on real accounts before they touch yours, working inside Google Ads and Meta Ads Manager directly, scaling monthly without a hiring cycle. You meet the specialist who'd actually run the account before anything is signed.
Interview before signing · Scale monthly
Try before you commit
Start Your 14-Day Risk-Free Trial
Work together on a real brief for up to 14 days, then decide whether to scale.
Hiring a PPC expert through PixelCrayons gets you a vetted Google Ads and Meta Ads specialist inside your accounts. They work the platforms directly: campaign and account-group structure, bid-strategy selection, search-term and negative-keyword hygiene, ad-set and creative testing week over week, all in your accounts, with a named coordinator and an escalation contact behind them. You interview the person who would manage your accounts before they start, then scale monthly and skip a full recruiting cycle and the risk that comes with it. Paid-media delivery since 2004 stands behind the bench.
Judge the record,
not the adjectives.
Outcomes tied to real engagements, not averages.
Rates for brands and companies buying for themselves.
Platform skills,
worked weekly.
A PPC specialist whose job is the account itself: what's structured well, what's leaking, and what a week of testing just proved, not a strategist who glances at the account once a month.
Google Ads craft
- Search campaign structure and match-type strategy
- Shopping and Performance Max asset groups, aligned to a clean feed
- Bid-strategy selection, with manual overrides where automation misreads intent
- Quality Score and ad-relevance diagnostics
- Search-term and negative-keyword hygiene, worked weekly, not quarterly
Meta Ads craft
- Campaign, ad-set and ad structure for prospecting and retargeting
- Creative testing at the ad level: hooks, formats and angles, not five crops of one banner
- Audience and placement optimisation, frequency capped so remarketing doesn't stalk
- Catalogue and product-feed ads for commerce accounts
- Post-iOS-14 measurement: modelled numbers labelled as modelled
Inside the account
- Account and tracking audits before anything is changed
- Conversion tracking implemented and verified per platform
- Weekly test logs: what ran, what won, what's next
- Landing-page collaboration so the click and the page argue the same thing
- Account-level reporting (CTR, CPC, CVR, spend) tied to what changed that week
What a PPC expert
changes in the account each week.
The routine inside Google Ads and Meta, the interview signals worth trusting, and what to settle before they log in.
Inside the account, week to week
The week usually starts in the search terms report: new negatives added, a match-type leak closed, a query that converts moved into its own ad group. Then the test log: which ad or creative variant has gathered enough data to call, and what replaces the loser. Shopping and Performance Max accounts get a feed check, because a disapproved product or a missing attribute quietly costs impressions. Budget pacing gets a look against the month's plan. Every change goes into the change history with a reason, so the next person, and the platform's own recommendations, can be judged against it.
Interview signals that matter
Share your screen on a real account and ask what they would look at first. Strong candidates go to conversion tracking and the search terms report before they touch bids. Ask when they would move a campaign from maximising conversions to a target CPA, and what data they would want first. Ask what they do with the platform's automated recommendations; the right answer is that they read every one and apply few. On Meta, ask how they decide a creative test is finished. If they talk only about audiences and never about creative, they are working the smaller lever.
Before they log in
Admin access to Google Ads and Meta Business Manager, with the ad accounts, pixel and product catalogue shared to their own user rather than a shared login. Access to Google Merchant Center if you sell products, and to GA4 or whatever confirms a sale actually happened. Your margin or target cost per acquisition by product line, even roughly, because without it the specialist is optimising towards a number nobody agreed. A list of brand terms and competitors you will or won't bid on. Approved creative and landing pages for the first round of tests.
When you need a different role
A PPC expert runs the accounts. If the real question is how budget should split between Google, Meta, LinkedIn and everything else, that's a performance marketer's job, and this role will carry out the decision rather than make it. If conversion tracking is broken across the whole site, an analytics engineer fixes that faster. If ads get clicks and the landing page loses them, the fix is design and copy, not bids. And if spend is too small for automated bidding to learn from, a good specialist will tell you to consolidate campaigns before you scale them.
Brief to embedded,
interview before signing.
Brief & shortlist
You describe the accounts, the platforms and the gap; we propose the specialist, or pod, whose actual delivery history fits it. No generic CVs.
Interview them
You meet the specialist directly, not a media buyer's manager answering on their behalf. Ask how they'd build your campaigns; if not a fit, we propose again.
Inside the account
Google Ads and Meta Ads access granted, an account and tracking audit run, your stand-ups joined.
Scale either way
Add a second specialist when a new platform or a bigger test calendar demands it; step down when it doesn't. Paid-media capacity resizes month by month, with no headcount decision.
Requests, approvals and the weekly review for this engagement live in your Prism workspace. Each decision is recorded against the outcome it expected. See how Prism runs an engagement →
Meet the actual people before anything is signed
The person,
plus the system.
Hiring a specialist gets you their skills. Going through a delivery organisation gets you the same skills, backed by a structure that keeps campaigns covered through leave or a departure.
Vetted on real accounts, not puzzles
Every specialist on the bench has run live Google Ads and Meta Ads accounts before yours. That work ran under our own delivery standards, reviewed weekly, held to the same testing bar you'll see. Vetting by delivery history beats vetting by interview performance: one shows what happened when real spend was on the line, the other shows how someone talks about spend.
A second specialist who already knows the test log
There's a named coordinator, an escalation contact, and a second PPC specialist by name. Briefed on your accounts from day one, reading the account notes and test log as the first one keeps them. If the first specialist is on leave or moves on mid-campaign, the second steps in without a ramp-up, not someone opening Ads Manager for the first time. A lone freelancer can't offer that continuity, and a solo in-house hire has nobody to hand the account to mid-campaign.
Team integration, not a portal
Your Ads Manager, your Slack, your stand-ups, your project tools. Dedicated means working inside your ad accounts and your cadence, not change requests dropped into somebody else's queue.
A test log you can audit
Every creative test logged win, lose or inconclusive, every structural change dated and reasoned, a weekly review in Prism tied to account performance rather than a screenshot of impressions. If you ever wonder what changed and why, the log answers before we do.
How you typically hire,
versus through us.
An in-house hire is still the better call when paid media is a permanent full-time role central to your organisation, and we'll tell you when that's the case. This is for every other case.
| Hiring it yourself | Through PixelCrayons | |
|---|---|---|
| Time to a working specialist | A full recruiting cycle: sourcing, interviews, notice periods, onboarding | Eligible engagements can typically start within two to three business days after scope, payment and required access are confirmed |
| Vetting | CV screening and interview performance: you find out the truth once the account moves, or doesn't | Delivery history on real accounts under our own standards, reviewed weekly |
| Management overhead | Yours entirely: bid strategy, creative-test review, tracking audits, coverage | A named PM handles the admin; you approve the test calendar, not the account logins |
| Scaling | A new hiring cycle each direction: months up, severance down | Resize monthly: add a specialist ahead of a launch, step down after |
| Risk when it doesn't work | A mis-hire costs a quarter of wasted spend before anyone notices the account was never right | Propose-again is built in; the next specialist inherits the test log, not a cold account |
Paid media rebuilt on one roadmap, not two.
When a D2C fragrance retailer rebuilt its store, paid media was rebuilt alongside it. Account structure was cleaned up, tracking verified before spend scaled, and Google and Meta run against the same commercial plan instead of two disconnected budgets. The full case study includes the numbers and the rebuild timeline.
Read the case study →Our commitments
Each one says where it applies and links to its full terms.
14-Day Risk-Free Trial
For eligible managed specialists. Up to 14 calendar days or 80 logged working hours, whichever comes first. End within the trial and pay nothing for eligible trial hours. Continue beyond it and those hours are billed at the agreed rate. Unpaid trial work remains ours if you stop.
Eligible managed-specialist roles only, one trial per customer. Not offered for AI, chatbot, prompt, automation, API-integration or QA work. Brand and graphic designers, brand strategists, video editors, content writers, copywriters and content marketers start with a paid pilot.
Full termsTime-zone overlap
At least four hours a day inside your core working hours. Two hours plus a daily written handover for the US West Coast.
Managed specialists only; not a staffing promise for project teams.
Full termsClear IP & Ownership Terms
Your materials remain yours. Bespoke deliverable rights, licences and handover are agreed before work starts.
All engagements.
Full termsClear Delivery & Escalation Ownership
Know who coordinates your engagement, who owns the work and how to escalate an issue.
All engagements. Roles may be combined and vary with your engagement.
Full termsQuestions buyers ask before they commit
Why not just hire a freelancer?
A freelancer can be the right choice for a single, well-defined task. We are set up for work that needs an accountable team: a named coordinator, delivery reviewed by QA and a senior lead before release, and continuity arrangements written into the engagement. Confidentiality, ownership and escalation terms are agreed in writing before work starts.
How does time-zone overlap work?
Your engineers work at least four hours a day inside your core working hours. We set the window with you before the engagement starts and hold it for as long as the engagement runs. For the US West Coast the live overlap is two hours each morning, with a written handover at the end of every Indian day. We do not run night shifts: engineers who work nights leave quickly, and keeping the same people on your team matters more to us than a longer overlap.
Can we try you before we commit?
For eligible managed specialists, yes: up to 14 calendar days or 80 logged working hours, whichever comes first. End within the trial and pay nothing for eligible trial hours; continue beyond it and those hours are billed at the agreed rate, and unpaid trial work remains ours if you stop. For project work, and for roles outside the trial, we offer a paid pilot with its scope, acceptance criteria, duration and fee agreed before it starts.
What if we want to stop?
Cancellation, notice and any renewal terms are written into your proposal or statement of work before you accept it. If an engagement ends early, we hand over completed, paid-for work and list any unfinished work separately. For an eligible specialist trial, you can stop within the trial window and pay nothing for eligible trial hours.
How we handle claims, credentials and your data: group credentials, dated ratings, how case figures are signed off, client permissions and data handling.
Frequently
asked.
Once we have a complete brief, we confirm the date you will receive your proposal. The shortlist follows within days; you interview the specialist the same week, and can ask to walk through a real account they've run under NDA. Eligible engagements can typically start within two to three business days after scope, payment and required access are confirmed. Expect the first fortnight to prioritise an account and tracking audit; most accounts have conversion-tracking gaps worth fixing before a single bid changes.
No, and no honest specialist does, because auctions, competitors, seasonality and demand all sit outside anyone's control. Promising a return before seeing your account data would be a sales tactic, not a forecast. What we commit to contractually is the work: tracking verified, structure rebuilt where it needs it, creative tested weekly, and everything reported against what actually moved the account.
NDA first, then Google Ads and Meta Ads access. Next is a structure and tracking audit, written up so you see what they found, and agreement on the first month's priorities before anything changes. They attend your stand-ups from week one, so getting to know your accounts happens inside your process, not in a parallel track.
Weekly, written, at the account level: what changed, which tests won or lost, what's queued next, and the core numbers (CTR, CPC, CVR, spend) with the reasoning behind any structural change. If you're an agency placing a PPC expert on client work, the report comes in your own templates.
One is the normal starting point: a single PPC expert covers Google and Meta comfortably for most accounts. A second pair of hands joins when spend or platform count genuinely justifies it (a dedicated Google Ads specialist for Performance Max, say), and the monthly resize works both directions. One PPC expert first; we won't sell you a paid-media pod before you need it. Your proposal identifies the backup PPC specialist by name and states whether covering your accounts is included in the monthly rate.
Interview the person,
not the pitch deck.
Brief us on the accounts and the gap, get a shortlist within days, and interview the specialist who'd actually run the account. If what you really need is cross-channel budget strategy rather than platform execution, we'll point you to the right role on the first call.
Interview before signing · Scale monthly
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