Frequently Asked Questions About Online Paid Advertising

Paid advertising is a marketing strategy where businesses pay for their advertisements to be displayed to a precisely targeted audience. While the concept includes traditional media like television and radio, in the digital context, it refers to paying for ad placements on platforms like search engines, social media networks, and other websites. The primary objective of a paid advertising campaign is to inform, educate, motivate, or change the behaviour of a target audience, ultimately driving a specific business outcome.   

The core mechanism of most digital paid advertising is the Pay-Per-Click (PPC) model, where the advertiser pays a fee each time a user clicks on their ad. This model is powerful because it allows businesses to attract highly motivated individuals who are actively searching for their products or services.   

Paid advertising generates results by enabling a business to:

• Reach the Right Audience at the Right Time: Advanced targeting capabilities allow ads to be shown to users based on their search queries, demographics, interests, online behaviour, and geographic location. This precision ensures that marketing budgets are spent on reaching the most relevant potential customers.   

• Drive Qualified Traffic: By appearing at the top of search results or in relevant social media feeds, paid ads capture the attention of users with high intent, driving qualified traffic directly to a website or landing page.   

• Generate Measurable Leads and Sales: Unlike many traditional marketing efforts, every aspect of a digital paid advertising campaign can be tracked. This allows for the precise measurement of key business outcomes, such as leads generated, online sales completed, and the overall return on investment.   

• Achieve Immediate Visibility: While organic growth through Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is a long-term strategy, paid advertising can deliver immediate visibility and traffic, making it an ideal strategy for launching new products, promoting time-sensitive offers, or quickly gaining market traction.

Ultimately, paid advertising is a direct and controllable method for achieving specific business goals, from increasing brand awareness to driving revenue growth.

Grendesign offers a comprehensive suite of paid advertising services across the most effective digital channels. Each channel serves a distinct strategic purpose, and the optimal mix depends on a business’s specific goals, target audience, and industry. The primary services include:

• Search Engine Advertising (Google & Microsoft Ads): Placing text-based ads on search engine results pages (SERPs) of platforms like Google and Bing. This is the most effective channel for capturing high-intent demand, as it connects a business with users at the exact moment they are searching for a solution.¹

• Social Media Advertising (Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok): Running targeted ad campaigns on social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok. This channel is ideal for building brand awareness, engaging with communities, and targeting users based on their detailed demographic, interest, and behavioural data.¹

• Display & Programmatic Advertising: Placing visual banner ads across a vast network of websites, apps, and online properties. This is used to build broad brand awareness and can be highly targeted through programmatic technology that automates ad buying in real-time.⁶

• Video Advertising (YouTube): Utilising video ad formats on platforms like YouTube to tell a compelling brand story, demonstrate a product, and reach a massive, engaged audience with the targeting precision of the Google network.¹

• Google Shopping Advertising: Displaying product-specific ads, complete with images and pricing, directly in Google search results. This is an essential channel for e-commerce businesses looking to drive direct product sales.¹

• Remarketing & Retargeting Advertising: Serving targeted follow-up ads to users who have previously visited a website but did not complete a desired action (e.g., make a purchase or fill out a form). This strategy is crucial for re-engaging high-intent prospects and guiding them through the sales funnel.¹

To clarify which channels are best suited for different business objectives, the following matrix provides a strategic overview:

The cost of paid advertising in Australia varies significantly based on several factors, including the chosen platforms, the competitiveness of the industry, the geographic targeting, and the overall campaign objectives. There is no one-size-fits-all budget; however, it is essential to understand the components that constitute the total investment.   

A common misconception is to view “ad spend” as the only cost. A successful paid advertising initiative involves a Total Marketing Investment, which is composed of three key elements:

1. Media Spend: This is the portion of the budget paid directly to the advertising platforms (e.g., Google, Meta). This spend is what gets the ads displayed to the target audience. Costs are typically based on a per-click (CPC) or per-thousand-impressions (CPM) basis. In Australia, a CPC on Google Ads can range from $1 to over $50 in highly competitive niches, while a CPC on Facebook Ads may range from $0.50 to $5. Most platforms provide full control over this spend through daily or lifetime budget caps.   

2. Agency Management Fee: This is the fee paid to an agency like grendesign for the strategic development, management, optimisation, and reporting of the campaigns. This fee covers the expertise required to maximise the return on the media spend. Agency management fees in Australia can range from several hundred to several thousand dollars per month, often structured as a fixed retainer or a percentage of media spend.   

3. Ancillary Costs (if applicable): High-performing campaigns often require additional assets. This can include costs for professional creative production (e.g., video ads, high-quality images) or the design and development of dedicated, high-converting landing pages.   

For a business to see noticeable returns and gather sufficient data for optimisation, a minimum combined investment is often recommended. Some agencies suggest a starting point of at least $5,000 in total investment to make a meaningful impact. A strategic approach involves starting with a test budget to establish performance benchmarks and then scaling the investment based on the initial return on ad spend (ROAS).   

The success of a paid advertising campaign is measured by tracking Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that are directly aligned with the specific goals defined at the outset of the campaign.2 A campaign focused on brand awareness will have different success metrics than one focused on lead generation.

At Grendesign, the focus is on measuring tangible business outcomes rather than superficial “vanity metrics.” The measurement framework includes:

• Top-Level Performance Metrics: These provide an overview of ad engagement and efficiency.
• Impressions: The number of times an ad is displayed.
• Clicks: The number of times an ad is clicked by a user.
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): The percentage of impressions that result in a click (). This indicates how compelling the ad is to the target audience.
• Business-Critical Conversion Metrics: These are the most important indicators of a campaign’s contribution to the bottom line.
• Conversions: The number of desired actions completed by users after clicking an ad (e.g., a form submission, a phone call, a product purchase).
• Conversion Rate: The percentage of clicks that result in a conversion.
• Cost Per Lead (CPL) / Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): The average cost to generate one lead or acquire one new customer (). This is a primary measure of campaign efficiency.
• Return On Ad Spend (ROAS): This is the ultimate measure of profitability, calculating the total revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising. It is calculated as . For example, a ROAS of 5x means that for every $1 spent, $5 in revenue was generated.

The foundation of accurate measurement is a robust tracking setup. This involves the correct implementation of tools like the Meta Pixel and Conversions API for social media campaigns, and Google Analytics and Google Ads conversion tracking for search campaigns. Many agencies overlook or incorrectly implement this critical step, leading to inaccurate data.6 Grendesign ensures end-to-end tracking is in place from day one, providing a clear and accurate picture of campaign performance and ROI.

Grendesign employs a structured, data-driven, and collaborative process to ensure every campaign is strategically sound and relentlessly optimised for performance. The process is a continuous cycle, not a “set and forget” service, and is broken down into four key phases:

1. Discovery & Strategy: This foundational phase ensures complete alignment with the client’s business. It involves:

• Business Needs Analysis: An in-depth consultation to understand key business objectives, target audience profiles, unique value propositions, and commercial targets.
• Market & Competitor Research: A thorough analysis of the competitive landscape, identifying opportunities and learning from the strategies of key competitors.
• Strategic Roadmap Development: The creation of a comprehensive, multi-channel strategy that outlines the recommended platforms, messaging pillars, budget allocation, and a clear set of KPIs to measure success.

1. Campaign Planning & Setup: With the strategy approved, the team moves to meticulous implementation. This includes:

• Account & Tracking Configuration: Setting up or auditing ad accounts and implementing robust conversion tracking and analytics to ensure all data is captured accurately from the start.
• Audience & Keyword Development: Building precise audience segments based on demographic, interest, and behavioural data, and conducting extensive keyword research to target high-intent search queries.
• Creative & Copy Development: Crafting compelling ad copy and collaborating on the development of high-impact visual creative (images and video) that resonates with the target audience and adheres to platform best practices.

1. Launch, Monitoring & Optimisation: Once the campaign goes live, the focus shifts to continuous performance improvement. This is an ongoing process involving:

• Performance Monitoring: Daily monitoring of campaign performance against the established KPIs.
• A/B Testing: Relentlessly testing different variables, such as ad creative, headlines, calls-to-action, landing pages, and audience segments, to identify the highest-performing combinations and incrementally improve results.
• Budget Management: Actively managing the media spend to allocate the budget towards the best-performing campaigns and ads, ensuring maximum efficiency and ROI.

1. Reporting & Insights: Transparency and communication are paramount. This phase ensures clients are always informed and that the strategy evolves based on data.

• Performance Reporting: Providing regular, easy-to-understand reports (typically monthly) that detail campaign performance, key metrics, and progress towards goals.
• Data Analysis & Insights: Going beyond simply reporting the numbers to provide actionable insights and strategic recommendations for future optimisations and growth opportunities.

Strategy Reviews: Conducting periodic strategy sessions (typically quarterly) to review overall performance, discuss insights, and collaboratively plan the next phase of activity.

Transparency is a cornerstone of the Grendesign partnership, designed to counteract the “black box” approach common in the agency world where clients have little visibility into how their investment is managed. The structure and processes are built to foster trust, collaboration, and a clear understanding of performance.

A significant point of anxiety for businesses is the lack of clarity regarding data access, communication channels, and accountability. Many have had experiences with agencies that obscure data or are difficult to reach. Grendesign’s model is built on a philosophy of radical transparency, ensuring clients are empowered and informed at every stage.

• Dedicated Account Management: Each client is assigned a dedicated Account Manager who serves as the primary point of contact. This individual possesses a deep understanding of the client’s business and is responsible for overseeing the strategy and ensuring clear communication.
• Direct Access to Data and Accounts: Grendesign operates with 100% transparency. Clients retain full ownership and administrative access to all their advertising accounts (e.g., Google Ads, Meta Business Manager) and the associated data.6 The agency works as a partner within the client’s assets, not as a gatekeeper. This ensures that all historical data and campaign structures remain with the client, should they ever choose to transition management in-house or to another partner.
• Structured Reporting and Communication: The reporting process is designed for clarity and actionable insights, not confusion.

• Live Dashboards: Clients are often provided with access to live, customised reporting dashboards (e.g., using Google Data Studio) that allow them to view key performance metrics in real-time.
• Regular Performance Reports: Detailed performance reports are delivered on a consistent schedule (e.g., monthly), summarising results, work completed, and key insights.
• Scheduled Meetings: Regular check-in calls and more in-depth quarterly strategy reviews are scheduled to discuss performance, strategic direction, and upcoming initiatives.

• Clear and Honest Communication: The team is committed to proactive and honest communication. This includes sharing not only the wins but also the challenges and the data-driven pivots being made to improve performance. This approach aligns with what discerning clients expect from a premium agency partner.

While many agencies in Australia offer paid advertising services, grendesign’s approach is distinguished by a combination of strategic depth, a data-driven methodology, and an unwavering focus on tangible business outcomes. The key differentiators include:

1. Strategic Partnership over Tactical Execution: Many agencies focus solely on the tactical management of bids and budgets. Grendesign operates as a strategic growth partner. The process begins with a deep dive into the client’s business objectives, ensuring every dollar of ad spend is directly tied to a meaningful commercial goal. This full-funnel perspective considers the entire customer journey, from initial awareness to final conversion and retention, rather than focusing on isolated clicks.
2. Data-Driven and Analytically Rigorous: The approach is rooted in data and advanced statistical analysis, not guesswork. Every strategic decision, from audience targeting to creative testing, is informed by data. This includes establishing robust end-to-end tracking and attribution models to understand precisely which channels and messages are driving results, a technical capability that sets expert agencies apart.
3. Focus on Real Business Outcomes: The team prioritises metrics that directly impact a client’s bottom line, such as Cost Per Acquisition (CPA), revenue growth, and Return On Ad Spend (ROAS), over vanity metrics like impressions or likes. Success is defined by the profitable growth of the client’s business.
4. Integrated Creative and Media Strategy: A successful campaign requires both a compelling message and precise delivery. The approach ensures a tight integration between creative strategy and media buying. The media team works closely with creative development to produce ad content that is not only eye-catching but also strategically designed to perform on specific platforms and resonate with targeted audience segments.
5. Radical Transparency and Client Empowerment: As detailed previously, the commitment to 100% transparency is a core differentiator. By providing clients with full ownership and access to their accounts and data, Grendesign fosters a relationship built on trust and ensures the client is always in control of their valuable marketing assets.

This is not an “either/or” question but a matter of strategic synergy. Both Paid Ads (PPC) and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) are critical components of a comprehensive digital marketing strategy, and they work best when integrated. They serve different functions and timelines:

• Paid Ads (PPC) for Immediate Impact and Data: PPC campaigns can generate traffic, leads, and sales almost immediately upon launch. This makes it the ideal channel for achieving short-term goals, testing new offers, and quickly entering new markets. Furthermore, PPC provides a rich source of data; it reveals which keywords convert into customers, which ad copy resonates most, and how users behave on landing pages. This data is invaluable.
• SEO for Long-Term, Sustainable Growth: SEO is the process of optimising a website to rank higher in the organic (non-paid) search results. It is a long-term investment that builds a valuable, sustainable asset for the business. Strong organic rankings generate highly qualified traffic at a lower long-term cost per click, build brand authority, and create a durable competitive advantage.

The two channels have a powerful synergistic relationship:

• PPC Accelerates SEO: The conversion and keyword data gathered from PPC campaigns can be used to inform and prioritise the SEO strategy. By identifying which keywords are already driving sales through paid ads, a business can confidently focus its long-term SEO efforts on those same high-value terms.
• Total Search Engine Dominance: Running both PPC and SEO for key terms allows a brand to dominate the search engine results page, capturing a larger share of clicks and increasing overall brand visibility.
• Indirect SEO Benefits: The increased traffic and brand awareness generated by paid advertising can lead to more branded searches and a higher likelihood of earning natural backlinks over time, both of which are positive signals for SEO.

The recommended approach is a balanced one: use PPC for immediate results and data acquisition while simultaneously investing in an SEO strategy to build a long-term, cost-effective channel for organic growth.

Remarketing (often called retargeting) is a powerful advertising technique that involves serving targeted ads specifically to users who have already visited a website or interacted with a brand online but did not complete a conversion. It operates on the principle that individuals who have already shown interest are among the most valuable and high-intent audiences.

The process works by placing a small, unobtrusive piece of code (a “pixel” or “tag”) on the website. When a user visits, this tag drops an anonymous browser cookie, adding the user to a remarketing list. Ads can then be served to this specific audience as they browse other websites in a display network, scroll through social media, or watch videos on YouTube.

Remarketing is a critical component of a full-funnel strategy and is used to significantly improve overall campaign performance in several ways:

• Re-engaging High-Intent Prospects: On average, only a small percentage of first-time website visitors convert. Remarketing provides a second, third, or fourth opportunity to connect with the vast majority who left, reminding them of the brand’s value proposition and prompting a return visit when they are further along in their decision-making process.
• Nurturing Leads Through the Sales Cycle: For businesses with longer consideration periods, remarketing can be used to serve a sequence of different messages over time, educating the prospect, overcoming objections, and keeping the brand top-of-mind.
• Recovering Abandoned Shopping Carts: In e-commerce, remarketing is essential for targeting users who added items to their cart but did not complete the purchase. Dynamic remarketing ads can even show these users the exact products they left behind, often with a special offer to encourage them to finalise the transaction.
• Improving ROI: By focusing advertising spend on a pre-qualified audience that has already demonstrated interest, remarketing campaigns typically achieve higher click-through rates, higher conversion rates, and a lower cost-per-acquisition than campaigns targeting cold audiences, thereby boosting the overall ROI of the marketing investment.

While certain ad formats, such as on-platform lead generation forms on Facebook or LinkedIn, do not require a user to visit a website , for any campaign designed to drive traffic to a site, a custom, dedicated landing page is not just recommended, it is critical for maximising performance.

Sending paid traffic to a generic homepage is one of the most common and costly mistakes in paid advertising. A homepage is designed for exploration, with multiple navigation options, different messages, and various calls-to-action. This creates distraction and makes it difficult for a user to complete the specific action intended by the ad.

A custom landing page, by contrast, is a specialised page designed with a single, focused objective that directly matches the promise of the ad. Its benefits are twofold:

1. Improved User Experience and Conversion Rates: A landing page provides a seamless user journey. The headline, copy, and imagery on the page directly mirror the ad that the user just clicked, reassuring them they are in the right place. The page is stripped of distracting navigation and focuses the user’s attention on a single call-to-action (e.g., “Request a Quote,” “Download the Guide,” “Buy Now”). This clarity and focus dramatically increase the likelihood that a visitor will convert.
2. Higher Ad Platform Quality Scores: Platforms like Google Ads evaluate the relevance between a keyword, an ad, and its corresponding landing page to calculate a “Quality Score.” A highly relevant, dedicated landing page signals a good user experience to the platform. A higher Quality Score can lead to a better ad position and, most importantly, a lower cost-per-click (CPC), meaning the advertising budget goes further.
3. Grendesign offers landing page design and conversion rate optimisation (CRO) as an integrated part of its services, ensuring that the entire conversion pathway, from ad click to final action, is optimised for maximum performance.

Operating within the Australian legal framework is non-negotiable and a core part of a professional and responsible advertising strategy. Grendesign ensures all campaigns are fully compliant with the relevant laws and regulations, protecting clients from potential legal and reputational risks. The key legal requirements for online advertising in Australia include:

• Australian Consumer Law (ACL): This is the primary legislation governing advertising, enforced by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). Under the ACL, all advertising must be truthful and must not be misleading or deceptive. This means:

• All claims about a product or service must be accurate and verifiable.
• Pricing must be clear and transparent, typically showing a total price.
• Any disclaimers or important conditions must be prominent and not hidden in fine print.
• Testimonials, reviews, and influencer endorsements must be genuine. If an endorser has been paid or received a benefit, this relationship must be clearly disclosed.7

• Spam Act 2003: This act regulates the sending of commercial electronic messages, including marketing emails and SMS. The key rules are:

• Consent: A business must have the recipient’s express or inferred consent to send them marketing messages.
• Identification: The message must clearly and accurately identify the sender (the business).
• Unsubscribe: Every marketing message must contain a functional and easy-to-use unsubscribe facility.

• Privacy Act 1988: This act, along with the Australian Privacy Principles (APPs), governs how businesses collect, use, and store personal information. For paid advertising, this is particularly relevant for activities like:

• Data Collection: A business must have a clear and accessible Privacy Policy explaining what data is collected and how it is used.
• Tracking and Remarketing: Consent is generally required for using tracking technologies like cookies, especially for remarketing purposes where user behaviour is tracked across sites. This is often managed through a cookie consent banner on the website.
• Data Security: Any personal data collected (e.g., through lead forms) must be stored securely.

Grendesign’s campaign development process includes a compliance check to ensure that all ad copy, landing pages, and data collection practices adhere to these legal standards, providing clients with peace of mind.

This is a critical question that speaks to the nature of the client-agency relationship. At Grendesign, the policy is unequivocal: the client retains 100% ownership of all assets.

This includes:

• Advertising Accounts: All campaigns are built and managed within the client’s own advertising accounts (e.g., Google Ads account, Meta Business Manager). Grendesign is granted access as a managing partner, but the client remains the owner. This is a crucial distinction from agencies that run campaigns through their own accounts, which can lead to the client losing all historical data and campaign structures if they decide to leave.
• Campaign Data: All performance data generated by the campaigns, including keyword performance, audience insights, and conversion data, is the client’s intellectual property. This data is a valuable business asset that can inform future marketing strategies.
• Creative Assets: Any ad copy, images, videos, or other creative materials developed for the campaigns are owned by the client upon full payment for the services rendered.

This client-ownership model ensures there is no “agency lock-in.” If a client ever decides to move their advertising management in-house or to another agency, the transition is seamless. A smooth handover process is guaranteed, with all accounts, data, and assets remaining in the client’s full control. This approach is a hallmark of a transparent, client-first agency partnership.