PPC Agencies near you

CAP's advice on remit states that pay-per-click and other paid-for or sponsored listings on search engines fall under the Code and should be clearly distinguishable from the natural listings, and that natural results are seen as the product or service of the website rather than as advertising. The same logic applies on comparison sites: where a brand pays a premium for prominence or preferential positioning, that entry comes within the Code.

The practical consequence is that headline offers, price claims, superlatives and countdown pressure inside an ad all need to stand up. Rule 3.7 requires documentary evidence to be held before publication for objective claims, and the landing page has to support what the ad said rather than quietly changing the offer.

The ASA has sanctions aimed squarely at this channel. It can ask search engines to remove paid-search ads that link to a page hosting non-compliant material, and it can place its own paid-search ads highlighting an advertiser's name and non-compliance. Losing your ads while a complaint is resolved is a commercial event, not just a reputational one.

Drip pricing is the practice of showing an initial price and then adding unavoidable fees as the customer moves through the purchase. The CMA describes it as a banned practice under the unfair commercial practices provisions of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which apply to commercial practices from 6 April 2025 and replaced the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008.

For paid media that reaches into the ad itself. A headline price in an ad, followed by a compulsory booking fee revealed at checkout, is the pattern the rules are aimed at. The same guidance covers misleading actions, misleading omissions and aggressive practices such as pressure selling and false urgency, all of which are common in badly run performance campaigns.

Enforcement changed alongside the rules. Rather than taking a case through the courts, the regulator can reach its own finding of infringement and impose remedies itself, with redress for consumers and fines both available; government has put the ceiling at 10 per cent of worldwide turnover. So ask a prospective agency how it handles compulsory fees and urgency messaging before you ask anything about bidding strategy.

This is the single most expensive thing to get wrong in paid media, and it is decided before the first campaign runs. An account created inside the agency's manager, under the agency's billing, with the agency's tracking, is an asset you have been renting. Its bidding history, conversion data and audience lists are what makes it perform, and none of it moves easily.

Set it up the other way round. Create the advertising account under your own organisation and billing details, then grant the agency administrative access. Do the same with analytics, tag management and any feed management tool. The agency can still work normally, and removing access at the end is a two-minute job rather than a negotiation.

Write the exit into the contract as well: a notice period, a list of what is transferred, the format of the historical reporting, and confirmation that creative made for you is assigned to you. Creative matters because in UK law the person who made a commissioned work is its first owner unless there is a written agreement saying otherwise.