White label PPC pricing is usually discussed as a number, and the number is the least interesting part. What matters is the shape of the arrangement: who carries the risk when an account underperforms, who pays for creative, and what happens when the client asks for something that was never in scope.
Three shapes cover almost all of it.
Per-account retainer
A fixed monthly fee per client account, usually banded by ad spend. The simplest to resell, because your margin is the difference between two fixed numbers and you can quote a client without doing arithmetic on a call.
The risk sits with the partner: a difficult account costs them more to run and they earn the same. In practice that means bands exist for a reason, and an account that grows will get re-banded. Agree the band boundaries at the start rather than discovering them in month five.
Percentage of ad spend
The partner takes a percentage of the managed spend, you add yours on top. It scales neatly and it carries the same incentive problem it carries anywhere: on the day the right advice is to spend less, the advice costs the partner money.
That problem is manageable if you are the one making the call and the partner is executing. It is harder when the partner is also advising the client through you, because you cannot see which recommendations were shaped by the fee.
Per-hour or per-task
Blocks of hours, or a price list by task — build a campaign, audit an account, produce a report. Honest and flexible, and the hardest to resell, because clients want a monthly number and you are buying a variable cost.
It suits agencies with irregular demand: a few builds a quarter rather than twenty accounts running permanently.
What is usually excluded
Four things sit outside most white label quotes, and all four become invoices later if nobody asks:
- Creative production. Static and video assets are nearly always separate. Decide early whether you produce them, the partner does, or the client supplies them.
- Landing pages. Most partners will advise on the page and not build it, which leaves the biggest conversion lever owned by nobody.
- Tracking fixes. Server-side work, Conversions API, offline conversion import. Often quoted as a project and often genuinely necessary before the ads can be judged.
- Additional markets. A second country is usually a second account fee, not a small increment.
Where the margin in white label PPC pricing goes
The mistake we see most often is pricing the resale on the partner fee alone. The partner's fee is not your cost. Your cost is their fee plus the time your team spends on client calls, reporting, chasing approvals and handling the questions the partner never sees.
That client-facing time is substantial and it is the part that scales badly. Agencies that resell at a thin markup on the partner fee discover that fifteen accounts consume a full-time person who was never costed. Work out what an account costs you in your own hours before you decide the markup.
Questions to settle before the first account
- Who owns the ad account and the pixel data — you, the client, or the partner?
- What is the notice period per account, and can the client be transferred cleanly?
- Who talks to the client, and under whose name?
- What is the response time when something breaks, and does that include weekends?
- What happens to the fee during a month when the client pauses spend?
None of these are awkward questions and all of them get awkward later. We cover the rest of the diligence in eight questions to ask a white label PPC partner, and how the day-to-day actually runs in white label PPC explained. If you want to see our own arrangement, it is set out on the white label page.
Questions people ask before hiring
How is white label PPC usually priced?
Three ways: a fixed per-account retainer banded by ad spend, a percentage of managed spend, or hourly and per-task blocks. The retainer is the easiest to resell, the percentage scales but carries an incentive to spend more, and hourly suits irregular demand.
What is usually excluded from a white label PPC quote?
Creative production, landing page builds, tracking and measurement fixes, and additional markets. All four arrive as separate invoices later unless they are settled at the start.
What markup should an agency add?
Work it out from your own costs rather than a rule of thumb. The partner fee is only part of the cost — client calls, reporting, approvals and the questions the partner never sees consume real hours in your team, and that is the part that scales badly.
Who should own the ad account in a white label arrangement?
The end client, with both agencies added as users. It protects the client, it makes transfers clean if either relationship ends, and it avoids the argument about historical data that otherwise happens at the worst moment.
White label: Agency partner program