White-label PPC in Bulgaria: how it works and how much it costs
White label PPC means that an external specialist manages the ad accounts of your clients under your name. You keep the relationship with the client, the contract and the invoice; the execution happens behind the scenes. The partner takes on the campaign structure, bidding, keywords, ad materials and the monthly report, while communication stays with you. In Bulgaria the price is usually formed by two models — a fixed fee per account or a percentage of ad spend, the latter growing together with the client’s budget. The deciding question, however, is not the price, but who remains the owner of the accounts: if the ad account, the pixel and the conversions sit with the partner, then on parting you lose the whole data history and the optimisation starts from scratch.
My name is Hristiyan Panov — a performance marketing consultant with over 5 years’ experience and over €2 000 000 Managed advertising budgets for over 90 companies on Google and Meta. Below is an explanation of how the model works in practice, when it makes sense for an agency, and where it usually falls short.
What exactly does the partner take on?
The split is by function, not by accounts. The partner works inside the platforms, and you hold the relationship with the client.
- Strategy and structure of the campaigns against the client’s goals: which campaigns are opened, how they are split by product groups or services, what runs in search and what in Performance Max, what type of bidding the available volume of conversions can support.
- Day-to-day management — budgets, bidding, negative keywords, tests. This includes the review of search terms, the clearing of irrelevant traffic, creative rotation and stopping ad sets that burn budget without results.
- Monitoring and reporting, including reconciliation with the real orders: whether the conversion is counted once, whether the pixel and GTM pass a value in the correct currency, whether the UTM parameters reach GA4.
- Reports under your brand name, ready to forward to the client, with a description of what was changed during the period and on what basis.
What remains your responsibility: customer communication, the contract, pricing and deciding what to promise.
When does a white-label solution make sense for an agency?
- You have clients, but you lack the capacity to run PPC campaigns. Hiring someone costs a monthly salary and social security contributions, regardless of their workload.
- PPC is not your main service. If you build websites, do design work or work on SEO, maintaining a separate PPC specialism rarely pays off.
- The customer is larger than usual. An account with a budget of several thousand euros a month requires a different level of attention.
- You need a second pair of eyes. Sometimes the partnership is for a specific account that isn’t taking off.
When is it NOT worth it?
For very small accounts. Under €1 000 monthly ad budget, the margin between what you charge and what you pay becomes too thin, while the work does not shrink proportionally. The tracking setup, the weekly review and the monthly report take a similar amount of time for a small and a medium account.
It’s not worth it even if you’re just looking for someone to press buttons on your instructions. The value of the model lies in the judgement, not in the execution.
There are also situations in which the model breaks regardless of budget:
- There is no working tracking and nobody commits to fixing it. Without clean conversions, automatic bidding learns from the wrong signals.
- The problem is in the offer or in the checkout. Traffic to a page that does not convince raises spend, not orders.
- The client wants direct contact with the contractor. Then the roles blur and responsibility hangs between the two sides.
- The budget is changed without warning. A campaign whose funds are cut in the middle of learning never reaches stable data.
How is the price determined?
- Fixed account fee. Predictable for both parties. It works best with stable budgets.
- Percentage of advertising expenditure. It links pay to growth, but creates an incentive for the budget to increase.
- Combined. A base rate plus a lower percentage above a certain threshold. The most common option for larger accounts.
Whatever you choose, make sure you leave yourself a sufficient margin. An agency that charges the client 20% on top of its cost price has no buffer for the month when the account requires extra attention.
Who retains ownership of the accounts?
This is the most important issue, and it is settled at the outset, not when the relationship ends.
The correct model: The accounts belong to the client or your agency, and the partner is granted access. Upon termination, you retain the history, audiences and insights gained from the algorithm.
The incorrect model: The accounts belong to the partner. So, when the partnership breaks up, the client is left with nothing — and usually blames you, not the partner.
Before launch, go through item by item who owns each of the following:
- the ad accounts in Google and Meta and the business profiles they sit in;
- the pixel and the conversion dataset, together with the accumulated event history;
- the GA4 profile and the website’s GTM container;
- Merchant Center and the product feed;
- saved audiences and remarketing lists.
Access is granted to the partner’s email, not by sharing a password. Then withdrawing it goes through the access settings and does not affect the other users.
What does the reporting look like?
The reports are issued under your brand name, with no trace of the contractor. What matters is what they contain: genuine orders from the client’s system, cross-checked against the figures on the platforms, rather than just screenshots from the advertising account.
A working report brings together in one place the spend by channel, the orders from the client’s system, revenue, ROAS and CPA, and what was changed during the period. The numbers are pulled for the same period and in the same currency, otherwise the comparison has no basis.
A discrepancy between the two is normal up to about 20%. Beyond that, look for a cause. The usual ones are: a different attribution model and a different reporting window; conversions recorded by click date, not by order date; a duplicated event from the pixel and from the server connection; cancelled and returned orders that the platform does not see; traffic without UTM parameters that GA4 attributes to direct.
How does a partnership begin?
Usually with one account, not the whole portfolio. The first step is an audit of an existing account — it shows both the state and the way of working, before you have committed to anything.
The audit needs read access to the ad accounts, to GA4 and to the GTM container, plus the orders from the client’s system for the same period. Without the latter, every conclusion rests only on the platform’s numbers.
The review goes in order: first the tracking — whether conversions are unique, whether the value is in the correct currency, whether the pixel and the server connection are not duplicating; then the structure and the distribution of the budget; then the search terms and negative keywords; finally the creatives and the pages they lead to.
After the audit the scope is described: which accounts are included, who has the right to change budgets, when the reports come out and through which channel the questions flow. This conversation is easier while it concerns a single account.
FAQ — Frequently Asked Questions about white-label PPC
Will my client realise that it’s you who’s doing the work?
No. All communication goes through you, and the reports are issued under your brand. If necessary, I attend meetings as part of your team.
What is the minimum commitment?
An account with a monthly budget of over €1,000. Smaller accounts rarely justify the model for either party.
Who is liable to the customer?
You. That is why the decisions regarding promises, deadlines and prices remain yours — I provide my assessment and carry out the work; I do not bind your agency.
Is it possible to book just an audit or a consultation?
Yes. Some agencies use this model exactly like that — a second opinion on a specific account, without any long-term commitment.
What happens if we stop?
The accounts remain yours or the client’s, along with the entire history. This is a condition, not a concession.
Conclusion
White-label PPC isn’t a way to cut payroll costs. It’s a way to offer a service at a level you cannot maintain in-house — without incurring a fixed cost for capacity that won’t be utilised every month.
If you are considering this sort of model, start by setting up an account and carrying out an independent review of it.
Request a quote for a digital audit →
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