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SEM · Google Premier Partner

An SEM agency that delivers conversions, not clicks.

When someone searches, they're deciding. Our job is to eliminate waste and win those decisions — conversion-built paid search across Google, Microsoft, and now ChatGPT, with every call, form, and sale tracked back to the keyword that earned it.

Google Premier Partner — Top 3%Microsoft Advertising PartnerPublished pricingNo long-term contracts
41%
cost per lead in 90 days — Pacific Northwest plumbing company.
Source: Client engagement · anonymized
3.8×
return on ad spend at four times the original budget — regional personal-injury firm.
Source: Client engagement · anonymized
Top 3%
of Google Ads partners nationwide — Premier Partner status.
99%
client retention — with no contract requiring it.
Source: Actuate Media
How we're different

The conversion signal is the strategy.

Most accounts fail quietly: campaigns run, clicks arrive, and nobody tells the platform which clicks became customers. Google and Microsoft reward relevancy — starve them of conversion data and your cost per acquisition climbs.

So we wire everything together first — analytics, ads, call tracking, forms, transactions — and feed every conversion back to the auction. That's how the plumbing client's cost per lead fell 41% in 90 days: not magic, signal.

  • GA4, Google Ads & call tracking wired together
  • Phone calls, web forms & transactions — all tracked
  • Google Business Profile feeding local signals
  • Quality score optimized keyword by keyword
  • Negative keywords pruned weekly
  • A/B tests on ads & landing pages

Illustrative dashboard — clients see the real one, live

SEM management fee
20% of spend
$500/mo minimum · retainer available per client

Published pricing. No mystery invoices.

SEM management runs at 20% of monthly ad spend — or a flat-rate retainer decided per client. Larger accounts can step down toward 15%. Every fee is itemized in the proposal — full fee details, including the monthly minimum, are in the FAQ below.

  • No setup fees
  • No long-term contracts
  • Retainer available per client
  • Live reporting dashboard
Get a free PPC account audit
Client reviews

What clients say on Google.

Or read them on Google.

SEM questions

Straight answers about paid search.

What SEM costs, how fast it works, and where it ends and SEO begins.

Ask us anything

SEM (search engine marketing) is paid advertising on search results — campaigns on platforms like Google Ads and Microsoft Ads where specific keywords trigger your ads and you pay per click. Targeting can be tuned by geography, device, and behavior, which makes it the fastest way to reach in-market buyers.

Technically, SEM once covered everything search — paid and organic. Today the industry (and this page) uses SEM to mean paid search: Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and now OpenAI Ads. SEO is its own discipline with its own timeline. Most of our clients run both — paid for leads this week, organic for market share next year.

Google Ads (Search, Performance Max, Shopping) as a Google Premier Partner, Microsoft Advertising (Bing, Yahoo, AOL) as a Microsoft Advertising Partner, and OpenAI Ads — clearly labeled placements inside ChatGPT conversations, the newest surface where search intent lives.

Two costs: your media budget, paid to the platforms, and our management fee — 20% of monthly ad spend with a $500 monthly minimum. The rate steps down as spend scales — larger programs run as low as 15%, or on a flat-rate retainer decided per client. No setup fees, no long-term contracts, every fee itemized in the proposal.

Traffic starts the day campaigns go live, and high-intent search typically generates leads in the first week. Real efficiency takes longer: A/B tests on ads and landing pages, negative-keyword pruning, and conversion-signal tuning run over the first several weeks. We set milestones at onboarding and report monthly.

A Google Ads–certified specialist on our own team — not a bot, not a white-label. You get a direct line to the person running your campaigns, a live dashboard, and a monthly strategy review that walks through what we changed and why.

Reviewed by
Brad Holly, MBA
Partner · Actuate Media

25+ years in performance-based digital advertising. Brad reviews every SEM program Actuate takes on — account structure, targets, and the monthly numbers behind them.

Last reviewed: July 2026 LinkedIn
Free PPC account audit

See where your budget stands — free.

Enter your site and we'll send a free PPC account audit: account structure, wasted spend, and your fastest wins. No obligation, no long-term contract.

  • Account structure & wasted-spend review
  • Competitive snapshot of your market
  • Tracking check — is the auction learning from your conversions?
  • A real human follow-up, not a robo-report

We'll never share your info. Real audit, real person.