At this spend, software alone leaves money on the table.
Autopilot finds what's leaking every night. But the decisions that actually move a bigger account, meaning what you sell, who you bid against and where the traffic lands, still need someone who has done it before. So you get both.
45 minutes. No obligation. We'll tell you if you don't need us.
What the machine is good at. What it isn't.
Being honest about the split is the whole reason this works.
What Autopilot does better than a human
- Never misses a night.
Ten modules rescored every single day, including the days everyone's busy.
- Reads everything.
Every search term, every asset, every ad group, not a sample.
- No ego about it.
It flags the campaign someone built and is fond of.
- Catches drift early.
A budget cap or a tracking break gets found the night it happens, not at the monthly review.
What a strategist does better than the machine
- Knows what you actually sell.
Margin, capacity, which jobs you want more of and which you'd rather decline.
- Reads the market.
What competitors are doing, what's changing in your category, what a seasonal dip actually means.
- Owns the big calls.
Account structure, offers, landing pages, what to stop doing entirely.
- Says no.
The recommendation that looks right in the data but is wrong for your business.
Run either one alone and you feel the gap. Run both and each covers the other.
How the hybrid actually works
Nightly, Autopilot audits
Ten modules, every campaign, ranked by dollars. Findings queue up with the reasoning attached.
Weekly, a strategist reviews the queue
Someone who manages Australian accounts for a living decides what gets applied, what gets ignored, and what needs a bigger conversation.
Monthly, the account gets rethought, not just tuned
Structure, offers, landing pages, budget allocation across services and locations. The things no audit module can decide for you.
Quarterly, the strategy gets challenged
What's working is scaled. What's plateaued gets replaced. You get a plain English view of where the money went and what it bought.
Why the $2,500 line
If you'd rather run your own account, the software on its own is the better answer, the same nightly audit and one click fixes, for $199 + GST (A$218.90) a month, without the cost of a strategist. Above roughly $2,500 a month, an account is usually complex enough that the difference between a competent setup and a well run one is worth more than the fee, and a strategist starts to earn their keep. That's the only reason the line is where it is.
Want to run it yourself? Ads Autopilot on its own →Why us
Since 2011
Search Marketing Group has been running Australian ad accounts for over a decade.
Google Premier Partner
Top tier partner status, reassessed annually against performance.
500+ Australian businesses
Service businesses, trades, health, professional services and ecommerce.
81 five star Google reviews
From the clients we manage, not from a review farm.
We built the software we use
Autopilot isn't a tool we licensed. It's the system our own team runs on every day, across every account we manage.
One account, one month.
Not a projection. An Australian service business we manage, over the 30 days to 17 August 2026, compared with the 30 days before it.
Cost per conversion nearly halved while spend more than tripled. The account was restructured around when the leads actually came in, and the wasted spend was cut out first.
Result from a Google Ads account managed by Search Marketing Group using the same audit playbook Ads Autopilot runs. Client not named at their request. Individual results vary , past performance is not a guarantee of future results.
What happens on the call
we look at your account
Send us read only access and we'll run the audit before we speak, so the call isn't spent gathering basics.
we tell you what we found
The three things costing you most, and what we'd do about them. You get that whether or not you work with us.
a written plan
Scope, what we'd change first, and what it costs. No pressure and no lock in contract.
Let's look at the account first.
Book 45 minutes. If the software on its own is the right answer for you, we'll say so.