Rising Ad Costs Will Force Agencies to Prove ROI—or Lose Clients

Legal keywords now regularly hit $150+ per click. Home services aren’t far behind. And according to the 2025 Marketing Agency Benchmarks Report, 53% of agency leaders expect costs to keep rising.

At the same time, clients are asking harder questions. When cost-per-click jumps 30% in a quarter, "the campaigns are running" isn't an answer anymore. They want to know how many of those increasingly expensive clicks are turning into deals.

And that's the number you don't have ready.

When ad costs were stable, clients tolerated some ambiguity. Now they can't afford to.

Read More: How Constellation Marketing Proved 9x ROI and 70% of Earned Revenue for Their Client [Case Study]

The Problem: Rising Costs Meet Murky Attribution

When a client sees their cost-per-click jump from $120 to $156, the budget anxiety kicks in.

Suddenly, they need to see the math—which clicks turned into $50K contracts and which were time-wasters. Without that data, the doubt compounds with every invoice.

And here's where most agencies hit a wall: they can't connect the expensive click to the closed deal.

Google Ads will report "conversions,” but that's just:

• A form fill
• A button click
• A phone number tap

These could be from a real lead or from a spam bot. They won't tell you if the person who performed the conversion became a customer, or which specific campaign drove the call that closed.

The report shows that conversions are the #1 metric clients care about (47%)—not impressions, not clicks, not engagement. But for service businesses where phone calls drive most deals, "conversions" in Google Ads are just a proxy. The real question—which campaign drove revenue?—goes unanswered.

Why This Gets Worse as Costs Climb

When ad costs are stable and budgets are comfortable, clients tolerate some ambiguity. But when CPCs are climbing and the CMO is getting heat from the CFO, that tolerance evaporates.

Without clean attribution, you risk:

• Budget cuts to your best-performing channels because you can't prove they're working
• Continued spend on high-volume, low-value campaigns because they "look good" in platform dashboards
• Client churn when a competitor promises "transparent ROI reporting"

The agencies that retain clients through rising costs will be the ones who can say with confidence: "Here's exactly what your money bought, down to the lead."

How to Prove Your Work Is Worth It

When costs start climbing, you need to be able to prove your ROI in specifics:

"Your $11K in paid ads generated 37 leads. Twelve were qualified opportunities with a total deal value of $180K. Cost per qualified lead: $917. Three have closed for $65K in revenue so far."

To get this kind of evidence, agencies need to:

1. Track every conversion type in one place
   Calls, forms, chats—unified, not siloed across tools.
2. Tie every lead back to its source
   Not just "Google Ads" but the specific campaign, ad group, and keyword. Not just "Organic" but the landing page and referring source.
3. De-duplicate across channels
   One person who calls and fills out a form is one lead, not two conversions.
4. Connect leads to revenue
   Qualify leads, assign deal values, and tie closed business back to the campaigns that generated it.

This is the only way to answer the client's question: "What did my ad budget buy?"

Some agencies build this system manually, by routing all lead data into a master spreadsheet, using customer IDs or phone numbers to de-duplicate, and working with clients to mark which leads closed. It works, but it's labor-intensive and brittle. One missed webhook or manual import error, and your data is wrong.

The Easy Evidence-Gathering Solution

WhatConverts is built to close the attribution gap for agencies running multi-channel campaigns.

It tracks all lead types—phone calls, form submissions, live chats, and e-commerce transactions—in a single system. Every lead automatically captures full marketing attribution, down to the keyword level for paid search.

So instead of logging into five platforms and hoping you're not double-counting, you get one view:

• 47 phone calls: 34 from paid search (Campaign A: 18, Campaign B: 16), 10 from organic, 3 from social
• 23 form submissions: 15 from organic, 5 from paid search, 3 from social
• 8 live chats: 5 from organic, 3 from paid search

WhatConverts automatically de-duplicates leads across channels (flagging when the same person called and submitted a form), and lets you qualify and value each lead.

That's the conversation that justifies rising costs. And it's the reporting that keeps clients when competitors are pitching lower prices.

Why This Matters Now

According to the benchmarks report, 70% of agency leaders say reporting is "extremely important" for client retention. And 81% say strong relationships, not just campaign performance, are the top retention driver.

Relationships in 2025 are built on transparency. When clients are nervous about rising costs and every dollar is scrutinized, the agencies that survive are the ones who can prove value, clearly and consistently.

The client who asks "Should we keep spending?" isn't looking for reassurance. They're looking for data. And if you can't provide it, someone else will.

The question isn't whether ad costs will rise. The question is whether you'll be ready to prove the spend is worth it.

If rising ad costs have your clients asking harder questions about ROI and you're not sure how to answer with confidence, it might be time to see how WhatConverts connects every lead to revenue. Sign up for your free 14-day trial  or book a demo and find out if it's a fit for your agency.