Some of that is honest — markets do differ. But a lot of the vagueness is the product. If you can't compare prices, you can't comparison shop, and if you can't see how the fee is calculated, you can't see what the fee is for. So before you sign anything, it's worth understanding the three ways vet marketing gets priced — because each one pays the agency to do something different, and only one of them pays the agency to do what you want.
Model one: a percentage of your ad spend
The most common structure for Google Ads management: the agency takes 10–20% of whatever you spend on ads each month.
Follow the incentive. Every time your ad budget goes up, the agency gets a raise — whether or not your results do. Spend $2,000 a month, they earn one number; convince you to spend $5,000, they earn more than double, for roughly the same work. The honest version of this model exists, but the structure itself rewards exactly one behavior: growing your spend. "We should scale the budget" is sometimes the right advice. Under percentage pricing, you can never be sure whose budget problem it's solving.
Notice what it punishes, too. If the agency makes your campaigns more efficient — same results, lower spend — their fee goes down. The model literally charges them for doing the best version of the job.
Model two: the retainer with a term contract
The second structure is a monthly retainer — often $1,500 to $3,000+ for veterinary accounts — attached to a six- or twelve-month contract, usually with auto-renewal.
Follow this incentive too. The retainer is guaranteed for the term whether the work performs or not, which means the moment you sign, the economic pressure to earn your business ends until the renewal window. The contract, not the results, is what keeps you. That's why these agreements defend themselves so well — the term length, the renewal mechanics, the exit fees. When the paperwork is the moat, the paperwork gets the engineering. The paperwork is readable, though — the five clauses that decide how it ends are worth twenty minutes before you sign.
Model three: flat fee, month to month
Animaclarus is $750 a month, flat. No percentage of spend. No term contract. One practice per city.
Follow this incentive. I don't earn more when you spend more, so the only reason I'd ever tell you to raise your budget is that the numbers say it will pay you back. I don't have a contract holding you, so the only thing keeping the engagement alive next month is that the work earned it this month. Every structural pressure on me points at one target: results at the minimum spend that produces them — which happens to be the exact thing you want.
That's not virtue. It's plumbing. I built the pricing so that the lazy, self-interested move and the right move are the same move.
Why one practice per city
The exclusivity isn't a scarcity gimmick. It's the same incentive logic. An agency running Google Ads for two competing practices in the same market is bidding against itself with both clients' money — every keyword one client wins, the other paid to lose. Nobody can optimize honestly for both sides of the same auction. One practice per city means when I push your campaigns, there's no second client I'm quietly balancing you against.
The math to run before you hire anyone — including me
Pricing only means something against what a client is worth to you. So run your own number: take what a new client is worth to your practice in their first year — exams, diagnostics, dentals, whatever your actual mix is — and ask how many new clients per month the marketing has to produce to pay for itself.
At $750 flat, for most practices, the answer is: one. Often less than one. That's the bar the engagement has to clear every month to deserve to exist — and because there's no contract, the month it stops clearing that bar, you stop paying. I can't hide behind a term agreement, a percentage formula, or a report full of impressions. The fee is one number, the bar is one client, and the math is yours to check.
What the model requires of me
A flat month-to-month fee only works for an agency if clients stay because the work is good — there's no other mechanism. So everything else about how I operate falls out of this one pricing decision: you own your accounts and your site outright (here's how to check whether your current vendor can say the same), the reporting shows cost per new client rather than clicks, and if I ever stop earning the fee, you leave with everything and I lose a client. Which is exactly the arrangement you want your vendor nervous about.
If you want to see what the math looks like for your practice specifically — your market, your CPCs, your realistic cost per new client — get a free audit. It's the same numbers I'd be accountable to if you hired me, so you might as well see them first.