The short answer. Digital Legates runs paid media across Google (Search, Performance Max, YouTube), Meta, LinkedIn, Amazon, programmatic, and native. Management fees range from ₹50,000/month for single-channel work to ₹4,00,000+/month for full-stack multi-channel with creative and CRO. Media spend is separate and always in the client's own accounts. Founder-led strategy; specialists in-house on ads, creative, landing pages, and analytics.
Below: the channels, the measurement model, the pricing, and the case studies. If you'd rather skip ahead — the channels list, the measurement approach, or the FAQ.
Three buyer profiles
we see the most.
The D2C brand scaling past ₹5 Cr on Meta.
You've hit a plateau on Meta CAC. New audiences fatigue, retargeting is over-served, ROAS is drifting down every quarter. You need a media team that can diversify across Google, YouTube, Amazon, and native — while keeping the Meta engine efficient — without you having to project-manage four agencies.
The B2B or professional service running Google Ads and hoping.
You're a CA firm, law practice, healthcare clinic, dental group, real-estate developer, or B2B service running Google Search Ads with someone else's account structure and no landing-page investment. Cost per lead is high, quality is low, and you have no idea which keywords actually close. This is a common brief for us.
The Indian brand launching into the US, UK, or Middle East.
You've saturated India and want to test a market where CPMs are higher but AOV justifies it. You need a team that can run paid in USD, GBP, or AED with the compliance, currency, and creative localisation to make it work — not a domestic team just widening the geo targeting.
Every platform
we run in-house.
Not "we can run" — we run. Every platform below has a dedicated specialist, an internal playbook, and monthly published QC checklists.
Google
Ads.
Search, Performance Max, Shopping, YouTube, Discovery, and Display. Still the highest-intent channel on the internet for most Indian businesses — and still the one most under-optimised because agencies treat it as set-and-forget.
What ships
- Full account restructure & audit
- Search campaigns with proper match-type strategy
- Performance Max with asset-group discipline
- YouTube: Video Views, Reach, Video Action
- Shopping / PMax feed optimisation
- Enhanced conversions & offline conversion import
- Bid strategy calibration by margin, not by revenue
- Search Query Reports mined weekly
Meta
ads.
The best top-of-funnel canvas that exists, but only if the creative iteration is happening at the pace it needs to. Meta rewards volume and variety more than cleverness — one great ad and a lazy account will lose to a competitor shipping 15 mediocre ads a week.
What ships
- Advantage+ Shopping & Advantage+ Audience
- Retargeting cohorts & exclusions
- Conversion API (CAPI) via server-side
- UGC production & sourcing
- Static & motion creative sprints
- Reels & short-form video
- Catalog ads for D2C / e-commerce
- Lead ads with instant forms
LinkedIn
for B2B.
The one channel where you can buy an audience by job title and firmographic. Ludicrous CPMs — that's the trade for the precision — which means only businesses with real ACV should be here. Below ₹5 lakh ACV, LinkedIn ads are hard to justify.
What ships
- Sponsored Content: Single Image, Video, Carousel, Document
- Message Ads & Conversation Ads
- Lead Gen Forms with CRM integration
- Matched Audiences (list, website, account, job title)
- Website retargeting via Insight Tag
- ABM (Account-Based Marketing) target lists
- Thought-leader ads through founder profiles
- LinkedIn Live sponsorship & event ads
Amazon
ads.
For D2C and consumer brands, Amazon is now the second-largest search engine for product intent in India. Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and DSP inside the Amazon walled garden — plus Flipkart Ads for the categories where Flipkart still leads.
What ships
- Sponsored Products: Auto, Manual, Product Targeting
- Sponsored Brands with Store & video
- Sponsored Display for retargeting
- Amazon DSP for premium inventory
- Amazon Store & A+ Content optimisation
- Keyword harvesting from Search Term reports
- Flipkart Ads for relevant categories
- Marketplace SEO within Amazon & Flipkart
Video
at scale.
Video is now the top-of-funnel default for most consumer categories. YouTube pre-roll, in-stream, bumpers, and shorts — plus connected-TV inventory via Google's CTV network. Cheaper CPMs than most agencies believe, if you're bidding correctly.
What ships
- Video Action Campaigns for conversion
- Video Reach for brand awareness
- YouTube Shorts placement
- Connected-TV placements
- Bumper & skippable in-stream
- Non-skippable in-stream where the creative earns it
- Content-based targeting via topic & placement
- Retargeting on YouTube via Google Ads
Programmatic
& native.
DV360 for premium display, Taboola and Outbrain for content amplification, MGID for the mid-market. Not every account needs this — but for content-heavy funnels, native traffic is under-priced and converts at 3–5% inside a good lander.
What ships
- DV360 setup & audience strategy
- Taboola & Outbrain campaign management
- MGID for tier-2/3 audience reach
- Native ad creative (headline + thumbnail testing)
- Deal ID negotiations with premium publishers
- Brand-safety controls & whitelist management
- Content-recommendation retargeting
- Advertorial & sponsored-content amplification
Retargeting
done right.
Most retargeting spend is wasted — same ad, same audience, seven times a day, until the buyer is annoyed. We sequence creative by funnel stage, cap frequency by cohort, and rotate offers so retargeting stays incremental instead of just tagging on view-through conversions to spend you would've earned anyway.
What ships
- Cohort segmentation by intent & recency
- Frequency caps by funnel stage
- Creative rotation by cohort
- Cross-platform retargeting (Meta + Google + YouTube)
- Cart, browse, and pricing-page retargeting
- Post-purchase retargeting for upsell / referral
- Exclusion audiences to avoid over-serving
- Incrementality testing quarterly
How we actually measure.
Platform attribution is broken in a post-iOS-14, post-third-party-cookie world. We stack three measurement layers so you always know which number to trust for which decision.
Platform reporting — for iteration.
Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn native reporting. Still useful for ad-level decisions (which creative won, which audience is under-serving). Never quoted as the truth number.
Server-side tracking — for the account view.
GA4 with server-side GTM, CAPI on Meta, Enhanced Conversions on Google, LinkedIn Insight Tag with server-side ingestion. Cleaner data, longer attribution windows, less iOS loss. This is the number we quote in monthly reports.
First-party truth — for the boardroom.
Post-purchase surveys, MMM-style geo-holdout tests, lift studies via Google or Meta. The number we quote when the CEO asks whether the media programme is actually working — not just whether the pixels say it is.
Real brands, real ROAS.
Full-funnel D2C paid across Meta, Google Shopping, and YouTube. Category-defining spend for a specialist e-commerce brand competing with global equipment sites.
Lead-gen paid programme for a sustainability brand — 2× improvement in lead quality with paid social managed alongside content and web.
Event marketing paid programmes for Jagran's flagship conclaves — geo-targeted Meta, YouTube video reach, and Google Search for registration-driven campaigns.
B2B paid for a chartered-accountancy firm. Google Search for high-intent tax and compliance queries, LinkedIn for founder-led thought leadership.
Ranged, published,
no theatre.
Management fee only. Media spend is separate, always paid direct to platforms, always in your own accounts.
Single-channel management.
₹50,000–₹1,00,000 / month. One platform (usually Google Ads or Meta), account restructure, weekly optimisation, monthly reporting, 4–8 creative assets per month. For brands validating a channel or with a small ad budget (< ₹5L media / month).
Multi-channel programme.
₹1,00,000–₹2,00,000 / month. Google + Meta + one other (LinkedIn, YouTube, or Amazon), creative production, landing-page audits, server-side tracking, monthly strategy call. For scaling brands with media spend of ₹5L–₹30L / month.
Full-stack media & performance.
₹2,00,000–₹4,00,000+ / month. All channels, dedicated UGC/creative sprint, CRO on landing pages, incrementality tests, measurement infrastructure. For D2C brands or enterprise accounts with media spend of ₹30L+/month.
Projects — one-off paid audits, account restructures, or measurement infrastructure builds — are quoted separately. Honest ranges: ₹1,00,000–₹3,00,000 for a paid-media audit across 2–3 platforms; ₹1,50,000–₹4,00,000 for a full server-side tracking build with GA4 + CAPI + Enhanced Conversions.
Paid-media questions without the spin.
How much does a paid media agency cost in India?
Two costs: management fee and media spend. Management: ₹50,000–₹1L for single-channel, ₹1L–₹2L for multi-channel, ₹2L–₹4L+ for full-stack. Media is separate and paid direct to platforms — you own the accounts.
Do you take a percentage of ad spend?
For smaller accounts, flat monthly retainer. Above ~₹20 lakh/month media spend we offer a hybrid — lower flat fee plus a small capped percentage. Never undisclosed platform commissions.
How quickly can paid media show results?
Google Search + Meta retargeting: 2 weeks if the offer and lander work. Performance Max, LinkedIn, cold Meta: 4–6 weeks to stabilise CAC. Full-funnel: 8–12 weeks to see the compounding effect where brand searches lift performance efficiency.
Do you build the ad creative — or do we?
We do. Static, motion, UGC, short-form video — all in-house. Every retainer includes a monthly creative sprint (8–20 assets per platform depending on tier) with named hypotheses and win/loss tracking.
Do you also fix the landing page?
Yes. Ad and lander are one system. Every retainer includes landing-page audits, dedicated LPs for major campaigns, and CRO sequenced with the paid programme. Bigger web builds are a separate scope, same team.
How do you measure ROAS honestly?
Three layers. Platform reporting for ad-level iteration. Server-side tracking (GA4 + CAPI + Enhanced Conversions) for the account-level truth. Post-purchase surveys plus MMM-style geo-holdout tests for the boardroom truth.
What platforms do you run?
Google (Search, PMax, YouTube, Discovery, Display), Meta (Facebook, Instagram), LinkedIn, Amazon (Sponsored + DSP), YouTube, native (Taboola/Outbrain), programmatic (DV360). Not Twitter/X — targeting quality is poor for most Indian businesses.
Who owns the ad accounts?
You do — always. We access via manager accounts. If we part ways, you keep every account, pixel, conversion event, audience, and historical spend. We keep nothing.
Ready to brief us on your paid programme?
30-minute discovery call. Bring your current ROAS numbers and monthly media spend — we'll bring a written audit and a shortlist of quick wins within 5 working days.