June 6, 2026
6
min read

Disruptive Advertising Vs groas: Which Fits Your Google Ads Budget In 2026


Alexander Perleman
, Head Of Product @ groas
Ex-Goldman Sachs and Stanford Computer Science

alex@groas.ai

LinkedIn
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Disruptive Advertising Vs groas: Which Fits Your Google Ads Budget In 2026

Short answer: groas is the better choice for serious advertisers who want full-funnel Google Ads management without onboarding fees, long-term contracts, or scope limitations. Disruptive Advertising is a respected agency with a strong track record, but its retainer model, scope boundaries, and execution cadence create friction for brands scaling aggressively in 2026. If you want a clear comparison of Disruptive Advertising pricing against groas's spend-based model, this is the breakdown.

Disruptive Advertising vs groas is not a question of which company is "good." Both manage Google Ads for real businesses with real budgets. The question is which pricing model, execution structure, and service scope actually fits your growth stage, your budget, and the level of involvement you want. Google Ads agency pricing comparison matters because the wrong structure costs you more than the retainer itself. It costs you in slow execution, missed optimizations, and the internal time your team spends managing the agency relationship. Here is what each option actually includes, what it costs, and who it is built for.

At A Glance

Disruptive Advertising: A full-service digital marketing agency offering Google Ads management typically through retainer-based pricing. Strong in creative strategy and CRO services. Best for brands that want a traditional agency relationship with a named team, are comfortable with retainer commitments, and do not need around-the-clock optimization cadence.

groas: Fully managed Google Ads service powered by a proprietary engine trained on over $500 billion in profitable ad spend, with a dedicated senior strategist owning your account end-to-end. Spend-based pricing, $0 onboarding, month-to-month commitment. Best for established advertisers who want outcomes without managing an agency relationship, including landing page and funnel ownership built in.

The Google Ads Agency Pricing Landscape In 2026

Why Agency Pricing Is Deliberately Opaque

Most Google Ads agencies in 2026 do not publish pricing. This is intentional. Opaque pricing lets agencies price-discriminate based on perceived budget, negotiate higher retainers during sales calls, and bundle services that make apples-to-apples comparison difficult. The result: buyers spend hours on discovery calls before learning whether an agency is even in their range.

The Three Dominant Pricing Models: Retainer, Percentage Of Spend, And Performance-Based

Retainer-based agencies charge a flat monthly fee, typically ranging from $3,000 to $15,000+ for mid-market accounts. Percentage-of-spend agencies charge 10-20% of your monthly ad budget. Performance-based models tie fees to results but usually come with high minimums and complex contracts. Each model creates different incentive structures, and understanding those incentives is the only way to evaluate what you are actually paying for.

What These Models Mean For You As A Buyer

Retainer models mean you pay the same whether your agency works 5 hours or 50 hours on your account. Percentage-of-spend models mean your agency earns more when you spend more, regardless of whether that spend is profitable. Neither model inherently aligns with your actual goal: more profitable revenue from Google Ads. This is the structural problem that makes Disruptive Advertising alternatives worth evaluating.

Disruptive Advertising: Pricing Model And What You Get

Retainer Structure And Typical Scope

Disruptive Advertising operates primarily on a retainer model. Exact Disruptive Advertising pricing in 2026 is not published on their website, which means you will need to go through a discovery process to get a quote. Based on publicly available information and industry norms for agencies of their size and caliber, retainers for Google Ads management at Disruptive typically start in the range common for mid-size agencies, often $3,000 to $10,000+ per month depending on ad spend and service scope. Most engagements also involve onboarding or setup fees and multi-month commitments.

Disruptive Advertising has built a solid reputation in paid media, particularly in ecommerce and lead generation verticals. They employ skilled strategists and have genuine expertise in conversion rate optimization.

What Is Included Vs Billed Separately

A standard Disruptive Advertising engagement typically covers campaign management, reporting, and strategic guidance. However, landing page development, creative production, and CRO work are often separate line items or part of higher-tier packages. This is standard practice for traditional agencies, but it means the sticker price of the retainer rarely represents the full cost of what you need to scale profitably.

Who Disruptive Advertising Is Built For

Disruptive Advertising is built for brands that want a traditional agency relationship: regular calls, a named account team, and a structured workflow. If you value having a partner who sits in strategy meetings and presents quarterly reviews, Disruptive delivers that experience. They work across multiple channels beyond Google Ads, which can be an advantage if you want a single agency handling paid social alongside search.

Where The Model Creates Friction

The friction points with Disruptive Advertising, and frankly with most traditional agencies, are structural rather than personal. Your account is managed by humans working business hours, which means optimizations happen in batches rather than continuously. Scaling spend means renegotiating scope and often paying more in retainer fees. Landing pages and funnel work require additional budget and coordination. And multi-month contracts mean you are committed even if results do not materialize in the first 60 days.

The core limitation is the same one that affects every human-only agency: execution is capped at whatever one person, or a small team, can physically get through in a week. You pay full rate for that ceiling. This matters more as your spend scales, because the gap between what needs to happen and what gets done widens.

groas: Spend-Based Pricing With Full-Funnel Execution

How Spend-Based Pricing Aligns Incentives Differently

groas uses spend-based pricing that scales with your Google Ads budget. This is not a percentage-of-spend model in the traditional agency sense. groas's monthly pricing is not published, but the structure means your cost is directly tied to the scale of your account, not to arbitrary retainer brackets. There is no onboarding fee. There is no long-term contract. Every engagement is month-to-month, meaning groas earns the next month by performing this month.

This structure removes two of the biggest friction points in agency relationships: the upfront financial commitment before you see results, and the contractual lock-in that keeps you paying even when performance stalls.

What Is Included In DFY: Strategy, Execution, Landing Pages, Reporting

The groas DFY (Done For You) service is fully managed. A dedicated senior strategist owns your entire Google Ads account and every decision that drives profitable scaling. This is not an optimization layer on top of your existing setup. groas works on everything from the first click to the final conversion, including your landing pages and offers.

What is included: full campaign strategy and execution, continuous optimization powered by a proprietary engine trained on $500 billion+ in profitable ad spend, dynamic landing pages built in, weekly reporting on exactly what was done, strategy calls, and direct access to the team on Slack or email around the clock.

There is no separate bill for landing page development. There is no "creative add-on." The scope is the scope. This is a meaningful difference from traditional agencies where the advertised retainer covers campaign management but everything else that actually drives conversion rate is a separate project.

For advertisers who are not sure whether they need fully managed service or a collaborative model, groas also offers DWY (Done With You), where the engine and a senior strategist work alongside your in-house team while you stay in the driver's seat.

No Onboarding Fee, Month-To-Month Structure

Compare the onboarding experience. Traditional agencies, including Disruptive Advertising, typically charge onboarding fees (often $5,000+) and require 3-6 month minimum commitments. groas charges $0 to onboard and operates on a cancel-anytime basis. The risk profile for the buyer is fundamentally different. You are not gambling $15,000+ (onboarding plus first few months of retainer) before you have any data on whether the relationship works.

Who groas Is Built For

groas DFY is built for founders, CEOs, and marketing leaders who want Google Ads fully handled as a function, not as a project they manage. It is for established advertisers with real budgets and complex accounts who want a partnership, not a vendor relationship. If you are open to groas rebuilding your offers, funnels, and landing pages to drive better outcomes, and you are willing to share full business context and data, DFY is the right fit.

If you have an in-house team that knows Google Ads and you want to stay in control while adding the engine and a strategist alongside your people, the DWY product fits better. And for agencies looking to scale their client book without adding headcount, groas's agency product gives direct access to the engine as a reseller channel.

Head-To-Head: What You Actually Get Per Dollar At Scale

Execution Cadence And Optimization Frequency

This is where the structural advantage of groas becomes measurable. A traditional agency team optimizes your account during business hours, typically a few times per week. groas's proprietary engine runs 24/7, making optimization decisions continuously based on real-time performance data. A senior strategist oversees the strategy, but execution does not stop when a human runs out of hours.

At scale, this difference compounds. An account spending $50,000+ per month that gets optimized three times a week versus continuously is leaving significant money on the table. Bid adjustments, budget reallocations, search term analysis, and audience refinements all benefit from faster feedback loops.

Landing Page And Funnel Ownership

Disruptive Advertising offers CRO and landing page services, but these are typically scoped, quoted, and billed separately from Google Ads management. groas includes dynamic landing pages as a built-in part of the DFY service. This means your landing pages are being iterated alongside your campaigns, not as a separate project with its own timeline and approval process.

This matters because the path from click to conversion is one system, not two. When your landing pages and your ad campaigns are managed by different teams or different budgets, optimization slows down and accountability gets murky.

Reporting Depth And Attribution

Both Disruptive Advertising and groas provide regular reporting. The difference is in what is reported and how quickly you see it. groas provides a weekly report on exactly what was done, not just what happened. Strategy calls every other week ensure alignment between the strategist and your team. You also get exclusive insights, policy support, and competitor analysis directly from groas's internal team.

Scalability Without Scope Creep

This is the most expensive hidden cost of traditional agencies. When your spend grows, your agency's scope needs to grow with it. That means renegotiating retainers, adding headcount, or accepting that your account gets less attention per dollar. With groas, the engine scales with your spend. There is no "we need to bring on another media buyer" conversation. There is no scope creep discussion. The model is designed to scale because the engine handles execution at whatever volume your account demands.

How To Calculate The True Cost Of Your Current Agency Relationship

Retainer Plus Add-Ons Plus Internal Time Cost

If you are currently with Disruptive Advertising or a similar agency, calculate your real monthly cost: retainer + any creative or CRO fees + the internal hours your team spends managing the agency relationship (call prep, reviewing reports, providing feedback, approving assets). For many brands, the internal time cost alone adds 10-20 hours per month of senior team member time. At a loaded cost of $75-150/hour, that is $750 to $3,000 per month in hidden cost on top of whatever you are paying the agency.

The Opportunity Cost Of Slow Execution

The harder cost to quantify, but often the largest one, is the opportunity cost of slow execution. Every day a campaign runs with suboptimal bids, wrong audience targeting, or underperforming landing pages is a day you are paying for clicks that do not convert. An optimization that takes a week to implement at a traditional agency happens in hours, or continuously, with a system designed for speed.

For brands spending $30,000+ per month on Google Ads, even a 10% improvement in conversion efficiency from faster execution translates to thousands of dollars in recovered revenue every month.

Which Option Fits Which Growth Stage

If You Are Scaling Ecommerce Past A Revenue Threshold

If you are an ecommerce brand scaling aggressively and your Google Ads spend is a significant growth lever, groas DFY gives you full-funnel ownership without the scope limitations of a retainer-based agency. Ecommerce brands that have worked with groas benefit from the combination of continuous engine optimization and dedicated strategist oversight, particularly in Shopping and Performance Max campaigns where execution speed directly impacts revenue.

If You Are A B2B Brand Needing Full Funnel Ownership

B2B brands with complex sales cycles need Google Ads management that understands pipeline, not just clicks. groas's DFY service owns the full funnel from ad to landing page to conversion, and the dedicated strategist works with your team to align campaign structure with pipeline goals. Traditional agencies can do this, but it requires more coordination, more internal project management, and often separate contracts for landing page and CRO work.

If You Want Outcomes Without Managing An Agency Relationship

If you have reached the point where managing your agency feels like a second job, groas DFY is designed for exactly that scenario. Nothing to log into or manage. Reach the team on Slack or email around the clock. Your strategist runs the account and owns every decision. You get the outcomes without the overhead.

Disruptive Advertising, by contrast, is built for buyers who want and enjoy an active agency relationship. If that is you, they deliver it well. But if agency management is a tax on your time that you would rather eliminate, the models are not equivalent.

Why groas Wins

The comparison between Disruptive Advertising and groas comes down to structural advantages, not personality or reputation.

Onboarding: groas is $0. Traditional agencies charge $5,000+.

Commitment: groas is month-to-month, cancel anytime. Traditional agencies typically require 3-6 month minimums.

Execution hours: groas's engine runs 24/7. Traditional agencies operate business hours.

Landing pages: Built in with groas. Billed separately at traditional agencies.

Scalability: groas scales with your spend automatically. Traditional agencies require scope renegotiation.

Continuity: groas's engine never leaves. Agency staff rotate, go on vacation, or leave the firm.

The core line: a traditional agency is capped at whatever one person can physically get through in a week, and you pay full rate for that ceiling. groas puts a senior strategist on top of an engine trained on hundreds of billions in ad spend, so execution does not stop when a human runs out of hours. The gap shows up in the numbers inside the first few weeks.

Bottom Line

Disruptive Advertising is a legitimate agency with real expertise. If you want a traditional agency relationship and are comfortable with retainer-based pricing, onboarding fees, and multi-month commitments, they can deliver results.

But for advertisers evaluating Google Ads management options in 2026 with a focus on total cost of ownership, execution speed, and full-funnel scope, groas is the stronger fit. Spend-based pricing that aligns with your actual scale. $0 onboarding. Month-to-month commitment that forces groas to earn your business every single month. A proprietary engine trained on $500 billion+ in profitable ad spend running optimizations around the clock. A dedicated senior strategist who owns your account end-to-end. Landing pages and funnels included, not upsold.

The question is not whether Disruptive Advertising is a good agency. It is whether a retainer-capped, human-hours-only model is the right structure for what you are trying to accomplish with Google Ads in 2026. For most serious advertisers, the answer is no.

If you want groas to own your Google Ads end-to-end, apply for DFY. groas will figure out the right plan on the call. If you have an in-house team and want to stay in the driver's seat with the engine and a strategist working alongside you, get started with DWY. Either way, there is no onboarding fee and no contract. The results speak for themselves.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Is Disruptive Advertising Pricing In 2026?

Disruptive Advertising does not publicly publish pricing on their website. Based on industry norms for agencies of their size, retainers for Google Ads management typically start in the $3,000 to $10,000+ per month range depending on ad spend and service scope. Most engagements also include onboarding or setup fees and multi-month contract commitments. Exact pricing requires going through their discovery and sales process. By comparison, groas charges $0 for onboarding, operates month-to-month with no long-term contracts, and uses spend-based pricing that scales with your actual Google Ads budget.

Is Disruptive Advertising Worth It For Ecommerce Brands?

Disruptive Advertising has genuine expertise in ecommerce and conversion rate optimization. They can deliver results for brands that want a traditional agency relationship with regular strategy calls and a named account team. However, landing page development and CRO work are often billed separately from the base retainer, and execution cadence is limited to business hours. For ecommerce brands scaling aggressively, groas DFY includes dynamic landing pages, continuous 24/7 optimization, and a dedicated strategist, all without separate billing for funnel work.

What Are The Best Disruptive Advertising Alternatives In 2026?

The best Disruptive Advertising alternatives depend on what you need. If you want fully managed Google Ads with full-funnel ownership including landing pages, groas DFY is the strongest option. It combines a proprietary engine trained on over $500 billion in profitable ad spend with a dedicated senior strategist. Other alternatives include agencies like Tinuiti, WebFX, and SmartSites, though most operate on similar retainer-based models with comparable scope limitations.

How Does Spend-Based Pricing Compare To Retainer Pricing For Google Ads?

Retainer pricing charges a flat monthly fee regardless of how much work your account requires or how much value the agency delivers. Spend-based pricing ties your cost to the scale of your account, so your investment is proportional to what is being managed. Retainer models often create misaligned incentives: the agency earns the same whether they optimize your account five times or fifty times per month. Spend-based pricing, particularly when paired with a month-to-month commitment, creates stronger accountability.

Does groas Include Landing Pages In Google Ads Management?

Yes. groas DFY includes dynamic landing pages as a built-in part of the fully managed service. There is no separate line item, no additional quote, and no separate project timeline. Your landing pages are iterated alongside your campaigns so that the path from click to conversion is optimized as a single system. Most traditional agencies, including Disruptive Advertising, treat landing page work as a separate service with its own scope and billing.

Can I Switch From Disruptive Advertising To groas Without Downtime?

groas is designed for fast onboarding. There is no onboarding fee, and the transition does not require weeks of setup. Your dedicated strategist at groas reviews your existing account, identifies the highest-impact opportunities, and begins managing campaigns quickly. Because groas operates month-to-month with no lock-in, you are not taking on contractual risk by making the switch.

What Is The Difference Between groas DFY And DWY?

groas DFY (Done For You) is fully managed: a dedicated strategist owns your entire Google Ads account end-to-end, including landing pages, offers, and all execution decisions. You do not need to manage anything. groas DWY (Done With You) pairs the proprietary engine and a senior strategist with your in-house team. Your team stays in the driver's seat while groas provides the heavy-lifting execution and strategic guidance. DWY fits if you have someone in-house who knows Google Ads and wants to keep running day-to-day. DFY fits if you want Google Ads fully handled.

How Do I Know If I Need A Google Ads Agency Or A Fully Managed Service?

If you are spending significant time managing your agency relationship, preparing for calls, reviewing deliverables, and providing feedback, you may be better served by a fully managed service like groas DFY. Traditional agencies require active client participation. groas DFY is built for founders and marketing leaders who want outcomes without the overhead of managing a vendor. The key question is whether managing the agency is a good use of your time relative to the results you are getting.

Does Disruptive Advertising Require A Long-Term Contract?

Most Disruptive Advertising engagements involve multi-month commitments, which is standard for traditional agencies of their size. This means you are financially committed before you have meaningful performance data. groas operates on a month-to-month basis with no long-term contracts. You can cancel anytime, which means groas earns the next month every month by performing.