Cape Town is South Africa's most ecom-mature city and the originator of much of the African continent's DTC playbook. Yuppiechef, Superbalist, Faithful-to-Nature, and a long tail of design-led brands built the local mould.
Mon-Fri · 9am-6pm SAST · Same-day response if you fit
5 minutes with Patrick
$150M of context. Free audit at the end.
Verified across the platforms we run
Brands we've scaled
Who we run accounts for in Cape Town
Design-led home + lifestyle, premium supplements + wellness, fashion + apparel DTC, sustainable + ethical brands.
What we run inside every Cape Town account
What most agencies subcontract or charge as add-ons, we run in-house as part of the engagement. The Google + YouTube paid stack is the speciality. Everything below is included, not upsold.
Speciality
Search, Performance Max, Shopping, Demand Gen, Discovery. The full Google paid stack run by senior operators capped at 6 accounts each, with daily writing on the patterns we see across $150M+ of managed spend.
Speciality
Skippable, non-skippable, in-feed, Shorts, Demand Gen video. The video creative is built in-house, 18 units per 14-day batch with original scripts, direction, and editing. No client-supplied footage, no recycled US assets.
+ Included with every engagement
No add-ons. No upsells. No subcontractors.
5-10 conversion-rate-optimized pages per month, built in-house, indexed in Google.
18 video units per 14-day batch for YouTube + Demand Gen + UGC + product. Original scripts.
Static ads for PMax + Display + Demand Gen, plus product page + feed listing imagery.
Merchant Center compliance, GTIN + tax + shipping handling, suspension prevention + recovery.
Server-side GTM, Consent Mode v2, GA4 enhanced conversions. Not just the platform pixel.
AI baked into the daily operating cadence. Reporting, creative iteration, pattern detection.
The 90-Day Account Rebuild
Free · Lead offer
Step 00 · Pre-engagement
You apply against the qualification gate. Within days we deliver a real audit deliverable: where your account is leaking, what we would fix, and the rebuild plan we would run if you bring us in. The audit is free. The proposal happens inside it.
Proposal accepted · Engagement begins
Engagement starts here. Full-stack audit on the live account: structure, GMC, feed, creative inventory, tracking, full-funnel impact across every channel. The diagnostic depth most agencies skip because it is tedious.
Named milestones, asset production schedule, AI ops setup, channel cadence, POAS targets, weekly cross-channel readout. The plan you sign off on. The first rebuild ships inside week one.
Execute, measure, expand. YouTube, Demand Gen, comparison traffic, top-of-funnel informational. Surface area grows. POAS compounds. Reports go out without anyone touching them.
Performance-priced · Month-to-month · No retainer
Honest take. Each option wins where it actually wins. Pick the row you care most about and read across.
Performance-priced ecom Google + YouTube
Performance-priced. Pay on results.
1 operator capped at 6 accounts.
Founder runs the audit. Senior buyer runs day-to-day.
350+ ecom accounts of pattern-matching.
Onboarding window of 2 to 3 weeks.
Weekly, structured, documented.
5 to 10 per month, in-house.
18 video units per 14-day batch.
Modern conversion tracking, set up end to end.
POAS + MER + blended ROAS, weekly.
Month-to-month, no lock-in.
Retainer model
Fixed retainer regardless of result.
1 buyer juggling 8 to 15 accounts.
Senior on the sales call, often.
Broad portfolio, varied verticals.
Onboarding window of 4 to 8 weeks.
Monthly review deck.
Subcontracted or absent.
Client-supplied, sporadic.
Inherits whatever was there before.
Channel ROAS, monthly.
6 to 12 month minimum.
Marketplace media buyer
Hourly or low fixed. Cheapest option.
1 person split across 5+ side gigs.
Whoever bid lowest gets the job.
One-vertical specialist at best.
Onboarding window of 1 to 2 weeks.
When asked, ad hoc.
Out of scope.
Out of scope.
Out of scope.
Screenshot of the platform.
Project-based or weekly.
Full-time hire
Salary + benefits. Highest fixed cost.
1 person 100% on your account.
Junior hire learning on your spend.
One brand of context. Slow to compound.
Lives the brand every day.
Real-time, but only one set of eyes.
Bottlenecked by dev team.
Limited to in-house creative team.
Depends on dev team's priorities.
Whatever the founder wants.
Hire and fire cycle is months.
Why Ad-Lab
Most agency websites argue they care more, work harder, or have smarter people. The differences below are structural. they hold whether or not the team has a good week.
Our pricing model is tied to performance. The incentive alignment makes underperformance unprofitable for us, not just disappointing for you.
Kills incentive misalignment.
Patrick publishes one Google Ads piece every working day in The Operator Brief. The same brain inside your account is the one writing what you read first. No other agency in this category writes daily.
Kills agency-as-black-box.
At scaled agencies a buyer touches 12-18 accounts. Yours gets 30 minutes a week. Our cap is structural, written into hiring, and audited monthly.
Kills surface-level optimization.
We bill against performance, not the calendar. No retainer, no annual lock-in, no exit fee. The only agency in the ecom Google Ads space willing to be paid the same way our clients are.
Kills downside risk.
No Meta. No TikTok. No Amazon. Google Search, Shopping, Performance Max, YouTube Ads, Demand Gen get our entire attention. 99% of agencies dilute across 4-5 platforms.
Kills shallow expertise.
Patrick on strategy. Stephan on delivery. No SDR-to-AE-to-junior-buyer hand-off. The person who closes you is the person inside your account on day 1, day 90, and day 365.
Kills the bait-and-switch.
Brands we've scaled
I hired them about two years ago after being completely sick of agency after agency prom.
Ad-Lab has treated my small business like a large company. My sales have been increasing.
$20k → $170k/mo, 1500% ROAS
+45% revenue
PMax structure audit, branded-bleed audit, GMC suspension recovery, feed audit. Frameworks we run inside live $150M of spend.
Open38 Google Ads + DTC terms defined plainly. PMax, AI Max, Demand Gen, GMC, POAS, MER. Bookmark it.
OpenEvery question we answer on the audit call, written long-form. Pricing, contracts, timelines, GMC, attribution.
OpenStructured tracks for going from $30K to $300K of monthly Google Ads spend without burning ROAS.
OpenAlso in South Africa
South Africa FAQ
Yes. South African brands sourcing inventory in USD or EUR see margin compress when ZAR weakens. We measure POAS in ZAR, not USD-converted ROAS, and the audit call walks through exactly how FX moves change the break-even ROAS for your specific cost base. Hedging strategy is outside our scope but we'll flag when ad scaling is being subsidised by FX rather than real efficiency.
Yes. Most of our engagements run remotely with weekly Loom walk-throughs and an always-on Slack channel. The audit call is in your timezone (SAST). Quarterly we'll do a live working session over Zoom with screen-sharing on the live account. If you're in Cape Town, Joburg, or Durban specifically, we have dedicated city pages with timezone-specific booking windows.
Yes for ZAR-domiciled companies. Pricing structure mirrors our USD/EUR/AUD engagements, tier-based on managed spend, quoted on the audit call.
Rated 4.9 / 5 by 350+ ecom brands
Worked with Ad-Lab across 8 ecommerce businesses over 3 years. Last month, one brand alone did over $10M in revenue.
Lester J
Jan 2026
Been working with Ad-Lab for years. We barely need to check our ad account anymore. They know exactly who and where to target.
Omar
Jan 2026
Reply times within hours, structured kickoff process, and strategic thinking beyond basic account management. Never felt rushed or ignored.
Ryan
Jan 2026
Strategies across Google, YouTube, and Taboola delivered measurable, consistent growth. Proactive, transparent, and always in good hands.
Ajmal Rambocus
Jul 2025
Scaled our brand profitably across Google and YouTube. Super responsive in Slack and always testing new creatives that actually drive growth.
Dominic
2025
Helped us scale our stores profitably with Google and YouTube Ads. Professional, easy to work with, and clear weekly reports.
Suraj Neupane
Sep 2025
The best agency I've worked with, hands down. The team truly understand Google Ads inside out. Scaled consistently month-on-month.
Andrew Stewart
5 days ago
Our campaigns were a mess before Ad-Lab came in. They cleaned it up, rebuilt everything with solid logic, and we saw profitable results in week one.
Sarah Jenkins
1 month ago
Worked with Ad-Lab across 8 ecommerce businesses over 3 years. Last month, one brand alone did over $10M in revenue.
Lester J
Jan 2026
Been working with Ad-Lab for years. We barely need to check our ad account anymore. They know exactly who and where to target.
Omar
Jan 2026
Reply times within hours, structured kickoff process, and strategic thinking beyond basic account management. Never felt rushed or ignored.
Ryan
Jan 2026
Strategies across Google, YouTube, and Taboola delivered measurable, consistent growth. Proactive, transparent, and always in good hands.
Ajmal Rambocus
Jul 2025
Scaled our brand profitably across Google and YouTube. Super responsive in Slack and always testing new creatives that actually drive growth.
Dominic
2025
Helped us scale our stores profitably with Google and YouTube Ads. Professional, easy to work with, and clear weekly reports.
Suraj Neupane
Sep 2025
The best agency I've worked with, hands down. The team truly understand Google Ads inside out. Scaled consistently month-on-month.
Andrew Stewart
5 days ago
Our campaigns were a mess before Ad-Lab came in. They cleaned it up, rebuilt everything with solid logic, and we saw profitable results in week one.
Sarah Jenkins
1 month ago
Cape Town, South Africa
Pick a slot that works for you. We pull up your account before the call so we start on data, not introductions.
