Pay-per-campaign ad management for small businesses

A small business owner decides to run a Facebook and Google campaign for a seasonal promotion. They need budget controls, creative scheduling, and basic reporting — but they're not running ads the other nine months of the year. When they Google options, every tool they find charges $69–$159/month with no pause, no per-campaign option, and no refund for idle months.

The gap persists because every major vendor in this space is built for agencies and in-house teams who run ads continuously. Their pricing reflects that assumption baked into the product architecture: seats, monthly active accounts, spend thresholds. There's no financial incentive for incumbents to introduce campaign-scoped pricing — it would cannibalize their recurring revenue from their most stable customer segment.

What users actually complained about isn't lack of features — it's being forced to pay for a subscription when their ad activity is genuinely episodic. One person said they want something around $39. Another said the budget feature 'was not functional for my client, leading to abandonment.' The abandonment is the key signal: these aren't tire-kickers, they're buyers who tried, hit the pricing wall, and left.

Without a campaign-scoped option, a small business owner either overpays every month for a subscription they barely use, manually manages ads inside native dashboards (painful and error-prone across two or more channels), or gives up on multi-channel advertising entirely. The need recurs every time they run a promotion — holiday, product launch, local event — which for most small businesses is two to six times per year.

What to build

Build a multi-channel ad management tool (Facebook Ads and Google Ads to start) that charges a flat fee per campaign activated — covering the period from launch to end date — with no monthly subscription, no spend threshold, and no charge between campaigns.

Where to start

Start with local service businesses (salons, gyms, contractors) running seasonal Google Ads campaigns — they're easy to find through local business Facebook groups and have a predictable, recurring trigger (holiday promotions) that makes the timing of outreach obvious.

The hard part

Campaign-scoped revenue is lumpy and hard to forecast, which makes it difficult to raise money or staff support — you'll need to size the per-campaign fee carefully enough to cover infrastructure and support costs without pricing out the very users you're targeting.

How it makes money

Flat fee per campaign activated (e.g., $19–$49 depending on number of ad channels and campaign duration), with no monthly subscription; volume packs sold upfront for businesses that know they'll run multiple campaigns a year.