Google Ads · Long Beach & Anaheim, CA
From $568 a lead to $116.
Two years of Google Ads in greater Los Angeles — the most expensive market we work in. Every quarter published, including the campaigns of ours that burned money.
Extractors Junk Removal · Junk removal, cleanouts, light demolition · Google Ads client since Q4 2024
- Cost per lead — their last quarter vs. our latest
$567.87 → $115.55
Cost per lead — their last quarter vs. our latest
- Leads since takeover
385
Leads since takeover
- Era average, trending down eight quarters straight
$170.75
Era average, trending down eight quarters straight
- Named national brands in the same auction
six
Named national brands in the same auction
Market context
The most expensive market we work in
Greater Los Angeles. Clicks here run $5.56 on average across this account and hit $10.05 last quarter — nearly triple what the same click costs in Houston. The auction has 1-800-GOT-JUNK at 24.59% impression share, plus Junk King, Junkluggers, LoadUp, Vets Move Junk, and Thumbtack bidding on top of them.
Extractors holds 14.26% impression share in that room and lands top-of-page 51.15% of the time.
Read the numbers on this page against that market, not against a small town.
What we walked into
What the last agency did with a quarter
Q3 2024: $16,468.21 spent, 29 leads, $567.87 each. Ten campaigns, four of them named for what they targeted and the rest not named for much of anything.
That number isn’t an estimate. Those ten campaigns sum to exactly the quarter’s spend, which is how we know precisely where their work ends and ours begins.
The numbers
Eight quarters, one direction
| Quarter | Leads | Cost/lead |
|---|---|---|
| Q3 2024 — prior agency | 29 | $567.87 |
| Q4 2024 — first Adimize quarter | 56 | $183.48 |
| Q1 2025 | 36 | $214.24 |
| Q2 2025 | 75 | $202.22 |
| Q3 2025 | 63 | $198.07 |
| Q4 2025 | 18 | $134.72 |
| Q1 2026 | 62 | $144.08 |
| Q2 2026 | 39 | $117.68 |
| Q3 2026 (thru Aug 19) | 36 | $115.55 |
Engagement to date: $65,739 in, 385 leads out, $170.75 a lead. Trailing four quarters: $129.73. Latest quarter: $115.55. The line has gone one way for two years.
What worked
Beating the franchise at its own auction
Competitor conquest. Bidding into the searches the national brands own, in their own backyard.
Anaheim Junk Removal Competitor
115 leads at $95.66
Still running, still capped by budget.
Long Beach Junk Removal Competitor
53.5 leads at $97.25
Junk Removal, $35 target CPA
86.5 leads at $94.14
General Cleanouts, $80 target CPA
16 leads at $149.19
Running now.
In a market where the average click costs $5.56, buying leads at $95 means beating the franchise at its own auction.
What didn’t
And what it cost
The single largest line item in this account is one of ours, and it’s the worst thing in it: Specialty Removals at a $10 CPC cap. $17,007 spent. 29 leads. $586.46 each. More money than the prior agency spent in their entire quarter, at roughly the same cost per lead.
There’s more.
- ·Shed Removal: $603, zero leads
- ·A junk removal CPC test: $1,247, zero leads
- ·Specialty Removals at a $3 cap: $415, zero leads
Thirty-ninecampaigns exist in this account. Most of them are dead. That’s what finding the answer in a $10-click market actually looks like, and we’d rather show you the bill than pretend the competitor campaigns were obvious from day one.
Every agency has this list. Ask to see it.
Where it stands
The ceiling hasn’t been found — it’s been funded to a point
Five campaigns are live — though two of them are demolition builds that have spent under $100 combined against Anaheim’s $11,000, so the count flatters what’s actually running. The best one is limited by budget — meaning the ceiling here hasn’t been found, it’s just been funded to a point.
88% of spend goes to mobile, because junk removal is a phone business in every market, including the expensive ones.
Methodology
Where every number comes from
Figures from account-level Google Ads exports for the account Adimize manages (quarterly cost, conversions and average CPC; the full 39-campaign list; device and auction-insights breakdowns; account history June 14, 2024 – August 19, 2026, pulled August 19, 2026), reconciling to the account total of $82,207.54 and 414 conversions. The era boundary is derived from the data rather than estimated: the ten prior-agency campaigns (prefixed **LPin the account) sum to $16,468.21, exactly equal to Q3 2024 total spend, establishing Q3 2024 as the prior agency’s quarter and Q4 2024 as the first Adimize quarter. The prior-agency cost-per-lead of $567.87 rests on a single quarter and 29 conversions — a small sample we’re reporting because it’s the complete record of that engagement, not a selected window. “Leads” are conversions as tracked in this account. Cost-per-lead figures on this page reflect greater Los Angeles pricing and should not be compared directly against our case studies in smaller markets. No revenue or ROAS claims.
Your turn
Ask your ad manager for the dead campaign list
Not the winners — the ones that spent money and returned nothing. Ours are on this page, with the biggest one at the top.