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-nine campaigns 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.
Year two · Long Beach, CA · Jul–Sep 2025 vs Jul–Sep 2026
Year two: clicks cost twice as much, calls got cheaper.
The same three months, a year apart. A click cost $4.31 on average in Jul–Sep 2025 and $9.43 in Jul 1–Sep 28, 2026. A qualified call got 38% cheaper anyway.
- Qualified calls from ads
63 → 68
Qualified calls from ads
- Ad spend, shown in full
$12,478 → $8,334
Ad spend, shown in full
- Cost per qualified call
$198.07 → $122.56
Cost per qualified call
Average cost per click: $4.31 → $9.43. Calls of any length: 293 → 291, at $42.59 → $28.64 a call.
What changed
- We cut a campaign that spent $8,516 for 14 qualified calls in Jul–Sep 2025. It didn’t run in Jul–Sep 2026.
- We consolidated the budget into an Anaheim-area search campaign. Its share of the searches it was eligible for went from 15% to 32%. In Jul 1–Sep 28, 2026 it spent $7,659 for 66 qualified calls.
The market
This is a high-cost metro: the average click here cost $9.43 in Jul 1–Sep 28, 2026, 2.2× what it cost a year earlier.
Qualified calls from ads, by month
| Month | Qualified calls |
|---|---|
| Jul 2025 | 38 |
| Aug 2025 | 18 |
| Sep 2025 | 7 |
| Oct 2025 | 6 |
| Nov 2025 | 6.5 |
| Dec 2025 | 5.5 |
| Jan 2026 | 26 |
| Feb 2026 | 26 |
| Mar 2026 | 10 |
| Apr 2026 | 9 |
| May 2026 | 18 |
| Jun 2026 | 12 |
| Jul 2026 | 22 |
| Aug 2026 | 26 |
| Sep 2026 (partial, through Sep 28) | 20 |
Cost per qualified call, by month
| Month | Cost per qualified call |
|---|---|
| Jul 2025 | $178 |
| Aug 2025 | $258 |
| Sep 2025 | $151 |
| Oct 2025 | $102 |
| Nov 2025 | $113 |
| Dec 2025 | $196 |
| Jan 2026 | $123 |
| Feb 2026 | $163 |
| Mar 2026 | $150 |
| Apr 2026 | $47 |
| May 2026 | $113 |
| Jun 2026 | $178 |
| Jul 2026 | $106 |
| Aug 2026 | $116 |
| Sep 2026 (partial, through Sep 28) | $150 |
Jul–Sep 2025 vs Jul 1–Sep 28, 2026
Cost per qualified call
Lower is better.
Average cost per click
Each click cost 2.2× as much.
How this chapter was measured: “Qualified calls” are calls from ads counted as conversions (the “Calls from ads” action): calls long enough to count as a conversion in Google Ads. Cost per qualified call = ad spend ÷ qualified calls (derived). Calls of any length are Google Ads call reporting and are shown separately. In July–September of both years this was the account’s only conversion action, so for these months a qualified call and a “lead” in the chapters above are the same thing. The Q3 2026 cost per lead above ($115.55) covers July 1–August 19, the date of that pull; this chapter runs to September 28 ($122.56). Source: Google Ads monthly cost, clicks, calls and conversions by action, and campaign-level cost, conversions and search impression share, July 2025 – September 28, 2026, pulled September 29, 2026.
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; the year-two chapter’s “qualified calls” are the “Calls from ads” conversions, which were the only conversions recorded in July–September of 2025 and 2026. That chapter uses a separate Google Ads pull through September 28, 2026, described with it. 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.