Terms of service

01Who we are

These terms are issued by Ascend Media, a Google Ads agency registered and based in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, reachable at support@ascend-media.io. Our full registration details appear on our quotes and invoices.

We work with ecommerce brands internationally, including across the Benelux and DACH regions. In these terms, "we", "us" and "Ascend" mean Ascend Media. "You" and "Client" mean the business that engages us. "Services" means the work described in section 3 and specified in your proposal.

02When these terms apply

These terms apply to every quote, engagement and agreement between Ascend and a Client, and to any use of this website. By accepting a proposal, signing an agreement, or instructing us to begin work, you accept these terms.

We contract with businesses acting in a professional or commercial capacity. Our services are not offered to consumers.

Your own general terms and conditions are expressly rejected and do not apply, unless we accept them in writing. Where a signed proposal, statement of work or data processing agreement conflicts with these terms, that document prevails for the point it covers; these terms govern everything else.

03Our services

Depending on what your proposal specifies, our services may include:

• Audit and restructuring of Google Ads accounts
• Ongoing campaign management, bidding and budget allocation across Search, Shopping, Performance Max and related campaign types
• Product feed and Google Merchant Center work, including diagnosing disapprovals and feed optimisation
• Conversion tracking and measurement review
• Reporting and a dashboard built around your account
• Advice on landing pages, creative and conversion rate, where agreed

We perform the Services with the care and skill reasonably expected of a competent agency. Our obligation is one of effort and diligence, not of a guaranteed commercial result — see section 12.

We may use subcontractors or freelancers for parts of the work. We remain responsible to you for work they perform, and they are bound by the same confidentiality obligations we are.

04How we work with you

These are commitments, not marketing. If we fail to meet one, tell us and we will put it right.

• You deal with the people doing the work. Your account is not handed to a junior or an outsourced team you never meet.
• We work inside your own accounts. You keep ownership and full visibility at all times, and you can look at everything we do as we do it.
• We never mark up your advertising spend. You pay Google directly. We take no commission, rebate or kickback from any platform or third party.
• No long-term lock-in. The engagement runs month to month, as set out in section 8.
• Honest reporting. We report what actually happened, including when something we tried did not work, and we will not present a favourable metric to distract from a poor one.
• We say so when we cannot help. If we do not believe we can improve your results, or that paid search is not your bottleneck, we will tell you rather than take the fee.
• No surprise changes. We discuss material changes in strategy or budget with you before making them.
• Reasonable responsiveness. We aim to respond to messages within one business day, and to tell you promptly when something breaks.
• Conflicts. We will not take on a direct competitor of yours in the same market and language without telling you first.

05What we charge

Our fee for ongoing management is calculated per calendar month, and depends on the return on ad spend achieved in that month:

The two are alternatives, not additions — in any given month you pay one or the other, never both.

How ROAS is measured. Unless your proposal states otherwise, ROAS means the conversion value attributed to the Google Ads campaigns we manage, divided by the advertising spend on those campaigns, for the calendar month in question, as reported in your Google Ads account. Because it is measured monthly, the basis of the fee can differ from one month to the next.

Setup, audit or one-off project work is quoted separately and stated in your proposal. Any such quote is valid for 30 days from the date of issue and is not binding until accepted in writing, which includes acceptance by email.

We may adjust our fee structure once per 12 months by giving at least 30 days' written notice. If you do not accept the adjustment, you may end the engagement with effect from the date it would take effect.

06Advertising spend

You set the budget. We manage within it and will not knowingly exceed an agreed budget without your approval, but platform pacing means daily spend can fluctuate above or below the daily average — Google's own terms permit this, and it is outside our control.

07Invoicing and payment

Because we are established in the United Arab Emirates, our invoices are issued free of tax: no VAT or sales tax is added to our fee.

If you are established elsewhere, you may still have your own local tax obligations on services bought from abroad — in the EU this is usually the reverse-charge mechanism. Accounting for any such tax is your responsibility, not ours, and we recommend confirming the position with your accountant.

Performance-based fees are invoiced in arrears, after the month they relate to, once the month's spend and conversion value are final. Fixed monthly fees and one-off project fees are invoiced as stated in your proposal. Invoices are payable within 14 days of the invoice date, in euros unless agreed otherwise, by the method stated on the invoice.

If an invoice is not paid on time, we may charge interest on the overdue amount at 1% per month, or the maximum rate permitted by applicable law if that is lower, together with reasonable costs of recovery.

Disputes about an invoice must be raised in writing within 14 days of the invoice date. Raising a dispute does not suspend your obligation to pay any undisputed amount.

08Term and cancellation

The engagement runs month to month. There is no minimum term, no fixed contract period, and no cancellation penalty.

You may end the collaboration with effect from the end of any calendar month. We ask that you tell us at the beginning of the month — within the first five days — so that we can stop work cleanly, close out reporting and hand everything over properly.

If you cancel later in the month instead, the engagement still ends at the end of that month, and our fee for that final month is calculated on the advertising spend that ran up to the date you cancelled: 10% of that spend if a ROAS of 2.0 or higher was reached on it, or the €199 fixed fee pro-rated to the days worked, if it was not.

We may end the engagement on the same basis, giving you as much notice as we reasonably can. On termination we remove our access on request, leave your account structure and history intact, and invoice only what is genuinely due.

09What we need from you

For us to do the work, you agree to:

• Provide timely access to the accounts and tools we need, including Google Ads, Merchant Center, analytics, tag management and your ecommerce platform
• Keep a valid payment method on your advertising accounts
• Give accurate and complete information, including margin, product and stock data where the strategy depends on it
• Respond to approval requests and questions within a reasonable time
• Ensure your products, claims, landing pages and website comply with applicable law and with the advertising platforms' policies
• Hold the rights to any material you supply for use in ads
• Tell us in advance about changes that affect campaigns, such as site migrations, replatforming, tracking changes, stock issues or pricing changes

If delays or inaccurate information on your side hold up the work, any agreed timelines shift accordingly and we are not liable for the consequences.

10Accounts and ownership

Your advertising accounts, and the data in them, remain yours. Wherever the platform allows, we work through delegated or linked access rather than taking ownership of your account.

When the engagement ends, we remove our access on request and leave the account structure, campaigns and history in place. We will not delete campaigns, hold accounts hostage, or condition the return of access on anything other than payment of undisputed invoices already due.

Where we create an account or asset on your behalf, we transfer it to you at the end of the engagement at your request.

11Third-party platforms

Our work depends on platforms we do not control, principally Google. You remain bound by those platforms' own terms and policies, and we cannot override them.

We are not liable for: policy decisions, ad or product disapprovals, account suspensions, changes to auction dynamics, bidding algorithms, reporting or attribution models, outages, data loss on a platform's side, or changes to a platform's terms, pricing or feature set. We will of course work with you to resolve such issues where we reasonably can.

12Results and expectations

We cannot guarantee fast results, and we do not promise specific ones. No particular return on ad spend, revenue, conversion volume, cost per acquisition, ranking or impression share is guaranteed, and no timeline to reach any of them is guaranteed either.

What we do commit to is this: we will do everything reasonably within our control to get your account profitable as quickly as possible, and we will tell you honestly how it is progressing along the way.

Accounts differ. Some turn around within weeks; others need tracking fixed, a feed rebuilt or pricing addressed before paid search can work at all. Performance also depends on factors outside our control, including your pricing and margins, product and stock availability, site speed and conversion rate, seasonality, competitor behaviour, auction dynamics and platform changes.

Any figures we publish or discuss — including case studies, aggregate statistics on our website, benchmarks, projections and forecasts — are illustrative, based on past work or reasonable estimates at the time, and are not a promise, warranty or contractual commitment about your results.

13If you are not satisfied

Our goal is straightforward: that you make a profit. If you are not happy with the results, tell us early rather than at the end — most problems are fixable while there is still time to fix them.

When results fall short, we will review the account with you, explain honestly what we think is causing it, and set out what we would do differently. If we conclude we are not the right agency for your account, we will say so.

Where the outcome has genuinely not matched what was reasonable to expect, we will always work with you in good faith to reach a fair arrangement for both sides. Depending on the situation that might mean adjusting the fee, crediting a month, extending work at no charge, or parting ways cleanly with no penalty. Nothing in this section creates an automatic right to a refund, and it does not limit the rights you have under section 8 to end the engagement at any month's end.

14Confidentiality and discretion

We treat everything about your business as confidential. In practice that means:

• We never share personal information with anyone. Not your details, not your team's, and not the personal data held in your accounts.
• We never disclose your website, your products or your identity as a client. We do not name you, show your store, list your domain, or use your logo — not in case studies, not in pitches to other brands, not on social media, and not in conversation with other clients.
• Your commercial data stays yours. Margins, pricing, supplier information, revenue figures, strategy and performance data are never passed on, sold or used for anyone else's benefit.
• We do not use one client's data to benefit another. General experience and know-how we gain is ours to keep; your specific data is not.

Any public reference to work we have done is anonymised and non-identifying, unless you have given us prior written consent to be named — and you can withdraw that consent at any time.

Each party keeps the other's confidential information confidential and protects it with at least reasonable care. This does not apply to information that is public through no breach, was already lawfully known, is independently developed, or must be disclosed by law or court order, in which case the disclosing party is notified where legally permitted. These obligations continue indefinitely for personal data, and for 3 years after the engagement ends for other confidential information.

15Personal data

Where we process personal data on your behalf, you are the controller and we are the processor. A data processing agreement forms part of the engagement and governs that processing; where it conflicts with these terms, it prevails.

Although we are based in the United Arab Emirates, we apply GDPR standards to the personal data of clients and their customers in the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, and the GDPR applies directly to us where we offer services to clients there.

You are responsible for having a valid legal basis and the necessary consents and disclosures for the data you provide or ask us to use, including any customer lists uploaded for audience targeting, and for the lawfulness of the tracking deployed on your website.

Our handling of personal data is described in full in our privacy policy.

16Intellectual property

You own your brand, content, product data and anything you supply to us. Once our invoices for the relevant work are paid, you receive a perpetual, non-exclusive licence to use the deliverables we produce for you — campaign structures, ad copy, feed rules, reports and documentation — in your own business.

We retain ownership of our own methods, templates, scripts, tools, checklists and know-how, including anything developed before or outside the engagement, and we remain free to use the general knowledge and experience gained.

17Liability

Our total liability arising from or connected with the engagement is limited, per event and per calendar year in aggregate, to the fees you paid us in the 3 months preceding the event giving rise to the liability. A series of connected events counts as one event.

We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, including lost profit, lost revenue, lost savings, lost goodwill, business interruption, or loss arising from claims by third parties.

We are not liable for advertising spend incurred through campaigns operating as configured or approved, for the acts of third-party platforms as described in section 11, or for loss resulting from inaccurate or late information from you.

None of these limitations applies to liability arising from fraud, wilful misconduct or gross negligence on our part, or to any liability that cannot be limited or excluded under applicable law.

Any claim lapses if it is not notified to us in writing within 12 months of the date you became aware, or reasonably should have been aware, of the event giving rise to it.

18Force majeure

Neither party is liable for failing to perform because of events beyond its reasonable control, including outages or failures of third-party platforms and infrastructure, internet or hosting failures, cyber attacks, power failures, strikes, government measures, pandemics and natural disasters.

If such an event lasts longer than 60 days, either party may end the engagement in writing without owing compensation, without prejudice to amounts due for work already performed.

19Suspension and termination

Either party may terminate with immediate effect, in writing, if the other materially breaches these terms and fails to remedy the breach within 14 days of written notice, or becomes insolvent, enters liquidation or ceases business.

We may suspend the Services if an invoice remains unpaid more than 14 days after its due date, after notifying you. Suspension does not relieve you of payment obligations, and we are not liable for performance lost during a suspension caused by non-payment.

On termination: fees for work performed up to the termination date remain payable, any prepaid fees for services not yet delivered are refunded on a pro-rata basis, we remove our account access on request, and the provisions on confidentiality, personal data, intellectual property, liability and governing law survive.

20Use of this website

This website is provided for information. We take care to keep it accurate but give no warranty that it is complete, current or error-free, and content may change without notice.

Nothing on this site is a binding offer, and nothing on it constitutes legal, tax or financial advice. Links to third-party sites are provided for convenience; we are not responsible for their content. The site's text, design, logo and graphics are ours or our licensors' and may not be copied or reused without permission.

21Changes to these terms

We may amend these terms. The current version is always on this page, with the date at the top. For ongoing engagements, we give at least 30 days' written notice of a material change; if you do not accept it, you may end the engagement with effect from the date the change takes effect. Changes never apply retroactively to work already performed.

22Governing law and disputes

These terms and any engagement are governed by the laws of the United Arab Emirates as applied in the Emirate of Dubai. Disputes are submitted to the competent courts of Dubai, without prejudice to our right to bring proceedings in the court with jurisdiction over your registered office.

Before starting proceedings, both parties will make a genuine attempt to resolve the matter directly, in line with section 13.

If any provision is found void or unenforceable, the rest remains in force and the provision is replaced by a valid one approximating its purpose as closely as possible. If these terms are translated, the English version prevails in the event of a discrepancy.

23Contact

Questions about these terms:

• Email: support@ascend-media.io
• Based in: Dubai, United Arab Emirates

See also our privacy policy.