Certification and account setup
LegitScript and Google Ads certification are the gate. We get you through both, then build account structure so one policy strike does not take down every campaign.
The short answer
Healthcare PPC is paid search and paid social for providers, run under ad policies most industries never encounter. Google requires LegitScript certification plus a separate Google Ads certification before an addiction treatment provider can advertise in the US. Personalized advertising rules bar remarketing audiences built on health conditions. HHS has stated that third-party tracking pixels on a provider's site raise HIPAA obligations when they transmit identifiable health information to a vendor. Campaigns get built inside those limits and judged on cost per admission rather than cost per click.
typical cost per click on core treatment terms — pull from managed accounts
Cost per click on competitive treatment keywords
$50,000 – $100,000
Monthly ad spend our best-fit accounts run
What it includes
Healthcare PPC Agency: what it covers
Search campaigns by intent, not by service
Separate campaigns for insurance searches, level-of-care searches, geographic searches, and crisis searches. They convert at different rates and deserve different bids and different landing pages.
Negative keyword discipline
The largest single lever on wasted spend. Jobs, licensing, free programs, court-ordered searches, and student research all look like treatment intent and none of them admit.
Landing pages built for calls
Phone number above the fold, tracked, and answered. Not the homepage. Not a form-only page that a family in crisis at midnight will never fill out.
Privacy-safe conversion tracking
Call tracking and conversion measurement configured so protected health information does not flow to ad platforms, using offline conversion imports where the platform pixel cannot be used.
Reporting to cost per admission
Spend to calls to qualified calls to admissions. Cost per click is an input, not a result, and we do not lead a report with it.
The policy layer nobody warns you about
Google restricts advertising for addiction services. To run in the US you need LegitScript certification for the facility and then a separate Google Ads certification tied to it. LegitScript reviews licensure, ownership, business practices, and marketing conduct, and the process takes weeks. Facilities regularly build campaigns first and discover the gate afterward.
There is more underneath it. Google's personalized advertising policy treats substance use and mental health as sensitive categories, which limits remarketing and audience targeting built on those interests. Medication-assisted treatment carries its own restrictions tied to prescription drug advertising rules. Meta applies restrictions of its own and enforces them with less explanation and faster account suspensions.
None of this is a reason to avoid the channel. It is the reason accounts get built once, correctly, with certification in hand before a dollar is spent.
Where the money leaks
Broad match with automated bidding will spend your entire budget on searches from people looking for jobs at a rehab, students writing papers, and families in states you do not serve. In a category this expensive that is a five-figure lesson inside a month. Negative keyword lists in this vertical run to hundreds of terms and get worked weekly.
The second leak is the landing page. Sending paid traffic to a homepage costs you the majority of the clicks you paid for. A person searching "detox near me insurance" at 2am needs a phone number, an answer about coverage, and nothing else on the screen.
The third is answering. Roughly share of after-hours paid calls that go unanswered at new clients — verify of the calls a paid campaign generates arrive outside business hours. Every unanswered one was paid for at full price.
Tracking without creating a HIPAA problem
HHS guidance on online tracking technologies put providers on notice that analytics and advertising pixels on pages tied to health services can transmit protected health information to vendors who have no business associate agreement with the covered entity. An IP address plus a page about a specific condition can be enough to identify an individual and a health condition.
So the tracking gets built deliberately. Conversion signals go back to the ad platforms through offline import from the CRM rather than through a pixel that fires on a page carrying health context, and platform tracking stays off the pages where it does not belong. Measurement stays intact. The data going out the door does not include what should not leave.
This is the part most PPC agencies skip because they have never worked inside a covered entity. It is also the part that shows up in an audit.
Free audit
Want this looked at on your site?
We audit your rankings, ads, and call tracking, then show you where admissions are leaking. Yours to keep either way.
Prefer the phone? (561) 269-2833
Who we help
Programs we run this for
Drug and alcohol rehab
Fourteen years in behavioral health, all of it spent getting rehab centers on the phone with people who need a bed. We know your competitors, we know which searches produce a call, and we know which ones only produce a report.
Drug and alcohol detox
Somebody decides to stop drinking at 11pm. Whoever comes up in the results and answers the phone gets the admission, and we build the system that does both.
Suboxone clinics
The whole category runs on one question: can I be seen today. Clinics that answer it on the page get the call, and clinics that hide it behind a contact form lose to a telehealth company two states away.
Ketamine clinics
Your patient has already tried two or three antidepressants and a course of therapy, and they will read for weeks before they call. We put you in front of that reading and track the call back to the page that earned it.
Spravato providers
We market REMS-certified Spravato centers. The page that explains the difference honestly is the page that gets the call.
TMS clinics
We market TMS clinics running NeuroStar, BrainsWay, MagVenture, and accelerated protocols. A course of treatment is six weeks of daily visits and a payer fight, and marketing that stops at the form fill never sees either.
Further reading
Written on this in more depth
No gate and no form. These go further than a services page reasonably can.
Does your recovery center need a Google Ads agency?
When a Google Ads agency for rehab is worth the fee, when running it in-house is smarter, and the questions that expose an agency in one call.
Drug rehab PPC
Drug rehab PPC managed for phone calls, not clicks. Call-only campaigns, a negative list rebuilt weekly, and tracking that ties an admission to its keyword.
PPC for mental health centers
Mental health PPC managed for intake calls, not clicks. Payer-aware targeting, restricted-category ad policy, and call tracking on every campaign.
PPC for TMS clinics
PPC advertising for TMS clinics built around treatment-resistant depression intent, insurance prior authorization, and calls tracked to booked consults.
FAQ
Questions we get asked
Do we need LegitScript certification to run Google Ads?
For addiction treatment advertising in the US, yes. LegitScript certification comes first, then Google Ads addiction services certification on top of it. Budget several weeks and a certification fee paid to LegitScript, not to us. Mental health and general medical advertising have different requirements.
What should we expect to spend?
Clicks on core treatment terms are among the most expensive in any industry. The accounts we run best sit between $50,000 and $100,000 a month in ad spend. Below that, conversions arrive too slowly to separate the keywords that admit from the ones that only call. We would rather tell you paid search is not affordable yet than take a management fee on a budget that cannot work.
Can we remarket to people who visited our detox page?
Not in the ordinary way. Google's personalized advertising policy treats substance use and mental health as sensitive categories and restricts audience building around them, and HHS guidance makes pixel-based tracking on health-related pages a HIPAA exposure. There are compliant approaches, and they are narrower than what a general agency would set up.
Google or Meta?
Google, first and usually only. Search captures people already looking for treatment. Meta interrupts people who are not, converts far worse for admissions, and enforces its restrictions with sudden account suspensions. Meta earns its place for alumni, family audiences, and hiring, not for admissions volume.
How fast can paid search produce admissions?
Calls in the first week, once certification is in hand. Meaningful optimization takes 60 to 90 days because you need enough conversions to separate the keywords that admit from the ones that just call.
Who owns the ad account?
You do. We work inside your Google Ads and Meta accounts, your billing, your data. If the relationship ends, the account history and the conversion data stay with you. Agencies that run clients inside their own MCC accounts are holding your history hostage.
Free audit
Find out where your calls are leaking.
We take apart your rankings, your ads, and your call tracking, then show you where the calls are going instead of to you. The audit is yours to keep whether we work together or not.
Prefer the phone? (561) 269-2833