PPF ad budget calculator

How the calculator works

• Leads = monthly ad spend ÷ cost per lead.
• Sold jobs = leads × close rate.
• Cost per sold job = ad spend ÷ sold jobs, and (ad spend + management fee) ÷ sold jobs.
• Break-even jobs = (ad spend + management fee) ÷ gross profit per job, rounded up.
• Return on gross profit = gross profit from sold jobs ÷ (ad spend + management fee). Above 1.0× means the ads paid for themselves out of margin, not just revenue.

With the default PPF full-front example, $3,000 of ad spend at $70 per lead buys about 43 leads. At a 25% close rate that’s about 10.7 sold jobs, against a break-even of 4 jobs.

Where the defaults come from

Ticket sizes use midpoints of published price ranges: full front $1,800 to $3,000 and full body $5,500 to $9,000 or more (Capital Wrappers), and professional ceramic coating at a national average of $1,200 to $2,800 (Cost Insight Hub). Cost per lead uses the middle of agency estimates for PPF ($40 to $100), ceramic coating ($30 to $80) and window tint ($20 to $60) from Detailers Movement. For comparison, LocaliQ reports an average cost per lead of $32.79 across automotive search advertisers and $44.26 for auto service and repair, based on data from October 2024 to September 2025 (LocaliQ).

The tint ticket, every gross profit figure and every close rate are examples, not published data. Replace them with your own numbers. They matter more than anything else in the formula.

How to find your close rate

Take your last 30 inquiries for one service. Count how many became paid jobs. That’s your close rate for that service. If you don’t track inquiries yet, a shared sheet with five columns is enough: date, source, service, outcome and job value. We set one up for every client, and it’s what our sample report is built on.

Reading the result

If expected sold jobs sit well above break-even, the question becomes capacity: can your installers take that many more jobs a month? If they sit below, one of three numbers is off: the close rate (follow-up and pricing), the ticket (package mix), or the cost per lead (campaign quality). The calculator can’t tell you which. A search terms report and a status sheet can.

Keep in mind that PPF buyers often compare shops for a while, so a job booked in March can come from a February click. Judge a month of spend on the jobs it produces over the following weeks, not just the same calendar month.

Next steps

Read the full budget guide for worked examples and how to split a budget between PPF, ceramic and tint. Or see our pricing: the Founding Shop Pilot is $1,500 a month for the first 90 days, with ad spend from $3,000 a month paid directly to Google.