Premier Partner is a status Google assigns, not one an agency requests. Each year Google runs every Partner agency in a country through the same benchmarks and hands the Premier tier to the top 3% alone. The annual reset matters: the badge tells a prospective client that an agency's Google Ads accounts are performing at this moment, not that they performed well at some point in the past.
"Google looks at the same things our clients look at," said Josh Maraney, Founder and CEO of Top Click Media. "Are the accounts performing, are the clients growing, and are they staying. We have clients who have been with us for well over a decade, and that retention is the number we are proudest of. Nobody stays with an agency for ten years because of a nice report. They stay because the phone keeps ringing and the sales keep coming in."
Google Ads results that hold up year after year
The past year's Google Ads figures from Top Click Media's accounts would be strong in any market. One client, an online supplements retailer, came to the agency with a suspended Google Ads account and campaigns that had collapsed. Today the account returns 20x on ad spend and has recorded months above 24x. Another, a financial services firm competing head-on with the country's largest institutions, brought its cost per lead down by 80%, grew lead volume five times over, and ended the year at 128% of its annual target. Whatever the sector, the aim is identical: reduce cost per acquisition, raise return on ad spend, and put budget behind new customers instead of brand clicks that would have converted on their own.
The method behind those figures has not shifted in 18 years. Senior Google Ads specialists handle every account, with no junior staff placed on client work. Campaigns are constructed, audited, and refined line by line, covering shopping feeds, ad structures, bidding strategy, conversion tracking, and search term hygiene. Performance Max, AI Max, Search, Shopping, Display, Video, and App campaigns are all run in-house by a team certified in each format. Every client is given direct access to the agency's tools and reporting, so results can be confirmed without relying on the agency's word.
Clients who stay
Google puts particular weight on client retention, and no criterion describes Top Click Media better. Many of the agency's clients have stayed for years, and a substantial group has passed the ten-year mark, holding on through algorithm updates, platform overhauls, and economic cycles. All contracts are month to month with no lock-in, which means a client who has been with the agency for a decade has renewed that decision roughly 120 times, each time on results and nothing else.
That kind of retention has produced a client base that stretches far beyond South Africa. Top Click Media runs Google Ads, SEO, and Answer Engine Optimisation campaigns for businesses in Canada, Ireland, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and many other countries, in e-commerce, financial services, professional services, health, legal, education, and non-profit sectors. Overseas clients hire the agency for the reasons South African clients do: real depth in Google's platforms, senior people on every account, and results they can check in the tools for themselves.
Expertise built in public
The agency's founder has spent the last several years showing exactly how Top Click Media operates, in public and at length. Josh Maraney has recorded more than 750 educational videos on Google Ads, SEO, and AI search, distributed across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and the agency's website. They tackle the practical questions of running Google Ads: why Google sometimes leaves a Target CPA budget unspent, when display expansion helps and when it hurts, how to set up a shopping feed properly, how to stop brand terms eating a budget, and how to read an account and find the waste. The collection has built one of South Africa's biggest audiences for digital marketing education, with over 125,000 followers on TikTok alone, and it serves as a screening tool for prospects, who can watch how the agency thinks before making contact.
"I still do the audits and I still build the strategies," Maraney said. "The videos are the same thing in public. If you watch 20 of them you know exactly what you are getting when you hire us, and you know we are not hiding anything. Premier Partner status is Google confirming what the videos and the client results already show."
Ready for Google's next phase
The 2026 listing lands during a period of rapid change in Google Ads. Performance Max and AI Max now take a large slice of advertising budgets, and Google's AI-driven search experiences are reshaping where ads are shown and how people find businesses. As a Premier Partner, Top Click Media works directly with Google account representatives, receives early access to product betas, and can escalate account issues, policy suspensions included, straight to Google. That lets the agency test new formats on live accounts before the wider market sees them and resolve problems that would otherwise wait weeks in a public support queue.
To learn more visit www.topclick.co.za
About Top Click Media
Top Click Media (Pty) Ltd is a Google Premier Partner and specialist digital marketing agency in South Africa. Over 18 years the agency has concentrated solely on Google Ads, SEO and Answer Engine Optimisation for established businesses in South Africa and internationally. Every account is run directly by senior specialists on month-to-month contracts, with transparent reporting and full client access to all relevant tools and data.
