Why this investigation is your problem, not just Google's
On 27 February 2026, the Belgian Competition Authority (BCA) launched a formal investigation into Google's advertising practices. For most creative and communication agencies, the instinct is to file this under "legal news to follow later." That's a mistake.
If you're managing between €30,000 and €200,000 in monthly client budgets through Google Ads or DV360, you're operating inside the exact territory this investigation covers. And the practices being scrutinised are already costing you and your clients money right now.
The investigation focuses on three specific issues:
- Hidden take rates: Google is alleged to retain 30 to 40% of ad spend as fees, without transparently disclosing this to agencies or advertisers. That means for every €100 your client commits, only €60 to €70 actually reaches the ad auction.
- Dominance abuse: Google holds 80 to 90% of EU search and more than 50% of programmatic display. More than 68% of EU creative agencies generate over half their leads through Google. When ad costs rise 15 to 25%, that cuts directly into your deal margins.
- Self-preferencing in display tools: Google's own ad tools block competing networks, resulting in up to 30% higher costs for visual campaigns. For agencies that rely on display for branding work, this is a critical cost driver.
This isn't an isolated Belgian action either. It builds on the European Commission fining Google €2.95 billion in September 2025 for self-preferencing in publisher ad servers, with remedies that came into force in November 2025. Belgium is now escalating at a local level what Brussels already set in motion across the EU.
What does this actually cost your clients right now?
Let's make this concrete. Say you have a client with a €5,000 monthly display budget for brand awareness. Based on the BCA's findings, Google's hidden take rates likely mean €1,500 to €2,000 of that budget disappears into fees your client never sees and you can't explain. That's €18,000 to €24,000 per year in spend that produces no impressions, no clicks, no results.
Now imagine that client asks you in a quarterly review why their CPM keeps climbing. You have no answer. That's not a comfortable position for an agency trying to position itself as a strategic partner.
There's a second, less obvious threat: the Digital Markets Act, enforced since February 2026, is forcing Google to adjust how search results are structured. Those adjustments are already disrupting organic rankings that agencies have spent years building for clients. A client sitting comfortably at position 2 in Google can drop to position 5 or 6 overnight, through no fault of your SEO work. Explaining that to a client who pays a monthly retainer is its own kind of painful.
How should your agency respond in the next 30 days?
The good news is that the response doesn't require a complete overhaul of how you work. It requires four focused weeks of action.
Week 1: Run a transparency audit on your Google setup
Before you can fix anything, you need to see what's actually happening. For every active client campaign, pull together:
- Reported spend versus actual ad delivery (the gap is where hidden fees live)
- CPC trends over the past six months, per client and per campaign type
- CPM benchmarks for display campaigns compared to industry averages
This takes roughly 4 to 6 hours per 10 accounts. Document everything in a simple spreadsheet: client, campaign, period, spend, impressions, clicks, conversions, CPC, CPM. That data becomes your evidence base for everything that follows.
Week 2: Test an independent platform with 20% of one campaign budget
You don't need to abandon Google. You need to stop being entirely dependent on it. Two realistic options for Belgian agencies:
Meta Ads Manager is not a DSP in the technical sense, but it's a direct alternative to Google Display for visual and branding campaigns. Meta's CPM for visual content typically runs 20 to 40% lower than Google Display, with more transparent cost structures and no hidden intermediary fees.
The Trade Desk is an independent DSP that gives you access to display inventory outside Google's ecosystem. For agencies managing €10,000 or more per month in display spend, it's worth evaluating. Their service fee is 5 to 10% of media budget, which is far more transparent than Google's alleged 30 to 40% hidden take rates.
Run a parallel test for two to four weeks: same audience, same creative, split between Google Display and one alternative. Many agencies we work with are surprised to find Meta delivering comparable conversion quality at 25 to 35% lower cost for awareness campaigns.
Week 3: Build one lead channel that doesn't run through Google
This is the strategic move. If 50 to 68% of your agency's own leads come through Google, you're one algorithm change away from a pipeline problem.
LinkedIn Ads is underused by creative agencies for their own positioning. You can reach CMOs and Marketing Directors who are actively evaluating agency partners, at €3 to €8 per click, which is significantly lower than Google Search for high-intent terms. Build three to five campaigns targeting decision-makers searching for creative partners or rebranding support.
Alongside paid, start publishing two to three case studies or insight pieces per month. Not portfolio pieces, but actual business outcomes: how you helped a B2B tech client scale from €50k to €200k in monthly revenue, what a brand refresh did for a client's conversion rate. This builds organic authority that no algorithm change can take away overnight.
Week 4: Change how you communicate media costs to clients
This is where you recover margin and strengthen the client relationship at the same time.
Create a monthly transparency report that shows:
- Total client media budget committed
- Actual media budget reaching auctions (after estimated platform fees)
- Estimated hidden costs based on your week 1 audit
- A comparison with alternative platforms
- A specific recommendation, for example: "Moving 20% of your budget to Meta could save approximately €X per month"
This report does two things at once. It demonstrates that you're actively protecting their ROI, and it creates a natural opening to revisit your service fee ("We've restructured your setup and identified €X in recoverable costs, so here's how our retainer reflects that value").
Also update your contract language. Add a clause to new agreements that separates your agency fee from platform fees, and specifies that media costs are reported based on actual media budget, excluding platform charges. This protects you from being held accountable for Google's take rates.
Is your agency positioned to survive a shift away from Google dependency?
This is the harder question. The BCA investigation will likely run 18 to 24 months. During that time, there are two scenarios.
In the first, more likely scenario, the BCA imposes interim measures that stabilise or reduce ad costs, probably in Q3 2026. Agencies that have already tested alternatives and diversified their channel mix will have a structural advantage.
In the second scenario, Google's practices remain unchanged. Agencies that have diversified are still better positioned to protect margins and offer clients genuine alternatives.
Either way, acting now beats waiting. The agencies that lose in this environment are the ones treating this as a legal issue to monitor rather than an operational issue to address.
There's also a positioning opportunity here that most agencies are missing. An agency that walks into a pitch and says "we've audited your Google setup, identified €X in hidden platform costs, and here's our plan to recover that" is not a vendor. That's a strategic advisor. That's the conversation that wins retainers.
We've seen this play out directly with agencies that shifted from reporting campaign metrics to reporting business impact and cost transparency. The client relationship changes. The renewal conversation changes. The fee conversation changes.
The long-term shift: what this means for your agency positioning
The Belgian investigation is a symptom of a larger structural change. The era of Google as the unquestioned default for every euro of client media spend is ending, not because Google is disappearing, but because regulators, clients, and alternative platforms are collectively forcing more accountability.
For creative and communication agencies, the agencies that will grow in this environment share three characteristics:
- Diversified media channel expertise, with no single platform representing more than 40% of managed client spend
- Transparent, value-based pricing that separates agency fees from platform costs and makes the agency's contribution visible
- Strategic positioning that frames the agency as a media-neutral performance partner, not a Google Ads specialist
That last point matters more than it seems. Agencies that market themselves as Google Ads experts are, by definition, positioning themselves as vendors. Agencies that position themselves as strategic partners who optimise across channels, and who protect client budgets from platform inefficiencies, are advisors. Advisors command higher fees and longer contracts.
Your website is often the first place a prospective client evaluates whether you're a vendor or a partner. If your positioning still reads like a list of services and platform certifications, this is the moment to fix that.
Start with your positioning before the next pitch
The Belgian Google Ads investigation is a forcing function. It's pushing every creative agency to get clearer on what they actually offer beyond execution, and to make that value visible before a client or prospect has to ask.
If your agency's website and positioning don't yet reflect the strategic role you play for clients, that's the gap worth closing first. At Luniq, we work specifically with creative and communication agencies to build strategy-led websites that position them as advisors, not vendors.
If you're ready to stop losing pitches to larger networks because your positioning doesn't reflect your actual expertise, our Launched programme is designed exactly for that. Or if you want to understand where your current website is losing authority, start with a website audit.
The agencies that will look back on 2026 as a turning point are the ones that used this moment to sharpen their positioning, not just their media mix.
Tag: insights
Audience: creative_&_communication