Google is where roofing advertising actually happens. Across 17 metros, the 447 roofing companies we confirmed advertising keep 4,572 ads live on Google against 141 on Meta. 409 of them advertise on Google. If you run a roofing company and you are going to study one channel, this is the one.
We counted every advertiser through the Google Ads Transparency Center, anchored to their verified advertiser ID so the counts are theirs and not a lookalike's. Then we read 2,484 of the creatives. Here is what the field actually looks like.
How many ads does a serious advertiser run?
The distribution is lopsided. The median Google advertiser runs 3 live ads. 64% run 5 or fewer. But 60 advertisers run 20 or more, 20 run 50 or more, and 47 were still counting up when we stopped at 200 per advertiser. Parker Brothers Roofing in Oklahoma City, Murphy & Sons Roofing in Kansas City, and Best Choice Roofing in Nashville all sit at 200+.
Those big counts are not vanity. A large live-ad count means many ad groups, each matched to its own query: repair vs replacement, shingle vs metal, city by suburb. The median roofer with 3 ads is showing one generic message to every search. The 200-ad advertiser is showing a roof leak message to a roof leak search.
What the ads say
Of the 2,484 creatives we read, 76% are search ads and 24% are display banners. The dominant angles: quality and craftsmanship at 32%, trust, local, and family at 21%. Price shows up in only 8% of ads. Explicit storm and hail messaging in 8%. Speed and urgency in 6%.
Offers are the biggest miss. 53% of ads carry no offer. Free estimate or quote appears in 22%, free inspection in 12%, financing in 3%, a dollar or percent discount in about 4% combined. Insurance claim help, the thing storm-market homeowners most need explained, headlines about 1% of ads.
Only 25% of roofing ads show a phone number, in a trade where the lead is a phone call.
Seasonality is really geography: the storm profile effect
Roofing demand does not follow one national season. It follows local storm patterns, and the ad data mirrors this precisely. We tagged each metro by storm profile and the differences are large.
Oklahoma City alone carries 549 live Google ads from the 50 companies we checked, the most of any metro. Kansas City carries 455, Charlotte 386. At the other end, Stamford carries 26. Where hail writes insurance checks, roofers buy deeper ad accounts.
The creative changes with the weather too. Free inspection offers run at 13% to 15% of ads in hail and wind metros, but only 3% in low-storm metros. The free inspection is a storm-market invention: after hail, the homeowner does not know if they have damage, and the inspection answers the question that starts the claim. In Seattle there is no such question to answer, so the offer nearly disappears.
The winners do not turn it off
For every advertiser we logged the age of their longest-running live ad. The median is 420 days. 230 of 409 advertisers, 56%, have an ad older than a year. 107 have one older than two years. The oldest we found has run 1,739 days.
This is the quiet lesson in the data. The advertisers with the deepest accounts are also the ones who never stop. Storm-chasing accounts that switch on after a hail event enter an auction where the incumbents have years of conversion history feeding their bidding. Starting from zero in that auction is expensive, which is exactly why the incumbents never give it up.
What to build if you are starting now
Copy the structure of the deep accounts, not the median. Separate campaigns for repair and replacement, ad groups per service and per suburb, an offer in every ad. Match the offer to your storm profile: free inspection in hail country, free estimate elsewhere. Show the phone number. Then commit to a horizon of a year, because the data says that is what the ads that survive look like.
The fastest shortcut is to see the actual accounts you are up against, ad by ad. Muffin Intel tracks the ads, we read them, the written benchmark lands inside one business day.
Frequently asked questions
How many Google ads should a roofing company run?
More than the median 3, which usually means one generic message for every search. The advertisers winning volume in our data run 20 or more live ads, and 47 of 409 run 200 or more. The count itself is not the goal. It is a byproduct of splitting campaigns by service and geography so each search sees a matching message. Start with separate ads for repair, replacement, and your two or three biggest suburbs.
Do Google ads work for roofers outside storm season?
The advertisers in our data behave as if they do. The median longest-running ad is 420 days old and 56% of advertisers have an ad past a year, which means most working advertisers run straight through the off season. Roofs leak year round, and off-season auctions are cheaper because the storm-week crowd is absent. The years-long ads belong to companies that treat search as a standing position, not a seasonal buy.
What offer works best in roofing search ads?
It depends on your storm profile. In hail and wind metros, the free inspection dominates, appearing in 13% to 15% of ads there, because post-storm homeowners need damage confirmed before anything else. In low-storm markets it barely exists, and the free estimate or quote, 22% of all ads we read, is the standard hook. Either way, run an offer: 53% of live roofing ads have none.
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Written by Sarah Mitchell, Muffin Media
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