Should you hire an agency, build in-house or use a freelancer?

Hire an agency when you need several skills at once and cannot yet justify a full team. Build in-house when paid media is large and stable enough to keep specialists busy full time. Use a freelancer for a well-defined job on one channel. Most businesses move between these models as they grow, so the real question is which gaps you need filled now.

Paid acquisition needs more than campaign management. Someone has to define conversions and fix tracking, produce ad creative at a steady pace, build landing pages that match the ads, and read results against business numbers. A gap in any one of these limits what the others can do.

Agency In-house team Freelancer
Skills covered Media, creative, pages and measurement, if the agency offers them Whatever roles you hire Usually one channel or one skill
Time to start Weeks Months to hire and onboard Days to weeks
Continuity Team-based; ask who stays on your account Highest, if you retain people Depends on one person
Management load on you Moderate: approvals, data access, feedback High: hiring, training, tools Moderate to high: you coordinate everything else
Cost structure Fee plus media; creative may be extra Salaries, tools, overhead Hourly, project or monthly fee
Best fit Need several skills, budget not yet at full-team scale Large, steady spend; deep product knowledge needed Narrow scope, existing creative and tracking

A common pattern is a hybrid: one in-house owner of growth who sets goals and holds the data, with an agency or freelancers doing the specialized work. That owner is the person who reads the reports and makes the keep or stop calls.

How do performance marketing agencies charge?

Agencies use four main pricing models, and each one creates a different incentive. None is right for every business. Pick the one whose incentive points at the outcome you care about, then write the guardrails into the agreement.

  1. Percent of ad spend. The fee is a share of the media budget. It scales with workload, but it rewards higher spend whether or not that spend is profitable. Guardrail: budget increases need your written approval and must be tied to an agreed target such as cost per customer or payback.
  2. Flat retainer. A fixed monthly fee for a defined scope. It is predictable and separates the fee from spend. The risk is scope drift in either direction. Guardrail: list the deliverables (channels, creative volume, landing pages, reports) and the process for changing them.
  3. Hybrid. A base retainer plus a smaller percentage of spend above a set level, or a base plus a bonus on agreed outcomes. It balances predictability with scale. Guardrail: define the thresholds and how outcomes are measured before you sign.
  4. Performance-based. The agency is paid per lead, per customer or a share of revenue. Incentives are closest to yours, but everything depends on definitions: what counts as a qualified lead, which system is the source of truth, and how refunds or fraud are handled. Guardrail: agree tracking, definitions and quality rules in writing. Our guide to pay-for-performance media buying covers how to structure this.

Two cost questions apply to every model. First, is creative production (video, static ads, landing pages) included or billed separately? Second, are platforms billing your payment method directly, or is the agency paying the platforms and re-invoicing you? Direct billing gives you a clean record of what was actually spent.

Who should own the ad accounts, pixels and data?

You should. Every ad account, pixel or dataset, analytics property, tag manager container, product feed and domain should belong to your company, with the agency working inside them on access you grant and can remove. If the relationship ends, your account history, audiences and conversion data stay with you.

Google Ads. Create the account under your company and keep at least two of your own people as admins. Google’s access levels range from email-only and read-only to standard and admin. Only admins can give or change access, add or remove product links, and accept or unlink manager accounts. Google also warns that if an account has only one administrator, you may lose access to your tags if that person becomes unavailable.

Agencies usually work through a manager account, which links to your account after you accept an invitation. Users with admin access on your side can unlink it at any time. Be careful with ownership: a manager account can be given ownership of a client account, which lets the manager’s admins edit user access, managers and product links in your account. Grant link access, not ownership, unless you have a specific reason.

Meta. Keep your ad accounts, Pages and datasets in your own business portfolio, then give the agency partner access to the specific assets it needs. Meta offers full control or partial access by task, such as managing ads. A partner with full control can manage everything but cannot share the asset with another business; only the owning organization can. Only people with full control of your portfolio can share assets with partners.

Also keep in your own name: the analytics property, the tag manager container, the payment method, the landing page builder or site, and the source files for every ad the agency produces. Our guide to Google Ads conversion tracking explains why the conversion setup itself is a business asset.

What are the red flags when hiring an agency?

The clearest red flags are about control, honesty and method:

  • They want to run your ads in an account they own, or they hesitate to give you admin access.
  • They guarantee a specific ROAS or cost per acquisition before looking at your tracking and funnel.
  • Reporting shows only platform-reported results, with no link to your own sales or CRM data.
  • They talk about “workarounds” for ad review. Google’s Circumventing systems policy treats cloaking and review evasion as egregious violations that can lead to suspension on detection, without prior warning. That risk lands on your account, not theirs.
  • No written test plan: nobody can say what will be tested, with what budget, and when a decision will be made.
  • The senior people in the pitch are not the people who will work on your account.
  • Creative rights stay with the agency, or source files are not handed over.
  • Long lock-in terms with no exit tied to performance or service levels.

What questions should you ask before hiring?

Ask these ten questions, and ask to see examples (redacted reports, a sample test plan) rather than descriptions:

  1. Will you work inside our ad accounts, and what access level do you need on Google and Meta?
  2. How are you paid, and what in your fee structure rises when our spend rises?
  3. Is creative production included? Who owns the finished files and source files?
  4. Do platforms bill our payment method directly, or do you pay and re-invoice?
  5. What do you check in our tracking before you change bids or budgets?
  6. How do you decide when a test is finished, and what happens to the result?
  7. Which numbers will you report weekly, and how do they reconcile to our sales data?
  8. Who exactly works on our account, and how much of their time does it get?
  9. How do you handle ad disapprovals and policy questions in our category?
  10. If we part ways, what do we keep, and how is access removed?

Good answers are specific: named settings, named reports, named people and dates. Vague answers usually mean the process does not exist yet.

How MSG approaches this

MSG works inside the client’s own ad accounts: your accounts, your data. Engagements follow Diagnose, Build, Launch, Learn, Scale, and tracking and conversion definitions are settled before anything scales. Every test has a written hypothesis, a budget and a decision date, and results are read by concept, audience and channel, ending in keep, change, scale or stop. We report the business, not the platform, and we do not use cloaking or review evasion. See our media buying and planning service, or get in touch to talk through your setup.

Sources

  1. Google Ads Help: About access levels in your Google Ads account
  2. Google Ads Help: About Google Ads manager accounts
  3. Meta Business Help Center: Give a partner access to business assets in your business portfolio
  4. Google Ads Policy Help: Circumventing systems

Platform features and policies change. This guide reflects the sources above as of October 7, 2026.