At some point, every business running Google Ads asks the same question: should this sit with someone in-house, get handed to a freelancer, or go to an agency? There is no universally correct answer. The right choice depends on account size, complexity, how much internal capacity you have, and how much risk you can absorb if things go wrong. This post sets out the honest trade-offs of each option – including where an agency is not the right fit.
The three options, briefly
An in-house hire is a dedicated employee, either a specialist or a marketing generalist who takes on PPC alongside other duties. A freelancer is an independent contractor, usually working across several clients, billing by the hour, project, or a flat monthly retainer. An agency is a team – typically an account manager plus specialists in strategy, tracking, and analytics – working across a portfolio of client accounts simultaneously.
The differences that actually matter come down to cost, ramp-up time, access to tools and cross-account learning, and what happens when the person managing your account is unavailable.
Cost: what you’re actually comparing
Based on typical UK market pricing, freelancers tend to charge somewhere in the region of £200-£800 a month, depending on account size and how much hands-on work is involved. Small agencies generally sit around £500-£1,500 a month, and mid-tier agencies around £1,500-£5,000. For larger budgets, some agencies move to a percentage-of-spend model, roughly 5-15%, which usually only applies once monthly ad spend exceeds around £5,000 – below that, percentage fees tend not to cover the actual work involved. Setup fees, where charged, are commonly in the £250-£500 range. These figures are directional, gathered from general UK market benchmarking rather than a single definitive source, and any given agency or freelancer may sit outside them.
An in-house hire is rarely cheaper once you account for salary, National Insurance, pension contributions, software licences, and management time. A junior PPC hire in the UK might cost £28,000-£35,000 a year before overheads – viable if PPC is a large enough part of the role to justify it, but poor value if you only need a few hours of attention a week.
Time to competence
A new in-house hire, even an experienced one, needs weeks to properly understand your account history, sales cycle, and what “good” looks like for your specific business. If they are new to PPC altogether, that ramp-up can run to several months, during which mistakes on live budgets are likely.
A competent freelancer or agency should be productive faster, since account structure, conversion tracking, and bid strategy are familiar territory from day one. That said, they still need time to learn your business, margins, and what actually counts as a good lead – a generic PPC skillset does not replace that context, and any claim of an instant turnaround should be treated with scepticism.
Tools, data, and pattern recognition
This is where agencies tend to hold a genuine structural advantage, though it is not automatic. An agency managing dozens of accounts across different industries sees patterns that a single in-house manager or freelancer working on one or two accounts simply cannot – which bidding strategies tend to work for lead-gen versus ecommerce, how seasonal shifts play out across sectors, what a Performance Max account looks like when it is quietly wasting spend. Agencies also more commonly have access to enterprise-tier tools for bid management, reporting, and competitor analysis that are difficult to justify for a single account.
This is not a guarantee of quality – a poorly run agency with 200 accounts and thin account management is not automatically better than a sharp freelancer with 8 clients they know intimately. But all else being equal, breadth of exposure is a real advantage, and it is one that is structurally hard for a single in-house hire or solo freelancer to replicate.
Continuity risk
This is the risk that gets underweighted until it happens. A freelancer can get ill, take on too many clients, or simply stop replying to emails, and there is often no formal backup – if they hold the only login credentials or undocumented knowledge of why a campaign is structured a certain way, you can be left with a live account and nobody able to explain it. An in-house hire can hand in their notice, and recruiting a replacement with genuinely comparable PPC skill can take months, during which the account is often left on autopilot or handled badly by someone covering multiple roles.
Agencies are not immune to this either – staff turnover happens at agencies too – but a reasonably well-run one should have documentation, a second person with account access, and continuity built into how the team operates, so a single departure does not leave the account unmanaged. It is worth asking any prospective agency directly how they handle staff changes before signing anything.
Which option actually fits your business
A very small account – one or two campaigns, a modest budget, straightforward goals – is often genuinely well served by a freelancer or by someone in-house managing it alongside other work. The complexity simply may not justify agency fees, and a business that wants tight day-to-day control over messaging and budget may prefer that closeness regardless of size.
An agency tends to make more sense as accounts grow in complexity: multiple campaign types, several locations or product lines, a need for conversion tracking that goes beyond the basics, or a budget large enough that inefficiency has a real cost. It also suits businesses that do not have the internal capacity or appetite to manage a hire or vet a freelancer’s work.
None of these options is inherently right or wrong – the honest answer is that it depends on your account, your budget, and how much operational risk you are comfortable carrying.
Whichever route you are currently using, or considering, a second opinion on the account itself is useful, and that is what our free audit is for. We look at how your account is set up and managed today and where it is losing money, whether or not you work with us. No commitment, a reply the same working day.