Decision guide · Team structure
In-house, agency or hybrid is a question of who owns each decision.
None of the three wins by default. The right answer depends on your workload, the senior judgement you can access, and who covers when someone is away.
Decide on
- Senior judgement
- Weekly
- Feed workload
- Owned
- Measurement
- One owner
- Cover
- Named
Cost follows responsibility, not the reverse.
01 / Factors
Six things that decide it
Work through these before comparing costs.
Senior capacity
Profitable ecommerce PPC needs someone who can set commercial targets, read contribution rather than platform ROAS, and push back on the business. The question is not headcount but whether that judgement is available every week, and who has it.
Catalogue and feed workload
Large or fast-changing catalogues create steady work: feed errors, disapprovals, custom labels, new lines, stock and price changes. This is often underestimated in both models. Decide who does it, and who notices when it breaks.
Trading and measurement ownership
Someone must own weekly trading decisions and the definition of a good sale. If an agency trades and nobody internal owns measurement, targets drift. If an internal hire owns both alone, there is no second check.
Holiday and key-person cover
A single in-house specialist means gaps during holidays, illness and notice periods. An agency can cover, but only if more than one person genuinely knows your account. Ask who covers, not whether cover exists.
Access and ownership
Whatever you choose, the business should own the Google Ads account, Merchant Center, Analytics and tag containers, and grant access to others. That makes any later change of model a handover, not a rebuild.
Incentives
A percentage-of-spend fee rewards higher spend; an employee may be rewarded for activity or reported ROAS. Neither is wrong, but each shapes behaviour. Align rewards to contribution after advertising where you can.
02 / Situations
Where each option wins
Realistic situations, not a sales argument. Each option is the right answer somewhere.
In-house wins
- PPC is central to the business and there is enough daily work to fill a senior role
- Trading decisions depend on fast access to buying, merchandising and stock teams
- You can recruit, manage and retain a specialist, and cover absences
Agency wins
- You need senior judgement now and cannot justify or find a full-time senior hire
- The workload is real but not enough for a full role, or is uneven across the year
- You want continuity that does not rest on one person
Hybrid wins
- An internal owner holds commercial context, stock and margin inputs and reporting
- An agency brings specialist trading, feed or testing capacity alongside
- Responsibilities are written down, so nothing sits between the two
03 / Side by side
JudeLuxe vs an in-house hire
The honest comparison, including where in-house is stronger.
| JudeLuxe | In-house hire | |
|---|---|---|
| Annual cost | Fixed fee, from £2k/month | Salary + on-costs + tools + recruitment |
| Strategic seniority | Senior strategist day one | Depends on hire / budget |
| Recruitment risk | None for you | You carry it |
| Holiday / sickness cover | More than one person knows your account | Single point of failure |
| Tooling included | Yes | Separate cost |
| Google CSS included | Yes, at no extra cost | No |
| Cross-account benchmarking | Yes | One account view |
| Brand depth over time | Builds with retention | Deepest, if retained |
| Direct control | High (transparent reporting) | Highest (employee) |
04 / Transition
Changing model without losing the account's memory
- Confirm the business owns every account, and list who has access today
- Write down current targets, conversion actions and what counts as a sale
- Export change history, negative lists, feed rules and custom label logic
- Agree a handover period where both parties are available, and who approves changes during it
- Judge the new setup on the same contribution definitions as the old one, with enough time for conversion lag
If you are moving from one agency to another, see switching agency. How we run onboarding, reporting and responsibilities is set out on how we work.
Worksheet
Responsibility and cost worksheet
Replace every figure with your own. The defaults are hypothetical inputs chosen to show the arithmetic, not salary, fee or market benchmarks.
Employment on-costs are one figure you supply (for example from your finance team). This worksheet does not calculate tax, National Insurance or pension.
| Option | Annual | Monthly | How it is calculated |
|---|---|---|---|
| In-house | £67,600 | £5,633 | Salary + on-costs + tools × 12 + recruitment ÷ years |
| Agency | £39,840 | £3,320 | Fee × 12 + oversight hours × rate × 12 (£3,840) |
| Hybrid | £59,600 | £4,967 | (Salary + on-costs + recruitment ÷ years) × share + tools × 12 + fee × 12 |
Cost is only half the comparison. Set it beside the responsibilities below: an option that is cheaper but leaves trading, measurement or cover unowned is not cheaper in practice.
Who owns what
Assign every line. 9 still unassigned.
05 / Where we fit
If an agency or hybrid is the answer
We charge a fixed monthly fee, not a percentage of spend (pricing), and work alongside internal teams as often as instead of them.
Our published case studies show the kind of work involved, each with its source and caveats. If the right answer for you is an in-house hire, we will say so.
Questions
Agency vs in-house questions
Next step
Not sure which model fits?
Book a commercial review: a free 30-minute conversation about your account and team, even if the answer is not us.