Search Advertising: Agency or In-House? [2026]

For a marketer at a small or medium-sized company who wants to start search advertising, or to review how it is being run,
whether to leave it to an agency or run it yourself is a major decision.

This article sets out the advantages and disadvantages of using an agency and of running search advertising in-house, and offers criteria for deciding which suits you.
It goes into value for money and into how you are set up as a team, so do read to the end.

Summary
・Using an agency makes results easier to come by quickly, and you can start without specialist knowledge
・Running ads in-house keeps fee costs down and builds know-how internally
・The decision comes down to three things: resource, skills and the size of your budget
・Choosing a hybrid to match your budget and your team is also a sound option
・NowVillage supports you consistently, from advertising management through to bringing it in-house

▼Who this is for
・Anyone considering starting search advertising
・Anyone wanting to review how their advertising is run and improve value for money
・Anyone torn between using an agency and running ads themselves
・Anyone looking ahead to bringing advertising management in-house

1. Criteria for comparing an agency with running ads yourself

When you start search advertising, who runs it is a decisive factor in your return on investment (ROI).
It is best to narrow the decision down to three axes: resource, skills and the size of your budget.

1.1 Deciding on resource

Check whether you have the people and the time to devote to running ads.
If the day job is busy and advertising management is beyond you, an agency is the realistic choice. If you can afford to assign someone full time, running it yourself is worth considering.

1.2 Deciding on skills

Whether anyone in the company has knowledge of digital advertising, or experience of running it, also matters.
If nobody has, one option is to use an agency and absorb the knowledge gradually.

1.3 Deciding on the size of your budget

Where monthly media spend is small, the fee makes up a relatively large share of the total if you use an agency.
Consider the choice that best fits your budget.

1.4 How to think about it if you cannot decide

Which arrangement suits you changes with the stage your company is at and how you are set up internally. There is no need to insist on doing everything yourself from the very beginning.

One perfectly good answer is the hybrid: start with proven specialists to build the foundations of the account and find what works, then move the work across to your own team gradually.

2. The advantages and disadvantages of using an agency

▼Using an agency compared with running ads yourself

Item	Using an agency	Running ads in-house
Costs incurred	Media spend + management fee	Media spend + salaries and training
Where know-how accumulates	With the agency	Internally, as your own asset
Speed to launch	Can start smoothly and quickly	Learning and preparation take time
Workload inside the company	Greatly reduces the burden on your own staff	Requires dedicated or part-time staff time

The biggest advantage of leaving management to an agency is that, even with no expertise or resources in-house, you can start running high-quality ads immediately.
Because they can also respond quickly to the latest platform updates and to market changes, you avoid lost opportunities.
On the other hand, a set percentage of your ad spend (typically around 20%) is charged as a management fee, and little advertising know-how stays inside the company are cited as the disadvantages.

・You can put expert know-how to work straight away
Agencies employ specialists who have managed accounts across a wide range of sectors and industries. They know the latest Google and Yahoo! algorithms inside out and can design effective campaigns, so you are well placed to see results from the early stages. Another big advantage is that they can point out improvements you would struggle to spot on your own, and propose activity based on what has worked for other companies.
・You can focus in-house resources on other work
Running search advertising takes a lot of time: keyword research, bid adjustments, reporting and more. Hand that to an agency and your marketing team can concentrate on core work such as strategy, product development and looking after customers.
・You can respond quickly to the latest advertising trends
In digital advertising, platforms update frequently and new features are released all the time. Agencies often work directly with the platforms, so they pick up new information early and feed it into the work.

・There is a management fee
When you use an agency, a management fee is charged on top of your ad spend. The fee is usually set as a percentage of that spend, so the larger the budget, the larger the fee.
・Know-how is slow to build up in-house
Outsource the whole job and the advertising know-how accumulates on the agency’s side. If you later consider moving management in-house, you may have to learn it all from scratch.
・Results depend on the quality of the person assigned to you
Even at an agency with a strong track record, results vary with the skill and experience of the person actually running the account. It is worth arranging to speak to that person before you sign, so you can judge their knowledge and how well they respond.

3. Advantages and disadvantages of running it yourself

▼Using an agency compared with running ads yourself

Item	Using an agency	Running ads in-house
Costs incurred	Media spend + management fee	Media spend + salaries and training
Where know-how accumulates	With the agency	Internally, as your own asset
Speed to launch	Can start smoothly and quickly	Learning and preparation take time
Workload inside the company	Greatly reduces the burden on your own staff	Requires dedicated or part-time staff time

Running it yourself removes the agency fee, so you can put the money saved straight into ad spend or other activity— that is the advantage.
You can also take the customer data and keyword patterns you gain through running the ads and build them up in-house as a company asset.
On the other hand, hiring and training a dedicated person takes time and money, and it takes trial and error to find the best settings and start seeing results — those are the challenges.

・You cut the fee cost
Run it yourself and there is no agency fee. You can put that money into ad spend instead, or invest it in tools and training. The bigger your monthly spend, the more you save.
・You build marketing know-how in-house
Keep running it yourself and the patterns that work, along with the lessons from what does not, stay inside the company. That knowledge can be carried across to other businesses and new projects, and becomes a company asset.
・Decisions and activity can move fast
When a campaign has to change at short notice, or the market shifts, everything is settled in-house, so there is no lag. Being able to react quickly to competitors is another strength.

・You need to find and train specialists
Effective advertising management depends on people with specialist knowledge. Experienced hires are fiercely contested in the market, and training someone without experience takes time and money.
・It can take time before you see results
Starting with no experience in-house, it takes trial and error to find the right campaign design and bid strategy. You should expect the ad spend during that period to be a learning cost.
・The risk of your specialist leaving
If the know-how sits with one person, their departure hits hard. You need written procedures and a team of more than one running the account.

4. What is search advertising management? A recap of the basics

Search advertising means text ads shown on search engines such as Google and Yahoo!, matched to the keywords a user has searched for.
Also called search-linked advertising, its defining feature is that it reaches, very precisely, the users with high intent to buy — people already searching because they have a particular problem or need.
Management is not a job that ends once the ads are live.
It refers to the whole run of work needed to maximise results — adjusting bids, choosing effective keywords, writing ad copy that earns clicks, setting delivery to match the target, measuring every day, and acting on the numbers to improve — a continuous PDCA cycle.
Whether that specialist, ongoing work is done in-house or left to outside specialists is the question this article is about.

5. How to maximise the return on your search advertising

Whether you outsource management to an agency or run it in-house, there are common principles to follow if you want to improve the return on investment (ROI).

5.1 Set clear goals

Set specific numeric goals, such as “30 new enquiries a month” or “cut cost per acquisition (CPA) by 20% from where it is now”.
Without a clear KGI (the end goal) and KPIs (the milestones), you cannot judge objectively whether the work you did succeeded or failed.
The first step is to work back from your business plan and set target figures that are realistic and measurable.

5.2 Measure and improve on a regular basis

Digital advertising is not finished once the ads are live.
Use the data that builds up once the ads are running and check measures such as click rate (CTR) and conversion rate (CVR) regularly.
Reading the patterns in search terms and excluding wasted keywords, adjusting bids — repeating these small daily improvements (PDCA) is what directly lifts results.

5.3 Do not forget to optimise the landing page

To turn the users who click an ad and land on your site into a result — an enquiry or a purchase — the quality of the landing page (LP) that receives them matters enormously.
Keep the case you make in the ad copy consistent with the top of the landing page, improve how easy the form is to fill in (EFO), and generally treat advertising management and site improvement as two wheels turning together.

Related article:
How much does search advertising cost? Four ways to decide your budget and how to keep costs down

6. What to check so you do not pick the wrong agency

If you outsource management, the partner you choose holds the key to whether the project succeeds. When you assess candidates, look at the following three points.

6.1 Check their track record and where they are strong

Ask whether they have managed accounts in your industry, or for products with a similar audience. An agency that understands the customer mindset and search trends peculiar to your sector will move far faster from initial setup to live ads to results.

6.2 Check how they communicate

Agree in advance on monthly reporting, how often you will meet, and how you will stay in touch day to day — whether you can use a chat tool, for instance.
Put weight on how easy they are to talk to — whether they reply quickly, and whether they share the numbers from the ad accounts openly — because that is what makes a long-term partnership work.

6.3 Check the contract terms and the fee structure

Read the contract down to the details: any minimum term, the conditions for cancelling, and whether extras such as banner production cost more.
Make sure the setup cost and the monthly fee structure suit the size of your budget, and clear up anything unclear before you sign.

7. Preparing for in-house management and how to go about it

If you choose to run it in-house, planning ahead and setting up the right team largely decide whether the project succeeds.
To avoid failure and get started smoothly, we recommend preparing in the following order.

7.1 Put a team in place

Advertising management is not something you get results from in your spare time, so the first step is to secure proper resource in-house.
You also need to guard against the situation where only one person knows what is going on.

・Appoint someone dedicated to the work, or someone part-time with a clearly defined share of their time
・Set aside the hours the work needs — checking numbers daily, changing settings and so on
・Arrange for more than one person to be able to check the ad accounts, so the work continues when someone is away

7.2 Build a way to keep learning and gathering information

In digital advertising, platform specifications and algorithms change constantly.
Learning it once is not enough; you need a way for the organisation to keep following the latest trends.

・Use the official help documentation and certification programmes from Google and Yahoo! to build the basics
・Keep an eye on specialist industry publications and seminars so you can respond to platform updates and algorithm changes
・Put something in place for sharing know-how within the team and keeping everyone’s knowledge current

7.3 Start small and scale up gradually

Early on there is not enough data, so results often fall short of what you expected.
Do not overinvest at the start; go about it in a way that keeps risk to a minimum.

・Avoid committing a large budget at the outset; start running ads on a small test budget
・Check the real data — the going rate for a click, which keywords convert
・Identify the winning pattern that pays for itself, then raise the budget in stages and grow the scale of the work while keeping risk down

8. Consider the hybrid option too

You do not have to treat this as a choice between handing everything to an agency and running it entirely yourself.
A hybrid that combines the advantages of both is a valid option.
Adapting the arrangement as the company grows delivers a better return over the long run.

8.1 Absorb know-how while the agency runs the work

The approach here is to outsource the work to an agency at first while learning how it is done through the regular meetings and the reports they submit.
You get to watch, close up, the reasoning behind how specialists build accounts and choose keywords, which makes it a very effective transition period if you have bringing it in-house in mind.

8.2 Use an in-housing support service

Some agencies offer not only advertising management but also in-housing support, so that the client can eventually run it alone.
At NowVillage we run advertising for clients and, alongside that, share our know-how with their teams and hand the work over in stages, supporting them throughout. We can propose the right plan for any company that wants to build digital marketing knowledge as an asset of its own.

9. Common ways this goes wrong, and how to avoid them

We have set out the mistakes people commonly make with search advertising and how to avoid them.

9.1 Starting with vague goals

Launching on the basis of “let’s just run some ads and see what happens” leaves you with no standard for what counts as success.
Before the ads go live you must set specific numeric goals, such as a ceiling on cost per acquisition (CPA) and a monthly target for how many you will win. Work back from your revenue target and design realistic KPIs.

9.2 Neglecting the data

You often see cases where people are satisfied just to have the ads live and then leave them alone without measuring anything. With search advertising, it is barely an exaggeration to say that the adjustments made after launch decide most of the result.
Build regular data checks into your workflow and make improvement a habit: review search terms, set negative keywords, A/B test ad copy.

9.3 Never revisiting how the budget is split

This is the mistake of running several campaigns while leaving the budget split exactly as it was.
Shifting budget freely between the campaigns that perform (low CPA, plenty of conversions) and the ones that do not lifts the return across the whole account considerably. Always reallocate on the basis of data.

10. Frequently asked questions about search advertising management (FAQ)

11. Find the style of management that fits your company

We have set out the advantages and disadvantages of using an agency and of running search advertising yourself. There is no single right answer; what matters is judging it against your own situation.

Take stock of where you stand on three axes — resource, skill and budget — and choose accordingly. If you are unsure, one route is to start with an agency, build knowledge as you go, and aim to bring the work in-house later.

NowVillage supports digital marketing as a whole, search advertising included. From acting as your agency to helping you bring it in-house, we work alongside you at whatever stage you are at. Do get in touch.