Agency, freelancer or in house: who should run your Meta ads

I am a freelancer, so I have a stake in this question. Better to say so up front and then give you what you need to decide for yourself, including the parts that do not suit me.

Each of the three options wins clearly somewhere.

What each option really costs

In house. A junior in-house video editor costs between €1,800 and €2,200 gross a month; an experienced one goes up to €3,000-4,000. You then have to add a media buyer, which is a different job: in France, a traffic manager earns between €2,300 and €5,800 gross a month, with a median around €4,100. (source) Employer contributions included, count on roughly 1.3 times those amounts, so €3,000 to €7,600 a month of employer cost for the media buyer alone, without the equipment, the licences or the management time. These are French figures; the ratios hold elsewhere, the amounts do not.

With an agency. Billed as a monthly retainer or as a percentage of ad spend. The retainer includes what a freelancer does not: an account manager, continuity when someone is away, and the capacity to absorb spikes in volume.

With a freelancer. No structure to fund, so generally a lower cost for equivalent work. In exchange, one person, with everything that implies.

The real criterion: your volume

That is what settles it most often, ahead of budget.

Fewer than 5 videos a month and a single ad channel. The freelancer is the most efficient option. An agency will bill you for coordination you do not need; an employee will be underused.

5 to 15 videos a month, one or two channels. The zone where a freelancer still fits if they are specialised, and where an agency starts to justify itself if you need several skills at once.

More than 15 videos a month, several channels, several markets. An agency or an in-house team becomes necessary. One freelancer cannot hold that rhythm without quality slipping.

Bringing it in house only pays off from a high, steady volume, and it recreates the very risk people hold against freelancers: everything rests on one person, who can leave.

The criterion people forget: who does the work

With an agency, the central question is not the price but the seniority of the person assigned to your account. An account handed to a junior running thirty others in parallel produces standardised creative and very little real testing. It is the most common disappointment reported by businesses leaving an agency.

The questions to ask, whichever option you pick:

• Who will actually work on my account, day to day?
• How many accounts does that person run in parallel?
• Who produces the creative, and how often is it refreshed?
• Who do I talk to when something goes wrong?

The real weakness of a freelancer

Let us be plain about it: continuity.

A freelancer falls ill, goes on holiday, can have an accident. An agency has a team behind it. If your campaigns account for a critical share of your revenue, that is a risk to take seriously.

What reduces it:

• Full access to your ad account, in your name, never in theirs
• Every creative delivered and stored with you, source files included
• Documentation of the campaign structure
• A backup contact identified in advance

If a freelancer refuses any of those, that is a warning sign regardless of their talent.

The real strength of a freelancer

Responsiveness and knowing the account.

When the same person edits the videos and runs the campaigns, the gap between "this ad is not working" and "here is the new version" is measured in days. In a setup where editing and media buying are separate, it is measured in weeks, because it takes a brief, an approval and a slot in a schedule.

In advertising, that speed of iteration is directly tied to performance. It is probably the strongest argument for one person covering both jobs.

The decision table

A hybrid option people underrate

Bring in a freelancer to build the system, then take execution in house.

The freelancer sets up conversion tracking, the campaign structure and the creative templates, and trains your team. You then keep day-to-day production and bring them back now and then for audits and new angles.

It is often the cheapest option over two years, and it leaves you independent. I suggest it when the client's situation lends itself to it, even though it shortens the engagement.

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Going further: What Meta Ads budget to plan and What a video ad costs on Meta. And on money: how agencies and freelancers charge. Beyond Meta: the media buying agency, and how to choose one.

Torn between options? Book a 30-minute call. If a freelancer is not the right answer for you, I will say so and point you elsewhere.