should you run Google Ads in-house or use an agency?

Run it in-house if someone on your team has genuine hours and appetite to learn the craft properly. Use an agency when the account's spend and complexity justify specialist attention every week. The deciding factor is time and focus, not secret knowledge, and whichever you choose, the account should belong to you.

Nobody knows your customers like you do, and the platform is learnable. If someone can give it consistent weekly attention, learn the reports, and run disciplined tests, in-house works, especially at smaller spends where agency fees would eat the gains. The risk is the half-job: an account set up in a burst of enthusiasm, then left to drift for months while the market moves.

Specialists see hundreds of accounts, so they recognise patterns faster and avoid expensive detours. As spend grows, small percentage improvements outgrow the fee, and the weekly discipline is what you're really buying: search term hygiene, tests always running, budget flowing toward what works. The risk is buying reporting instead of work, which is why references and plain-English reviews matter.

Plenty of businesses do best with an agency to build and stabilise the account, then a trained internal person to run it day to day with periodic outside reviews. Skills transfer in, costs come down, and nobody is dependent on anybody. A confident agency will happily work toward this.

You're reading an agency's blog, so notice our incentive and discount for it. Our actual view: below a certain spend the maths rarely justifies full management fees, and an honest agency says so in the first call rather than after twelve invoices.