A Meta ads agency sells a system. A freelance media buyer sells a person. Either can be the right hire. The mistake is paying agency prices for a junior, or paying a freelancer and discovering you still needed a studio.
I am the freelance side of that choice. I work directly with ecommerce brands on Meta ads. There is no delivery team behind the call. That is a feature if you want the operator. It is a limitation if you want everything else done too.
Hire an agency when the work is bigger than the ad account
An agency earns its fee when the brand needs a group of skills on one timeline: creative production, landing pages, email, and media buying, with someone coordinating them. A store that is still inventing the offer, the photography, and the site often needs that group. A single buyer cannot design the catalog, write the flows, and run the account at a high level in the same week.
The failure mode is specific. You meet a sharp strategist. After the contract, the account moves to a pod. The strategist shows up monthly. The person changing budgets is early in their career and is following a playbook written for a different brand. You will feel this as slow answers and safe, generic creative.
If you hire an agency anyway, ask for the name of the buyer, their other accounts, and whether you can speak to them without a producer in the middle. “We don’t do that” is the answer that tells you the structure.
Hire a freelancer when you need a senior person in the account
A freelance media buyer is the right fit when the brand already exists. The site converts. The product has a margin you can explain. You need someone who has already managed serious spend to make the next set of decisions in Ads Manager.
What you are buying is judgment and attention. I have spent more than $500M across Meta accounts, including my own store above $8M, and I still want the work to be the work: in the account, on your numbers, without a junior between us. That only helps you if media buying is the gap. If the gap is the product page, fix that first or hire the people who build pages.
- You can name the person who will log in.
- You can see published account evidence, not only a logo slide. Mine sits on the results section.
- The weekly conversation is a decision, not a status report.
- Creative production is owned somewhere. The buyer directs tests. They do not secretly become your studio.
What you are paying for
An agency fee often buys a group: a strategist, a buyer, a designer, an account manager, and the meetings required to keep them aligned. A freelance fee buys one person’s judgment and the hours they spend in your account. If you compare the two prices without comparing the jobs, the freelancer looks expensive and the agency looks like a team. Unpack the team. Ask how many hours the named buyer will spend on your account in a normal week, not how many people are on the slide.
I do not publish a rate card on this site because the work depends on the account. What I will say is what the money is for. It is for me to be in Ads Manager, to test creative against your numbers, and to tell you when the ads are not the problem. It is not for a brand rebuild, a photo shoot, or a guaranteed return. If the proposal you are holding bundles all of that, you are buying a studio. Price it as a studio.
Media spend is separate from the fee, and it should stay that way. The brand pays Meta. The buyer does not need to own the card to do the work. Anyone who wants the ad account, the pixel, and the payment method inside their own business manager is asking for leverage you will regret the week you want to leave.
Who makes the ads
This is the gap that makes people hire the wrong shape of company. A freelance media buyer can direct a test: which concept, which offer, which cut of the video, what to kill. A freelance media buyer is not, by default, your photographer, your editor, and your landing-page designer. If nobody owns production, the account starves, and then everyone blames the structure.
An agency earns the broader fee when production is actually included and the people making the ads talk to the person buying the media. It fails when creative is a monthly batch designed without the account, dropped into a shared folder, and judged by a strategist who will not open Ads Manager. Ask to see last month’s ads next to last month’s results. If the creative team cannot name which concept won, the “full service” is two departments sharing a logo.
On the accounts I run, I need a supply of distinct ads and a person at the brand who can approve an offer without a committee. I will say what to make next. I will not pretend a lack of creative is a targeting problem. That conversation is easier with a founder than with a pod that is measured on delivering assets, not on whether the assets paid for themselves.
The first two weeks, either way
Agency or freelancer, the opening should look similar, because the account does not care about the org chart. Access, the purchase event, the last 60 to 90 days, the margin, and a list of what is already working. Then a written note that says what will change, what will not, and when you will look again. If the first deliverable is a 40-page audit full of screenshots and no decision, you bought a document.
- You can see the buyer in the account, not only on the kickoff call.
- Nobody rebuilds a profitable ad set in week one so the setup matches their template.
- You get one opinion about tracking before anyone scales spend.
- Creative production has a name and a date, even if that name is not the buyer.
I wrote the longer hiring checklist in how to hire a freelance media buyer. The structure those buyers should be protecting is in Facebook ads campaign structure. Use both before you sign, whether the signature is with me or with a team.
Red flags on either side
Walk away from a guaranteed ROAS, a promise of overnight scale, or a black-box account you are not allowed to open. Walk away from a freelancer who cannot describe your contribution margin, and from an agency that will not let you meet the buyer. Both are selling comfort.
A practical way to choose: write down the jobs you need done in the next 90 days. If the list is “run Meta, test creative, tell me the truth about the numbers,” hire the person who will do those jobs with their own hands. If the list includes building the brand from scratch, hire a team and then still ask who opens Ads Manager.
Count the jobs before you count the headcount. “Full service” is only a bargain if those services are the ones you are missing, and if the person who buys the media is allowed to reject creative that will not survive the feed. A freelancer is only a bargain if the store, the offer, and the creative supply already exist, and if you are willing to hear that the next problem is not inside Ads Manager.
Either hire should be easy to leave. Your ad account, your pixel, your catalog, your card. A written note of what is working on the day you part ways. The brand that cannot open its own account has not hired help. It has rented its distribution. I will not run an account on those terms, and you should not accept them from an agency either.
Judge the hire on the second month, not the kickoff. By then you should know the buyer’s name in the account, have seen one decision that was explained before it was made, and have heard at least one no. If the only artifact is a dashboard and the person who sold you is suddenly “across other accounts,” the shape you bought is not the shape that is doing the work. Switch then. Waiting a quarter to be polite is how a bad structure becomes the account.
The same test applies if you stay with an agency. Ask for the buyer’s calendar on your account for the last two weeks, not the agency’s headcount. Hours in the account, decisions made, creative killed. If that list is thin and the slide deck is thick, you are paying for management of the relationship. The ads are being managed by someone else, or by no one.
If you already know you want the operator, the next step is a call. I take those myself. The longer checklist for the conversation is in how to hire a freelance media buyer.