How to outsource paid media without losing your ad accounts

The three fee models

Paid media agencies charge in three main ways. The model matters as much as the number, because it decides what the agency gets paid more for.

How common is each? In WordStream’s 2023 State of the Digital Marketing Agency report, a survey of 300 agencies, 33% priced paid services as a flat fee and 33% as a flat fee plus a percentage of spend. Another 16% charged a percentage of spend, 15% billed hours, and 3% used something else.

Creative is often extra. In the same survey, 52% of agencies charged add-on fees for landing pages, 41% for image ads and display creative, and 28% for custom reporting dashboards. Ask what the fee covers before you compare quotes.

What the fee looks like at your spend

A percentage fee is cheap on a small budget and expensive on a big one. Here’s the 10% to 20% range at four spend levels, next to a flat full-time hire.

The U.S. figure uses the Bureau of Labor Statistics median for market research analysts and marketing specialists, $78,760 in May 2025. Benefits were 30% of total compensation for private-industry workers in June 2026, so $78,760 ÷ 0.70 ÷ 12 is about $9,400 a month.

Our take: under about $10,000 a month in spend, an agency or freelancer is the cheaper call. Somewhere between $20,000 and $40,000, a full-time hire starts to cost less than a percentage fee, and the gap widens as you scale. An agency does bring a team, though. If you need a strategist, a designer, and an analyst on the account, price those seats too.

Who owns the ad accounts when you leave

This is the question most buyers skip, and the one that hurts at the exit. If the ad account, the pixel, and the audiences live in the agency’s business account, leaving means asking for them back.

Both platforms are set up so you can own the accounts and give an agency access.

• Meta. A business can create an ad account, claim an existing one into its business portfolio, or request to share one. Meta’s example of sharing is an agency managing a client’s account: "The account will remain in their portfolio, but access will be shared."
• Google Ads. Admin access lets you give account access, change access levels, cancel invitations, and accept, reject, or unlink manager accounts. An agency links its manager account to yours. You keep Admin.
• Google’s rules for agencies. Google’s third-party policy requires agencies to tell new customers about any management fee in writing before the first purchase and to show it on every invoice. When an agency’s terms with Google call for a monthly report, it must show costs, clicks, and impressions, with the exact amount Google charged and without the agency’s fee. The agency can let you sign in to the account instead. Agencies must give you your customer IDs when you ask.

### The exit checklist

Run this before you sign. Every item should be a yes.

1. The Meta ad account sits in your business portfolio, and the agency has shared access.
2. You hold Admin on Google Ads. The agency works through a linked manager account you can unlink.
3. The pixel, conversion tracking, and analytics property were created under your accounts.
4. Custom audiences and customer lists live in your ad accounts.
5. Creative files, ad copy, and reports are saved in your drive, not theirs.
6. Invoices show the management fee apart from media spend.
7. The contract says what gets handed over at the end, and how much notice you owe.

If an agency resists any of these, treat it as the answer to your question.

Agency, freelancer, or full-time hire

Each one wins somewhere. Pick by spend and by how much daily work the account needs.

• Freelancer. Spend under about $10,000 a month on one or two platforms, or a one-time audit and rebuild.
• Agency. A launch that needs strategy, creative, and media buying at once, or several platforms run at low volume without managing anyone.
• Full-time hire. Spend that’s steady and growing, with daily work: creative tests, bid and budget pacing, search term reviews, and reporting your team acts on.

For what each specialist should know, see our guides to hiring a Google Ads specialist and a Meta Ads specialist.

Where we’re the wrong call: if you spend a few thousand dollars a month on ads, a freelancer or a small agency at $1,000 to $2,000 a month costs less than a full-time hire. If you need a head of paid media to set strategy and manage a team, hire them in-house. And we place one marketer per seat, so if you need strategy, creative, and media buying on day one, an agency’s team gets you there faster.

Where GrowthPair fits

A GrowthPair Paid Social Marketer or Paid Search Marketer works full-time on your accounts only, in your time zone, for about $4,000 a month, all-in, at any spend level. A GrowthPair marketer works inside your accounts as a user you add, the same as an employee, so there’s nothing to hand back when you leave. Every candidate passes our five-step vetting: a resume screen, a phone interview, a proctored skills assessment, a live interview with a marketer, and your interview. About 1.5% of applicants are accepted. EmoryDay, an agency, hired an advertising specialist through us to support client campaigns across Google, Meta, LinkedIn, and Bing. Rob Fienberg, who has overseen client service and operations there for 17 years, had been cautious: "Google Ads is complicated. Meta is complicated." The hire passed his 30-day review with "flying colors." Read the EmoryDay case study.

To compare all four hiring models, see in-house vs agency vs freelancer vs staffing.