Resourcing paid media. Australia
Agency vs freelancer vs in-house
The real trade-off is not agency versus freelancer versus in-house. It is how much senior attention you get on the actual work, what happens to your account when that person is unavailable, and what the arrangement costs as a share of your ad spend, because no model gives you the best of all three at once.
A freelancer buys you the most seniority per dollar and the least capacity. An agency buys you the most capacity, and you have to ask who is really in the account. An in-house hire buys you total ownership and focus at a cost that stays the same whether you spend $5k or $50k a month. A productized service like ours buys you a published price and a fixed system, and gives up the long tail of everything else a generalist would pick up. This page lays out where each one genuinely wins, including where we are the wrong answer.
Traditional agency
Most capacity and the deepest bench. Ask who is actually doing the work.
Freelancer
Senior hands for the least money. One person, one week, no cover.
In-house hire
Total ownership and focus. Fixed cost, hiring risk, one point of failure.
Productized service
Published price, defined system, senior operator. Narrow scope by design.
Side by side
The six things that actually decide it
Most comparisons of this kind argue about price. Price matters, but it is one of six dimensions, and the other five are what people regret getting wrong. Here is the honest version of each.
| Dimension | Traditional agency | Freelancer | In-house hire | Productized service (us) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cost shape | A monthly retainer, sometimes with a percentage of ad spend on top. Usually quoted after a call rather than published. | A day rate, an hourly rate or a small monthly retainer. There is no team or office behind the price. | Salary plus on-costs: superannuation, leave, payroll tax where it applies, software, recruitment. Fixed whether you spend $5k or $50k. | A flat published tier from $2k/month + GST, set by your spend band. Never a percentage of your spend. |
| Who does the work | Depends on the agency, and on how large your account is to them. Worth asking who is in the account daily and how many accounts they carry. | The person you met. That is the whole appeal, and you can judge it directly before you start. | Whoever you can attract and keep, which depends on your salary band, your brand and your city. | Senior operators who have generated $700m in revenue across ecom. The person on your account is the senior, not a trainee. |
| Speed to start | Proposal, scoping and a contract first. Usually the second slowest of the four. | The fastest, if the right one has capacity in the week you need them. | Slowest by a wide margin: advertise, shortlist, interview, offer, notice period, then ramp-up. | The price and the scope are published, so there is nothing to negotiate before the work starts. |
| Capacity ceiling | The highest of the four. More people can be added to your account as it grows. | One person's week. Creative volume is usually what hits the ceiling first. | One person's week, until you can justify funding a second hire. | A defined scope per tier that steps up with your spend band. We do paid media, not everything. |
| When someone leaves | The agency continues. Your day-to-day contact may change, and how smoothly depends on what they wrote down. | Your account stops. A holiday, an illness and a new full-time job are all the same event from your side. | You lose the person and everything they knew, then restart hiring while the account runs on autopilot. | No hiring cycle on your side, and you can leave month to month. Ask us, as you should ask anyone, who else knows your account. |
| Transparency and ownership | Varies a lot. Ask whether the ad accounts, pixels and conversion history sit in accounts you own, and what you keep if you leave. | Usually works inside your own accounts. Ask the same question anyway, and check they have their own logins rather than sharing yours. | Everything is yours by definition. This is the strongest ownership position of the four. | Pricing is published on our site rather than quoted after a call. Ask us the same ownership question, in writing, that you would ask anyone else on this row. |
Prices in this table are ours and are current at the time of writing. The descriptions of the other three models are how they typically work, not a claim about any particular provider. Ask any provider these six questions directly, including us.
Model by model
Where each one genuinely wins
Every one of these is the right answer for someone. The mistake is not picking the wrong model, it is picking a model that does not match your stage and then blaming the people in it.
The traditional agency
You are buying a team and a bench. That is worth real money when the work is genuinely broad: several channels, several markets, brand and performance in the same room, offline media, a busy launch calendar, or a business big enough that one person could not physically hold it.
Who it genuinely suits
- Brands running paid across several channels and markets who want one accountable partner rather than four relationships to coordinate.
- Businesses whose paid media is entangled with brand, PR, offline and creative production, where the value is in the integration.
- Teams who need surge capacity: a launch, a peak season, a new market, without hiring for the peak and carrying it all year.
- Anyone who needs continuity above all else, because a team absorbs an individual leaving in a way that a single person cannot.
What to check before you sign
The main thing to establish is the gap between who sells the work and who does it. Ask, in writing, who is in the account day to day, how many other accounts that person carries, and what happens if they move on. Ask whether any part of the fee is a percentage of your ad spend, because that changes what happens to the price when you scale. None of this is a criticism of agencies. It is just the specific thing that is hardest to see from the outside, so it is the thing to ask about.
The freelancer
This is the most under-rated option in Australian paid media, and for a large number of brands it is straightforwardly the correct one. You get a senior operator at close to cost, because there is no office, no account management layer and no sales team folded into the price. You always know exactly who is doing the work, because it is the person you spoke to.
Who it genuinely suits
- Brands running one channel well, where the job is account management rather than a whole growth function.
- Businesses with someone internal who can hold strategy and write a decent brief, so the freelancer executes rather than guesses.
- Anyone at lower spend where a full management fee would eat an unreasonable share of the media budget.
- Brands with modest creative needs, or who already have a designer or an editor producing ad creative.
Where it costs you
Capacity and continuity, and they arrive together. One person has one week, and creative volume is usually what runs out first: an account that needs a steady stream of new ads every week will outgrow a solo freelancer before it outgrows their skill. There is also no cover. A holiday, an illness or a good full-time offer somewhere else all look the same from your side of the relationship. If you go this way, the sensible move is to make sure the accounts and the documentation are yours, so a handover is a bad week rather than a rebuild.
The in-house hire
Nobody will ever know your margins, your stock, your customers and your seasonality better than someone who sits inside your business. In-house is the strongest option on ownership, focus and context, and at the right size it is also the cheapest per hour of attention.
Who it genuinely suits
- Brands where a salary is a small share of monthly ad spend, so the fixed cost is comfortably carried.
- Businesses with enough paid media work to genuinely fill a full week, rather than a few days of real work stretched across five.
- Teams with someone senior who can hire well, manage the person, check their work and keep them learning.
- Categories where the paid media decisions are inseparable from product, merchandising or stock decisions that get made internally every day.
Where it costs you
The cost is fixed and the risk is concentrated. The true number is salary plus on-costs, and it does not fall in a quiet quarter. Hiring is slow: advertising, shortlisting, interviewing, an offer, a notice period and then ramp-up before anything improves. If you cannot assess paid media yourself, you have limited ability to tell whether the person you hired is good, which is the quiet failure mode of this option. And a single hire only knows what they have seen, so a specialist from one category can take a while in another. When they resign, the knowledge leaves with them and the account runs unattended until you hire again.
The productized service (what we are)
A productized service sells a defined thing at a published price, instead of a custom scope quoted after a sales call. You know what it costs and what is included before you speak to anyone, and the same system runs across every account rather than being invented from scratch each time. We stripped out account managers, decks and office overhead, and kept the media buying and the creative work.
Who it genuinely suits
- Brands who want senior operators on the account without paying for the layer of people around them.
- Anyone who wants to know the price before the call, and wants a fee that does not rise as a percentage when their spend rises.
- Businesses that need real creative volume every month, which is the thing that most often breaks a solo freelancer or a single in-house hire.
- Teams who want to leave if it is not working, without an exit clause conversation.
Where we are not the right answer
- If you are spending under roughly $10k a month on ads. Our lowest tier is $2k/month + GST, which would be a large share of your media. Do it yourself with our free guides, or pay a freelancer for a few hours a month, and come back when the maths works. We would rather say that now.
- If you need one person across email, SEO, organic social, brand and the website. We only do paid media. A generalist in-house marketer or a full-service agency is a better fit, and we will say so.
- If you want someone in your office, in your channels all day and in every meeting. That is what an in-house hire is for, and no external provider is a substitute for it.
- If you want a single partner across paid, brand, PR and offline media at scale. That is what a full-service agency is, and it is a real thing to want.
- If you want the fee tied to a percentage of your spend. Some brands prefer that shape. We do not offer it, deliberately, because it prices us to spend more rather than to spend better.
How to choose
Start with your spend, then your stage
The most useful thing you can do is stop thinking in dollars and start thinking in percentages. Management cost as a share of ad spend tells you almost everything: at low spend, any fee has to produce a very large improvement just to break even, and there is often not enough data yet for anyone to produce it. As spend rises, the same fee becomes a smaller share and a good operator has room to earn it several times over.
The bands below are our own rules of thumb from running accounts, not an industry standard and not a benchmark anyone has published. Treat them as a starting point and argue with them.
Under about $10k a month in ad spend
Do it yourself, or use a freelancer for a few hours a month. At this level a management fee is a big slice of your media and the account usually does not yet generate enough data to justify a lot of hands on it. Our free Meta Ads Strategy 2026 and Google Ads Strategy 2026 guides are the whole method written down, and the Paid Media Budget Planner will help you decide how much to put behind it. We are usually not the right answer here.
About $10k to $30k a month
This is where a good freelancer and a productized service both genuinely work, and the deciding question is creative. If you need a handful of new ads a month and someone internal can brief them, a freelancer is excellent value. If you need a steady weekly stream of new creative, that is where a solo operator's week runs out, and it is the single most common reason brands move on from an otherwise good freelancer. The Creative Testing Pipeline Planner will tell you honestly how much volume your account actually needs.
About $30k to $100k a month
The fee is now a small share of the media, so the question becomes who produces the best work rather than who is cheapest. A productized service or an agency both make sense here. In-house becomes genuinely viable too, provided you can attract the right person, keep them, and check their work. Many brands at this level end up with a hybrid: someone internal who owns strategy, budget and the brand, and an external team who runs the accounts and produces the creative.
Above about $100k a month, or multi-channel and multi-market
At this size the honest answer is usually a combination. An in-house lead who owns the numbers, plus specialists who run the channels, is a common and effective shape. A full-service agency is the other legitimate answer when brand, PR and offline media need to sit in the same room as performance. Our Meta ads management and Google Ads management services run at this level under the Pro and Ultra tiers.
Three questions that decide it faster than any table
- Who holds the strategy? If nobody internally can hold it, a freelancer executing tasks will drift, and you need a partner who owns the plan rather than a pair of hands.
- Is paid media your main growth channel, or one of six? If it is one of six, a generalist beats a specialist. If it is the main one, a specialist is worth what they cost.
- How much new creative do you need every month? This is the question people skip, and it is the one that decides whether a single person of any kind is enough. Our Weekly Paid Creative System guide explains the cadence we run.
Our model, plainly
What we charge and what you get
If a productized service is the shape that fits, here is ours with nothing hidden. The tier is set by your monthly ad spend, so the price does not creep as you scale within a band, and no part of it is a percentage of your spend. Every tier is month to month.
| Tier | Price | Made for |
|---|---|---|
| Hey Sage Core | $2k / month + GST | Brands spending under $30k per month on paid ads. |
| Hey Sage Studio | $4k / month + GST | Brands spending $30k to $100k per month on paid ads. |
| Hey Sage Pro | $6k / month + GST | Brands spending $100k to $200k per month on paid ads. |
| Hey Sage Ultra | $10k / month + GST | Brands spending $200k and above per month on paid ads. |
| Hey Sage Supply | $1k to $3k / month + GST | Brands that require monthly ad creative design. |
Ad creative production sits inside every management tier, so the tier price is the whole management fee. Supply is an optional add-on for brands that want extra ad creative design on top of their tier, not a second line item everyone pays.
Month to month. No lock-in contracts, no percentage of spend.
What that covers is the whole channel rather than a number of hours: strategy and the economics behind it, campaign structure, a production cadence of new static and video ad creative, structured testing, conversion tracking that holds up, and reporting you can act on. You can read the detail on our Meta ads management and Google Ads management pages, and you can read the entire method for free before you pay us anything.
Get startedWork it out yourself
Free tools for the maths behind this decision
You should not have to take our word for any of it. These are free, need no signup, and will tell you what your own numbers say about which model you can afford.
Paid Media Budget Planner
Work out what your ad budget should be before you work out who should run it. The percentage that decides this whole page starts here.
Shopify Profit Calculator
Model contribution margin, break-even ROAS and GST so you know what a customer is actually worth to you.
Service Business LTV Calculator
For clinics, trades and service brands: what a client is worth over time, and therefore what you can afford to pay to win one.
Australian Ecommerce Ad Benchmarks
Context for your own numbers before you decide whether the problem is the person running the ads.
Creative Testing Pipeline Planner
How much new creative your account needs each month, which is the single best predictor of whether one person is enough.
The Paid Media Measurement Stack
How to measure whether any of this is working, whoever ends up running it.
Wondering what the ads themselves will cost, separately from management? See our guides on Google Ads costs in Australia and Meta ads costs in Australia.
FAQ
Agency, freelancer or in-house FAQ
Should you hire a paid ads agency, a freelancer or an in-house marketer?
It comes down to three things: how much senior attention the work needs, how much capacity you need behind it, and what management costs as a share of your ad spend. A freelancer gives you the most senior attention per dollar and the smallest capacity. An agency gives you the most capacity, and you have to ask who is actually in the account. An in-house hire gives you total ownership and focus at a fixed cost that does not move when your spend does. There is no universally correct answer, only the one that matches your stage.
What does each option actually cost?
The shapes differ more than the numbers. Agencies usually charge a monthly retainer, sometimes with a percentage of ad spend on top, and usually quote it after a call rather than publishing it. Freelancers charge a day rate, an hourly rate or a small monthly retainer, with no team overhead behind the price. An in-house hire costs salary plus on-costs like superannuation, leave, payroll tax where it applies, software and recruitment, and that cost is fixed whether you spend $5k or $50k a month. Ours is published: flat tiers from $2k/month + GST, set by your spend band, never a percentage of spend.
When is a freelancer the better choice than an agency?
When you need one channel run well, you have someone internally who can hold strategy and write a brief, and your creative needs are modest. A good freelancer is the cheapest way to get genuinely senior hands on an account, and you always know exactly who is doing the work. The trade is capacity and continuity: one person has one week, and when they are on holiday, unwell or hired full-time somewhere else, your account stops.
When does an in-house paid media hire make sense?
When the salary is a small share of your ad spend, when there is enough work to genuinely fill a full week, and when you have someone senior who can manage and develop that person. In-house wins on ownership, focus and context: nobody will ever know your margins, your stock and your customers better than someone who sits inside your business. The risks are hiring the wrong person, having no way to check their work if you cannot assess paid media yourself, and losing everything they knew when they resign.
What is a productized paid media service?
A defined service sold at a published price, rather than a custom scope quoted after a sales call. You know what is included and what it costs before you talk to anyone, and the provider runs the same system across every account instead of inventing one each time. The upside is price transparency and senior work without agency overhead. The limit is scope: a productized service does what it says it does, and not the long tail of other things a generalist would pick up.
At what ad spend does paid ads management start paying for itself?
Work it out as a percentage, not a dollar figure. If management costs more than a fifth of your media budget, the fee has to produce a very large improvement just to break even, and at low spend there is often not enough data for anyone to produce it. As spend rises the same fee becomes a smaller share and a good operator has room to earn it. That is our own rule of thumb rather than an industry standard, and the honest version is that under roughly $10k a month in ad spend, most brands are better off doing it themselves with free material or paying a freelancer for a few hours a month.
What should you ask any paid ads provider before signing?
Who will be in the account day to day, and how many other accounts do they carry. What the total cost is, including whether any part of it is a percentage of your ad spend. What the notice period is, and what happens to the work if you leave. Whether the ad accounts, pixels and conversion history sit in accounts you own. What will be produced each month, specifically, and how you will see it. Ask us exactly the same questions.
When are you not the right fit?
When you are spending under roughly $10k a month on ads and our fee would be a large share of your media. When you need one person across email, SEO, organic social, brand and the website, because we only do paid media. When you want someone physically in your office and in every meeting, which is what an in-house hire is for. And when you want a single partner across paid, brand, PR and offline media at scale, which is what a full-service agency is for. We would rather tell you that now than three months in.
If we are the right fit
Tell us your numbers
Send us your spend, your margins and what you have tried. If a freelancer or an in-house hire is the better answer for where you are, we will tell you that instead. If we are the right fit, the price is already on this page.
From $2k/month + GST. Month to month. No percentage of spend.
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