In shortThree ways to get Google Ads run: an agency, a one-person freelancer or consultant, or in-house. Who does the work, holiday cover, and who each suits.
For most UK small businesses, the choice comes down to who touches the account. A larger agency offers breadth and holiday cover, often with an account manager between you and the specialist. A freelancer or one-person consultant is the specialist, with a single point of failure to manage. In-house suits businesses with the spend and hours to justify it.
A declaration first: Lucent is the one-person model. I'm David, and I run every Google Ads account the studio manages myself, with no account managers or juniors behind me. So I have an interest here, and this guide tries to be fair to the other two options and plain about the weakness of mine. The Google Ads consultant page shows how the one-person version works in practice.
Key Takeaways
- The real difference between the three models is who logs in to your account each week, and how much context they carry.
- A one-person consultant is a single point of failure. Owning the account, holding your own admin access and documenting every change makes that failure recoverable.
- Judge any provider on enquiries and revenue from your own records, and prefer a fee that does not rise with your ad spend.
Who actually touches the account each day?
This is the question most buying decisions skip. Google Ads rewards steady, informed attention: reading search terms, adding negative keywords, checking that conversions still fire, adjusting budgets as demand moves. How good that attention is depends on who gives it.
A larger agency
The person who sells you the service is rarely the person who runs the account. You usually speak to an account manager, who passes requests to a PPC specialist, who may share the work with junior staff. Good agencies make this work through senior review and shared processes. The risk is dilution: context gets lost in handovers, your account is one of many on a busy list, and staff turnover can put a new face on it without much warning.
A freelancer or one-person consultant
The person on the call is the person making the changes. A comment about a quiet week or a new service can shape the account the same day, and the person who set the account up remembers why each decision was made. The trade-off is capacity: one person has finite hours, and a good one limits how many accounts they take on.
In-house
An employee knows your business better than any outsider: the margins, the jobs you want more of, which enquiries waste time. But in a small business, the person running Google Ads often also runs email, social media and the website. Ads get the leftover hours, and because that person only ever sees one account, it is hard for them to know what good looks like.
What happens when the person running it is on holiday or ill?
This is where the one-person model is weakest. If a freelancer is ill for a fortnight, nobody else is logged in. An agency has cover built in, even if the stand-in knows your account less well. In-house carries the same exposure as a freelancer, plus one more: when the employee leaves, the understanding of the account can leave with them.
The campaigns do not stop when the person is away. Ads keep running within the budgets and settings already in place. The risk is a gap in monitoring, a week where nobody reviews search terms or notices that a form has broken.
Four safeguards turn that into a manageable risk:
- The account is in your name. You are the admin, you pay Google on your own card, and the consultant has user access you can change or remove at any time. Google explains the access levels in its guide to managing access to your Google Ads account.
- Changes are documented. Google Ads keeps its own change history, but a short written note of what changed and why is what lets someone else pick the account up quickly.
- Absences are planned. Time off is agreed in advance, budgets and negative keyword lists are checked beforehand, and you know what to look at if something seems wrong.
- There is an exit route. If the relationship ends, you keep the account, its history and its data, and any competent specialist can take over from the notes.
That is how I run accounts at Lucent: the client owns the account and the access, and changes are written down so nothing depends on what is in my head. It does not give a one-person model an agency's cover. It makes a gap recoverable rather than fatal.
How do the cost structures differ?
Every option costs two things: the ad spend, which goes to Google, and the cost of managing it. Spend is broadly the same whoever runs the account, so the useful comparison is how the management is charged.
Agencies usually charge a monthly retainer, a percentage of ad spend or both, sometimes with a setup fee and a minimum term. With a percentage, the person advising you on budget earns more when the advice is to spend more. Many agencies handle that honestly, but the incentive exists.
Freelancers and consultants tend to charge a flat monthly fee or an hourly or day rate. Lower overheads can make them cheaper, but not always; an experienced specialist may cost more than a junior-led agency package. Compare what is included, not the headline figure.
In-house has no management invoice, but the real cost is a salary, employer contributions, training, tools and your own time supervising. It is good value when the workload genuinely fills the role, which with one or two campaigns it often does not.
Lucent's management fee is flat, never a percentage of spend, and quoted on the audit call once I have seen the account. For the spend side, see what Google Ads cost in the UK.
Where does each option have the deepest skills?
Each model is strong in a different place, and the right one depends on what your account needs.
An agency usually has the widest range under one roof: Search, Shopping feeds, Performance Max, YouTube creative, analytics and web development. If you need several channels running at once, that breadth is worth paying for.
A freelancer or consultant tends to go deep in a narrower band. Ask what they do not do. A Search specialist who turns down large product feeds or video production is being honest, not showing a weakness.
In-house has the deepest business knowledge and the thinnest platform exposure. That suits specialist trades where only an insider can tell a good enquiry from a poor one.
The skill most often missing under all three is measurement. If the account counts page views or button taps as conversions, every decision rests on the wrong numbers. Google's conversion measurement overview is a sensible place to start checking what your account actually records.
Who is accountable when results slip?
Accountability is only as good as the numbers behind it. Whoever runs your account should report against enquiries and revenue you can check in your own records, not only against what the platform says it achieved.
An agency gives you a contract and an escalation route, but responsibility can spread across several people. A freelancer is one name with nowhere to hide, but nobody else checks their work, so you need reporting you can verify yourself. In-house, you manage the person directly, but you need enough knowledge to judge whether the work is good.
The Google Ads case study I publish is Procon 24/7, a Yorkshire concrete supplier. Revenue there comes from the client's own revenue reports rather than the ad platform: from 2022 to September 2026, £1,337,693 of tracked revenue on £150,443 of ad spend, an 8.9x return, with 2,055 new customers. That is one client's result, not a forecast for anyone else.
The mistakes matter as much as the headline. Call tracking should have shipped in month one and did not. A site rebuild once silently broke conversion tagging until it was caught. Because revenue came from the client's own reports, the figures stayed trustworthy while that fault was live. That is the case for client-side reporting under any of the three models.
Which option fits which business?
Here is the comparison in one place.
| Larger agency | Freelancer or consultant | In-house | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | Account manager plus specialists, sometimes juniors | The person you speak to | Your employee, often alongside other jobs |
| Holiday and sickness cover | Built in | Single point of failure; reduced by ownership and documented changes | Single point of failure, and knowledge can leave with the employee |
| Cost structure | Retainer, percentage of spend or both, often with a minimum term | Flat fee, or an hourly or day rate | Salary, employer costs, training and tools |
| Breadth of skills | Widest | Narrower, often deeper | Depends on the hire |
| Knowledge of your business | Varies with staff changes | Builds steadily with one person | Deepest |
| Accountability | Contract and escalation, spread across people | One name, needs verifiable reporting | Direct line management |
| Best fit | Several channels, larger budgets, cover that never depends on one person | Search-led accounts, owners who want direct contact | Enough workload to fill a real role |
In short: choose an agency if you need several channels at once or cannot accept any gap in cover. Choose a freelancer or consultant if your account is mainly Search, you want to talk to the person doing the work, and you will own the account. Choose in-house if Google Ads fills real hours every week, and add an outside review once or twice a year so someone with wider exposure checks it.
What should you ask before hiring anyone?
The same questions work for all three options:
- Whose name is the Google Ads account in, and who pays Google?
- Who will log in each week, by name?
- What happens when that person is away?
- How are changes recorded, and can I see the record?
- What counts as a conversion, and does it match the enquiries in my inbox?
- How often are search terms reviewed and negative keywords added? Google's guides to the search terms report and negative keywords explain what that work involves.
- How is the fee charged, and does it rise with my spend?
- If we part ways, what do I keep?
A good provider of any kind will answer those without hesitating.
Where Lucent fits
Lucent suits a UK business that wants one specialist running a mainly Search-led account, reporting against real enquiries and speaking to them directly. It is not the right choice if you need a multi-channel agency with in-house video production, or cover that never depends on one person. I would rather say that now than after you have signed.
Every engagement starts with a free Google Ads audit, and the audit can conclude that you should not spend yet, for example when the website is not ready for paid traffic. If going ahead makes sense, the one-person Google Ads consultant service sets out how the work is structured, and the Google Ads management page explains what is included each month.
