A side-by-side breakdown for companies with 5–100 employees deciding between hiring a senior paid media specialist and retaining a performance marketing agency.
Salary is the smallest part of an in-house hire. Employer contributions, tooling, recruitment fees, onboarding time and the cost of an empty seat during notice periods all sit on top. The table below uses conservative European benchmarks for one senior paid media specialist.
| Item | Vibe Digital | In-house hire |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly cost | €659 + 10% of ad spend over €1,000 | €6,225 all-in |
| One-time cost | from €250 per social platform (€450 for Google Ads) setup | ~€4,500 recruitment |
| Time to full output | 1–2 weeks | 8–12 weeks after hiring |
| Channels covered | Google + all major social | Usually 1–2 |
| Creative, tracking & analytics | Included | Extra hires or tools |
| Cover during holiday/sick leave | Team continuity | Campaigns pause |
Benchmarks for a 5–100 employee company. Run your own numbers in the ROI calculator.
Hiring is a 6–10 week process before day one, then another 8–12 weeks of ramp-up on your account, data and creative. An agency inherits an existing playbook: audit in week one, tracking and structure rebuilt in weeks one to four, and the first optimisation cycle closed inside the first month.
That difference matters most when demand is seasonal. A quarter lost to hiring is a quarter of ad spend running on last year's structure.
In-house is the better answer when paid media is your core product surface, when you spend enough to keep a specialist fully occupied on a single channel, or when data cannot leave the building for regulatory reasons.
A single in-house growth owner sets strategy, budget and brand guardrails. The agency runs channel execution, creative iteration, tracking hygiene and reporting. You keep control and institutional knowledge without paying for four specialist salaries.
Take your last 90 days of ad spend, your gross margin and your current ROAS or cost per lead. Model the fully loaded in-house cost against an agency retainer at the same spend, then apply a conservative uplift — not a best case.
For most companies spending under about €80,000 per month on ads, yes. A fully loaded senior specialist costs roughly €6,225 per month plus around €4,500 in recruitment, while an agency retainer starts at €419–€659 per month per platform plus a variable fee on ad spend. Above that spend level the maths narrows and a hybrid setup usually wins.
An agency is normally live within 1–2 weeks and closing its first optimisation loop inside the first month, while an in-house hire takes 6–10 weeks to recruit and 8–12 weeks to reach full output. In practice the agency is a full quarter ahead.
Proximity. An in-house specialist sits in your product and sales conversations daily. We close that gap with a weekly working session, shared dashboards and direct access to the people running the account — but if paid media is your product, keep it inside.
Yes, and many clients do. Accounts, pixels, feeds, creative files and documentation are yours from day one, so a handover is an export, not a rebuild.
A free account review gives you the fully loaded comparison for your spend, margin and current performance — no obligation.
One offer, no pressure
Meta, Google or TikTok — a senior specialist reviews your account and sends a concrete growth plan within 48–72 hours of access. No obligation, no lock-in.