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Should I hire an agency or run Google Ads and affiliate in-house?

In-house works when you have the spend to justify a specialist for each channel and the time to keep them current. An agency makes sense when you need that expertise across Google Ads and affiliate without the hiring, and when it is paid on results rather than hours.

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The short answer

There is no single right answer, but there is a useful test. If you could hire a full-time specialist for each channel, keep them trained, and give them the tools they need, in-house can work well. If you'd be asking one person to run Google Ads, affiliate and reporting on top of other work, an agency usually gets more from the same budget.

What in-house does well

  • Your team knows the product, the customers and the margins better than anyone outside.
  • Decisions can be fast, because there is no handoff.
  • Knowledge stays in the company when campaigns change.

Where in-house teams tend to struggle

  • Google Ads and affiliate need different skills. One is bidding, keywords and feeds; the other is partner deals, tracking and commission structures.
  • A small team rarely has the time to test whether branded search or coupon partners are incremental, so reported revenue gets taken at face value.
  • Platforms change constantly, from AI Overviews in Google to new affiliate networks, and keeping up is a job on its own.
  • Partner relationships take years to build. An in-house hire starts from scratch.

What an agency should bring

A good agency brings specialists across channels, relationships you don't have, and an outside view of where the budget is wasted. For SocialLynx, that means certified Google Ads Partner status, impact.com Gold Partner and Certified Managing Partner status, a network of 1,000+ publishers, and experience managing 7-8 figure affiliate programs.

It should also be honest about where it doesn't help. SocialLynx reads the whole budget and tells you if money is going to waste on a channel it isn't paid to run.

Questions to decide

  • How much are you spending on Google Ads and affiliate today? The more you spend, the more a small efficiency gain is worth.
  • Who on your team owns each channel now, and how much of their week does it get?
  • Can you tell new customers from returning ones in your reports today?
  • Would you rather pay salaries and tools, or a fee tied to results?

The hybrid option

Many brands keep strategy and brand decisions in-house and hand channel management to an agency. The in-house owner sets the goals and the agreed number, and the agency runs the accounts and reports against it. This works best when the agency is month to month, so the in-house owner always has leverage.

When SocialLynx isn't the answer

If you haven't launched Google Ads or an affiliate program yet, SocialLynx isn't a fit. It improves programs that are already spending. It also doesn't take startups, SaaS companies, or brands in cannabis, alcohol, gambling, GLP-1 or tobacco.

If you're an e-commerce or DTC brand already spending on either channel, the free audit is a low-cost way to compare: it shows what an agency would change, and you can decide from there whether to keep the work in-house.