The internal and agency debate misses the real problem of paid media

For years, discussions about paid media have revolved around one question: should companies build in-house teams or outsource to agencies?

That argument makes sense, but it misses the real problem. The problem isn’t where paid media sits on the organizational chart. That’s right how operational leadership is structured.

Many companies use Google Ads and other paid channels with talented teams, tight budgets, and documented best practices. Campaigns are live. Full dashboards. Upgrades happen on a schedule. However:

• The results are static.
• Pipes are flat.
• The budget is in question.
• Confidence in paid advertising is destructive.

This is rarely a talent issue. It is usually a structure.

Many home teams ended up getting beaten

For many B2B paid media accounts, from SaaS to service businesses spending five figures a month, we see the same pattern.

Performance does not fall overnight. It’s moving slowly.

Campaigns are ongoing. Costs appear to be stable. Leads are still coming in. But growth continues. Leadership sees movement without understanding. Decisions turn into action. Paid media is changing from an engine of growth to a cost center that must protect its existence.

Gap is not effort or doing. Over time, strategy is reduced when groups work alone.

Why ‘multiple calculations’ rarely fix the problem

When performance is cold, the default response is to hire. A new professional. Station owner. A very high level role.

Additional resources can make the job easier, but headcount alone rarely fixes the real problem.

For internal teams, three challenges go hand in hand:

1. Leadership tracking and visibility

Leadership teams often lack a clear, shared vision of how paid media drives pipeline and revenue. The data is there, but it’s scattered across disconnected platforms, tools, and dashboards.

Without strong integration, even well-run campaigns operate with weak feedback loops, limiting how much they can improve.

2. Roof structure and capacity

Most teams try to follow proven best practices. The problem is not the intention. It is the context. What works for one company or growth stage may not work, or be harmful to another.

Without external benchmarks or new ideas, teams strive to see what works for their business.

3. Lack of systematic testing

Daily execution consumes available capacity. Teams focus on keeping things stable instead of pushing performance forward. Testing first feels risky, although the real benefits often come from a few effective tests.

Over time, this creates the illusion of improvement: steady work without meaningful progress.

The same error occurs before the ads start

These structural issues don’t just affect companies that already use paid media. They often appear early, before the launch of the first campaigns.

For many B2B organizations, paid advertising enters the picture when growth from external sales, partnerships, or organic channels begins to slow.

The budget comes out carefully. Execution is empowered. The results are expected to appear in the field automatically.

What is often missing is strategic ownership:

• Clear definitions of success that go beyond high-level metrics
• Track that commitments spend to pipelines, not just lead volume
• A road test that matches your income goals

Despite this premise, the first results are disappointing. The budget is being cut. Confidence fades. Paid media is written off before it has a real chance to work.

Ironically, this first stage is where an outsider’s perspective can have the greatest long-term impact. This is where companies are least likely to want it.

The structural advantage of extrinsic performance leadership

Outsourcing is often planned as a way to reduce costs or add outsourcing capabilities. In fact, its great advantage the idea.

External operations teams work across multiple accounts, industries, and growth segments. See:

• Spot the patterns ahead.
• Know when platform recommendations favor cost growth over business results.
• Internal groups of assumptions are likely to stop challenging.

That external perspective is especially important in areas such as tracking architecture, platform integration, and account structure, where the adoption of best practices can undermine performance.

A typical scenario looks like this:

• Teams follow the platform’s direction but leave martech gaps unaddressed.
• Systems don’t talk to each other.
• Signs of improvement are weakening.
• Budget effectiveness is declining, although campaigns appear to be fully compliant.

When outsourcing actually works – and when it doesn’t

Outsourcing is not a solution. It breaks down when companies expect external partners to fix operations on their own, or when strategy and execution reside in different countries.

It works best as a hybrid model:

• Internal teams manage execution and business context
• External experts bring strategic guidance, structural resets, and ongoing challenge

In this setup, partners don’t change teams. They raise the bar.

That’s why the special agency Google Ads creates great value where the goal is not only to run campaigns, but to turn paid media into a predictable growth lever.

The smart model: External strategy, internal execution

Effective organizations are increasingly fragmented strategy from capacity to do.

They bring in outside technology not because something is broken, but because they want to:

• Objective assessment of performance and structure.
• Powerful attribute and tracking basics.
• Disciplined assessment frameworks.
• Clear accountability at the leadership level.

This approach builds momentum before budgets are cut, not after results drop. It also helps leadership understand why paid media is doing the way it is, restoring confidence in the channel.

What companies do well do it differently

Organizations that avoid long plateaus tend to:

• Treat paid media as a system, not an independent channel.
• Invest early in clear tracking and strong integration.
• Invite an external challenge before the performance slips.
• Accept that many trials will fail, knowing that a few wins will add up.

In this context, outsourcing is not about cost efficiency. It’s about maintaining strategic sharpness as platforms and markets evolve.

A final thought

The internal versus external debate boils down to a deeper issue: who owns operational direction, and how often is it challenged?

As paid media platforms automate and evolve, the companies that sustain growth aren’t the ones with big teams. They are the ones with the clearest vision.