Choosing
Agency, freelancer,
in-house, or enterprise?
Four ways to run Amazon advertising, compared properly — including what each one costs, what you give up, and the specific way each one goes wrong. We run one of these four. We’ve said where it’s the wrong answer.
Hire in-house
Recruit an Amazon manager onto your own team
Typical cost
What it's good at
Total focus on your brand, full context on stock, margin and roadmap, and the knowledge stays in the building.
What you give up
One person can only be senior at one thing. Advertising, listings, vendor negotiation and catalogue ops are four different jobs, and no single hire is strong at all four.
How it fails
You hire a generalist because a specialist is unaffordable, then discover 18 months later that the advertising has been competently mediocre the whole time — and there's nobody to benchmark them against.
Best for
Brands where Amazon is the primary channel and the volume genuinely justifies a full-time salary.
Freelancer
One independent contractor managing the ad account
Typical cost
What it's good at
Cheapest route to real expertise. Direct access to the person doing the work, no account-management layer, easy to start and stop.
What you give up
Single point of failure, limited bandwidth, and usually scoped to the ad account alone — listings, creative and catalogue problems fall outside the remit.
How it fails
It works well until it doesn't: they take on too many clients, go on holiday during Q4, or hit a problem outside advertising that nobody owns. Quality varies enormously and is hard to assess before you hire.
Best for
Small, stable catalogues with a straightforward ad account and someone in-house able to judge the work.
Small independent agency
A senior team, a limited client list — where NAYF Ads sits
Typical cost
What it's good at
Senior attention with a team behind it: advertising, listings, creative and reporting covered, without the account-management layer. Cross-account exposure means patterns get spotted early.
What you give up
Capacity is genuinely limited. No 24/7 cover, no large dedicated pod, and if you need formal procurement and vendor onboarding it will be a poor fit.
How it fails
It fails when the agency grows past its own model — takes on too many clients, hires juniors to cover, and quietly becomes the thing it was an alternative to. Ask directly how many clients they hold and whether they turn work down.
Best for
Established brands wanting senior specialism and a direct line to a decision-maker, without an enterprise price or an enterprise contract.
Large / enterprise agency
Network, holding-company or full-service multi-channel agency
Typical cost
What it's good at
Scale and process. Large pods, multi-marketplace coverage, out-of-hours support, formal SLAs, and the ability to run Amazon alongside every other channel under one contract.
What you give up
You are one account in a large portfolio, and attention follows revenue. Long contracts are standard, and the senior people who pitched are rarely the people who execute.
How it fails
The scale mismatch: a brand joins expecting the pitch team and gets a junior carrying eleven accounts. This is the single most common reason mid-size brands change agency — and it isn't incompetence, it's arithmetic.
Best for
Large brands with the spend to be a meaningful account, genuine multi-marketplace or multi-channel needs, and procurement requirements a small firm can't meet.
Cost ranges are market observations for UK and US Amazon advertising management, not quotes. NAYF Ads’ own published rates are on the pricing page.
Find your situation.
Five common positions and what we’d actually tell a founder in each — including the two where the answer isn’t us.
Amazon is under 20% of your revenue and the catalogue is small
Start with a freelancer or a paid audit, not a retainer. At that scale the fee difference matters more than the marginal quality difference, and you can always upgrade once Amazon is material.
Amazon is your main channel and you have the volume for a salary
Hire in-house — then buy specialism around them. The strongest setups we see are one good in-house owner with a specialist agency alongside for advertising, not one or the other.
You're mid-size, growing, and were the small account at your last agency
A small independent agency is the obvious fix, but do the diligence: ask how many clients they hold, who specifically is on your account, and what happens when they get busy.
You need multi-marketplace, multi-channel or formal procurement
Go enterprise. The coverage and process you're paying for is real, and a small agency that tells you it can match it is either overselling or about to under-serve you.
You haven't launched on Amazon yet
None of the above. Get the listing and the first reviews right first — advertising into a listing that doesn't convert is the most expensive way to learn that it doesn't convert.
Nine questions to ask any of them.
Including us. The answers are more revealing than any case study, and an evasive answer to number one tells you most of what you need to know.
Our answers to all nine →- 01Will I have a named person who personally manages the account — and are they on this call?
- 02How many other accounts does that person carry?
- 03Is the agreement rolling, and what's the notice period?
- 04Is there a setup fee, minimum term, or minimum ad spend?
- 05How often will you actually make changes, as opposed to report on them?
- 06Do you work to profit and contribution, or only to ACoS and ROAS?
- 07Do you need ownership of the account, and does the campaign data stay ours if we leave?
- 08Which ad types are in scope — Sponsored Products, Brands, Display, DSP?
- 09Can we speak to a client of a similar size in a similar category?
The questions behind the choice.
- Should I hire an Amazon agency or a freelancer?
- A freelancer is the better value if the catalogue is small and stable, the ad account is straightforward, and someone in-house can judge the quality of the work. An agency earns its premium when the problem spans advertising, listings, creative and catalogue at once, when there's enough spend that a mistake is expensive, or when you need cover that doesn't disappear during Q4. The honest dividing line is roughly whether the fee difference is material to the P&L: below that point, take the freelancer.
- What's the alternative to a large enterprise Amazon agency for a smaller brand?
- A small independent agency, or a senior freelancer. The reason brands leave enterprise agencies is usually scale mismatch rather than poor work — a smaller account gets proportionally less senior attention, because attention follows revenue in a large portfolio. A small independent agency inverts that: the account is significant to them, so it gets senior time. The trade is that you give up 24/7 coverage, large pods and formal procurement.
- How much does Amazon PPC management cost?
- Broadly: freelancers $500–$2,000/month; small independent agencies $2,000–$5,000/month; large agencies $8,000+/month, usually with a percentage of ad spend on top. An in-house Amazon manager costs $70K–$180K a year in salary and benefits. Some agencies, including NAYF Ads, also offer performance-based models where the fee is a share of the sales uplift rather than a fixed retainer.
- Is a percentage of ad spend a good pricing model?
- It's the most common agency model and the most misaligned one: it pays the agency more for spending more of your money, which is exactly the opposite of what you want from an efficiency exercise. A flat fee is more neutral. A fee based on incremental sales uplift above an agreed baseline is better aligned again, though it requires both sides to agree honestly on what the baseline was.
- Can an agency work alongside our in-house Amazon manager?
- Yes, and it's often the strongest structure: the in-house person owns catalogue, stock and commercial relationships, while the agency brings advertising specialism the brand would otherwise have to hire separately. Ask any prospective agency directly how they work with in-house teams — one that treats your internal hire as a threat rather than a counterpart will be difficult to work with.
We’re the small
independent one.
Fifteen minutes with Nathan, a senior read on your account, and a personalised report on your category that’s yours either way.