Agency or consultant? An honest comparison

By Joseph Tobin. 17 September 2026. 7 min read.

Joseph has sat in all three chairs. Eleven years in agencies. Seven years as the client in betting and gaming and in higher education, hiring and reviewing agencies. Now as a consultant. This is what each model is good for, and what it costs you in ways the proposal does not show.

What you are buying

An agency sells you a team and a process. Account director, account manager, executive, a specialist or two, plus tools and reporting. The pitch is that you get a whole department for less than one hire.

A consultant sells you one senior person’s time and judgement. No team, no process layer, no tools you did not ask for.

In-house is a hire. Full cost, full control, and the risk that the person leaves.

Who touches the account

This is the question to ask any agency, and to keep asking. In most agencies, the day-to-day work is done by the most junior person on the team. The senior people you met in the pitch are on the next pitch. That is not a criticism. It is how the model makes money. A director costs the agency £100k or more a year. They cannot be in your account for £4k a month.

With a consultant, the person you speak to is the person in the account. With in-house, it is whoever you hired.

How each one is paid, and what that does to the advice

Percentage of spend. Still common for agencies. The agency earns more when you spend more. It does not have to be corrupt to be a drag on the advice. Nobody on percentage of spend has ever recommended a smaller budget.

Fixed retainer. Better. But retainers are sized to hours, and hours are filled by juniors because that is the margin.

Day rate or project fee. The consultant model. You pay for time or for an outcome. The incentive is to solve the problem and move on, because the next client is waiting.

Salary. In-house. The incentive is to keep the job, which sometimes means not rocking the boat.

Where an agency is the right answer

• You need several channels run at once, across markets, with creative production, and you do not want to manage it.
• You spend enough that the agency puts senior people on it, usually £100k a month and up.
• You need cover for holidays and departures without thinking about it.
• You want tools and reporting built for you.

Where a consultant is the right answer

• You need a senior person to fix, plan or rebuild something, then hand it over.
• You have an in-house team that needs a lead or a second opinion.
• You want an independent view of an agency’s work.
• You are spending between £10k and £250k a month and cannot get senior attention from an agency at that level.
• You want the person in the pitch to be the person in the account.

Where in-house is the right answer

• Paid search is core to the business and you will spend seven figures a year on it for years.
• You can pay the market rate for someone good, and give them a career.
• You have the management capacity to run them.

A combination that works

Many businesses run a consultant or a fractional head alongside an agency. The consultant sets the strategy, owns the target and reviews the agency’s work. The agency does the volume. The agency works harder when the client knows the job, and the client pays for senior judgement only where it is needed.

Questions to ask before you sign

1. Who will be in the account every day? Can I meet them?
2. How are you paid, and what happens to your fee if you recommend spending less?
3. What did you change in your last three accounts, and what happened?
4. Show me a monthly report for a client like me. Would I understand it?
5. What is the notice period, and who owns the account and the data when we leave?

If the answers are vague, the model does not matter. The people do.