Honest side-by-side.

Advantage+ wins for most prospecting and scaling on strong creative and clean signal; manual wins where you need control and isolation. Run Advantage+ as the workhorse with manual campaigns around the edges.

A freelancer wins on cost and directness for a focused account; an agency wins on breadth, cover, and depth as channels and complexity grow. The freelancer's risk is key-person dependency; the agency's is a junior bench.

In-house wins at lower spend and simpler accounts where one capable owner suffices; an agency wins as spend, channels, and complexity scale. The deciding factors are budget, breadth, and whether you can hire and retain senior talent.

A tool wins on price and speed if you already have in-house PPC judgment to point it. An agency wins when you need someone accountable for strategy, not just software that executes tasks. The two are not substitutes for each other.

AI wins the tactical layer, human judgment wins the strategy layer. Any framing that makes you choose one is selling you the wrong thing. The right account runs both.

LSA wins on cost-per-signed-case in single-market practices; Search wins on scale, control, and out-of-metro capture. Run both.

Google captures demand that already exists; Meta creates demand that does not. For most stores the right answer is both, sequenced by whether people are already searching for what you sell.

Google Ads wins for capturing active SaaS intent and lower-funnel leads. Meta wins for demand creation, retargeting, and awareness. Run both, measured on qualified pipeline rather than raw leads.

Google Ads wins for capturing active B2B intent efficiently. LinkedIn wins for precise account and role targeting to create demand. Run both across the funnel, not one or the other.

LSA wins on speed, top placement, and trust signals for immediate intake. SEO wins on durability and long-run cost efficiency. Run LSA now and build organic in parallel.

PMax wins on reach and automation with guardrails; Standard Shopping wins on control and transparency. Use PMax as the engine, keep Standard Shopping where you need visibility.

Fixed retainer wins on stable, aligned incentives when tied to senior expertise. Performance pricing sounds fairer but frequently misaligns incentives toward spend or short-term revenue. Judge by what the pricing actually incentivizes.