Before choosing an agency or freelancer, identify who will make the buying decisions, who will execute them and who covers an absence. Those arrangements vary within both categories, so compare the people and responsibilities named in the proposal.

What you are actually buying from an agency

An agency can provide coverage, a reporting process and access to several specialists. Ask how that works on your account: the assigned buyer, the backup and the responsibilities each person holds.

The senior person on the sales call may not be your day-to-day buyer. Ask to meet the assigned operator and find out how much time they have for your account. A large team only provides useful coverage if someone on it knows the work and owns the next decision.

What you are actually buying from a freelancer

A freelancer can give you direct contact with the person making changes. Check whether they do the work themselves, use subcontractors or rely on your team for launches, reporting or creative.

Discuss absences before they happen. Ask who can handle an urgent pause, where the account history is kept and how a handover works if the engagement ends. Some freelancers have a backup; others do not.

Should you just hire in-house?

An employee can work closely with the product and creative teams. Compare that benefit with the full cost and the amount of senior media buying work the account actually needs.

Include salary, hiring, tools and management time in the cost comparison. Spend alone does not tell you whether the role will fill a full week.

Use a working interview to assess the candidate even if you do not run ads yourself. Ask them to explain a decision in terms of your economics and the evidence available. The media buyer interview guide provides a scenario.

The questions that expose the operating model

Whatever the label says, put the same questions to every proposal:

• Who makes the final buying decisions in my account?
• Who actually executes the changes?
• Who do I talk to when I have a question?
• Who covers the account when that person is out?
• Who fixes it when something goes wrong, and how do I find out about it?
• Who produces the creative, and who has the final say on it?

Ask for a named person or role for each responsibility, including the backup. Resolve gaps before signing.

Two useful follow-ups are:

"Who exactly logs into my account on Tuesday?" and "How many other accounts does that person run?"

Put the answers in a comparison table

Use this table to record the actual arrangement. The entries describe possibilities to verify, not fixed traits of each provider type.

The final column records what must be agreed regardless of provider type. Use gaps in the answers to guide the next conversation.