Amazon PPC management: in-house, agency, freelancer or software?

There are four ways to run Amazon advertising: hire someone, pay an agency, use a freelancer, or lean on software. Mr. Prime sells the second, so we have tried hard to be fair to the other three. Each can work. Each also fails in a predictable way, and the right choice depends far more on the size and shape of your account than on any general rule.

What an Amazon PPC specialist does

An Amazon PPC specialist sets up, runs and measures your Amazon advertising so that it adds profit: choosing which products to advertise, building the campaigns, setting bids and budgets, mining search terms and reporting what the ads added to total sales. Whether that person is an employee, a freelancer or someone at an agency, the job is the same, and it needs more than a feel for bids. In the accounts we manage, these are the skills that separate profitable PPC from busy PPC:

• Commercial maths. Working out each product’s break-even ACoS from its margin before advertising, and setting targets from it. Our break-even ACoS guide shows how.
• Search-term discipline. Reading the search term report every week, moving converting searches into exact match and adding negatives for the ones that waste money.
• Campaign architecture. Structuring campaigns so that each has one job and one budget, and choosing bidding strategies and placement adjustments that stay within what a product can afford. Our Amazon PPC strategy guide covers this in detail.
• Measurement. Knowing what Amazon’s numbers do and do not include. For sellers, Sponsored Products credits a sale to an ad only if the shopper buys within seven days of clicking, on a last-click basis, and attributed sales exclude VAT¹³. A manager who reports only attributed sales can look successful while the business stands still.
• Tools. Comfort with the console, spreadsheets and Amazon’s bulksheets, which create, update or archive Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands and display campaigns in bulk⁷.
• Keeping up. Amazon renamed its ad platform Amazon Ads Agent on 29 September 2026, added a conversational assistant that can create and optimise campaigns, and said a combined display, video and audio product, DVA+, will roll out from late October⁹. Whoever runs your account has to absorb changes like this without being told.
• Reach beyond the ads. The authority, or at least a direct line, to fix listings, prices and stock. Advertising cannot rescue a product that does not convert or is about to run out.

How much time it takes

This is the question most comparisons skip. The figures below are the hours we plan for in our own work. They are our practice, not an Amazon rule or an industry benchmark, and an account with messy structure or frequent launches will need more.

Two things follow. Below roughly 4 hours a week, a full-time hire would spend most of their week on something else. Above roughly 20, one part-time freelancer will struggle to keep up, and nobody covers the account when they are away.

The in-house hire

What it costs. We found no published salary survey for Amazon PPC specialists in the UK, so the closest benchmarks are general PPC roles. Ashdown Group’s 2026 salary guide gives a national range for a PPC manager of £48,188 at the lower quartile, £56,950 at the median and £70,092 at the upper quartile, with London at £55,000, £65,000 and £80,000¹. For a PPC executive, a more junior role, the national figures are £30,665, £39,427 and £43,807². These are one recruiter’s figures, for PPC roles that are mostly on Google and Microsoft, and its manager profile assumes the person leads a team. Treat them as a guide.

Salary is not the whole cost. Employers pay National Insurance at 15% on earnings above £96 a week in the 2026 to 2027 tax year⁴, and must pay at least 3% into a workplace pension on qualifying earnings between £6,240 and £50,270 a year⁵.

Your payroll provider or accountant can confirm the exact figures for your business.

Where it wins. The knowledge stays inside the company. An in-house person sits next to the people who set prices, buy stock and approve listings, so advertising decisions can join up with the rest of the business. For a large account where advertising is central to the strategy, that is hard to beat.

Where it fails. One person is a single point of failure. Holidays, illness or a resignation can leave campaigns untouched for weeks, and a new hire sees only your account, so they learn from your budget rather than from a range of accounts. A capable hire also needs someone to judge their work, which a founder without PPC experience may not be able to do.

The agency

What it costs. Agencies charge a fixed retainer, a percentage of ad spend, a percentage of sales, a hybrid or a performance-only fee. We explain each model, the published price ranges and the break-even growth test in our agency pricing guide, so we will not repeat them here.

Where it wins. A team rather than a person, so there is cover when someone is away. People who see many accounts spot patterns sooner, and a good agency brings listing, creative and reporting skills that one hire may not have.

Where it fails. Your account competes for attention with every other client, and the person who pitched may not be the person doing the work. The fee model can also pull in the wrong direction.

Choosing an Amazon PPC agency in the UK

If an agency is the right route, the hard part is telling a good one from a good pitch. These are the checks we would make if we were buying, and the answers a UK brand should expect.

1. Check the partner status, and know what it means. Amazon Ads lists its partners in a directory. Verified status means a company has registered for the Partner Network, linked the advertisers and staff it works with and created a directory listing; advanced status adds recent campaign activity, at least two certified users and partner-led investment at the 95th percentile for its country and company type, in at least one of ten countries including the United Kingdom¹⁵. Status measures scale and activity, not whether clients made money, and Amazon has paused status decisions through the end of 2026¹⁵. Our guide to choosing an Amazon agency in the UK explains each badge in more detail.
2. Meet the people who will run the account. Ask who does the weekly search-term work, how many accounts each of them manages, and put their names in the contract.
3. Ask how they set targets. A good answer starts from each product’s margin and break-even ACoS, not from a single ACoS target for the whole account.
4. Ask what they report. Expect total sales from Seller Central, TACoS and profit after advertising by product, not only attributed sales. Ask whether their figures exclude VAT, because Amazon’s attributed sales do¹³.
5. Check the fee against your spend. Work out the fee at today’s spend and at the spend the agency proposes. Our agency pricing guide explains each model.
6. Keep ownership. Give the agency service provider access rather than an employee login¹⁴, keep Admin access in the business’s name, and ask for a monthly export of the search term report, because Amazon keeps only 65 days of it¹².
7. Read the exit terms. Notice period, who owns the campaigns and creative, and how the handover works if you leave.

UK-specific knowledge matters at the margins: VAT treatment in the profit maths, Amazon.co.uk’s fees, and, for brands selling across Europe, campaigns in several languages. If a shortlist agency cannot explain how a VAT-inclusive price becomes the ex-VAT sales figure in its reports, keep looking.

The freelancer

What it costs. 3Search’s 2026 guide lists contract day rates of £175–£250 for a PPC executive, £280–£350 for a PPC manager and £550–£700 for a head of PPC³. Like the salary figures, these cover PPC in general. At £300 a day, one day a week works out at about £1,300 a month, and two days at about £2,600.

Where it wins. You can buy senior skill for exactly the hours the account needs, and often deal directly with the person doing the work.

Where it fails. Capacity and continuity. A freelancer has other clients, holidays and no one to cover them, and an account that suddenly needs more time, at a launch or before peak, may not get it. Check access too: Amazon’s help says anyone outside your organisation, contractors included, should be given service provider access rather than employee access, which requires them to be registered in Amazon’s Solution Provider Portal and lasts 365 days before it must be renewed¹⁴.

Software

What Amazon gives you free. Sponsored Products has no monthly or upfront fee; you pay for clicks⁶. The tools come with the console: bulksheets for bulk changes⁷, schedule-based and performance-based budget rules, schedule bid rules, and rule-based bidding, which adjusts bids within a return-on-ad-spend guardrail you set⁸. Since 29 September 2026, Amazon Ads Agent also includes a conversational assistant that can create and optimise campaigns⁹.

What paid tools cost. Two examples from the vendors’ own pricing pages, both in US dollars and before tax:

We name these two because they publish their prices, not as a recommendation. On $25,000 of monthly spend through Helium 10 Ads, the 2% fee alone is $500 a month on top of the plan.

Where it wins. Automation is fast and tireless. Rules adjust bids and budgets around the clock, dashboards save hours of spreadsheet work, and a capable generalist with good software can cover an account that would otherwise need a specialist.

Where it fails. Software does what it is told. Someone still has to set targets from each product’s margin, decide which products deserve budget, and fix the listing or stock problem the ads reveal. Unchecked rules can also compound mistakes quietly, and a tool that charges a share of ad spend carries the same incentive as an agency that does.

The risks side by side

One risk is shared by all four: losing the history when someone leaves. Amazon’s search term report reaches back only 65 days¹², so if nobody downloads it each month, the record of which searches made and lost money goes with the person who ran the account. Make the archive the business’s property, whoever runs PPC.

Which option fits your account

This table is our opinion, built from the hours above and from the accounts we have taken over. Use it as a starting point.

Hybrids often work best: an in-house owner who sets targets and approves budgets, with an agency or freelancer doing the hands-on work, or the reverse. What matters is that someone inside the business understands the numbers well enough to judge whoever runs the account.

How to judge whoever runs it

Whichever route you choose, judge it on profit, not on activity or attributed sales. Here is why, using the shape of a rescue we have seen more than once, with invented figures.

High ACoS is only justifiable in growth mode, buying market share. If you’re flat at 60% ACoS, you’re not investing. You’re subsidising Amazon’s revenue with your own.

Each month, ask for total sales from Seller Central, TACoS (ad spend divided by total sales) and profit after advertising, product by product. Our PPC strategy guide lists the signs of an account on autopilot: the same campaigns as three months ago, no new negative keywords for a month, and TACoS rising with no planned reason.

The best arrangement is the one where every pound of ad spend can be traced to a product that makes money, and someone in your business can check that it still does. Whether that someone is an employee, a freelancer, an agency or a well-configured tool matters less than the check itself.