Compare
Decisions, compared honestly
The choices marketing teams actually face, each worked through to a recommendation rather than left balanced.
Every comparison here reaches a recommendation, and every one names the situations where we are the wrong choice. A comparison that concludes you should hire the publisher, every time, is an advert wearing a table. Those are easy to spot and worth nothing to you.
How to use this
What is this cluster actually for?
Decisions where both options are defensible and the right answer depends on your situation, not on which one is better in the abstract.
These are not feature roundups. Every question here is one where two competent people can disagree, and where the answer turns on things that are true about you: how much conversion volume you have, who maintains the thing afterwards, whether your data can leave your infrastructure, what your sales team can absorb.
So each page is built the same way. The recommendation comes first, before the detail, because burying it at the bottom wastes the time of anyone who already trusts the reasoning. Then the genuine difference, then both options with their weaknesses stated as plainly as their strengths, then a set of questions you can answer about your own situation, then the verdict.
The section we would read first, if we were you, is the one at the end of each page headed when we are the wrong choice. It is a required field on every comparison rather than a courtesy, and a test fails the build if one goes missing. Somebody telling you when not to hire them is the cheapest signal available that the rest of the page is written for you rather than for them.
What none of these will do is give you a universal answer. If a comparison could be settled without knowing anything about your business, it would not need a page, and the ones that claim to are usually selling the winner.
All comparisons
Google Ads vs Microsoft Advertising
Run Google Ads first, because that is where the volume is. Add Microsoft Advertising only when two conditions hold: Google is capped by impression share rather than budget, and your own analytics already show a real audience on the other network.
Marketing agency vs in-house team
Hire in-house when the work is continuous, strategic and deeply product-specific, and you can afford a second person so the first is not a single point of failure. Use an agency when you need several specialisms at once, when the volume does not justify a full seat, or when you need the work to start before a hire could.
PPC freelancer vs agency
Hire a freelancer when you run one platform, spend modestly, and mainly need skilled execution. Hire an agency when you run several platforms, need measurement rebuilt, or need cover when one person is unavailable. The honest split is narrower than agencies suggest and wider than freelance marketplaces do.
Server-side vs client-side tracking
Client-side tracking runs in the visitor's browser and loses events to blockers and privacy settings. Server-side tracking sends events from your own server and recovers much of that loss. Server-side is worth its complexity when the losses are large enough to skew what your bidding algorithms learn from, and not before.
n8n vs Zapier vs Make
Pick Zapier if nobody on the team writes code and speed matters more than cost. Pick Make if you want branching and error handling without code. Pick n8n if you have engineers, care about cost at high volume, or need data to stay on your own infrastructure.
Performance Max vs standard Search campaigns
Run both in most mature accounts. Keep dedicated Search campaigns for your highest-value keyword themes, where you control the queries and can see them, and use Performance Max for coverage beyond that. Apply brand exclusions to Performance Max, or it will bill you for traffic your brand campaign already owned.
Google Ads vs Meta Ads for lead generation
Start with Google Ads if people already search for what you sell, because capturing existing demand is cheaper than creating it. Start with Meta if nobody knows your category exists, or if search volume is too thin to spend against. Run both once your measurement can tell you which one produced the sale.
Also worth reading
Not a comparison, so it lives in the blog rather than here, but it answers a similar question.
Google App Campaigns, and the few levers you actually get
A how-to rather than a comparison, which is why it is not in this hub.
Choosing between two options?
Tell us what you are weighing up. We will give you the same answer we would give a friend, including when it means not hiring us.