How do I choose a media buyer for my business? Seven criteria before I sign

A media buyer plans, runs and optimises paid campaigns on platforms such as Meta, Google, Snapchat and TikTok, and reads their numbers to turn spend into orders, bookings or conversations. They are not an ad designer, a social media manager or a web developer, even though they work with all three. Blurring these roles leads owners to hold the wrong person responsible for the result.

Decide first what you actually need: someone to run the ads only, or someone to oversee the ads, the page and the tracking together? Each choice changes the questions you ask and the criteria you judge by.

The ad account, the pixel ID and the audience history are assets of your business, not of whoever manages them. Ask for the account to be created in your name or your company's, and for the media buyer to be added with permission to manage ads only.

This protects you in the worst case: if the engagement ends, you keep the business data, the campaign history and the audiences the platform has learned, and you do not start from zero.

The first good question an owner hears is not "what is your budget?" but "how much is left of one order?". Someone who does not ask about margin cannot know whether the result they show you is a profit or a loss.

Ask them to work out with you the most you can pay per order and your break-even point before the campaign starts. You can try the calculation yourself in the break-even calculator on this site, to see whether your numbers allow advertising at all.

A number with no source cannot be relied on however good it looks. Ask for screenshots from the ad dashboard itself showing the period, the spend, the measured event and the attribution window, not ready-made percentages or collages.

And notice what a screenshot does not say: one week is not a year's average, and a business with a wide margin is not a business with a thin one. Ask for a case that resembles yours, and for the conditions the result came under.

A campaign running on partial measurement misleads you in both directions: it can look like a failure while making money, or look like a success while losing it. Ask how they will track the completed order, and whether they will compare the platform's numbers with your actual orders from your own system.

The gap between the platform's figure and the real order is normal up to a point, but it takes someone who understands the cause. Someone who has not heard of the attribution window or the duplicated event will not notice when the number goes wrong.

Sometimes your campaign needs no change; your page, your price or the way you answer messages does. An honest media buyer will tell you so even if it means a larger budget will not be spent just yet.

Ask: in which cases do you advise postponing the ads? If they cannot name one, you are probably dealing with someone who sells the spend, not the result.

A good report reads the cost at the event that reaches the bank, compares it with your cost ceiling, explains what changed and why, and does not stop at impressions and clicks.

Ask for a fixed reporting rhythm, weekly for example, and for read access to the account to stay with you so you can check for yourself whenever you like.

Ask how many accounts they run at once, who will actually do your work, and what the smallest budget they accept is, and why. A very small budget gives the platform too little data to learn from, so accepting it without a warning is a bad sign, not generosity.

And look at their experience in your market: cash on delivery and ordering through WhatsApp in Egypt and Saudi Arabia differ from a store whose customers pay by card, and an approach that works in one can fail in the other.

A promise of guaranteed sales or return: nobody holds that promise, because the product, the price, the page and the market are outside the hands of whoever runs the ads. A refusal to let you own the ad account or to give you view access to it. Success stories with no source and no period.

Any offer built on a percentage of spend alone also deserves a question: that structure makes the contractor's interest your spending more, not your profiting more. It is not wrong in itself, but ask what keeps it in check and whether the work is tied to a cost-per-order ceiling.

A freelancer usually suits you when you want one person who knows your account in detail and answers you directly. An agency suits you when you need a whole team for design, filming and page management alongside the ads, or when your business needs a corporate contract. Neither is better in the abstract: the better one is the one that matches the size of your business and what needs to get done.

This site offers two routes: a company contract, and a direct engagement to run campaigns for budgets from $1,500 a month. If your budget is smaller than that, a one-hour consultation session or the free courses at the academy are a more suitable starting point.