Agency fees and commercial arrangements are essential to get right. But what is the right agency fee model? How much should be paid? And how do you manage and negotiate these fees effectively? While there is common practice in agency fee models, there is no best practice, with each fee model dependent on the discipline, services, volume, and more.
The objective of our agency fee advisory is to create fair, sustainable and mutually equitable models that are easy to manage, and which drive the desired outcomes.
We approach this challenging area from a number of angles, tailored in each project to fit specific need. You can explore them here:
Find more information on agency commercials arrangements here or explore more details and insights below.
How output pricing supports an agency subscription fee model
While input models, such as hourly rates, retainers and project fees, continue to dominate agency fees, there is an increasing ...
What are the real considerations and impacts of AI on agency fees?
An increasing number of agencies are including promises of AI benefits in their pitches. Typically, these are framed in the ...
The perils of agency hourly pricing: Lessons from a man and his lawn mower
Imagine sitting at lunch with some of Australia’s best marketing management consultants, watching a man spend almost five hours mowing ...
How to avoid waste in your agency fees
With the increase in the cost of living still impacting households in most of the world’s economies, it only stands ...
Overcoming Obstacles to Agency Value-Based Pricing Fees
The past 18 months or so have seen more advertisers and agencies looking to move away from “traditional” FTE/resource/cost-recovery-based pricing ...
Why Value Trumps Cost in Agency Remuneration Fees
My grandfather was a frugal man, borne no doubt from living through the Great Depression, then going to war and ...
When it comes to paying your agencies, you need to follow the money.
Marketing teams can be broadly divided into two groups. There are some who think their agency is paid too much ...
The limitations of input cost over output and outcome value for advertising agencies
Talking with a media agency today, they were sharing the struggle they had with a client getting a fair fee ...
Your next agency pitch will cost you financially, but not as much as you think.
The practice of going to tender at the end of the agency contract period has become a habit for many ...
Advertising Agency Fees – The Move from Static Inputs to Valuable Outputs
This is an edited version of the guide "Advertising Agency Fees – A Comprehensive Guide for Marketing". To access the ...
With agency costs on the rise, how should advertisers respond?
Believe it not, advertisers have generally enjoyed a stable and relatively low cost for agency services for more than a ...
Advertising ideas are a dime a dozen according to this advertiser
Ultimately, the value of the advertising agency process is in the intellectual properties created and in the commercial outcomes, those ...
Common mistakes made when preparing a scope of work for the agency
We have written extensively about developing a scope of work for media, creative and digital agencies. This could be to ...
The traps and pitfalls of developing an output-based agency fee model
Since 2004, we have been using a workload agency fee model to calculate agency resources based on the work to ...
Value-based, cost-based, pricing-based, and performance-based agency fees – bring it on
At the Mumbrella360 Reconnect last year, I was moderating the thought-provoking session by Kathryn Williams, Managing Director at KMint, titled ...
Past, present or future – which tells you more about your agency fees?
Are you wondering if your agency fee is fair and reasonable? When we benchmark agency fees against a scope of ...
Will agencies absorb their advertiser budget reductions again?
For those too young to remember the global recession of 2007, most agencies absorbed the significant cuts in their client’s ...
Could advertising agencies be the next big subscription-based model?
Let’s be honest: No one is happy with the current advertising agency fee models - retainers, project fees and hourly ...
The problem with setting agency fees is most are making it up
Would it surprise you that many agencies set their resource plan to the agreed fees? In the absence of any ...
What is more important in assessing agency fees, productivity or price?
If Oscar Wilde was alive today, would he write that a marketer “is someone who knows the price of everything ...
Five ways to use the Verificom toolkit to more effectively manage agency fees
Since our foundation in early 2000, TrinityP3 has been working with our clients and procurement teams to better assess and ...
Why hourly rates are no measure of value when negotiating agency fees
What represents value when you are looking at agency fees? Often marketers and procurement professionals will look at the agency ...
Why a scope of work is essential for managing agency value
This is the next in a series of one-minute videos that address one of the many complex challenges facing marketing, media ...
Deciding on the right agency fee model is now easier
How are you paying your agencies? Is it a retainer? Or project fees? And why did you use that particular ...
Is the problem with agency fee benchmarking simply a matter of statistics?
It is often quite annoying when asked if we sell our industry benchmarks, You see, over more than a decade ...
The difference Between Scope of Work (SoW) and Scope of Services (SoS), and why that matters
We have talked and written many times about the importance of the scope of work in regard to setting or ...
Retained AOR or project fees? Which one is best?
While paying agencies with retainers is still a popular fee model, project fees and hourly rates are becoming more popular ...
The challenges in measuring the value your agencies contribute to your marketing
How do you calculate or assess the value of your marketing spend? In the past three years we have had ...
Why performance based payments need to be an incentive not a disincentive
This is the eighth in a series of one minute videos that address one of the many complex challenges facing marketing, media ...
How long payment terms impact client / agency relationships
This is the seventh in a series of one minute videos that address one of the many complex challenges facing marketing, media ...
