AI doesn’t make agencies cheaper

More and more agencies are promising in pitches —often because brands ask for it— that AI will make them more productive and therefore lower costs for clients. Some even claim savings of up to 50%. For marketers and procurement, that sounds tempting. Only… it’s rarely true.

AI can speed up processes, but only after an agency has survived a heavy transformation cycle. This isn’t about “installing a few tools.” It’s about reinventing how an agency operates. That means: setting up structural data governance, attracting new data specialists, redesigning workflows, organizing change management, training teams, hiring new profiles, and then continuously maintaining, updating and integrating it all. The real cost isn’t the AI itself — it’s the organization you need to build around it.

That journey easily takes 12 to 24 months. And during that period, costs don’t go down — they go up. It’s a phase where cash goes out, not in. And because those investments need to be recouped, new pricing models are popping up abroad: tech fees on top of retainers, efficiency-based pricing, higher rates for AI specialists, and licensing models for proprietary AI solutions. AI isn’t used to push final invoices down; it’s used to add value.

This makes the classic expectation “AI = cheaper agency” a misconception. The reality is that AI makes agencies more valuable: faster output, richer insights, stronger personalization, closer to data. But value is not the same as “discount.”

So the real question shifts: not “How much cheaper will my agency be with AI?” but “Which agency can integrate AI so intelligently that it truly boosts my marketing performance?” And that leads to the next question: “As a brand, am I willing to pay more for that difference in quality?”

Because if you see AI merely as a cost-saving tool, you’re looking at yesterday. If you see it as a growth accelerator, you’re looking at tomorrow.

And dear brand — how do you see it? Are you willing to pay more for an agency that uses AI in a truly smart way?