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I just need to vent. The market sucks and being in this industry has changed sooo much in just a couple years.
Posted by on February 12, 2026 at 6:59 pmIf nobody responds to this, no problem, as it's primarily me just venting to feel better and get this off my chest. If everyone responds and tells me to suck it up, I'll take that and roll with it.
I'm managing a team at a smaller agency, acting as a head of paid media (without the title, or pay). We offer various services with PPC being a relatively small part of our overall offering.
The clients we've been getting are terrible, and churn is high. This of course impacts morale on my team, and my team's profitability.
I'm trying to tell the sales team that these clients are terrible, but they then slap back that the leads our paid efforts send them is terrible. The term "beggars can't be choosers" is quite apt here.
I am also trying to tell our company that our minimums and management fees are too low. We're charging as little as $2,500 per month, or % of ad spend. However, we're also putting in tons of hours on clients that are bad, eat up so much of our time and hours, with budgets that stay prohibitively low. This then, in turn, makes meeting profitability goals basically impossible.
Sales team says that our fees are too high. Even when I provide other data points and research showing them how we're on the low end, I get a "but clients are saying…", or "but [insert competitor] is doing…", completely ignoring and disregarding the research I've done.
I also then get critique that we don't do enough creative, or we don't manage this super random channel, or we don't do organic social. Which is super hard to explain that, first, media buyers are rarely good at creative, and that creative is really expensive (especially with prospect clients are trying to get super low minimums). Second, organic is a completely different skillset, and not well aligned with media buying.
So, to sum up, we're charging too much, while not being profitable enough, and also not offering enough services, on a team that is likely a couple people too small.
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1 Reply
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I hate to engage with this, but: Sounds like all your issues fall under the responsibility of the Head of Paid Media. So it begs the question “Wtf are you doing?”
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May I ask what geo market your agency is operating in? Where based and where clients are.
Perhaps the economy has boosted the commission figures, and I’m somewhat removed from the days where my role dictated what the agency collects, but the $2,500 or % as you’ve stated does work for an agency that either has a deep client roster or has other offerings to round out the total fee.
This isn’t to say you’re ignorant, but I also used to share the same sentiment when our VP sat me down to help understand the bigger picture. What they were really after was production cost since we had video bays, and they were willing to throw in digital sweeteners (such as a lower mgmt fee for SEM) in order to gain the business.
Just trying to get perspective on how your company strategizes.
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$2500 USD (or %) doesn’t seem too cheap but I guess it depends on who you’re serving and where.
At least in USA, small and mid-size companies I’ve talked to are struggling right now. Many have cut spending and/or stopped hiring. Their comps vs 2022-2023 are pretty bad. They’re all looking for value based pricing or reduced overall spend (including fees). I think agencies are finally coming around to this fact and have started adjusting rates to survive. I take it your agency is probably taking on some of these budget accounts to help with cash flow. Sometimes it’s hard to know without seeing their books.
The work is still out there and companies are still making money, just not at 2022-2023 levels. I’ve seen this cycle in 2008-2009, 2018, 2020. Usually short-term.
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Not sure if this is applicable, but a lot of this resonates with my past experiences.
The issue I found with a lot of “bad clients” was often just that their website was bad and lacked the content needed to succeed in paid media.
So I developed a web/content optimization service for the agency which we would package with paid and other services. Basically just an audit of what to fix on site to improve conversions.
It was often what I needed to do any way to get any level of success or if their paid media, but now made official for a small additional fee. Kind of win win for everyone, because paid media worked better and the client also benefits from those improvements from their other traffic sources.
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My 2 cents as someone who runs a digital ad agency solo (with 6-8 clients, $30k/month in revenues, and @ 55% gross margins). As you can see my average client size is not that much different than yours.
Your employee costs are what’s killing you. Digital advertising, especially when you’re keeping creatives to a minimum, does not require a team, it requires efficiency.
You’re a buyer of digital media. Any company who has a budget of $3k/month and doesn’t instantly know exactly what definable goals they are looking for you need to stop working with. At that price point you aren’t there for consultation, you’re there to provide ad impressions and traffic.
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Sorry that you’re dealing with this.
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the “charging too much while not being profitable enough while also not offering enough” triangle is genuinely impossible to solve. something has to give and it’s usually the team’s sanity.
honestly the $2,500 clients with low budgets are almost always the most demanding ones too. the accounts spending $50k/mo rarely micromanage you because they understand it takes time to optimize. the small budget ones want daily updates and panic over a $20 CPC swing.
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A lot of agencies are in for a rude awakening. Pricing can’t stay the same because the market is much different than even a few years ago. Your competition is becoming more efficient and are therefore able to compete on price more effectively while maintaining profitability.
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getting hit with ads 20+ times with the same ads doesn’t help the industry as well. SEMRush’s conversion funnel is set to 30+ frequency.
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