Media budget and fees: two separate lines
The media budget goes to the platforms (Google, Meta, LinkedIn) and buys the delivery of your ads. The fees pay the agency: strategy, campaign build, optimisation, measurement. Two lines, two invoices, two separate decisions.
Confusing the two is the first cause of disappointment. An “all-inclusive package” where media and fees are blended stops you from knowing what is actually invested in delivery, and therefore from judging the agency's work.
Insist on the separation: advertising accounts in your name, the media budget paid directly to the platforms, the fees on their own invoice. That is how we work, on every engagement. At any moment you know what delivery costs, what management costs, and what each one brings back.
Fee models and their biases
The percentage of media spend is the most common model and the most biased: the more you spend, the more the agency earns, whatever the result. The incentive pushes towards spending more, and nobody has any interest in suggesting you spend less.
Performance-only fees look healthier, but they push towards the short term: the agency concentrates on what is immediately attributable and neglects what builds the brand or the middle of the funnel.
We charge a monthly flat fee, indexed on the number of campaigns and markets managed. The fee does not move when the media budget goes up: the agency has no interest in making you spend more, only in doing better.
Why a media budget threshold
Below a certain volume, the platforms learn slowly: too few conversions per week to optimise on, tests that never reach a conclusion. And fixed fees weigh proportionally too heavily against the media actually invested.
That is why we only take on advertising from €5,000 of media budget per month, with a 6-month commitment. Below that, the honest advice lies elsewhere: SEO, content, or a website that converts better.
This threshold marks the level at which optimisation produces more value than it costs. An agency that accepts any budget is mostly telling you something about its own model.
Measuring through to revenue
Clicks do not pay salaries. The only measurement that counts goes through to revenue: every campaign linked to incoming enquiries, every enquiry linked to a quote, every quote to a signature. That is what we wire into your cockpit.
This measurement chain requires connecting advertising to your CRM and your invoicing. Without it, nobody can say which campaign pays and which one burns budget, not even the agency. It is also what keeps decisions calm: cutting a campaign becomes a matter of numbers.
Judge over a full quarter: the time it takes for platform learning to stabilise and for sales cycles to complete. 2-week verdicts only measure noise. A monthly check follows execution; the review that decides what comes next happens at the quarter.
The signs an agency is costing you dearly
First sign: reports in clicks, impressions and “engagement rates”, without a single line of revenue. If the monthly report contains no euros, it is hiding something, most often the absence of measurement.
Second sign: advertising accounts opened in the agency's name. The day you leave, you lose the history, the audiences and the accumulated learning. The accounts must be in your name, with your admin access.
Third sign: an agency that has never told you no. The one that accepts any budget, promises results in 2 weeks and never asks about your margins is working for its own invoicing first.