Why agency doing the work shouldn’t be the one deciding what work gets done. I r
By Matt Anderson · October 30, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Why agency doing the work shouldn’t be the one deciding what work gets done.
I read a sharp piece this week from an agency peer Robert Prime (MrPrime.com), arguing that the middle of the e-commerce agency market is being squeezed.
I agree with most of it. But I think the story starts further back.
I’ve built, run and sold agencies. Here’s how I’ve watched the model evolve.
Stage one: the generalists.
Digital agencies bolted Amazon on as a service line. Lots of enthusiasm, not much depth.
Stage two: the specialists.
Amazon agencies emerged and broke the work into neat, sellable tasks. PPC. Listings. A+ Content. Images.
Stage three: the software.
Bid tools and dashboards automated much of the manual effort. Agencies kept the retainers but did much less of the heavy lifting.
Stage four: AI Agency
A credible first pass at analysis, copy, creative and reporting now takes minutes.
Each stage made the output cheaper to produce.
But most agency pricing is still tied to the output...
That’s where the cracks show:
- Fees based on ad spend quietly reward spending more, not spending better.
- Retainers built on deliverables, reward activity, not outcomes.
- Growth means more accounts per person, so thinking time becomes account management.
- Retainers based on % revenue, reward doing less for more agency revenue.
- Nobody owns the joined-up view of team, agencies, tools and AI spend together.
- Agencies would not recommend the optimal optimisation of the P&L if it meant training an in-house team unless they are incentivised on profit...
None of that is about bad people. Most agency folk I know are smart and work bloody hard!
It’s about incentives. An agency is paid to deliver, so the answer to most problems tends to look like more delivery and fees please!
My approach would be to start somewhere else entirely.
Before anyone does anything, ask:
- Where is the margin actually leaking?
- Who should be doing this work: your own team, an agency, a freelancer or software?
- Which retainers, tools and AI subscriptions are earning their keep?
- Are we paying twice for the same job or tokens?
Most brands don’t have a spending problem. They have an allocation problem.
Then comes the bit people underestimate. Change.
Rip everything up and you lose months, good people and most of your momentum.
So I find what’s working and build on it. Changing your agency for its own sake is expensive.
Three things done properly beat thirty things done busily.
Doing the do still matters. Someone has to run the campaigns and build the content.
But in a world where AI makes doing cheap, judgement is what’s left to pay for.
The question isn’t “who can do this work?” any more.
It’s “should this work be done at all?”
Who in your business is paid to ask that?
cc Robert Craven Chris Turton
#Amazon #Ecommerce #AIinEcommerce #EcommerceStrategy #Profitability