Pricing & Evaluation
What a CPG marketing agency costs —
and what you should get for it
Most agencies won't put this in writing. We will.
Nobody will give you a straight answer on CPG marketing agency cost. If you're three or four conversations into an agency search, every one has ended the same way: "it depends on scope, let's set up a call."
Fair enough — it does depend on scope. But you can't build a budget out of that, and you can't compare two proposals that are deliberately structured to be incomparable.
So here's how CPG marketing agencies actually price the work, what moves the number, and what you should expect to get regardless of who you end up hiring. Including if it isn't us.
How the money works
The three ways agencies charge
Model 01
Monthly retainer
The default. A fixed monthly fee for a defined scope — some mix of strategy, paid media management, creative production, and reporting.
- Works when
- The work is ongoing and roughly steady month to month. Which, for a CPG brand with retail distribution, it usually is.
- Watch for
- Scope that quietly shrinks while the fee doesn't. Ask for the scope in writing, itemized, and ask what happens when you need more than it covers.
Model 02
Percentage of ad spend
The agency takes a cut of what you spend on media — commonly 10–20%, sometimes on a sliding scale as spend grows.
- Works when
- Media buying genuinely is the bulk of the work, and you want the fee to scale with the program instead of renegotiating every quarter.
- Watch for
- The obvious conflict: the agency's income rises when your spend rises, whether or not spending more is the right call. Have someone independent check that the increase was justified.
Model 03
Project or hybrid
A fixed fee for a defined piece of work — a launch, a rebrand, a content sprint — either standalone or on top of a smaller retainer.
- Works when
- You have a specific event with a specific end date, or you want to test an agency before committing to twelve months.
- Watch for
- Projects scoped optimistically that need a change order at week six. Ask what happened on the last three projects they ran at this size.
Compensation models across the wider industry are tracked in the ANA's Trends in Agency Compensation report, which has surveyed client-side marketers for more than fifty years. Its first study of influencer marketing agencies, reported in February 2026, found commissions averaging 30% — with fewer than half of those agreements transparent to the marketer paying them.
Read the proposal properly
What actually drives CPG marketing agency cost
Price differences between two proposals usually come down to five things. Ask about each one directly.
-
Creative volume
The biggest single driver and the most commonly under-scoped. An agency producing four assets a month and one producing forty are running fundamentally different operations. If a proposal doesn't state monthly creative output as a number, that's your first question.
-
Channel count
Meta only is one thing. Meta plus TikTok plus Amazon plus retail media is four sets of mechanics, four reporting surfaces, and four creative formats. Each one added is real cost, not a rounding error.
-
Retail complexity
A DTC-only brand is a far simpler engagement than one managing a trade calendar, retail media across two or three retailers, and a buyer review cycle. Agencies that don't work in retail often price as if it's DTC, then discover mid-engagement that it isn't.
-
Who actually touches the account
The senior person in the pitch is frequently not the person doing the work. Ask who's on your account day to day, what else they're on, and how many hours a week you're actually buying.
-
Whether strategy is included or sold separately
Some agencies bill discovery and strategy as a separate upfront phase — you pay for a plan, then pay again to execute it. Not automatically wrong, but you should know going in.
Non-negotiable
What you should get for the money — from anyone
Regardless of who you hire, at any budget level, these are table stakes. If a proposal doesn't include them, that's a real gap, not a nitpick.
- A named business metric, agreed before work starts. Velocity, repeat rate, distribution, blended CAC — something that shows up in your P&L. "Engagement" and "reach" are not that.
- Reporting on a schedule you set, in a format you can read without a translator.
- Direct access to whoever does the work — not everything routed through an account manager.
- Your accounts stay yours. Ad accounts, pixels, creative files, audience data. In writing, with admin ownership.
- A stated point of view on your constraint. If an agency can't tell you what's actually holding the business back, they're selling channels, not thinking.
- Willingness to say no. An agency that agrees with everything is managing the relationship, not the business.
Take these to your next call
Questions to ask before you sign
The answers tell you more than the deck will.
Q1"Who's on my account daily, and what else are they on?"
You're looking for a real number. "You'll have a dedicated team" is not an answer.
Q2"What would make you tell me to spend less?"
Anyone who can't name a scenario is either inexperienced or being careful with you.
Q3"Show me a client where it didn't work. What happened?"
Everyone has them. The ones who'll describe it honestly are the ones who learned something.
Q4"How many creative assets per month, and who produces them?"
Watch for production that turns out to be subcontracted to a partner you've never met.
Q5"What happens in month one?"
You should get a concrete sequence, not "onboarding and discovery."
Q6"If we part ways, what do I keep?"
Accounts, creative files, data. Get the answer before the contract, not after.
For the record
How we structure it
We work on monthly retainers, scoped to output rather than hours, with the deliverables itemized so you can see what you're buying. We don't take a percentage of media spend — we'd rather our recommendation to spend more or less carry no financial weight for us.
Strategy is included, not billed separately. You keep your accounts and every asset we make. And if we look at your business and think you'd be better served by a smaller shop or an in-house hire, we'll say that — it's a small category and reputation travels faster than revenue.
Where to go next
Tell us what you're up against
We'll tell you what we'd do about it, and whether we're the right people to do it.
Want the model, the services, and whether you're a fit? That's on our CPG agency page.