Marketers weighing AI investments are feeling pressure from every direction, and some of the agencies building AI tools are the ones calling for more discipline in how those tools get bought. Tessa Burg, chief technology officer at Mod Op, which earns 10% of its revenue from AI solutions and services, including building agents for clients, said her teams have steered clients away from building agents after a closer look. Some of those “build an agent” requests became AI road mapping, data strategy, or operations projects instead.
Burg’s advice is to start with growth. “Most brands are still evaluating AI tools like software licenses, when they should be evaluating them like new roles in the company,” she said. “Think about how you’d stand up any new role … Agents deserve the same rigor.” She added that agents built to replace people miss the point. Her starting question is where people could be working at the top of their expertise, and what’s getting in their way.
Nick Wright, enterprise AI transformation lead at Booking Holdings, sees agencies and CMOs alike fixated on which tools to adopt. The question he asks instead: “What advantage are you trying to create from the AI?” For marketers who want a structured way to answer that, Simon Francis, founder and co-CEO of consultancy Flock Associates, uses a seven-step evaluation that starts with a pre-AI baseline and a proof-of-value test on real briefs. Not adding AI at all is always one of the options.
The business model is still being worked out. Wright said agencies should charge more for delivering more value, and that AI strengthens the case for pricing based on deliverables or outcomes. Francis argues that backend efficiency tools belong in agency overhead. Mod Op already combines custom work billed at time and materials, value-based pricing for specific deliverables, and a retainer for maintaining agents. On IP and liability, Wright said Booking looks for a middle ground where the agency and the marketer share responsibility. “It’s a partnership-driven exercise,” he said.
Our read: agencies are reinventing how work, and the crucial handoffs inside it, gets done, and they’re getting there through a cycle of test, learn, and iterate. Burg’s framing gives both sides a common starting point: treat agents like roles, tie them to growth, and price them on the value they deliver. Agencies are well positioned to lead that conversation.
Read more at Ad Age.