Happy Triple Threat Thursday.
Here’s one Signal to notice, one thing to Spark growth and one Shift to consider.
This week's theme: AI made marketing cheaper to produce. It did not make bad marketing easier to hide.
The social posts still go out. The retainer still clears. The pipeline still doesn't move. That gap existed before AI. Now it just costs more to ignore.
📡 Signal — What’s Changing
Why Are Companies Still Paying for Marketing Activity That Doesn't Connect to Revenue?
Most companies with a marketing agency on retainer cannot answer one question: what did the agency produce last month that moved the number?
Not impressions. Not traffic. Not posts published on schedule. A customer. A conversation. A conversion. Something that touched revenue.
Most rooms go quiet when that question gets asked.
60% of US senior marketing leaders said they spent less on agencies in 2025 as a direct result of AI. That shift didn't happen because clients got smarter. It happened because AI made the underlying math visible. The execution work that justified large retainers now costs a fraction of what agencies charge to produce it. When the cost of execution collapsed, the only thing left to justify the relationship was outcomes. Most agencies couldn't show any.
The ones still standing draw a direct line from their work to revenue. Agencies stuck in billable-hour models are discovering that AI's efficiency gains destroy their traditional revenue streams. Clients expect better results faster, but these agencies haven't figured out how to monetize AI-driven productivity.
The ones who can't draw that line do something else. Keep the report busy. Keep the client occupied with metrics that sound meaningful. Post the social content because the client thinks they need to be on social. Renew before anyone asks what it actually produced.
Why it matters now: The value of basic content deliverables has dropped 43% in agency markets. Operators paying 2022 retainer rates for 2026 execution are funding that gap themselves. Every month the invoice clears without a revenue conversation is a month the agency has no reason to change.
What to do this week: Ask your agency one question before the next call: what did last month's work produce that is traceable to revenue? Not a metric. A result. If the answer is a dashboard of activity, the relationship is running on inertia.
⚡ Spark — What to Try This Week
How Can Operators Tell Whether Their Agency Is Driving Growth or Managing Activity?
Most operators don't push back on agency reporting because they don't know what to push back on. The agency fills that gap with metrics that sound credible. Impressions. Reach. Engagement rate. Social posts because someone decided the company needed to be on social. None of those are wrong to track. All of them are wrong to treat as evidence of growth.
The tool linked above was built for that gap. Paste in whatever your agency sent you last, describe what a conversion looks like for your business, and it translates every metric in plain language, flags what is missing, and returns a partner vs. vendor verdict based on what the agency chose to show you.
It also produces three specific questions to bring to your next call.
Run it before you pay for next month’s retainer.
Why it works: Operators don't push back because they don't have the language to. Agencies report in their own vocabulary and most clients accept it. This tool converts that vocabulary into one question: did this produce anything? The answer changes the conversation.
🔄 Shift — How to Rethink It
Is Your Agency Relationship Based on Results or Just on Habit?
Default belief: The agency has been around long enough to know the business. That continuity has value.
Flip: Continuity without accountability is a retainer that has never been questioned.
A $40M services company had been with the same agency for three years. The reports were thorough. The team was responsive. The work went out on time every month. When the new VP of Revenue joined and asked which channel was producing qualified pipeline, nobody could answer. The agency had never been asked to track it. The CEO had assumed consistent activity meant something was working.
It didn't. The agency had been executing against a scope that was never connected to a revenue outcome. The relationship had persisted on familiarity and clean reporting. Nobody lied. Nobody asked the right question.
Why it matters: An agency that controls what gets measured controls what gets credited. Most retainer relationships drift from outcome-focused to activity-focused within the first six months and stay there until someone forces the conversation. That someone is always the operator. The agency has no incentive to start it.
Before the next renewal, name the one outcome the agency is being paid to produce. Not deliverables. The business result. If you can't name it in one sentence, the scope was never built around revenue.
Ask the agency to name one client where their work produced a measurable revenue outcome. Not a case study. A direct conversation with that client. If they can't arrange it, you have your answer.
Set one revenue-connected metric as the lead number on every future report. Everything else is context. One number defines whether the month worked.
An agency that can't be measured by revenue will always find another metric to show you instead.
📚 Worth A Look
What Should You Be Reading About the Agency Shift This Week?
The 43% drop in the value of commodity content deliverables is the number every operator with a retainer should understand before the next renewal conversation.
The source for the 60% stat. The broader context on agency consolidation explains why the industry is restructuring rather than adapting, and what that means for companies that are not enterprise-sized.
The clearest breakdown of what separates operators winning right now from those still paying agency rates for work AI handles in an afternoon.
📈 TL;DR
AI made the activity cheap. It did not make the outcome question easier to avoid.
📈 One Question
When did you last ask your agency what last month's work actually produced, and did the answer connect to revenue?
Thanks for reading Triple Threat. See you next Thursday with another Signal, Spark, and Shift.
— Alexandria Ohlinger
p.s. If this helped you think sharper or move faster, share it with someone who builds the way you do. And if you want more practical insight between issues, connect with me on LinkedIn or schedule a strategy session.