Industry Report · 2025
The State of Digital Agencies
SparkToro (Rand Fishkin)
SparkToro's 2025 survey of 376 agency owners on revenue, pipelines, AI adoption, pricing, and what's actually working in the agency game. A useful pulse-check that complements the longitudinal Promethean dataset above.
Pipeline Pricing AI threat
Key Findings
- Only 12% of agency owners say things are healthy. 41% call it a struggle, 47% land on "meh" — and yet 64% still expect revenue to grow next year.
- 86% of agencies are running on a pipeline they describe as average or worse. Just 14% call their pipeline healthy.
- Six times more owners say their sales cycle got longer (29%) than say it got shorter (5%). The biggest jumps were in the 7–8 week and 12+ week timelines.
- 79% of agencies have no dedicated marketing staff. 70% have no dedicated salespeople. The founder is doing both jobs at once.
- 85% of agencies live on retainer, and 86% of those retainers are under $10K/month. 64% planned to raise fees, only 16% actually did.
- 53% now see AI as a real threat, up nine points from 44% the year before. 66% worry there'll be fewer jobs for junior staff.
- Referrals still run the game (client/past-client #1, partner referrals #2, content marketing #3). Events and speaking jumped to #4. 73% say LinkedIn is their best social channel.
Recommendations · Tim's Take
- 64% of owners expect growth next year while 88% say the business is struggling or "meh." That's not optimism, that's a forecast nobody built a plan against. If your 2026 number doesn't have a named pipeline source for each dollar, it's a story you're telling yourself to get to sleep.
- 86% of agencies have a pipeline they admit isn't working. The pipeline is the single most leveraged thing in your business, and most owners don't have one. If demand generation isn't a system inside your agency, the pipeline will keep starving you no matter how good the work is. DemandOS is the fix.
- The fee-raise gap is a positioning problem, not a market problem. 64% planned, 16% did, and 48% talked themselves out of it. If you can't defend the rate to yourself, you definitely can't defend it to a procurement team.
- 79% of marketing agencies don't market themselves and 70% don't have a salesperson. That's the ceiling nobody on the agency leadership podcasts wants to name. Hire one of the two before next quarter, or stop being surprised when neither job gets done.
- Events and speaking jumping to #4 is the move worth noticing. Founders who get on stage create demand that didn't exist before they showed up. Everyone else is waiting for the phone to ring.
Industry Report · 2025
The Next Wave
WP Engine + Promethean Research
Survey of 214 digital agency professionals (primarily US and Canada) on how AI is reshaping the agency model. Covers internal AI adoption, new AI-driven service lines, and the emerging requirement to build websites for both human and machine audiences.
AI adoption AI services Optimizing for machines
Key Findings
- 72% of agencies have changed how they build websites to serve machine consumers (AI tools, search algorithms, chatbots, voice assistants). 73% say optimizing for AI will be as pivotal for client success as the mobile-responsive shift was a decade ago.
- 26% of agencies self-identify as AI Leaders (advanced or expert), 15% as Laggards. Leaders are nearly 3x as likely to offer AI-based client services (49% vs 18%), almost 2x as likely to have formal AI guidelines (64% vs 36%), and 4x more likely to always initiate the AI conversation with clients.
- 99% of agencies have taken concrete steps on AI, including investing in tools (63%), training staff (60%), and developing internal AI policies (52%). Only 34% have actually built new AI offerings that clients can buy.
- The top "designing for machines" tactics are upfront content summaries and FAQ sections (37%), improving the data layer with schema and plain-language metadata (32%), and keeping business information consistent across platforms (31%).
- The top adaptation challenge is keeping up with the pace of change (41%), well ahead of skills gaps (15%), uncertain ROI (12%), and resource constraints (11%).
Recommendations · Tim's Take
- AI Leaders are running ahead on every metric that matters: 3x more AI-based services, 2x more formal AI policies, and 4x more likely to always initiate the AI conversation. "Intermediate" is the polite name for the group that gets quietly cut from RFPs over the next 18 months, and most agency owners are already there without knowing it.
- "Pace of change" being the top-cited problem at 41% is the most expensive lie agency owners tell themselves. The agencies blaming the speed of AI are the same ones without a written position on what it changes for their clients. Pick a thesis, ship something against it this quarter, and most of the noise sorts itself out.
- 99% of agencies took some action on AI, and only 34% built something a client can actually buy. The other two-thirds purchased tools, ran a training, called it a year, and watched the spend walk out the door without ever turning into invoiced revenue. If your AI investment isn't attached to a billable offer by next quarter, you're financing somebody else's R&D.
- Optimizing for AI consumption is the new SEO, and most agencies are quietly hoping their clients don't notice that nobody owns it yet. Content summaries, schema markup, plain-language metadata, and consistent business info across platforms are billable line items right now, and the agencies putting them on retainers in 2026 are the same ones raising fees while the rest debate whether it counts as real work.
Industry Report · 2025
Agency Edge Research
Agency Management Institute (Drew McLellan)
Annual research from Drew McLellan's AMI surveying agency owners and their clients on growth, AI, new business, and the operator life. The most consistent agency-owner survey in the US market, now in its 13th year.
New business Client expectations AI adoption
Key Findings
- Most clients want their agencies to use AI and to be transparent about it, actively expecting their agency to serve as a guide in the AI-driven shift.
- The 2025 research identified three distinct client mindsets on AI: Embracers, Skeptics, and Opportunists. What each group expects from agencies differs sharply.
- More than half of clients identify agencies through online search. About 40% ask for recommendations from colleagues, and one in three reviews direct outreach.
- Two in three clients expect a new agency search to take three months or fewer, which means agencies that are hard to find or slow to respond lose the deal before it starts.
Recommendations · Tim's Take
- Your clients want you to lead the AI conversation. If you can't articulate what AI changes for their business in plain English by next quarter, the agency that can will win the next RFP and you'll find out from a press release.
- Stop pitching AI the same way to every client. The Embracer wants you to push their roadmap forward, the Skeptic wants you to prove it won't break their brand, and the Opportunist wants you to find them an unfair advantage. One pitch to all three loses all three.
- More than half of buyers find their next agency through online search, and "good word of mouth" isn't a strategy when your name doesn't surface in the result they actually click. The page-one results are your storefront, and your homepage is just where buyers verify what they already decided about you.
- Two in three clients are running their agency search inside ninety days. If your sales team takes a week to respond, your homepage is unclear, or your case studies need a sales rep to decode them, the deal is over before you knew it started.
Industry Report · 2025
Agency Core 2025
Agency Core (Audience Audit + White Label IQ)
Free, ungated research from 778 agency leaders on optimism, pipeline, AI, talent, and retention. Identifies five distinct leadership mindsets that explain why some agencies accelerate while others stall in the same market.
Pipeline Optimism Mindsets
Key Findings
- Strong optimism among agency leaders collapsed from 74% in 2023 to 47% in 2025, and the drop shows up across every segment, size, and specialty.
- Pipeline is the #1 severe challenge agencies face. 43% of leaders strongly agree finding new clients is harder than ever in 2025, nearly triple the 15% who said so in 2023.
- AI lands far down the severe-challenge list. Only 21% cite AI's impact on agency relevance as a severe challenge, well behind pipeline (61%), prioritizing agency marketing (44%), and getting paid appropriately (39%).
- 68% of agencies lost clients in 2024, up from 56% in 2023, and fewer than half have a formal program to prevent client defection.
- The five attitudinal segments held stable from 2023 to 2025. Loyalty Builders, the only segment that significantly grew, also report the highest optimism and the strongest ability to adapt to change.
Recommendations · Tim's Take
- Pipeline pain tripled in two years, and most agencies are still treating new business as a thing that happens to them. If demand generation isn't a real system inside your shop, you're rolling dice on payroll every quarter and waiting for the run that ends the business.
- Stop letting AI panic eat your strategic attention. Pipeline outranks AI three to one as a severe concern in this data, and the agencies that spent 2024 wringing their hands over ChatGPT are the same ones with empty calendars in Q2.
- The five mindsets in this study barely moved in two years. These aren't passing problems waiting to fade, they're how the industry is wired now. Loyalty Builders are the only segment that grew, and they grew because they built retention and expansion systems while everyone else was reacting.
- 68% of agencies lost clients last year and most don't have a written program to stop the bleed. If client retention isn't a named workstream with an owner and a quarterly review, you'll find out a logo left when the invoice doesn't get paid.
Industry Report · 2024
Agency Transformation Report
Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA)
Annual global report from SoDA examining agency operations, client relationships, talent management, and the structural impact of AI on digital agency business models.
Global trends Client dynamics AI adoption
Key Findings
- AI is reshaping agency pricing, processes, and ways of operating in ways most agencies haven't yet formalized into policy.
- Agencies are being asked to demonstrate transformation readiness, not just execution capability, as clients elevate the strategic bar for outside partners.
- The agencies navigating AI most effectively are integrating it across operations rather than treating it as a single-service add-on.
- Talent dynamics remain the persistent operational constraint, with retention harder to solve than acquisition even as hiring pressure has eased from its 2022-2023 peak.
Recommendations · Tim's Take
- If your retainer can't be defended with measurable outcomes, you're one budget meeting away from getting cut. List what you deliver, and then list what it's actually worth, and notice the gap.
- Hire for the agency you want to run in 2027, not the one you're running today. Every month you delay is a month your competitor builds the team that beats you.
- Write your AI point of view down before a client asks for it, because they're going to ask within twelve months. "We use AI tools" isn't a position. It's a confession that you don't have one.
- Stop bolting AI on as a new service line. The agencies winning with AI bake it into pricing, delivery, and how every account gets staffed, and the ones still selling it as a one-off offer are watching their margin walk out the door to faster competitors.
Research · 2025
State of Marketing
HubSpot
Annual report on marketing trends, channel performance, and AI usage across thousands of marketers and marketing leaders.
Channel mix AI adoption Buyer journey
Key Findings
- Short-form video is the top-reported ROI content format at 21%, ahead of images (19%) and live-streamed video (16%).
- Content creation is the leading AI use case for marketers at 35%, followed by data analysis (30%) and workflow automation (20%).
- 75% of marketing leaders who have invested in AI report a positive ROI from that investment.
- For B2B marketers, the top ROI channels in 2024 were website, blog, and SEO, followed by paid social and social media shopping tools.
Recommendations · Tim's Take
- If you can't deliver short-form video in-house or through a partner, you're not in the room when buyers shortlist. That isn't a content gap, it's a relevance gap, and the buyer doesn't owe you the conversation.
- Stop selling "AI services" as a line item. Bake AI into the work and charge for the outcome, because selling the tool is what consultants do when they don't trust the result.
- Your website, blog, and SEO are still the top ROI channels for B2B in 2024, and they outperform paid social. Every dollar you funnel into rented attention is a dollar you didn't put into the assets that keep paying you back for years.
Research · 2024
B2B Buyer Experience Study
6sense
Research on how B2B buyers actually move through purchase decisions, including how often they shortlist before talking to sales.
Buyer behavior Sales cycles Vendor selection
Key Findings
- B2B buyers are nearly 70% through their purchasing process before engaging with a vendor. Buyers initiate first contact more than 80% of the time.
- 81% of buyers already have a preferred vendor at the moment of first contact. 85% have largely set their requirements before ever talking to a seller.
- 95% of buyers purchase from a vendor on their Day One shortlist, a number that increased from 85% in the prior year's study.
- 84% of buyers who ranked their shortlist before seller contact went on to buy from the first vendor they spoke with. Among buyers who hadn't ranked their list, only about half did so.
Recommendations · Tim's Take
- Buyers are shortlisting your agency right now without ever talking to you. Your visibility is your pipeline, whether you built it on purpose or by accident, and the agencies pretending otherwise are the ones that go quiet in Q4.
- Build for first contact, because the vendor who shows up first with the most relevance wins the meeting that actually matters. Everyone else gets a courtesy interview that ends in a "we went a different direction" email.
- Treat every first call like the buyer has already evaluated you, because they have. If you spend the first 20 minutes "discovering" what they already decided, you've lost the deal and you're just waiting to find out.
Thought Leadership · 2024
The B2B Effectiveness Code
LinkedIn B2B Institute
Joint research with the IPA on how B2B buying decisions are made, including the role of mental availability and brand-building over time.
Brand building 95-5 rule Mental availability
Key Findings
- At any given time, only about 5% of buyers in a B2B category are actively in-market. The other 95% aren't buying now and won't be for months or years. (The 95-5 Rule, Professor John Dawes / Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, published with the LinkedIn B2B Institute.)
- Marketing that only targets in-market buyers reaches at most 5% of the addressable category. All spend on conversion media misses the 95%.
- Buyers tend to choose vendors who came to mind first when they entered the market, not vendors who pitched hardest after the search began.
- B2B marketers who push brand investment below 30% of total spend see measurable decay in future pipeline, a finding consistent with the Binet and Field framework adapted for B2B by the LinkedIn B2B Institute.
Recommendations · Tim's Take
- Stop calling brand building a luxury. It's the only thing loading your pipeline twelve months from now, and skipping it is why you'll be sitting in 2027 wondering why nobody knows who you are.
- Show up for the 95% of buyers who aren't ready to talk yet. They're your future deals, and treating them like wasted impressions is exactly why your pipeline runs dry every fourth quarter.
- The vendor who comes to mind first is the vendor who wins, and nobody in your category comes to mind first by accident. If your name doesn't surface in your buyer's head before they open a browser tab, you're playing for second place against agencies that have been investing in mental availability for three years.
Research · 2024
How B2B Buyers Actually Buy
Wynter
Buyer insight research on how B2B leaders evaluate, shortlist, and reject vendors based on their websites, messaging, and signals.
Messaging Website Buyer signals
Key Findings
- Most B2B buyers form a vendor opinion within the first moments of landing on a homepage. The window is short enough that unclear messaging eliminates you before a human has read a full sentence.
- At the vendor evaluation stage, approximately 90% of buyers are evaluating roughly three vendors simultaneously, so differentiation at the message level is a deciding factor.
- Vague positioning is a primary reason buyers pass without booking a call. Specificity about who you serve and what changes for them matters more than polish.
- Buyers scan and screenshot, they don't read. The homepage functions as a visual shortcut to a yes or no decision.
Recommendations · Tim's Take
- If your homepage doesn't survive the 90-second scan, the rest of your sales motion doesn't matter, because buyers eliminate you before a human reads a full sentence.
- Get specific about who you serve and what changes for them. "Marketing for SaaS" isn't a position, it's a polite way of saying you'll work for anyone who pays.
- You're not selling against silence. 90% of buyers are weighing you against two other agencies at the same time, and the one who shows the sharpest reason to pick them in the first 60 seconds wins, regardless of who has the bigger team or the longer client list.
- Visibility Lab will tell you exactly what your homepage is doing in those 90 seconds. Try Visibility Lab →
Research · 2025
Generative AI in Marketing Services
McKinsey
McKinsey's analysis of how generative AI is reshaping the marketing services industry, with implications for agency business models.
AI economics Service redesign Productivity
Key Findings
- McKinsey projects that agentic AI will power as much as two-thirds of current marketing activities, spanning content generation, audience testing, and media planning.
- Generative AI productivity gains in marketing are estimated to be worth roughly 5 to 15 percent of total marketing spend, or approximately $463 billion annually.
- Marketing and sales showed the biggest single-year adoption jump from 2023 to 2024, with reported AI adoption more than doubling.
- Strategic and consultative roles will grow in relative value as execution becomes faster and less labor-intensive. Agencies that reposition around strategic oversight are better insulated than those selling production volume.
Recommendations · Tim's Take
- Audit your service offering this quarter. Anything AI will do well in 18 months can't be the headline of your retainer, or your retainer is on a clock you can't see.
- Move up the value chain or get crushed at the bottom of it. Sell the thinking, not the deliverables, because the deliverables are about to cost a tenth of what they used to and your margin will go with them.
- Position AI as an efficiency unlock for the client, not a threat to their headcount. Buyers respond to the first framing and run from the second, and the agency that gets the framing right wins the next three years of their budget.
- Marketing and sales AI adoption more than doubled in twelve months. Every quarter you "wait and see" is a quarter the gap widens between you and the agencies already shipping with it, and the disadvantage shows up in the case studies you can't tell and the speed you can't match, long before it shows up on a dashboard.
Whitepaper · 2025
Trust Barometer
Edelman
Annual global research on trust in institutions, brands, and leaders. Useful as a backdrop for how agencies should position credibility.
Trust Founder voice Credibility
Key Findings
- 61% of people globally report a moderate or high sense of grievance, defined as believing that government and business serve narrow interests rather than theirs. This shapes how skeptically buyers evaluate any branded message.
- 7 in 10 people believe government officials, business leaders, and journalists deliberately mislead them. The trust gap between institutions and individual voices has never been wider in the study's 25-year history.
- "My employer" remains the most trusted institution in the study, but it dropped three points from 2024 to 76% in 2025. Managers are trusted more than senior leadership to tell the truth on major topics.
- Trust is moving from top-down institutional voice to peer-to-peer. For agencies, that means the founder's voice carries more weight than the agency's brand statement.
Recommendations · Tim's Take
- The founder voice is the single highest-trust asset your agency owns, and if it's silent, you're handing market trust to the louder competitor down the street for free.
- Stop hiding behind brand-speak. Buyers want a human point of view, and "we are passionate about driving results" isn't one. It's static, and they tune it out before the second sentence.
- Build the founder content engine before you scale the agency content engine, because the first one earns the trust that the second one will need to actually convert anything into revenue.
- Managers are trusted more than senior leadership to tell the truth on major topics, which means the people closest to the work are your most credible spokespeople, not just the founder. If your team isn't visible alongside the founder, you're handing the credibility advantage to the agencies whose people are out there doing the work in public.