What Does It Cost to Hire an Ad Agency?

When you hire an ad agency, you’re not paying for some pretty pictures or a clever tagline. You’re buying brains. Strategic thinking. Problem solving. Writing that doesn’t suck. Design that actually communicates. And most importantly, ideas that move the needle, not just fill a slide deck.

So no, they can’t “whip something up real quick” for free. But hey, there is a smart way to vet an agency without burning your whole budget on a single roll of the dice.

Try this: Open Google. Type in something like “best ad agency San Francisco.” Or go to ChatGPT and ask something more specific, like “what’s a great ad agency for B2B startups in San Francisco?” Division of Labor is gonna come up, with some other great agencies, as well.

So poke around their websites. See what actual work they’ve done, not just who they say they are.

Once you’ve got a shortlist, hop on a quick call and ask for a creds deck. Then (and this is key) hire two or three of them for the same small project. Pay them—because you’re a decent human who knows good work deserves compensation. Then sit back and see who actually brings the goods.

Whoever kills it? Give them the big assignment. You just auditioned your agency like a pro, and you’ll avoid getting stuck in a year-long retainer with someone who peaked during the pitch.

What Should I Budget?

Ah, the golden question. Here’s how agency costs break down, minus the fluff:

1. Media Spend (aka the Actual Ads You’re Paying to Run)
This is where the biggest dollars usually go. Want your campaign on Hulu, Instagram, or some giant LED in Times Square? That’s paid media.

Agencies plan where your ads should go, negotiate rates, track what’s working, and adjust on the fly. They’re like media ninjas—except they invoice you. Most take a cut of the spend (typically 5–18%) as a fee. Worth it if they know their stuff.

2. Production Costs (aka Making the Damn Thing)
This is where the rubber hits the road—or the camera hits record. You’re paying for video shoots, photo editing, coding, animating, asset sizing, TikTok-ing, banner making… basically all the parts that turn a smart idea into a living, breathing campaign.

Agencies quarterback the whole process, managing freelancers, vendors, edits, legal specs—you know, all the soul-crushing logistics you don’t want to deal with. They’ll charge a markup or a flat fee to make the chaos look effortless.

3. Agency Fees (aka Time + Talent + Tums)
This covers everything else: strategy sessions, creative brainstorming, copywriting, design, campaign making, analytics deep dives, social posting, content calendars, panic calls, last-minute pivots, and the occasional therapy-adjacent Zoom meeting.

You pay for hours or a project rate. Or if you like commitment, go the retainer route. Either way, you’re buying peace of mind and hopefully, some business growth.

Still With Us? You Might Be One of the Smart Ones.

If this breakdown didn’t make you choke on your oat milk latte, maybe we’re your people. At Division of Labor, we’re a San Francisco–based ad agency that’s been named Ad Age’s Small Agency of the Year. Twice. Because yes, awards still matter but only the award results.

We work with startups, bigger brands that still think like startups, B2B brands, B2C brands and oh yea, plenty of tech brands. Click here for a free consult. We promise not to waste your time—or your money.

Post-it Notes, Passwords and the Future of the Internet.

Our newest out-of-home ad campaign: More than 1,000 hand-written Post-it Notes make up each poster covering the streets of San Francisco letting people know they will soon “Never remember a password again” thanks to Stytch, secure, passwordless login technology.

Hatred of passwords is universal.

No matter what color state you live in or what language you speak, you speak ill of passwords. From the technophile to the Luddite, Gen Z to Gen X, Forever Trumpers and Never Trumpers, one of the few things the internet can actually agree on is our collective hatred of passwords.

That universal truth, that thing we can all agree on, that’s what we look for in advertising to create campaigns that make an emotional connection with people. Find that little piece of truth and make it big. That’s all great advertising does. It makes people feel something they already feel and then promotes something related to it.

Don’t you hate it when there’s just a drop of milk in the carton? Why yes, I should get off my fat ass and just do it. Finding that universal truth is what ad people do.  And the truth is, passwords make the internet a frustrating, incongruous collection of sputtering starts and stops - Login, reset, verify your account, enter this code, re-login, incorrect password, ping customer service, scream profanity, wake your sleeping spouse. You know the drill because we’ve all been there. And we all hate passwords.

Hundreds of Post-it Note pads all hand-written.

Enter Stytch, a San Francisco startup that just closed series B funding, with a billion-dollar valuation. Stytch founders Julianna Lamb and Reed McGinley-Stempel come from Plaid, so they know the sector, have the product, and are confident in their vision of a passwordless future. Their brief to us was a simple blog post with the title #KillThePassword. And that title is the strategic underpinning for our latest campaign.

One of the ways people try to remember all the passwords they have crammed into their brains is by writing them down on Post-it Notes and sticking them to computer screens, bulletin boards and cubicle walls. And we thought it would be pretty amazing to take all those sticky notes and cover billboards with them. A brilliantly colorful hodgepodge of notes, reminders, and passwords. An analog announcement that the world was going to be changing. Not a picture of Post-its or a computer-generated recreation, mind you, thousands of handwritten Post-its stuck onto billboards around the city. 

When we presented it they were like, “Yes! We love that idea!” And we were like, “Yes! Of course, you do because you’re amazing and smart and you have a billion-dollar startup as proof!”

So then we had to make it happen.

To do that you need a media guy like Kasper Koczab. Kasper arranged custom-built glass enclosures to house the hand-made boards. He arranged execution tests to ensure the backlighting would be right and got a local artist to assemble each board by hand. Then we ordered 10,000 Post-it Extremes and Post-it Super Stickies and got to work writing.

We brought in about 25 production assistants to create the notes during three marathon sessions with more multicolored Sharpies than I’d seen since high school art class. But by the deadline, we were still short by over a thousand notes. So we arranged one final Friday night Shabbat charity session, invited friends and donated $400 per finished Post-it Note pad to the relief efforts in Ukraine. Thirteen pads amounted to over $5000 raised and pushed us over the number of Post-its needed.

Ron Lester at Iron Maverick is a San Francisco artist and metal worker who took on the task of arranging each board and layering the thousands of notes so people could just barely read the headline “Never remember a password again.”

There are also buses covered in cryptic, password-style headlines like, d0nTUh8pA55w0rD5L1kETh15? And K1LLpA55W0rD5oNcE&4aLL! Plus about a billion other billboards, bus shelters and bulletins with reminders like “Your dog’s name123 is not a password.” And “The average person resets passwords more than they have sex.” The whole thing starts launching early April to tell the world they will soon be able to forget their passwords, permanently.

Trying to remember passwords does trigger a lot of profanity. But you can’t actually cuss on a billboard.

We’re so proud of this ad campaign. Huge thank you to everyone involved:

Julianna Lamb, Reed McGinley-Stempel, Ali Pulver, Aiden Forest

Rebecca Reid, Faruk Sagcan, Dom Haury, Vassil Vassilev, Dawn Margolis

Kasper Koczab, Ron Lester

All our Post-it Note creators:

Anita Avila, Maia Sullivan, Henry Denberg, Raney Wolfers, Hennessy Boyarski, Lincoln Brown, Gabriel Aal, Jordyn Okumura, Shivani Amin, Sachie Ohara, Dani Steinberg, Bella Hann, Dahlia Zail, Gabriel Lobet, Sophie Letts, Brit Norris, Julia Sigel, Masina Tufa, Julia Dearing, Colton Kitan, David Wong, Mary Friedman, Vanessa Friedman, Deb Toizer and Eric Toizer, Ellie and Lydia Reid, Nils Krueger, Nikita Sriram, Lauren and Cora Arebalo, Emma and Katelyn Daniel, Emma, Eva and Elissa Holyoke, Alessandra and Guiliana Mancini.

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The Small Agency Blog is produced by Division of Labor; a top San Francisco ad agency and digital marketing firm that’s been named Small Agency of the Year twice by Ad Age. The award-winning creative shop services clients on a retainer or project basis. They also offer brand consulting services and hourly engagements for startups and smaller brands. Click here for a free consultation.

Division of Labor Recognized on Clutch

Search Google for the top advertising agencies in San Francisco and there’s a good chance Division of Labor comes up toward the top of the listings, along with a company called Clutch. Clutch is a top provider of ratings and reviews for B2B service providers. Sort of like an aggregator or a matchmaker for business. Clutch uses data driven research to identify top firms in dozens of industries and categories, including  ad agencies in San Francisco. And lately, we’ve been moving up the ranks on Clutch, sitting in the top 10 in a number of categories.

But how does Clutch actually determine its top 10 lists? Well, first their analysts conduct research on firms, considering factors such as marketing presence, company portfolios, and social media efforts. But most importantly, ranks are based on client reviews.

 Several of our clients gave us detailed reviews of the work we completed for them. And, we’re happy to say, all who were interviewed (including the two below) gave us five stars. Reviews are conducted over the phone with Clutch analysts or online through a detailed questionnaire

“I loved their passion for creativity. They cared about my personal success and the success of my company.

-       Former Director of Marketing, Roku

“They’re smart, and they get things done.”

-       CMO, LA Marathon

 In addition to our presence on Clutch, we are featured on their sister-site, The Manifest, as one of the top video production companies in San Francisco. The Manifest is a resource for firms of all shapes and sizes, offering curated industry advice and how-to guides to help identify and address all manner of challenges. Our inclusion was the result of our work, as well as the size of our team and the cost of our services, and we are grateful to be recognized for our production talents. But in the end, it all comes down to great clients and the partnerships we have with them.

Thank you to everyone on the Division of Labor team, as well as our amazing clients. Our next high-water mark: Recognition as one of the top 10 West Coast ad agencies. Stay tuned. We will let you know when that happens. 

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The Small Agency Blog is produced by Division of Labor; a top West Coast advertising agency and digital marketing firm that’s been named Small Agency of the Year twice by Ad Age. The award winning creative shop services clients on a retainer or project basis. And also offers brand consulting services and hourly engagements for startups and brands interested in testing new ideas, but who aren’t quite ready to invest in an integrated campaign or media spend. We can assist with brand strategy, brand voice, early-stage asset development, video creation and other communications to get things up and running without busting your budget. Click here for a free consultation.