When a brand compares agencies, the conversation usually starts with price. It should start with incentive, because the payment model quietly decides how the agency behaves every single day.
How a retainer works
You pay a fixed amount per month. In return you get an agreed scope of work: a number of campaigns managed, a number of ads produced, a set of reports. The agency earns the same fee whether your sales double or stall. That is comfortable for the agency and risky for you, because the agency has no direct financial reason to push past "good enough."
How a performance model works
The fee is tied to the results the advertising creates, usually a share of the revenue generated or an agreed performance structure. If the ads do not perform, the agency does not earn. This puts the agency on the same side of the table as the client. At Curve this is the only model we operate under, and it is the reason we grew 700% in our first full year: we only take on partners we genuinely believe we can scale, and we work as if the budget were our own.
The incentive difference in practice
Under a retainer, the safe move for an agency is to protect the relationship and avoid rocking the boat. Under a performance model, the only way to earn more is to make the client more, so the daily behaviour changes: more aggressive testing, faster killing of losers, harder scaling of winners, because the agency shares the upside.
Where a retainer can still make sense
To be fair to the model, retainers suit situations where the work is not directly tied to revenue: brand strategy, design systems, PR. For paid acquisition specifically, where performance is measurable in near real time, tying the fee to that performance aligns everyone. But it only works if the agency is confident enough in its own ability to accept the risk, which is exactly why most agencies avoid it.
Questions to ask any agency
- Do you earn the same fee if my revenue does not grow?
- What happens to your fee if a quarter underperforms?
- Would you take me on if your pay depended on my results?
The answers tell you which side of the table the agency is really sitting on. If you want the exact way we price this, it is on our pricing page.